Chapter 1: TWISTED AND BROKEN ANGLES
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The arms, legs, and frozen faces of the Elkwood tribe men jut out from the drifts of snow at twisted and broken angles outside. Tahki bites her lip, breaking the skin as she pulls closed the gap in the skin hide door and turns to the warmth of her family’s wigwam.
“Why us?” Wapun asks from across the dying fire. “Have you eaten anything it’s offered?”
Tahki looks at her sister with disgust. “Do you think I’m a fool?”
“It’s whispers to me too. It’s okay.”
“I haven’t,” Tahki barks. She throws her mittens over her mouth as the shout bounces off the angled walls and escapes with the smoke above. The gentle coo of her babe, wrapped in its nest of furs, calls out next to the fire as the women sit in the crackling of the embers. From beyond the comfort of their refuge, the quiet, hollow imitation of Tahki’s voice whispers out, growing and taking on her husky tone.
“Haven’t, haven’t at all. Not at all, no, no.” Tahki gulps a breath of air and holds it fast as the voice chatters and fades away. She exhales after several moments and looks at the dwindling flames, feeling the heat fade by the second. “There is nothing left to burn. We must do it now.”
Wapun reluctantly nods. She shuffles, dragging her malnourished legs to the far end of the wigwam and pulls out her knife. With gentle hands, she works the sharpened bone into the skin wall and rocks it back and forth, tearing a slit as it leaks the darkness and falling snow from outside. Tahki turns to the double knots tied in the flap, taking her place. “Are you ready?”
“What choice do we have?” Wapun answers back.
“Now.” She forces their last piece of unburnt wood through the slit in the doorway and whoops and hollers as she pivots it back and forth, letting its tip dance out in the cold winter air from the safety and warmth of her home.
The crunch of snow outside bounds toward the wigwam as the thing’s cheap imitation of her voice fades and mixes with something more ancient and animistic. She yanks the branch back as it nips at the branches. A look across the fire reveals her sister pulling open the small tear. She plunges her arm out into the night, shifting her shoulder back and forth before retracting it with a split log clutched in her mitten.
“Quickly,” Tahki whispers as Wapun reaches for another piece. The branch continues to wave back and forth as she tries to ignore the mad ramblings from the thing just beyond the skin wall as it bats at its plaything. The gentle whine of her babe stirs, and she ignores it, unable to calm her daughter’s worries from her job at hand. With held breath the pile of wood grows with each draw of her sister’s mitten.
“Why didn’t we store the meats with the wood?” Wapun asks.
The thing’s voice mixes with the gentle cry of the babe, growing louder and more distorted as it struggles to hold on to one single voice at a time. Tahki yanks the branch back again, wishing she had another set of hands to cover her ears. “It’s how we have always done. Never have you suggested otherwise in all the winters before, sister.”
“I’m suggesting it now,” Wapun says.
“A little too late.”
“Little late, too late, too little,” it whispers outside, unable to help itself.
“We never should have let them go after it.”
“And instead, do nothing? Continue to let it snatch the children while we slept? They did all they could, Wapun.”
“At least you have your daughter. I have no one.”
“They were my family, too, you selfish doe. Am I no one to you? Is your own niece nobody as well?”
The women sit, staring at each other in the flickering light as the branch waves free in Tahki’s hand. She pauses, realizing the thing’s loss of interest on the other side of the hole. “Get your hand back inside,” she screams.
“Mmmmmhhhmhmh.” The air fills with the deep, twisted laughter as it cries out with the borrowed women’s voices. They mix in the thing’s throat and the snow crunches beneath its large, bounding steps that wrap around the wigwam, toward Wapun.
Wapun yanks her arm back. A small yelp escapes her as the slit catches on her mitten and clinches her hand in place. She heaves against the hole, trying to widen it as Tahki watches the dark shadow glide across the walls with steady precision outside. She screams out and joins the wails of her child.
“Wapun, now.”
“Hurry now, Wapun. I can smell you, Wapun,” it laughs with delight. Tahki stares in horror, unaware she is still shaking the branch back and forth, uselessly, unable to do anything but watch her sister heave at her wrist and scream.
The shadow comes down fast and Wapun dislodges, falling backward into the sanctuary. She sits up and allows herself a nervous, relieved laugh.
“Nearly had me,” she says between shuddering breaths. She raises her arm and brushes back her dark, wild hair as her wrist paints her face with a stroke of thick crimson blood. Her eyes cross and focus on the jagged bones protruding out from the strands of flesh left behind from the thing’s quick work. She lets out the first uneasy scream as the chewing of bones crack and grind somewhere outside.
“Stay still,” Tahki pleads. She throws her mittens off and drags her useless legs behind her, clawing towards Wapun’s flailing body as she tries to back away from her own arm.
Tahki’s cries blend with her family’s. Her eyes rise from her sisters and stare out into the darkness of the tear above. From within the inky black, two cateraxed eyes stare back at her, their sheen glowing gray and green like a wild creature caught in torchlight.
“Wapun,” she utters from her heaving chest, but her voice gets lost in the chaos. She waves her withered arms frantically as she tries to grab her attention, but they fall limp by her side as the nightmare before her unfolds.
Fingers, long devoid of blood and warmth, crawl in from the night. Jagged fingernails span off weathered black digits that stretch out forever from its rotted palm. It disappears into the thick sleeve of stitched furs and rises into the nothingness of the night beyond, readying to strike in the faint glow. She tries to call to her oblivious sister again, but nothing comes out.
“Tahki, please,” Wapun yells for her, unable to take her eyes off her phantom limb.
Its hand strikes and wraps itself around Wapun’s hair with one sickening swoop. Tahki watches the hope drain from her sister’s face and fill with fear and confusion as she pulls herself like a wounded coyote, desperate to reach her. The fingers, weaved around Wapun’s locks, rise and steal her from the ground. Her cries of horror curdle and turn to ones of pain as her feet dangle in the air. Her wrist drips, bleeding like a deer, hung to drain.
“Mmmmhhhhmhm.”
The ancient laugh howls with delight as its arm rips the seam higher and tears its way upward, toward the peak of their home. The stiff wind sucks the remaining warmth from the Wigwam and cuts through Tahki as the flames dance, the last of them threatening to peter out.
Tahki throws herself around the smoldering pit, desperate to save the last of the dying heat as the iron kettle in the center burns its logo into her palm, leaving a fleshy red buffalo imprinted in her skin. She watches as Wapun’s flailing body jerks, then stops as the thing flicks its wrist and snaps her neck with ease. Tahki turns away, desperate for the sight of anything else, but only finds more terror as she sees her child’s eyes stare up at the hand dragging Wapun’s lifeless body into the darkness.
Stillness fills the air. Tahki rolls from the pit and reaches for one of the lesser blood-covered logs. Smoke pulls into her lungs as she carefully blows on the coals between panic-induced gasps, desperate to revive the flames.
“T-Tahki…” Wapun calls out from the night.
She jolts upright and stares into the darkness. “Sister?”
“Help me, please.” Tahki scrambles to her knees again and drags herself toward her voice.
“I’m coming sister, hold on.”
“Tahki please. I want you.”
She stops, her blood running cold at the emptiness in the voice. She throws herself back as the things rotted hand lunges out from the wild and swipes through the air. Its deep laugh hums out again.
“So close, nuntanuhs.”
Tahki’s exhausted mind snaps in two as she collapses next to the smoking pit. “What’s left to take, spirit? Do not say you still hunger when you leave the waste of my people’s men, my mother and husband out in those drifts to freeze. A foul creature as yourself wouldn’t mind cold meat, I’m sure.” She stares out into the reflective eyes hovering in the darkness.
“Why would I eat from the reserves when you keep your meat so… fresh? Why chew and gnaw when warm meals are on hand, nuntanuhs?”
“Then do it,” she cries. “If your appetite is never-ending, then have your way with us and pick your teeth clean with my daughter’s ribs.” Tahki scoops a handful of the burning coals into her already burnt hand and heaves them into the darkness. An amused grunt lets out as the embers roll off the thing’s fur hood and light its brow as they trickle down, giving away the true scope of its looming size.
“No,” it whispers, half to itself. “No meal left here. The babe would only be a single bite. Its meat is mushy and void of flavor.” The wild eyes blink and disappear into the darkness. Wild snapping of branches fill the air from the canopy above. Tahki scoops her babe from its furs and tucks her into her robes. Oblivious to the horrors, she latches to the withered breast inside and fruitlessly suckles, receiving nothing in return.
Branches rain down, one after another as they cover the gash leading out into the harsh environment beyond. The cold wind ceases as the pine arms wrap themselves around Tahki’s home. The rotten stench of the thing’s breath blows between the branches and gives life to the coals. Flames dance, birthing heat back into her home. Tahki stokes the flames with terrified relief and throws another log into the pit. She stares at the fire, unable to deny any longer that her once comforting home has now become a terrible prison.
“I can care. I can provide for my kind, if you like, nuntanuhs?” it whispers to only her.
“I am not your kind, wretched spirit.” Tahki spits, tears rolling down her cheeks and onto her babe’s soft scalp below.
“But you could be.” The thing’s long-arm enters uninvited once more, its hand clutching the stripped flesh of her sister’s arm. The stiff clatter of its knuckles release and drop the meat next to Tahki.
“Eat. Feast. Gorge.”