Page 60 of Outside the Veil
“I’m going to make a run to the post office while you’re busy,” Diego offered. With the winding, uncertain roads, a ‘run’ to the post office could take two hours. “Do you need anything out that way?”
“Oh, no, thanks for askin’, though. We’ll be out of your hair by suppertime. Ms. Thorpe says you need quiet so you can get some work done.”
“Oh, did she?” Diego chuckled. “Such a slave driver.”
Diego took the truck into the little gathering of houses and businesses that passed for a town and sent both signed contract and manuscript off to Miriam. He had ended with a couple ofparagraphs on the last page cautioning the reader to keep an open mind when confronted with someone odd.
An inability to recognize common names or unfamiliarity with machinery may mean you have met one of the last of the fae rather than an eccentric psychiatric patient. Be kind, be patient, listen carefully, and you may hear secrets and dreams we humans lost long ago.
He stopped at the little grocery for cream, eggs and chamomile tea. If Finn did come back that evening, he might need to be coddled and fussed over.
When he returned to the house late that afternoon, Jake and his boys were cleaning up. They showed him the neatly stacked woodpile by the garage and the new window, then said their goodbyes. The huge trucks lumbering away into the woods seemed to Diego a last glimpse of companionship and civilization. The sun dropped below the tree line without any sign of Finn, and he braced himself for another long night.
Shaman.
The chill voice yanked Diego from a light doze. He lay on the ottoman wrapped in blankets by the fire, since he didn’t have any illusions about a good night’s sleep. Had he dreamt it?
“Shaman, come and see.”
“I’m not going out there, you mangy scavenger,” he muttered, with more bravado than he felt.Why is it calling me that?
It called again and again, soft and coaxing, while the wind tugged at the house in little gusts and whistles.
“Dios,” he whispered, and got up with the blankets wrapped around him. “What do you want?”
Dread gripped him, but the soft persistence compelled him to look. What if— No, Finn had said he would be hidden while hehealed. He crept to the front window and peeled back a corner of the curtain.
The empty front porch stared back at him. With a slow exhale, he pulled the curtain open further.Nothing…good…still nothing.A heavy object slammed against the glass. He staggered back with a sharp cry. The wendigo leered at him, inches from his face. He retreated another step. The glass between them suddenly did not seem enough.
Blood dripped from the thing’s decay-riddled teeth. Glistening lumps decorated its matted fur. It wore its own face now rather than Finn’s, more bear than human, but a bear that had been dead for some months.
“Go away,” Diego whispered. “Please go away and leave us alone.”
“Look, Shaman. I have a she. You know this one.”
The frigid, hollow thoughts pierced his head, scattering his wits. “You have…”
In answer, the wendigo held up its gruesome prize. A woman’s mutilated body hung from its grip. A ragged, gnawed stump was all that remained of the right leg. The head still dangled from the neck by a few flaps of skin. It turned the body so the head flopped backward and Diego could see the face.
“Tara,” he got out in a strangled whisper. “Oh…holy shit.”
“You are not pleased, Shaman.”The wendigo brought the body up to its face. It opened its mouth wide enough to unhinge its jaws and bit down to tear a chunk from the Park Service officer’s side. Gobbets of flesh fell with nauseating, wet sounds onto the porch. “You do not wish for me to eat this one. The flesh is strange. The taste. Sharper. But the bones—”
It opened its maw again and bit down on Tara’s ribcage. The bones snapped and crunched.
“Stop!” Diego shouted. “God…please stop!” Emptiness, such terrible emptiness filled his head with every thought, black, unceasing despair.
“Join with me. Calm your lightning and let me touch you. Let me live in your skin. Then we will hunt together. You will help me choose which ones to eat.”
“No, I can’t! I can’t eat my own kind! I can’t kill for you!”
“Hunt with me. Help me choose. Or I will choose another each night. One with your scent on them.”
Diego’s stomach lurched. Jake, Mick and Billy, the ladies at the post office and the grocery, the teenager at the gas station—they would all carry his scent. He would be their deaths. A sudden rush of anger swept through him, a forest fire of rage that rose from his belly to his head.
“Hijo de puta!” he bellowed as he grabbed the iron fireplace tongs in one hand and the poker in the other. “You won’t have any more!”
He flung open the door, heedless of the blast of frigid air, and strode out. “No more, you bastard! Put her the fuck down!”
