The Winnipeg Incident

July 3, 1978. 7:20 P.M. Winnipeg, Manitoba.

“Hey, mister,” a freckle-faced red head in his late teens said with a condescending politeness as his eyes focused up on my forehead. “But, has anyone, ever told you, that… you look like-”

“Yeah,” I replied. Beating around the bush was futile more often than not. My last haircut, a regrettable to surrender to a pang of vanity, had unfortunately left the boltheads of both my temples too visible. Given that there were about twenty other men in this clearing, it was probably going to come up a lot more.

“Oh. I hope I didn’t, offend you or nothin’. Just not, good at introducin’ myself, I guess,” he stammered out. “I’m Russell.”

“Victor.” I still do not know why I gave him my actual first name.

Russell raised his left hand for me to shake, but lowered after it a painfully long ten seconds. I had given him my first name, not consented to physical contact. I noticed his eyes shifted to my rifle, slung over my shoulder, before he inquired, “So, how long you been huntin’?”

It occurred to me that I should have devoted some time to straightening a cover story for my interactions with Winnipeggers. Three centuries of transient habitation and I still could be so sloppy sometimes. I had only purchased the firearm two weeks ago in preparation for the hunt and been to the shooting range once. It was useless to pretend I was a seasoned hunter, so I decided to use a kernel of truth. “I’ve been hunted my whole life. Does that count?”

The kid said nothing, just looked up blankly. I was a full foot taller than him, not to mention outweighing his skinny frame by well over three-hundred pounds. He was as intimidated as he was confused. “Uh-”

“We’re all here! Listen up,” a deep voice shouted a dozen meters from where we were standing. Me, the kid, and the other hunters all turned our attention to the voice’s source: a six-foot, brickhouse built man with a shaved head, a Winona Camo vest, and a full brown beard standing atop a pick-up truck. “Before we go out there, I wanted to thank you all for rising to this occasion. We don’t know what the hell is out there, but we all know what it took from us.” He pointed into our mission: Assiniboine Forest. “We go out there, we don’t come out unless we're carrying that thing’s corpse. Let’s get it done.”

Just a fortnight after I arrived in Winnipeg, terror swept through the town like a plague. Hunters were going missing in the forest every other week, and the ones they found had been converted into chunks of shredded flesh. A flyer went out, calling brave and experienced men to form a mini militia that would hunt and execute whatever beast was responsible. Knowing my outsider status could make me a scapegoat for the umpteenth time, I decided to participate.

Before the man could step down from the pickup, I raised my hand for an impromptu Q&A. “What’s the plan?”

“You deaf?” the burly man “answered.”

“No, I heard you describing our goal. But how are we going to accomplish that?”

The man did not answer. He just jumped down from the hood of the car, his workboots slamming on the ground slightly louder than I expected. “We ‘accomplish that’ by not being chickenshit cowards and nutting the hell up,” he said as he moved close enough to invade my personal space.

“He’s not wrong, Clint” Russel chimed in, “if this thing is what my pops said it was-”

The other men started laughing and pointing towards the kid. “We got ourselves a hick!” an older man yelled hypocritically. “It’s just a damn coyote or bear or somethin’,” another old-timer chimed in.

Though Clint was not laughing, just glaring in a judgmental silence. “Listen here, boy. Your old man’s a drunk and crank. Your whole clan is trailer trash. Keep those ghost stories in the gutter you crawled out of.” He turned his attention back to me, shoving a forceful finger into my chest. “No one asked you to move here, no one asked you to be here, bolt-head.”

I smirked. “Clever.”

Before he could escalate our disagreement, a high-pitched scream tore through the forest. I knew it in an instant. My previous encounters with the creature had permanently engraved that torturous shriek into my auditory memory. I looked around at the rest of the hunting party. Within seconds, the dramatic investment in my confrontation with Clint had morphed into a primal terror as they stared through rows of trees in a futile search for the scream’s source.

Without another word, Clint rushed back to his pickup truck, grabbed a Remington rifle, and marched to the front of the pack. With as much volume as he could muster, he yelled, “Let’s get it done!” before shooting his gun into the air. Dumb as the gesture was, it did inspire enough bravado in the others for them to follow Clint into the mouth of Assinboine. Russell peaked up at me, probably hoping for that plan I was needling about. But I knew the futility of trying to reason with them, so I told him, “Remember to duck,” before we both followed the hunting party.

*

“You from Europe?” Russell whispered.

“Yeah, but not somewhere you can pronounce,” I responded in a slightly higher volume.

A couple hours had gone by since the hunt began. The ordinarily pitch-black night sky was illuminated by a waxing crescent moon and the intermittent howls of wolves sustained a tenacious, trigger-happy atmosphere. Two dozen scared men with guns in the middle of a forest at night. Even Shakespeare would have cringed at such a brazen setup for tragedy, and he could not have written a more obvious tragic hero, leading his allies to certain doom, than Clint Simmons.

As we had drudged through the wetlands, Russell had filled me in about our tenacious “leader”. He and his son Kyle had been on a deer hunt in the Assiniboine woods a few weeks back when they heard a cry unlike what any animal could make. Kyle wanted to turn back, but Clint raced to confront the source, pulled by a father’s instinct to defend his offspring with overwhelming violence. But he found nothing, and when he turned back, Kyle was gone. Three days later, the child’s bloody clothes and severed left hand were found under a Tamarack tree.

Why was he so insulted by my desire for a plan? Because it meant he might make it out of this alive.

“Stop,” Clint yelled, and we obeyed. I took my rifle, which had been resting on its sling, and pointed it at some trees a few meters to my left. The rest of the hunters did the same in different directions, the first strategically sound decision they had made that night.

Russel was shaking, but his posture showed he knew how to handle a rifle. I was sure he was going to ignore my advice, so I made a mental note to remember his name and face in case I had to identify his remains later on. “You know what it is, don’t you?” The boy was awkward, not dumb.

“Afraid so,” I murmured.

“Then, how do we kill it?”

I chuckled, much to my own surprise. “Honestly, I never figured out that part. The Count had some theories, but he never told me if he tested them. Personally, I have yet to try ‘hail of bullets’.”

“You're kinda weird, Victor.”

“That’s actually the kindest way anyone has expressed that sentiment to me,” I said with a smile.

“Kyle!” Clint shouted, shocking the other hunters. “Kyle,” he repeated with a tearful quiver, before dropping to a crouch and extending his left arm. His fingers tenderly stroked the air. His head tilted forward, as if he was touching his forehead to a smaller one. He was mumbling something, I still don’t know what. Nor, at that moment, did I know what words to say to him. Fortunately, Russell took the initiative.

“It’s okay, Clint.” A blatant lie, but necessary for what he was trying to accomplish. After carefully walking past the others, the kid gently landed his hand on the quivering man’s shoulder, and I saw no apparent rejection. But whether Clint heard what he said or not, anyone could see those words were of no relevance.

“I’m here, son. I’m home,” he almost sobbed out.

Tightening his grip on Clint’s shoulder, Russell continued. “He’s not here, Clint. He’s gone. You know he’s gone.”

Suddenly, Clint stood up. Russell jerked back in shock as I moved closer to them. Familiar hairs were standing on the back of my neck. The chaotic can that was this little misadventure could no longer be kicked down the road. When Clint turned around, he was doing something for the first time since I had met him: smiling. “I’m home,” he said to Russell and I. “I’m going home.”

In an instant, he raised the barrel of his rifle up to his open mouth. He clicked the trigger, the muzzle flashed, and his brain matter volcanically exited through the top of his skull.

Hell breaks loose. Whatever shred of composure this hunting party had disintegrated into screams, curses, soiled undergarments, and projectile vomit. They were almost too scared to even notice when the creature leaped from the shadows, sinking its bony claws into two of their number before disappearing again behind some foliage and oak trees. It was only after particular scare that when the bullets started flying.

Fortunately, Russell had heeded my advice and dove to the ground. I simply rolled my eyes as this incompetent firing squad emptied their rifles in every direction. By the time it was done, I had felt three bullets hit my torso and two hit my left arm. As for the hunting party, over half of them were dead from friendly fire, and those still alive were maimed beyond any further threat to the creature.

“What the hell are you?” the kid yelled while still on the ground. I offered him my hand, and he wasted a whole ten seconds before taking it. “You should be bleeding out!”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Nature makes plans. Man laughs at them. Take our new friend, for example.” I pointed behind the boy, and against his better judgement, Russell turned around. It was standing out in the open now, knowing it no longer needed the element of surprise. Its emaciated physique with rotted flesh pierced by a protruding rib cage and malformed deer antlers sticking out of its skull were elucidated by moonlight. Sunken red eyes and fanged teeth contrasted a distorted but recognizably human shape to its face. Thick, white drool poured from a second maw between its throat and chest.

The Wendigo.

I raised my rifle and unloaded my bullets as it marched forward. Russell joined me, but our effort to slow it down succeeded with the downside that it was now much angrier. So much that it dropped to a quadrupedal stance and lunged toward us. I barely managed to push Russell out of the way before it tackled me to the ground. It screamed even louder than before as its claws punctured my wrists and its teeth sunk into my shoulder. My ears rang and my head spun in a vortex of delirium. It was trying to get in my head as it had with Clint. Sturdy as my mind was, the screech prevented me from leveraging my trump card.

A gunshot to the left side of its neck shut the Wendigo up. “Die you, you freak!” Russell yelled before cycling and firing three more shots at the monster. It laughed at his futile effort, just long enough for me to regain my bearings.

I felt a familiar tingle in temples as bolts vibrated and my heart rate sped up as eight thousand volts of electricity struck the Wendigo like a lightning bolt. A momentary flash of blue, three seconds to be precise, and the creature went limp, falling over as its skin smoldered.

“Is it dead?” Russell asked as helped me get to my feet.

“Maybe,” I answered, about as honest as I could. I touched both of my temples and felt the burn of the slightly protruding boltheads before I fell backwards with a stupid smile on my face.

Russell stood over me, took a deep breath, and asked “Mister, has anyone ever told you that you look like the freakin’ the Frankenstein’s Monster?”

“Yeah, but you can just call me Frankenstein.”