THE CURSE OF THE WENDIGO
Also by Rick Yancey
THE MONSTRUMOLOGIST
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
Copyright © 2010 by Rick Yancey
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For Sandy, my light in the darkness
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Editing this second set of Will Henry’s journals proved a more daunting task than the first. Historical references abound throughout the folios, all of which had to be checked for accuracy. I am indebted to Jonathan DiGiovanni and copy editor Bara McNeill for their careful and thorough fact-checking of the manuscript.
For their generous help in vetting the languages spoken in the book, thanks to Dr. Sylvie Blum-Reid, Dr. Hana Filip, and Linda Kittendorf.
As with the first volume of
My agent, Brian DeFiore, whose enthusiasm for this project seems to have no bounds, was an early reader of the manuscript. Throughout the editing process he offered suggestions for further research and provided guidance when certain avenues of inquiry came to an abrupt dead end. I am lucky to have him as an agent and proud to call him a friend.
I cannot thank my family enough for their amazing patience, understanding and support while I worked on this book. My sons have always been my biggest fans. Thanks, guys.
I owe the most by far to my wife, Sandy, to whom this book is dedicated. Without her love and fierce loyalty, her unflagging devotion and uncompromising honesty, I would be truly lost. She is my best friend.
—
PROLOGUE
The reader was a retired middle school English teacher whose mother had come to live at the facility in 2001. Every week for the next five years, the reader made the thirty-minute drive from Alachua to Gainesville to visit her mother. In clement weather they sat in the same cobblestoned courtyard, nestled between the two main residential buildings of the retirement home, where she now sat with me. A fountain gurgled in the center of the courtyard, ringed on three sides by bistro-style tables that had been painted and repainted to stay the corrosive effects of Florida’s tropical climate. Even now, in late September, the air was thick with moisture and the temperature hovered near ninety—and that was in the shade.
Her mother had passed away in ’06, but the reader still returned each week as a volunteer to read to the residents who either had no family or had family who rarely, if ever, visited. The director of the facility had given me her name and phone number. No, he had told me, to his knowledge the man calling himself William James Henry had not been close to any resident. The only visitor he had had was the volunteer who sat across from me, sipping iced tea from a tall glass in which no ice remained. Perhaps she could help me, the director had said.
“I can’t help you,” the reader told me now.
“He never said anything?” I asked.
“Just his name and the year he was born.”
“1876.”
She nodded. “I’d tease him. I’d say, ‘Now, William, that can’t be the year you were born.’ He would nod—and then he’d say it again.”
“What would he do when you read to him?”
“Stare off into space. Sometimes he’d fall asleep.”
“Did you ever have the impression he was actually listening?”
“That wasn’t the point,” she told me.
“What was the point, then?”
“Companionship. He had no one. Except every Tuesday at two o’clock, when he had me.”
She sipped her tea. The fountain gurgled. The water in its basin dripped off one edge and spattered onto the stones. The fountain had settled several inches on one side into the soft, sandy soil. On the other side of the courtyard, two residents, a man and a woman, sat at another table holding hands, watching—or appearing to watch—the play of light in the cascading water. She nodded in their direction.
