The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist, Book 2)

counteroffer and counter-counteroffer—both the doctor and our porter seemed dissatisfied with the outcome; each felt a little had by the other.

My master’s mood did not improve upon our arrival at the Russell House. Our room was small, containing a washstand, a dresser that looked as though it had been cobbled together by a blind man, and a single equally rickety bed. Warthrop was forced to rent a cot from the proprietor for an extra ten cents a night, a fee he likened to highway robbery.

We tarried only long enough to drop our bags and find something to eat at a smoke-clogged restaurant across the street, where men spat mouthfuls of oily tobacco juice into battered brass spittoons and eyed our eastern clothing with frank suspicion. We then set about to find Muriel’s correspondent, a task that proved more frustrating than the doctor had anticipated.

From the hotel clerk who checked us in: “Larose? Yes, I know him. He’s a popular guide; few know the backwoods better than Larose. Haven’t seen him in over a month, I’d say. Don’t know where he’s gone to, but let me know if you find him, Dr. Warthrop. He owes me money.”

From the Rat Portage postmaster: “Yes, I know Larose. Nice enough fellow when he isn’t three sheets to the wind. Can’t remember the last time I saw him. . . .”

“He posted a letter from here sometime in late July,” the monstrumologist said.

“Yes, that would be about right. I remember that. Falling down drunk. He’d just come in from the bush, he said. Seemed out of sorts, not his usual self. He wouldn’t say any more about it. If you can’t find him, I’d say he’s back in the woods, maybe up Sandy Lake way, but he’ll be back. He always comes back.”

“He has a family?”

“Not that I know of. He comes back for the liquor and the gambling. Which reminds me, if you see him, tell him I haven’t forgotten about the money he owes me.”

From the storekeepers along Main Street, to the dockworkers on the wharf, from the gambling halls and crowded halfpenny beer dives, from the offices of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to the deafening interior of sawmills choked in swirling wood chips, it seemed the entire town knew Pierre Larose, or at least knew of him, but no one knew where he might be. All agreed he had not been seen for some time, and he owed all, it seemed, for one debt or another. The consensus was that he either had picked up stakes and returned to his native Quebec or had fled into the wilderness to escape his burgeoning debt. The few who claimed to have seen him around the time he’d posted the letter to Muriel Chanler whispered of a man who had lost his mind, who had stumbled about the streets lost in a besotted fog, “spitting and frothing at the mouth like a mad dog,” slapping at his ears until they bled, whimpering and moaning and muttering on and on about a voice only he seemed able to hear.

Before that, Chanler had been seen with Larose at the chief outfitting shop on Main Street. (The clerk recognized Warthrop’s description of his colleague.) Chanler had paid for their supplies—ammunition, a tent, bedding, and the like—and when asked what was their game, Larose had winked and cagily replied, “We be goin’ after the Old One of the Woods.”

The clerk chuckled now, and added, “I knew what he was about with that, and sure enough, next he asks if we’ve got any silver bullets! ‘For what do you need silver bullets?’ I ask, but I know why he’s askin’. . . . Say, that Chanler—is he the one they was looking for couple weeks back? Whole troop of the NWMP were through here looking for some big shot that got lost in the bush, I recall.”

On the boardwalk outside, Warthrop shook his head ruefully.

“I am a fool, Will Henry. The NWMP is the first place we should have asked.”

He obtained directions from a man loitering outside the blacksmith shop, and we dashed across the dusty thoroughfare, dodging dray and carriage, to the other side, where the long shadows of late afternoon lay. We hopped over the steaming mounds of horse manure and slid through a small knot of miners standing in front of the tavern, fresh in town from their subterranean digs, their faces as black as players in a minstrel show, the whites of their eyes startlingly bright, each wearing a gun strapped to his waist. From the open door tinny music floated onto the street, faint and ethereal, unnervingly cheery, interrupted suddenly by what sounded to my anxious ears like a gunshot, only to resume again to the accompaniment of raucous laughter.

We ducked into the offices of the North-West Mounted Police, the precursor to the Royal Canadian Mounties. A strapping young sergeant dressed in a crisp red uniform rose from his desk.

“May I help you gentlemen?”

“I sincerely hope so,” replied the doctor. “I am looking for an American by the name of Dr. John Chanler. I understand you’ve been advised of his disappearance.”

The sergeant nodded, and his eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you a friend of Dr. Chanler?”

“I am. His wife asked that I look into the matter.”

“Well,” the man said with a careless shrug of his broad shoulders, “you are free to look, Mr.—”

“Doctor Warthrop.”

The Mountie’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Not the same Warthrop who’s the monster hunter?”

“I am a scientist in the natural philosophy of aberrant biology,” the doctor corrected him stiffly.

“Right—you hunt monsters! I’ve heard of you.”

“I’d no idea my reputation had preceded me so far north,” replied Warthrop dryly.

“Oh, my mother used to tell us children tales of your exploits—and I always thought it was to get us to mind!”

“Your mother? Then they were not my exploits. She must have been speaking of my father.”

“Well, whoever’s they were, they frightened the pants off us! But this Chanler—was he a monster hunter too?”

“His wife did not tell you?”

The man shook his head. “She said he’d come for the moose. He and his guide went in, and only the guide came out.”

“Pierre Larose.”

“Yes, that’s his name. Only he’s gone missing too, is my understanding.”

“So you were not able to question him?”

“Be the one I’d most like to lay my hands on, Dr. Warthrop, if I only knew where to put them. He’s the key to this whole riddle—last to see the man alive and then gone into thin air without even reporting it to us. We spent nearly a month in the bush trying to pick up their trail, all the way up to Sandy Lake and the Suckers encampment —”

“The Suckers?”

“Right. Jack Fiddler’s people.”

“Fiddler. I’ve heard that name before.”

“I’ll wager you have! He’s no doctor of monster philosophy, but he hunts them just the same. He’s a shaman, too—a medicine man—and fairly civilized for a savage. Speaks passing English. Used to work down here on the boats. Makes fiddles, that’s how he got his name.”

“And you questioned him about Chanler and Larose?”

“And got nothing from him—nothing of any use anyway. Told us the same thing Larose told Chanler’s poor wife—”

“Lepto lurconis,” murmured the doctor.

“Lepto what?”

He sighed. “The Wendigo.”

The sergeant nodded slowly, and then the connection dawned on him. His voice shook with wonder as he said, “You don’t mean to say—I never put any stock in those stories. Is that why you’ve come? It’s real?”

“Of course it isn’t real,” the doctor said irritably. “It’s a convenience, like the stories your mother told to frighten you into submission.”

“You mean those weren’t real either?”

“No, those probably were. It’s an entirely different species.”

“The Wendigo?”

“The stories. My good man, I understand Chanler is missing, but I’d hoped I might be able to dredge up information on Larose’s whereabouts . . .”

“You and half the town of Rat Portage. The man’s melted away like a puff of smoke.”