sunlight first struck his undead flesh-exactly as he’d begged her to do-was scorched and seared and blistered from the fire-
Because there were no more secrets, because every truth of the world, past, present, and future, was laid bare to the dead-the true dead, as Finn now was-he knew that Morgan would bear livid scars on her arms for the rest of her life. They would fade a bit more every year, but he knew (as the dead know) that Morgan would think of him every day when she looked at them, and the thoughts would be tender ones, thoughts of love-and sadness.
The horror would eventually become a half-remembered nightmare, and he was glad for that. He knew she would never return to Parr’s Landing, nor would her mother, and that neither of them would ever see Billy Lightning again.
Finn continued to rise.
The dead of Parr’s Landing surged around him like transcendental tributaries to a larger sea of souls, and time itself spun like a great tumbler of history and memory. The dead opened their arms to Finn in love, pulled him close, carried him higher and higher.
His soul wept for the half-souls that remained, trapped.
As Finn was absorbed into the massive vortex of spiralling black light, he looked down one last time.
Below him, he saw the oak doors of St. Barthelemy and the Martyrs crash open. Christina Parr, screaming her daughter’s name, ran with the speed only the mother of an injured child ever really attains to the place where Morgan knelt, weeping over the charred skeleton of the twelve-year-old boy Finn once was. Finn saw Christina tenderly wrap her daughter in blankets and carefully carry her to Billy Lightning’s truck, depositing her gently in the passenger seat and starting it up.
The dead see all roads, spiritual and temporal alike, and Finn was well pleased with what he saw ahead on theirs.
And then, the part of Finn Miller that was eternal heard the sound of a red rubber ball striking his bedroom floor. His soul was suddenly engulfed in familiar fragrance-clover and lake water and sunlight on soft black fur, and he was awash in frantic movement, warmth, and love.
The sound of Finn’s laughter fell like blue sparks and the sound of Sadie’s triumphant, joyous barking fell like black ones, and together their essences became one with the souls around them, passing completely from the world of the living into a perfect, brilliant sunrise above Bradley Lake and the cliffs of Spirit Rock.
There was no pain in it this time, only sunlight that no longer burned.
PARR’S LANDING POLICE DEPARTMENT
75 Main Street E.
Parr’s Landing, Ontario
P2T 1R2
807-731-1002
TO: Sergeant Gill Styles. Gyles Point Police Dept., Gyles Point, Ont.
FROM: Sergeant Dave Thomson, Parr’s Landing
October 25, 1972
Dear Gill,
Following up on our telephone conversation of earlier this evening, a local boy, Finn Miller, found this hockey bag and its contents in the Spirit Rock area while looking for his dog. PC Elliot McKitrick came upon the young man over the course of doing rounds and brought the boy and the hockey bag back to the station where we took it into evidence.
The bag appears to contain archaeological tools. In light of the Carstairs disappearance on the night of October 22nd in Gyles Point, I recommend that you forward them to Bruce Benson at the RCMP in Sault St. Marie for forensic lab analysis of fingerprints and blood type.
Also found in the bag were several documents that have been identified by Dr. William Lightning, a visitor to Parr’s Landing, as having belonged to his father, Dr. Phenius Osborne of Toronto, who was the victim of homicide early this year. Dr. Lightning believes they were taken from his father’s house during the course of said homicide.
As an aside, he believes the perpetrator was Richard Weal, a former student of Dr. Osborne’s, but according to the information we have from Metro Toronto Homicide, Weal is deceased.
We do not consider Dr. Lightning a suspect at this time, though we have asked him to remain in Parr’s Landing for the next few days. Please call if we can be of any further help.
Dave Thomson, Sgt.
Parr’s Landing
From the notes of Professor Phenius Osborne
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto
Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street, Toronto
Fall Term, 1971
Note: The text that follows is my translation of an original document held by Professor Victor Kleinschmit of the Department of History at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The document itself, written in French, dates from the seventeenth century and appears to be a letter from a Jesuit missionary on his deathbed, addressed to his superiors in Rome. I have cross-referenced both this document with every available edition of The Jesuit Relations, but have found no reference to it, nor to the priest mentioned (Fr. Nyon) in any available record pertaining to the history of the Jesuits in Canada.
Dr. Kleinschmit, upon hearing of my work on the St. Barthelemy dig in Parr’s Landing in the summer of 1952, invited me to come to Michigan to read it and to translate, which I did.
It is worth noting that I did not share any of the specific events surrounding the excavation of the St. Barthelemy site during the summer of 1952 with Dr. Kleinschmit, so his delivery of this document into my hands was in no way intended to support any “fantastical” notions of what might have occurred there that summer. The story, as read here, presents a plausible theory of the origin of the Wendigo legend of St. Barthelemy by a writer obviously familiar with myths and legends of that period.
In 1968, I forwarded a copy of my translation to Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ, (the twenty-eighth and current) Superior General of the Society of Jesus in Rome to enquire as to why it had not been included among the official records of the Jesuit missions to New France.
On February 12th, I received a brief, very courteous reply (see later notes, attached) from the Superior General’s secretary thanking me for my letter, assuring me that the Reverend Father had enjoyed reading the document I sent him and thanking me for my “assiduous scholarship” and my
“interest in the glorious history of the Jesuit martyrs” but asserting that, owing to both its “fantastical and lurid” subject matter as well as its length, the document was clearly a forgery, though it had already been examined on both palaeographic and material grounds by Professor Kleinschmit, and found to be consistent, even if the subject matter itself was not. It’s not surprising to me that the SG would find this embarrassing if fictional; and mortifying if it was proven to be an authentic record of the delusions of a Jesuit missionary likely driven mad by the isolation of northern Ontario in the seventeenth century. The Jesuit motto, “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam”-to the greater glory of God-is repeated several times in this narrative, which struck me as unusual, since one can infer that both the writer and the recipient were already well familiar with its meaning. There is an earnestness to its use here that seems noteworthy, especially in context of the narrative, as becomes obvious.
NB: Must forward a copy to Billy. He will find this entertaining, esp. in light of our “adventures” with good Dick Weal that summer!
