A cold night in October was the first time the old man saw the eyes at the tree line. The moon was silhouetted in a glow he knew to mean that frost was coming. One hand was tucked into his canvas coat pocket, warm with fleece. The other was mostly numb, alternating between the cigarettes he was chain smoking and the wine he drank from a chipped black coffee mug.
He sat on his porch bathed in the halogen light that buzzed above over the moths plinking against the opaque glass. The porch light shone as far as the ditch on the other side of his dirt driveway. Beyond the ditch was a grassy hill that ended in a dense thicket of woods that stretched for thousands of acres and only ended halfway up a nearby mountain range. The old man’s cabin was as close as he could get to the wilderness without abandoning society completely. A rusty old blue Ford pickup was his remaining link to human contact and he used it as rarely as he could.
There had been plenty of wildlife around. Elk passed through in droves. Coyotes bickered nearby. The he mountain beavers would come, washed out of their burrows scared and hissing. The old man killed the first, raising a shovel over his head and bringing it down quickly. He saw the fear and confusion in the animal’s eyes, and felt the familiar surge of power in his veins. He buried it with a eulogy out of habit. But the words felt sarcastic and blasphemous. He learned to turn the other cheek and allowed the critters to weather the storm under the Plexiglas of the porch.
The animals disappeared when the eyes came. It grew so quiet that the old man could hear his cigarettes burn with every inhale, and he fingered a cross necklace he kept warm in a pocket. The silence crept on for days. Every night he sat on the porch and stared back at the eyes. He met their glowing crimson gaze, not with defiance, but with a passionless resignation. He considered his continued existence a penance.
On the fourth night, the eyes grew bold and stepped out from the tree line. They were perched from a monstrous height, and swayed unsteadily. As the attached creature drew close to the ditch, the old man pulled a flashlight up and for a horrible moment illuminated the visitor.
The eyes belonged to a grotesque humanoid form, gaunt and pale, with skin in tatters. It looked as though a corpse had been stretched and pulled taught over a set of bones belonging to something larger and distantly related.
It froze in the light and in a delayed response, slowly threw its gangly arms up over its face and took a step back.
The old man lost his nerve. He bolted for the door and slammed it shut, impotently flicking the doorknob to a locked position. He turned out all of the lights and crawled into his bed, shaking and hiding under an army surplus blanket like a child.
He could hear the thing slowly investigating the cabin, dragging its feet and running its hands along the exterior. When the sounds finally stopped, the old man made the mistake of looking from beneath the blanket. He found the entire room bathed in a red glow, the eyes shining through his curtain, aimed directly at him as if the creature was using something other than sight to observe him.
The night passed long and quiet.
By morning, hunger and lack of sleep emboldened the old man. A hesitant check through the windows showed no signs of the creature and the old man breathed a sigh of relief and finally fell asleep for several hours.
He awoke sweating from a nightmare in which the sun followed him wherever he went, burning through buildings and blistering his skin. He made coffee and slipped on rubber boots to examine the outside of the cabin.
The creature seemed more a dream than the nightmare he had, but there was evidence enough to convince the old man of his unfortunate sanity. Instead of tracks there were ruts worn in the dirt that formed parallel circles around the cabin where the creature’s path must have been. The tracks got closer and closer to the cabin until they diverged from the pattern and formed a straight line to his bedroom window.
He finished his coffee and got into the old blue pickup truck, driving 35 minutes to Amgoss, the nearest town. As he passed the local high school, he noticed the sign out front for the first time. “Home of the Windegos!”
He parked a block away from the local library, a baseball cap pulled low over his face. A few people stared and whispered. One man spit as he walked by.
The library was empty. The old man walked up to the front desk and waited a few moments before ringing the bell. A woman, with thick curly grey hair that seemed to explode from her scalp, came quickly out of the back.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m… uh. Looking for information on local legends.”
“Oh. Ok? You might check our reference section for old newspapers, but honestly you won’t find much.”
“Ah. Um, do you happen to know what the high school mascot is?”
“The Windegos.”
“Yeah but, what is that?”
“What is a windego?”
He nodded sheepishly.
The librarian leaned her shoulders heavily onto the counter in front of her. “Well, a windego is a native legend. They say if a person eats another person, they become a mythological monster. They become corrupted with a craving for more human flesh.”
“That’s kind of a strange mascot for a high school isn’t it?”
“Well, legend has it that when Amgoss was first settled, there was a winter famine. One of the men in town lost it and ate his son. His wife found them and killed herself. The man was exiled into the woods and never heard from again.”
The old man stared.
“Of course that story turned into this local myth that he turned into a windego. Every once in a while some hiker or hunter claims to have seen him. So that’s how the high school got its name.”
“Oh. What was his name?”
“Isidore. The high school’s mascot’s name is Izzy, named after him.”
The old man pulled into his driveway and walked into the cottage with a bottle of wine under each arm. He drank coffee until sundown and ceremoniously donned a wool cap and his warmest flannel. He looked at himself in the mirror, muttered “Fuck it,” and pulled open the top left drawer of his dresser. He dug past a layer of socks before pulling out his old priest’s collar.
He sat on the porch, humming different songs from his past and feeling the wine soak into his bones.
The eyes came at last. They did not pause at the tree line. The creature shuffled along with the same awkward gait. The old man poured more wine as he watched it rise from the ditch into the glow of the porch light once more. This time he really looked at the thing.
He could tell the monster was distinctly human, now that he saw what was left of the face. The eyes sat deep in the skull, atop a sagging nose. The skin and bone had worn down around the mouth so it wore a mocking half grin through the remaining half of its cheeks. Long matted hair tangled down along its mud covered body. A rancid mulch, of what now seemed to be a long indistinct set of clothes, festered into the skin.
The old man’s hand began shaking. He gulped at the wine, hoping that the windego would speed up and end things, fearing that the act would take longer than necessary.
It skulked up to the porch, staring directly at his chest. He gulped hard. Its leg joints creaked and popped as it stepped up the stairs. It smelled like earth and shit. He noticed how its distended stomach wobbled as it stopped in front of him.
A breeze blew between them. The windego turned to the right, and sat down next to the old man’s chair. It still stared at his chest.
The moon was out again. It looked like frost.
“Isidore?”
The windego looked away. It stood up and walked off the porch, then a few more steps more before it stopped to look back.
The old man sighed, drank the last bit of wine, and stood up. Together they walked beyond the ditch, and disappeared into the tree line.
A cold night in October was the first time the old man saw the eyes at the tree line. The moon was silhouetted in a glow he knew to mean that frost was coming. One hand was tucked into his canvas coat pocket, warm with fleece. The other was mostly numb, alternating between the cigarettes he was chain smoking and the wine he drank from a chipped black coffee mug.
He sat on his porch bathed in the halogen light that buzzed above over the moths plinking against the opaque glass. The porch light shone as far as the ditch on the other side of his dirt driveway. Beyond the ditch was a grassy hill that ended in a dense thicket of woods that stretched for thousands of acres and only ended halfway up a nearby mountain range. The old man’s cabin was as close as he could get to the wilderness without abandoning society completely. A rusty old blue Ford pickup was his remaining link to human contact and he used it as rarely as he could.
There had been plenty of wildlife around. Elk passed through in droves. Coyotes bickered nearby. The he mountain beavers would come, washed out of their burrows scared and hissing. The old man killed the first, raising a shovel over his head and bringing it down quickly. He saw the fear and confusion in the animal’s eyes, and felt the familiar surge of power in his veins. He buried it with a eulogy out of habit. But the words felt sarcastic and blasphemous. He learned to turn the other cheek and allowed the critters to weather the storm under the Plexiglas of the porch.
The animals disappeared when the eyes came. It grew so quiet that the old man could hear his cigarettes burn with every inhale, and he fingered a cross necklace he kept warm in a pocket. The silence crept on for days. Every night he sat on the porch and stared back at the eyes. He met their glowing crimson gaze, not with defiance, but with a passionless resignation. He considered his continued existence a penance.
On the fourth night, the eyes grew bold and stepped out from the tree line. They were perched from a monstrous height, and swayed unsteadily. As the attached creature drew close to the ditch, the old man pulled a flashlight up and for a horrible moment illuminated the visitor.
The eyes belonged to a grotesque humanoid form, gaunt and pale, with skin in tatters. It looked as though a corpse had been stretched and pulled taught over a set of bones belonging to something larger and distantly related.
It froze in the light and in a delayed response, slowly threw its gangly arms up over its face and took a step back.
The old man lost his nerve. He bolted for the door and slammed it shut, impotently flicking the doorknob to a locked position. He turned out all of the lights and crawled into his bed, shaking and hiding under an army surplus blanket like a child.
He could hear the thing slowly investigating the cabin, dragging its feet and running its hands along the exterior. When the sounds finally stopped, the old man made the mistake of looking from beneath the blanket. He found the entire room bathed in a red glow, the eyes shining through his curtain, aimed directly at him as if the creature was using something other than sight to observe him.
The night passed long and quiet.
By morning, hunger and lack of sleep emboldened the old man. A hesitant check through the windows showed no signs of the creature and the old man breathed a sigh of relief and finally fell asleep for several hours.
He awoke sweating from a nightmare in which the sun followed him wherever he went, burning through buildings and blistering his skin. He made coffee and slipped on rubber boots to examine the outside of the cabin.
The creature seemed more a dream than the nightmare he had, but there was evidence enough to convince the old man of his unfortunate sanity. Instead of tracks there were ruts worn in the dirt that formed parallel circles around the cabin where the creature’s path must have been. The tracks got closer and closer to the cabin until they diverged from the pattern and formed a straight line to his bedroom window.
He finished his coffee and got into the old blue pickup truck, driving 35 minutes to Amgoss, the nearest town. As he passed the local high school, he noticed the sign out front for the first time. “Home of the Windegos!”
He parked a block away from the local library, a baseball cap pulled low over his face. A few people stared and whispered. One man spit as he walked by.
The library was empty. The old man walked up to the front desk and waited a few moments before ringing the bell. A woman, with thick curly grey hair that seemed to explode from her scalp, came quickly out of the back.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m… uh. Looking for information on local legends.”
“Oh. Ok? You might check our reference section for old newspapers, but honestly you won’t find much.”
“Ah. Um, do you happen to know what the high school mascot is?”
“The Windegos.”
“Yeah but, what is that?”
“What is a Windego?”
He nodded sheepishly.
The librarian leaned her shoulders heavily onto the counter in front of her. “Well, a Windego is a native legend. They say if a person eats another person, they become a mythological monster. They become consumed with a craving for more human flesh.”
“That’s kind of a strange mascot for a high school isn’t it?”
“Well, legend has it that when Amgoss was first settled, there was a winter famine. One of the men in town went crazy and ate his son. His wife found them and killed herself. The man was exiled into the woods and never heard from again.”
The old man stared.
“Of course that story turned into this local myth that he turned into a windego. Every once in a while some hiker or hunter claims to have seen him. So that’s how the high school got its name.”
“Oh. What was his name?”
“Isidore. The high school’s mascot’s name is Izzy, named after him.”
The old man pulled into his driveway and walked into the cottage with a bottle of wine under each arm. He drank coffee until sundown and ceremoniously donned a wool cap and his warmest flannel. He looked at himself in the mirror, muttered “Fuck it,” and pulled open the top left drawer of his dresser. He dug past a layer of socks before pulling out his old priest’s collar.
He sat on the porch, humming different songs from his past and feeling the wine soak into his bones.
The eyes came at last. They did not pause at the tree line. The creature shuffled along with the same awkward gait. The old man poured more wine as he watched it rise from the ditch into the glow of the porch light once more. This time he really looked at the thing.
He could tell the monster was distinctly human, now that he saw what was left of the face. The eyes sat deep in the skull, atop a sagging nose. The skin and bone had worn down around the mouth so it wore a mocking half grin through the remaining half of its cheeks. Long matted hair tangled down along its mud covered body. A rancid mulch, of what now seemed to be a long indistinct set of clothes, festered into the skin.
The old man’s hand began shaking. He gulped at the wine, hoping that the windego would speed up and end things, fearing that the act would take longer than necessary.
It skulked up to the porch, staring directly at his chest. He gulped hard. Its leg joints creaked and popped as it stepped up the stairs. It smelled like earth and shit. He noticed how it’s distended stomach wobbled as it stopped in front of him.
A breeze blew between them. The windego turned to the right, and sat down next to the old man’s chair. It still stared at his chest.
The moon was out again. It looked like frost.
“Isidore?”
The windego looked away. It stood up and walked off the porch, then a few more steps before it stopped to look back.
The old man sighed, drank the last bit of wine, and stood up. Together they walked beyond the ditch, and disappeared into the tree line.