ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As with any work, there are many people who were invaluable to me in completing Wendigo. I would like to take a moment to thank a few of them.

The North Maine Woods covers more than 3.5 million acres (14,000 square kilometers) of forestland. While global economic changes and other factors have hurt Maine’s forest-resources industry, forest products are still a key part of the state’s economy. Maine has two hundred forest-products businesses employing some twenty-four thousand people. The forest-products industry directly contributes some $1.8 billion to the state’s economy each year. Maine is the second largest paper producing state. The North Maine Woods is managed by North Maine Woods, Inc., in Ashland, Maine. Executive Director Al Cowperthwaite was a great resource quickly answering my questions about the woods industry, and about geographical features of the woods.

Thanks are also owed to Warden Ryan Fitzpatrick of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Warden Service, who gave me assistance on warden procedures and organization.

Ojibway teacher and scholar from Ontario Basil Johnston’s book on Native American gods, The Manitous, was instrumental, particularly in its well-written chapter on the Wendigo, spelled Weendigo in the book. Johnston brings out the point that the myth does have its real-world counterparts. He states that the Wendigo is never satisfied: the more it eats, the more it grows, and the more it grows, the more it needs to eat; it is constantly hungry. He argues that the modern-day Wendigo is the logging industry, in that the more timber they cut, the more they need to cut, leaving our natural woodlands looking like the result of a humongous bomb detonation or the impact of an interstellar body similar to the meteor (or asteroid) that exterminated the dinosaurs.

To Maxim Brown, my editor at Skyhorse Publishing, for his insight and patience while I made major revisions based on his recommendations. To Jay Cassell of Skyhorse Publishing, who took a chance on me, and now we are up to book number four with number five under contract (hang in there, you who are awaiting more of Ed Traynor).

You, the reader, give me the fortitude to keep writing, to fight off the deadly impact of procrastination on those days when I’d rather goof off than place myself in front of a word processor—thank you.

Stockholm, Maine

2016

Of the evil beings who dwelt on the periphery of the world of the Anishinaubae peoples, none was more terrifying than the Weendigo. It was a creature loathsome to behold and as loathsome in its habits, conduct, and manners.

The Weendigo was a giant manitou in the form of a man or a woman, who towered five to eight times above the height of a tall man. But the Weendigo was a giant in height only; in girth and strength, it was not. Because it was afflicted with never-ending hunger and could never get enough to eat, it was always on the verge of starvation. The Weendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tautly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Weendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody from its constant chewing with jagged teeth.

Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, the Weendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption.

When the Weendigo set to attack a human being, a dark snow cloud would shroud its upper body from the waist up. The air would turn cold, so the trees crackled. Then a wind would rise, no more than a breath at first, but in moments whining and driving, transformed into a blizzard.

Behind the odor and chill of death and the killing blizzard came the Weendigo.

Even before the Weendigo laid hands on them, many people died in their tracks from fright; just to see the Weendigo’s sepulchral face was enough to induce heart failure and death. For others, the monster’s shriek was more than they could bear.

Those who died of fright were lucky; their death was merciful and painless. But for those who had the misfortune to live through their terror, death was slow and agonizing.

The Weendigo seized its victim and tore him, or her, limb from limb with its hands and teeth, eating the flesh and bones and drinking the blood while its victim screamed and struggled. The pain of others meant nothing to the Weendigo; all that mattered was its survival.

The Weendigo gorged itself and glutted its belly as if it would never eat again. But a remarkable thing always occurred. As the Weendigo ate, it grew, and as it grew so did its hunger, so that no matter how much it ate, its hunger always remained in proportion to its size. The Weendigo could never requite either its unnatural lust for human flesh or its unnatural appetite. It could never stop as animals do when bloated, unable to ingest another morsel, or sense as humans sense that enough is enough for the present. For the unfortunate Weendigo, the more it ate, the bigger it grew; and the bigger it grew, the more it wanted and needed.

The Anishinaubae people had every reason to fear and abhor the Weendigo. It was a giant cannibal that fed only on human flesh, bones, blood. But the Weendigo represented not only the worst that a human can do to another human being and ultimately to himself or herself, but exemplified other despicable traits. Even the term “Weendigo” evokes images of offensive traits. It may be derived from ween dagoh, which means “solely for self,” or from weenin n’d’igooh, which means “fat” or excess.

The Weendigo inspired fear. There was no human sanction or punishment to compare to death at the hands of the Weendigo …