Hanging just under the small porthole, a red plaque reads Autopsy. Bill cringes against the far wall, knowing his mother waits for him on the other side of that door. His eyes linger over the latch yet paralyzed with fear; he cannot bring himself to touch it.
Open the door. Open the door, and see what you have done to your mother.
His argument is sound, he tells himself, and he tries to press his thumb on the door’s latch; still, he cannot. With every horror he had endured as a man and then again as Cold Bill, Bill did not know if he now had the courage to walk through the door and look upon the face of his mother’s corpse. For the first time in a long time, Bill found himself vulnerable and afraid. Nevertheless, he wanted answers, and to get them, he had to clear his mind and enter the room. His hand moves through the solid door. As he tries grasping the latch, Bill’s body follows.
Overhead fluorescent lights gleam off reflective surfaces. The impregnable scent of encroaching disinfectants, strong enough to mask the dead stored in the chilly room, are unable to repel the wendigo stench. Stainless steel tables align in neat rows along the walls, while others are placed at the center of the room, unified by two-foot spaces, three to a row as Bill counts them. Most of the tables are without remains, but of the three that do retain bodies, Maggie Colden’s is the furthest from Bill.
He hears a faint hum coming from within the table; a ventilation system is designed to filter out bodily gases and decomposition. Water from a rinsing sink runs steadily down into a basin, washing blood from recently used surgical instruments. The pathologist had only recently begun the autopsy. Bill hops onto the autopsy table perching himself along the outer edge. He carefully inspects his mother’s corpse. His malignant pinpoints eventually settle on the milky gaze of her lifeless eyes.
Looking upon his mother’s damaged face is difficult. With her head positioned sideways, Bill can see that the examining physician has removed the lower back portion of Maggie’s skull, revealing a large mass over the surface of her occipital lobe. Scarcely translucent, the milky mass sits over hundreds of black viscid blood vessels. It looks to be at least three inches in radius and is no longer a thriving cancerous mass; the tumor carried out its death sentence and then perished along with Maggie. Her thin frame is dry and splotchy and closely resembles the color of Bill’s own lifeless ash gray. Fastened to her right hallux, a manila tag with her name written on it flutters under the soft breeze of an overhead air-conditioning duct. Also printed on the tag are the color of her eyes and hair (dark blue and brownish gray), the law-enforcement case number, as well as the time and date of Maggie’s arrival. Listed as DOA, Maggie arrived at the hospital yesterday morning at nine thirty-three. While Bill sheltered himself from the harmful sunlight in a culvert off Highway 50 in Utah, his mother left this world without her husband or son by her side.
Reeling backward, Bill slides off the table and falls on to the flat of his back, emitting powerful waves of mental energy; he screams through the silence in his mind. Incapable of tears, expressions of sadness, or any other physical human emotion for that matter, in his pain, he could only echo animalized baaing. Consumed by thoughts of guilt and despair, Bill continues crying out in bestial yelps, much like a wounded animal calling for help.
He presses his hands against his face, covering his eyes, attempting to make the examination room disappear. Although finding it difficult to stare into Maggie’s glazed eyes or look upon her blanched skin, Bill finds it even more difficult ridding himself of this tormented guilt. It persists, circling Bill’s every thought. Before driving him to madness, he scrambles to his feet, and like a ghost vanishing before the dawn, Bill flees through the closed door and back into the hallway.
He makes a sharp right, ascending the stairs, and out of the hospital’s basement. After a few dozen steps, Bill drops down on all fours, accelerating his stride until he is once again outside the hospital and now feels the uncomfortable humid air on his clammy undead flesh. He cannot stop now, not with that painful guilt-ridden image relentlessly stabbing at his sanity. Bill no longer feels safe, and he desperately needs to feel safe. He needs to find Abigail. If he could find his love and look upon her face, he knew she would calm him. Derrylin’s scenery melts away as Bill’s blurry form once again furiously sweeps through the streets. Abigail is all he had left. At least, he hopes she is still in need of him.
What is it you think to accomplish, Billy Boy? Malsum bursts into Bill’s thoughts as if the wolf god had been there the entire time, silently taking pleasure in his painful calamity.
Bill’s focus is on Abigail and errantly disregards Malsum’s presence. He recalls the neighborhood where Abigail’s house resides. He remembers how each house looked the same, all of them painted a diffused sunset yellow with dark brown trim. Each yard is separated by beds of brick-red porous lava rock rather than well-manicured grassy lawns. Bill concentrates on Abigail’s neighborhood until he finds himself a heaving monstrosity panting breathlessly in the narrow entryway of Abigail’s doorstep. Bill is motionless, enraged, and undeterred by Malsum’s prying words. He senses Abigail is home, and he lifts his insubstantial hand slowly to the door’s latch.
Errant child, Malsum speaks again, this is no longer your place. Your place is with your brothers. The sun will be over the horizon soon. Be mindful of your surroundings and forget the girl.
you—Bill drops his hand to his side and whirls around, implicating Malsum as to the cause of his misfortune—you have caused this!
Regardless of what you may think, child, there is little time to argue. Malsum warns Bill of the approaching sun. Forego such thoughts, as the sun will surely rise. Your pain will be unimaginable; it will take days to repair.
i don’t care! Bill confesses with a quick heated snap. I would have rather died than to have lost everything.
You have said this before. Yet I have given you so much in return. Why must you linger over such meaningless things, boy? Malsum lowers his voice to an ineffectual scheming tone, his conniving words intent on reminding Bill of the pleasures and the power of wendigo. Bill senses the wolf god’s anger and lack of patience for his insubordinate child. I have made you a god among men. You possess such tremendous power.
you made me a monster! Bill screams out so powerfully, so much so that the amplified intensity of his will thrusts him woozily to one side, and he nearly collapses. After the outburst that shakes the house, both Malsum and Bill are silent, contemplating one another. Bill’s ears ring; his mind shakes. He eventually calms himself and speaks using a more controlled volume of telepathy. I am a lowly thing… a sick creature that desires only to kill and to eat all that I see. I have lost everything I’ve loved except for her… and you, you cannot have her.
i will have abigail and so shall you! Malsum spits venom into Bill’s thoughts. You will come to understand that this life is lost to you! It is not by my doing but by your own hand that you suffer. Know this, Billy Boy. As close as you will ever come to your Abigail is when she dissolves in your belly and you wear the stink of her dissipating flesh on your skin as a constant reminder of how you chose to defile such a sweet, sweet innocent love!
Malsum penetrates Bill’s icy heart as an arrow unerringly striking its mark. More than he dared to admit to himself, Bill knew the truth behind the wolf god’s words. Abigail and he could never be together again. Still yet, Bill feels the need to go inside and see her, if only to look upon her face one last time before giving in to his beast and returning to his brothers. If only to burst through the door, dart up the stairs to her bedroom, and watch her shift softly under her blanket and sheets until she awakens sometime later stretching her arms raising them to the heavens as she prepares for another day without him. He is so close to her. She was just on the other side of the door—up the stairs.
Is it okay to surrender now? Bill truthfully asks himself. Can I keep Abby safe if I leave… and for how long? How long will it be before Malsum wills it and my brothers and I make our way back to Derrylin… days, hours? After all, we have business here—wendigo business.
Bill immediately breaks away from his thought. A sudden and peculiar notion dawns on him. It was something Malsum had obviously overlooked until just then; Bill had too. His thoughts shift to the memories of his mom and dad. With his dad buried in the cemetery and his mother waiting in the city morgue, soon to follow her husband into the ground, Bill suddenly realizes he can keep Abigail safe after all. More so, he can rid himself of Malsum forever.
Child… this tantrum is over. You will do as commanded and return to your brothers, forgetting the girl. Your body is vulnerable, and the light is nearly upon you.
Bill continues ignoring Malsum’s warning as he pursues a more pressing matter. Carefully, Bill thinks back over his family’s ancestry, realizing that neither his mom nor dad share any siblings. Maggie’s mother had an older sister (Virginia), but she died at an early age of nine from a neglected case of lobar pneumonia. Bill’s aunt, who lives in Eufaula, was nothing more than a sorority sister Maggie had kept in contact with through the years and seemed more like family than anything. It was becoming clear to Bill as he retraced the withered limbs of his family tree how tragic circumstances and simple choices had all led to this very moment. The moment he stood on Abigail’s porch with a peculiar notion circling his thoughts: He was the last heir of the Colden bloodline. Everything Bill was and all he had become, along with recent and past torments, suddenly dissipate; he was left with a strange yet bitter euphoria.
It is too late, he utters softly to himself and then reiterates much louder, much bolder, do you hear me? it’s too late!
No, child… there is still time. You need to move now.
You fail to understand, wolf. My place is no longer with you or by my brothers’ sides. Bill looks up into the sky, to the hidden place Malsum has decidedly chosen to lurk. My parents are dead, our bloodline severed. I cannot complete my transformation, unless it is your desire that your coveted prize remains inadequate.
Bill’s rage simmers, and Malsum is entirely too quiet; neither speak. Bill feels both the wolf god and the beast Cold Bill withdraw from his thoughts. He could only imagine how deeply his words have stung their arrogance. He did not care.
enough! Malsum roars back into Bill’s thoughts, disrupting the concentration that it took to bind Bill to Abigail’s location. Bill flickers as the walls of her house violently shake. He could sense the unraveling of ethereal tethers binding him to Abigail. He falls to his knees, cupping his hands to the sides of his head as Malsum’s voice reverberates in outburst. this will change nothing! do you think i will give up so easily? you will do as commanded! eat the rotting entrails of your father’s carcass or the tumor that has settled on your mother’s brain, but you will eat one of them, or i will have the flesh stripped from your body and devoured! heed my warning, child. whatever you should choose, you will remain here no longer!
No. I am finished, wolf. Bill scrambles to his feet, hurriedly drifting through the door. I will see her one last time, and then I will not see or hear of you again!
no! no! ungrateful, child, i have grown tired of your insolence! i made you a god, and you wish to be a man. if you will not obey me willfully, then i will make you obey!
Projecting his will into the very darkness that dwells within Bill, Malsum’s powerful intrusion instantly prevents Bill from advancing further up the staircase leading to Abigail’s bedroom, where he knew she awaits him. It was as if Malsum knew when Bill looked upon Abigail asleep, it would corrupt his own corruption, thus releasing Bill from any further obligatory holds the wolf god may have upon him. Maslum and Cold Bill continuously hold Bill in place—their dark synergy encompassing his entire body. Their indisputable ironclad wills hold Bill motionless at the base of the staircase, until suddenly, overwhelmed with nausea, Bill buckles dry heaving. Malsum’s poisonous presence coils around his spine like a constrictive python as sickness rises from the pit of his stomach like a plague of flies summoned from the fissures of a blighted landscape. Then flung backward like a whip, out of the house, they pull Bill back through the door and across the yard. All the while, Bill relentlessly claws at air and telepathically screams in protest.
The wolf god flings Bill across the twilight sky, forcing him to retrace every horrible vision he had come to witness on his clairvoyant journey. Malsum is intent on unraveling all that Bill has uncovered as he pulls him back through the autopsy room—the cemetery, his parents’ estate home, and back across a bird’s-eye view of Kansas terrain. Thrown violently to his knees, Bill’s incorporeal manifestation collides with his corporeal counterpart; the choking sickness in the form of thick flowing pitch and a bustle of ash escapes Bill’s expanding jaws.
The moments pass as Bill purges himself off Malsum’s grip. He shakes his head dizzily from side to side, repeatedly trying to get to his feet but only managing to stumble forward, wobbling sideways a few times, and then collapsing back down on his knees. He decides not to move again until Malsum has completely left him and he regains a measure of control. The sun has almost fully peaked off the eastern horizon. In those few desperate moments before Malsum and Bill reengage their battles of wills, Bill formulates a plan that will finally get Malsum to understand his determination and rid himself of the wolf god.
You will not change what has happened to you. If you try, I will have your brothers devour you.
I am finished. Bill’s heaving, gasping, breathless body seems desperate and still very weak from Malsum’s hold. Understand me perfectly clear because after today, we will not speak again.
There is no salvation for you. You will remain in between forever. Do you not understand this? Even holding fast to the humanity you so desperately cling to, your body will remain wendigo… your appetite as well! Do you think your Abigail could look to and love something as grotesque as you? Malsum’s words deeply wound Bill, but Bill would not digress—he couldn’t. What will she think after she uncovers how meticulous and surgical you have become—if she were to learn how you have taken apart so many human beings, stuffing their flesh and their bones into your greedy mouth? Do you really think she can still love something so vile? No, she will not. She could not. You are wendigo—my creation. She will never understand the horror you have become.
Bill stands up, lengthened by every inch of his thin hideousness. He pushes his skeletal chest outward, raising his head defiantly in the presence of the sun. I know she is lost to me. Just as I am now lost to you. Find someone else to be your lapdog. I will meet my end here.
As the first beam of sunlight shines across Bill’s face, pain accosts him like nothing he had ever felt before. Every nerve ending in his body screams out like a sudden unsuspecting fire alarm, and again, he collapses on his knees screaming. Where he once stood steadfast, ready to the meet his end, Bill now cowers on his hands and knees. He had never endured such rapidly accelerating or excruciating pain. His flesh smolders, ignites, and then seconds later, disintegrates.
Can you feel it? Malsum snickers blissfully. I warned you, child. It hates you for what you have become… There is no safety in its embrace, no beauty of poetry to your end, and there will be no redemption! It is going to burn deep, and it is going to be unpleasantly painful!
Bill screams and screams, yet it only makes the situation worse. Engulfed in flames, he feels his skin sizzle and pop.
I want you to beg me to carry you to safety, Billy Boy. Beg me, and I will know the sincerity of your regret. Make your choice: Is it Bill, or is it Cold Bill?
Bill can no longer endure the pain the sun inflicts upon him, and yet he will not make the same mistake twice asking Malsum for help. He scrambles to his feet and accelerates off to the west through a field of harvest gold. With his back to the sun and the wind allowing the flames to breathe, the fire spreads rapidly. Bill’s telepathic emanations level the field and hurl him forward in clumsy spinning circles. He rises as the fire erupts along his neck and shoulders, turning to ember and then to ash. He drops on all fours to quicken the pace, veering toward the south where he remembered the old barn stood from his clairvoyant journey.
Malsum’s laughter echoes maniacally in his thoughts. How pathetic! You cannot even die like a man. I will remain a presence until your body is smoldering ash so that I may take pleasure in your screams as you beg me to carry you to your brothers.
Bill catches the first glimpse of the weathered barn up ahead but still very far away. He mocks Malsum with painful grimace. Are you still here?
Moving quickly from tree to tree, Bill uses what little shade each tree might provide until finding himself safely inside the structure. He tumbles repeatedly along the dirt floor, halting momentum and extinguishing flames. Deep within the safety of the barn and rubbing out the last of the harmful flames, Bill rises to his feet and looks out over the field. He flinches under the pain of his charred flesh; ash and smoke still rise off him.
Malsum speaks shrewdly and callously, and he spits his words into Bill’s mind. You will not survive the night! When the sun next sets on the western horizon, your brothers will hunt you, they will kill you, and they will devour you! You will die this night, Billy Boy! Do you hear me? You will die for this treachery!
Whatever it takes, no matter what the sacrifice I have to make or what pain I must endure, I will find my way back and rid myself of you for good.
So be it, betrayer… Malsum’s fading whisper disperses. Bill thinks no more of Malsum and disappears into the dark barn. He now thinks about his brothers that will be coming for him.