Tomas Edel's Arc

Chapter 3 of 17

Regan walked toward the wall. Tomas grabbed her sleeve. She stopped and looked at his hand, then at his face. He shook his head hard. She pulled free. "Then help," she said. "Or leave." He did not leave. He followed her, the hound at his side. She led him away from the pit, toward an old house that leaned against the trees. Broken windows. A sagging porch. Boards nailed over the door. She had been here before. She pointed inside. "It came from here," she said. "A man lived here. He stopped being a man." Inside, dust covered everything. On the floor lay bones stacked in a small circle, the same shape as the pit. Above them, someone had scratched words into the wall. Tomas leaned close and read. A hunger that never fills. A man who eats his own kind and turns into the thing that hunts them. The word at the bottom was carved deep. Wendigo. The hound growled low. Tomas turned. The creature stood in the doorway, thin as the door frame, its limbs bent wrong. It had followed his scent, just as Regan warned. It stepped inside. Regan raised her stake. Tomas caught her wrist. He shook his head again. Silver would not hold it. She had told him that herself. He looked around the room. A rotted beam sagged from the ceiling, half torn free. He let go of the hound. It bolted between the creature's legs. The creature snapped at the dog and missed. Tomas seized the loose beam and pulled with all his weight. The wood cracked. The ceiling gave way. He pulled too late to clear it. The beam swung down and struck his arm as it fell. He heard the bone break before he felt it. Pain shot white through his shoulder. The beam and half the ceiling crashed onto the creature, pinning it under wood and dust. Regan hauled him up by his good arm. They stumbled out onto the porch. Behind them the pile shifted. The creature was not dead. It was digging free. Tomas cradled his arm against his chest. It hung wrong. Every step jarred it. But he knew now. He knew what the thing was and where it came from. A man who ate men and became a wendigo. The warning he had held so long finally had a shape. "Duskwood," he said through his teeth. "They have to know." Regan looked back at the house. "It knows your scent. It knows mine." She pulled him toward the road. "Walk faster." He walked. His arm screamed with each stride. The hound ran ahead through the mist. Behind them, wood cracked and fell as the creature clawed its way out of the ruined house. Tomas had his answer at last. Now he had to reach the village before the thing that hunted him could.