Tomas Edel's Arc

Chapter 7 of 17

Tomas and Regan reached the edge of Duskwood as the mist thinned. Lamps burned in the windows. People moved on the road, safe, unknowing. Tomas had run all this way to warn them. But he had no proof. Only a broken arm and a word he could not say. He stopped at the tree line and stared at the houses. His hands twitched. He had never felt so useless. A farmer with a lantern spotted them first. He raised the light. "You two shouldn't be out here after dark," he said. Tomas lifted his good hand. He pointed at the forest. He mimed antlers, claws, teeth. He clawed at the air. The farmer frowned and backed away. "He can't talk right," a woman muttered. "Leave him." More faces gathered. They watched Tomas wave and grab at the air like a sick man. He saw it in their eyes. Madness. Nothing more. Regan stepped in front of him. She did not raise her voice. She never did. "Bring your lanterns," she said. "I'll show you the pit." The crowd went still. A shaved-head girl in a bloody uniform, a stake strapped to her arm, said it flat as a fact. She had killed things they only whispered about. Tomas had learned to trust that certainty. The farmer looked at Tomas, then at her. "What pit?" "Under the stone wall," Regan said. "Bones. Shoes. Belongings. Your missing people are down there." She turned and walked toward the forest edge. "Come or don't." Fear moved faster than doubt. Six of them followed with lanterns. Tomas led. He knew the way. He knew the wendigo hunted by trading fresh kills for stale trails, that it might be far off chasing his dog's scent, or close. He kept the group tight. At the crumbling wall he knelt and pointed into the dark pit below. A man lowered his lantern over the edge. The light fell on a ring of small bones. A child's shoe sat in the center. Belongings circled it. Coats. A watch. A woman's shawl someone recognized. She dropped to her knees and screamed a name. The farmer stumbled back. "God," he said. "It's real. It's all real." Tomas watched belief spread through them like fire through dry grass. They saw it now. Not madness. Truth. He had failed to speak the warning. But Regan had spoken it for him, and the pit had done the rest. The farmer gripped his arm. "What did this? What do we do?" Tomas opened his mouth. The word rose in his throat, the same word he had carried for seven chapters. His lips moved. No sound came. His face burned. Regan met his eyes and answered for him again, plain and hard. "Wendigo," she said. "And it knows his scent. When it stops chasing the dog, it comes here. For all of us."