The day the river misted over

One fateful morning will forever stay with me, it will form my outlook on life for probably the rest of my existence. It haunts me.

This story goes back 10 years, I was a young child, and I was living deep in the forests of northern Ontario on my reserve, which was situated on The Severn river. The summers were short and hot, filled with swimming and fishing and all the mischief an 11-year-old could get up to. the winters in the north are famously terrible but, the winters where I was were hell. They lasted for what felt like an eternity of nothing but darkness and the sort of cold that soaked into your bones no matter what you did to stave it off.

My family and I hunted and trapped for a living, and I was learning the family trade. We didn’t get cargo planes coming up very often, and the “grocery store” if you can even call it that was poorly stocked and usually closed for “maintenance” meaning they had nothing left to sell us. During the summer is when we did most of the hunting and gathering, then we had stores for the winter. 

One winter sticks particularly in my mind as it was the last winter I ever lived up on my homeland, that, and it was a record-breaking cold. The community as a whole had begun to run out of food, which was dangerous because now we were competing with any other predators outside for sustance  as well. Hunting had begun to become scarce, and that was dangerous. 

The only part of this season that I liked was, due to the food shortage, we often ate as a community. Everyone would pile into the gymnasium around dinner, we had tables and chairs, and the fires for cooking would be outside. The elders would tell traditional legends, and one that often got told in winter to encourage the youngsters to not wander too far were the stories about the wiindigoo.

The Wiindigoo was a creature who was constantly on the edge of starving but could never die, it was skeletal, its flesh stretched over its large emancipated frame. And where it went the cold followed, it was said to have a heart of ice that emanated frost. But the worst part was it was cannibalistic, meaning it was once one of us, and it could become any of us, if we were driven mad enough. It usually hunted near water, that's where we were our most vulnerable. We sent children to get water, and we sent them often due to not having running water. the stories served as a warning to our children to not wander far and to keep an eye on your surroundings.

One “day” if you can call it that. Every day in the winter was essentially a consistent night, there was a small amount of hope when you saw the horizon lighten before falling away again. My brother and I were sent for water, it was a very usual chore, break some ice to bring the water back, and bring our bows in case we found animals we could catch to eat. And that’s when I first noticed it.There was a smell, an absolutely foul stench, wafting from up wind of us. I grabbed my brother's jacket and told him to stand still, not knowing what it was. It was horrid rancid scent. I’d never smelt something that awful before, but it brought a chill to me, not just to my body, but I felt it in my bones and my soul.

We were standing on the edge of the river, our ice hole was not far out, but still at this moment I did not wish to leave the safety the edge of the woods provided. Makwa my brother was complaining so I silenced him. And we waited, listening for any noise at all, but all we could hear was the creaking of the trees, as their frozen limbs waved in the breeze. The smell vanished after what felt like an eternity and makwa whimpered slightly from the cold and the position he held, so finally I deemed it safe enough to continue our chore.

We retrieved the water in record time and trudged as quickly as possible back home. Not bothering to look for prey seeing as we were already running late, I figured the next day I’d go hunt instead, but maybe further down river. Whatever that smell was, I felt it could only mean bad omens. Once home safely in the light of the wood stove, with the solid house around me, I felt a little foolish being afraid of a smell. In my head that sounded ridiculous and to try and explain it out loud to an adult seemed like a way to be teased. Makwa must have had the same thoughts as he said nothing either.

The next morning as promised I went to hunt, makwa was to stay at home because it appeared he had caught a cold from the excursion the day before, it must have been how long we stayed out there. But being a young man, hell-bent on proving himself he insisted on coming and my mother finally caved and as long as he drank his tea and rested when he needed he could come.

My father offered to go with us as well. We were packed and ready before dawn, and off we went. My father took us down the trail me and makwa had gone down the day before. I tried suggesting that we not, that we should go further down the river, but he insisted my uncles had seen caribou not too far from our water hole, so with great hesitancy I followed. It was one of those icy misty mornings Where the snow was all crystals and the woods, except for the occasional frost cracking of the trees, were silent. My father said the herd probably has crossed the river, so we had to cross as well. We found the tracks soon enough and had almost reached the other side. It was hard to see, but we knew it wasn’t far.

As we neared the far shore I smelt it again, That sickly sweet smell, it reminded me now almost of rotting meat in a hot summer sun. Rancid and all enveloping. It made my heart race, with that came an unknown icy terror rising in my chest. I looked at my brother to see if he had noticed it. And makwas face was a reflection of my fear. I called for my father who was in the lead, he turned And he looked as pale as the snow, I’d never seen my father afraid, but I did that day. He turned around and whispered “run!” to us, but before I turned I saw what he had seen. On the shore, watching us, was a tall, gangly gray looking creature. Taller than a man, His arms seemed too long, he was hunched, and everything about him seemed inhuman. I felt every hair on my body stand up. That image will forever be in the back of my mind. The light in the sky was just enough to see what it was. And I ran.

My brother and father were hot on my heels, fear lending speed I didn’t know I had. As we tried desperately to race back across the wide expanse of the river. The fact the snow was deep and not packed made it infuriatingly slower than it should have been. Our snow shoes also slowing us down, but without them, we would sink surely in the deep snow. The worst thing about it was you couldn’t hear the creature, it’s like he moved without sound. Like he was the one with the mist and the wind.

Suddenly there was a bone chilling scream. I turned, and it was the wiindigoo, and my father.My brother had fallen. Tripped I supposed, and that error lent a fatal hand to the wiindigoo. It caught up to them, my father turned, his hunting knife gripped in his hand, prepared to defend makwa as he struggled to stand in his now broken snow shoe, the wiindigoo, his face the picture of delighted malice as it comprehended he could have 2 instead of one, leapt with inhuman strength landing on my father, pinning him down and burying the knife somewhere in the snow forever. It bent without hesitation and sank its razor sharp teeth into my fathers' throat. Cutting off the cries of “RUN!” abruptly and turning them into an airy gurgling noise.

I screamed then, the sound ripping from my body of its own volition, that sound echoing across the frozen wasteland of the river. The wiindigoo looked up, it’s eyes locking with mine, my father's blood dripping from its tattered lips and I swear it grinned. My bow had been strung since we started the walk across the river, in case we caught up to the caribou earlier than expected.My body running on instinct whipped and arrow from my quiver; and believing for some reason I could injure or kill this supernatural being, I shot.

My shot was true and clean, my arrow finding home where I assumed whatever it had for a heart would be. And nothing happened. The wiindigoo didn’t even flinch. It looked down at the wooden shaft protruding from its chest. Turned back to the corpse that once was my father and continued to devour him. As makwa got on his one snow shoe. His body in shock. He tried to run towards me but couldn’t keep on top of the snow. The wiindigoo seeing him struggling away, dropped my father's mangled body, reached out and dragging makwa back to him. Makwa let out a blood chilling cry. He screamed my name, but it ended abruptly as the wiindigoo plunged its claws into makwas chest, stopping his heart with a wet squelching sound.

I turned and bolted, I didn’t look back, I couldn’t. The only thing going through my head was that I needed to survive. I needed to get home and never come back. I didn’t realize I was crying until I noticed I couldn’t really see because my eyelashes were freezing shut. I made it home with nothing but adrenaline running through my veins. Falling through the door into my house where my mother was sitting peacefully and oblivious to the horrors that occurred by the fire. When she saw the panic on my face, my mom looked behind me for my father and brother. Asking what happened and where they were. Shaking me, desperate for answers. That’s when the grief hit, and through the hiccuping sobs I explained what had happened.

We moved immediately. Anything we could fit in a bag we did, and luckily there was a plane leaving the next day. We tried to tell the community but to no avail, they were unwilling to believe, saying I was a child, and it was how I was trying to deal with trauma, that my brother had probably fallen through the ice and my father tried to rescue him. That is the story that people made up to cover up the truth.

My mother grieved and was never the same, she never received closure. I grew up and moved out, and am an adult now making my own way in the world. We moved to a much larger city, one much further south where there is no ice on lakes or rivers to fall through. A big city where there’s always lights and people around, but still at night as I’m walking home I catch a smell on the breeze as a pass an ally, An echo of the smell that one dreadful day when the river's snow was painted red with my families blood. With the breezes icy fingers running up my spine reminding me he could still find me. He could still be out there, he has my scent.