There was never anything wrong with the night. The dark itself on occasion was sublimely peaceful. Yet it was never entirely innocent. The proof of this was in what Her shadows concealed. The howls of the previous twilight was evidence enough it concealed beasts. However there was the tamed, the untamed....and lastly...
Do you know what is scarier than werewolf? A Lycan of lore? A beast entirely different and unlike that of any other.
An abstract, shapely tall mesh of wolf, man, demon, spirit, and elk.
This was a real monster. These things felt nothing and accepted nothing into their lives but hunger. Insatiable hunger that never left, an endless void of carnage and every once in a while it would be set off like a ticking time bomb.
It was a creature, a manifestation of pure selfish discombobulated chaos.
The worst part of it was...no one was really safe from it.
We all carry darkness in our hearts. This is a known fact. If you are human you will have selfish desires, there's no possible way to be human and not have flaws. It is these vulnerabilities that it will latch onto. It is this way, that you are contaminated. That you draw the evil spirit to you. That you become a target.
You may ask me how I know this. How does one know a Wendigo and live to expose it's weaknesses?
That is because I am it's Mother. And to answer your questions, I am not living. But we all know one does not have to have a physical body to be here...and it hates that. It hates me. If you want to understand the creature that holds my son..or rather if you want to understand him you need to listen. You need to listen and learn while I am here.
I met his Father Claude Frollo when I was a young woman, in church. You see, he was once a very Holy man with a good soul. I had come to God's house for forgiveness to beg my Saviour if he would spare my immortal soul and cleanse my body. I had an addiction to pleasure prayer could not cure.
Perhaps at that very moment in time my soul was unclean.
I saw him for only a few weeks but bewitched him so much he sent me away. He thought lust was not an attractive trait for a woman to have.
You can ask me forever about my family and where I come from but I won't discuss it. I haven't carried a last name for years. I certainly won't start using it now. France was a beautiful place you know? Even when the sun went down it had a different kind of memorable seductive aura. That was the environment I conceived my son Gaston in. We spent the first months in a small apartment adjacent to a bakery. I would catch him as a toddler stealing rolls under his clothes.
He was a good boy. I sent him away when he got old enough to understand the noises coming from my bedroom. I sent him to his Father, who took him in and placed him with the clergymen to have a chance.
I did not see my son again until he was just past six years. He walked in on me with a client and I knew I had to go out rather than bring my work home. Still, he wandered the streets searching for me.
I told my sister I wasn't suited for motherhood. She didn't believe me. At least...not at first.
I did not see the evil that had taken an interest in my boy. I should have known too. I was a witch with a bloodline stemming back farther than most. No one knew my real age either. I think that's no crime though. Most women hide their ages.
It started with him mutilating rats in the alleyways. He said he liked to hear their small shrill screams. He said he could understand them, found them amusing. He matured; I found him evolving to other animals, rabbits, cats and stray dogs. Then there came that terrible day I walked in on him having killed George. One of my...regulars. We couldn't dump the body so I asked him what he was to do. Ten year olds are tried maturely. They are practically young men at thirteen. So I slapped him and said:
"You clean this mess right up!"
And he did. When I came back my boy was covered in blood surrounded by bones with flesh still stuck to it. He was knawing on a femur when I returned. He said he was hungry...
As people in the neighbourhood went missing, people of no account that no one would miss I turned a blind eye time and time again-
Until it was my turn. Until I went out for the last time one rainy night and he followed me, a dagger in one hand and a bible clutched in the other. I thought; had I really born a monster or had his father convinced him he was doing God's justice? He didn't devour me though. He stabbed me again and again, disfiguring my face, marking every part of my body then buried me. I, his horrible mother, should have been consumed. I should have understood what a monster he had become.
But my spirit did not move on. No I have followed him for years now, unsettled and finally put together what was the real cause of all this bloodshed. You can say I am looking for something else to blame but I know in my heart that is not my son and I cannot say I created that. I did not. I insist that's not so. I have another perfectly normal dysfunctional son. His half brother, Brom.
There was another party privy to this tragedy. A dear friend, under my employ who came too late to my death bed. Hatori wept, my poor Cheshire cat. He called me the Enchantress the woman who put his heart back together after that Alice messed it up. I would do worse though. I made him promise to protect it. My son was in there somewhere. It's quite comical how death makes a person wise, isn't it? I made him swear on his life, he would protect Gaston to the end. For our House. For our line. He said yes, kissed my eyes and laid me to sleep.
My son was eventually rejected by his father. Sent away. He could not bear to watch him fall to the fiery pits of Hell. I think my son has silenced my voice. He might not even recognize my face. I wouldn't be surprised if the Beast had manipulated his memory. He calls the woman he was sent to, Tuya, his mother now. A woman he wants to set free from jail, or so I have watched him plot hunched over the table with a wild desperate look in his eye. As he would call Esme sister, though really having no emotional attachment to either female.
It won't let him care. It won't let him feel.
He felt my presence last night. He killed so many people but I was finally able to come to him, to stop him for now. He could not stand that I had returned, that my spirit wasn't at peace. I sit now by the last victim's bed, wondering if the young witch - so much like my once self will pull through....
The beast rose from slumber at this hour, the time of his birth with his nostrils flaring and his eyes wide and rounded. He tossed off the blankets and began to pace the room in an anxious frenzy feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Far be it from having anyone in his life to know him well enough but Gaston hated his birthday. He hated the date that carried a full amount of life's memories - bad ones, regrettable ones, terrifying ones.
He felt a pulsing at the back of his head, at that thought. It felt like his skull was on fire as he blinked and took in another few quick deep breaths. He could feel the rage coming on.
The rage; The random, instantaneous uncontrollable power that made him hunger more, that made him angry and upset.
His head snapped around as Cheshire opened the door slowly. That fucking cat had radar. God fucking damn it he was annoying.
"Calm. Down," he said gently as if he was talking to a child that was about to explode and start shouting. He wasn't that far off the mark either because Gaston's lips curled back in a sneer and in that instant he roared.
His body snapped back and Cheshire's own form changed before it began, slamming the door shut with a wave of his hand and placed himself between the exit full well knowing he was going to have to subdue it like he had before, many a time.
This time felt different though. As a feline floating midair he watched as Gaston's muscular arms straightened and his back arched up as he was compelled to. His hands shot out and the skin ripped and tore to make way for claws that shot up in place of his nails. Thunder rolled outside as he heard the beginnings of a storm mingle with his feral snarls. His muscles bulged and expanded, growing wider and taller as horns shot out from the top of his head and he started to shake it from side to side like he was trying to fight the metamorphosis but it just kept going. More skin ripped and hair came growing at a rapid rate as his jaw broke and widened, reshaping and snapping into place again now with a muzzle and his fangs came down in his mouth with his teeth changing and sharpening to pointed tips. A long tail sprouted from it's backside and it towered over him with a menacing height. Lastly Gaston's blue eyes lightened and the white sclera turned a discerning black. His own old shed skin dropped to the ground and was consumed first by the monster.
It lashed out and the cat was afraid to let it phase through so the only thing it could do was dodge it's blows and work up a theory while tiring it out. Hatori's poisonous claws had no affect on it - it's fur was so thick that he barely broke the skin. It was not like he could hurt him either. It crashed into things, growling and tore after him again wrecking the room and everything in it's path. Hatori decided the safest way was to disappear and put it under enchantment. He couldn't risk It getting out. So he did bring up the illusion, hiding his physical body and prayed it wouldn't find him-
Then cursed his own mistake.
It could smell his doubt. His desperation. His fear.
It struck him across the chest with a painful slash and sent him crumpling into the wall unconscious.
The beast tore through the house for the door and burst through, taking off into the night at an alarmingly fast pace to sate it's starvation.
He started with the man the Hunter had so kindly left for him in his part of the forest. He had been beginning to tire of picking off werewolves.
That trembling morsel that started to scream even when just feeling his presence draw near was mouthwatering. She had left not long ago, he judged by the boot imprints in the ground and the lingering faintest scent of cinnamon and vanilla.
He came upon him from the front and lifted the screaming man up by his neck. It drunk in his first victims delightful terror, agonizing over just what he was going to do then ripped his head clean off and dropped it. He pried his arms apart and his legs enjoying how the blood spewed and spattered every which way and made a sound that was vaguely of triumph and inhumane laughter before he took to tearing the clothes away his mangled carcass and started with his arm. He ate everything even the bones - the marrow was important not to miss.
Finished he continued, stealing into the night and running to enjoy it's breeze. He came upon a druid woman, someone that screamed of virtue and decency and had a vague resemblance to Hawkins - therefore the perfect choice. He found her in a graveyard, weeping over that fat cook that had died a few months ago. Too bad really that it'd died down. He wished he'd have been around in existence for that. Just seeing Hawkin's tormented face every morning for the first week would have been a fucking riot.
She wasn't hard to kill. She wasn't as trained as him, a household wholesome wench that hadn't been able to even make him flinch. It was such a disappointment too. She didn't scream. Didn't make a sound and just accepted the fact he was going to kill her. He spat out her wedding ring and left it where he'd found her.
At the base of John Silver's Grave.
The blood shed continued farther into the darker nooks of town. Camelot was quiet - given most would have been asleep just after one in the morning but there were still a few stragglers out and about, dumb enough to take a turn down the dimly lit path. He picked off a group of teenagers. Finger foods really, they snapped like twigs and the boys screamed like pubescent girls.
The real challenge came when he found Her.
He came upon the university, looking for more drunk idiots when Helen Blythe was just getting off her shift on her way back to her apartment. He followed her back into the forest, onto the path when she stopped suddenly. He knew she knew he was trailing her. She straightened her shoulders and said in a loud voice, "You will leave me foul beast. As God is my witness if you attack me I will destroy you."
He shivered, desiring her blood even more. He got a particular sort of pleasure out of destroying those of God. Those bible thumpers that believed they were under His protection. That believed they lived for some higher purpose. He finally noticed a cross hung over top her clothes. Yes, this would be better than killing the gangle of teens, the heartbroken woman or even his first birthday present of the day from the Hunter. This would be sweeter, to put her in her place. Catholics, he thought. They were all so full of themselves.
Without any more hesitation he ran at her only to smash into an unforseen barrier that was put up and seemed to encircle her for a few feet. Bitch! His claws raked at it but to no avail.
He felt the raw burning sensation in the back of his skull increase, the pressure making his eyes burn and he howled. His claws grew and sharpened. His eyes glowed and he pushed against it, causing Helen to step back as her barrier wavered. She'd made a vow she wouldn't kill a living mortal and sought to leave the boy possessed by the demonic spirit from physical harm but he was pressing in and the fact that it wasn't purified touching her barrier was disturbing. It meant she'd underestimated how deep it's hold on the boy was.
"I can help you," the white witch pleaded with him, beginning to say the blessing enchantments her grandmother had taught her in her head. "I can free you if you'll let me help!"
He snarled loudly once more, surprising her with a voice this time - both human and demonic coldly responded.
"I don't want to be saved. I don't want to be human."
He ripped through the invisible wall and the backlash of power threw her back to the ground. As he moved toward her a white light tore through the trees and passed through his chest. He cried out and spun around, searching for the thing that attacked him.
Only to see a ghost from his past.
Disbelieving he stood up on his hind legs and took a step back. "No..."
Renee's spirit hovered, holding his gaze as Helen clutched her bleeding forehead and took the opportunity to run as fast as she could back to the university while It was distracted.
The thunder that had been foreshadowing a storm all night finally gave way to rainfall as the storm began and the Beast lurched back away from his mother, who opened her arms.
This significant exchange revealed to the monster it was not without it's own fears - fears for existence and that of the boys humanity.
And as a first, it withdrew back into the cloak of night fearing it's destruction and losing strength. It would have to wait and fully eradicate the resistance it got. The beast would have to take back control of the man.
It's hosts couldn't have weakness.
Friends and family...those relationships had to be snuffed out. Exterminated and made obsolete.
Otherwise the wendigo spirit would have to find a stronger host with a weaker, shattered soul.
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