The White Hunger

The wind didn’t just blow in the Saguenay region backwoods; it screamed. Odilon Thorne spat a dark stream of tobacco into the snow, watching it freeze before it even sank. Beside him, his partner, Kaelig, was tightening the cinches on their last pack horse. They were lean, ragged, and smelled of wet wool and old leather. In the sled behind them, bound in rusted chains and shivering under a moth-eaten pelt, sat Clement Tremblay—the man worth one hundred dollars in Chicoutimi. They stood at the edge of an Innu encampment, the last spark of humanity before the endless black spruce forest took over. The village Elder, a man whose face was etched like the bark of an ancient cedar, stood blocking the northern trail. "The ice has spoken," the Elder said, his voice low. "The spirits of the air are turning sharp. If you go now, you do not just fight the cold. You fight the Witiko". Odilon scoffed, rubbing his frostbitten fingers. "We’ve heard the stories, Chief. We’re down to three days of dried caribou meat. We stay here, we starve. We go back, we get paid". "The White Hunger does not care for your gold," the Elder replied, his eyes moving to Tremblay. The prisoner was staring into the woods, his eyes wide and vacant. "The Wendigo hunts the transition. When the sun dies early and the belly is empty, it finds a home in the hearts of desperate men. Stay. We will share what little we have". "We’re moving," Odilon snapped, mounting his horse. "We’ll be in Chicoutimi in ten days, or we’ll be dead". "You will be both," the Elder whispered. Into the Shroud: By the third day, the world turned white. The trail vanished under three feet of fresh powder. Their breath came in ragged plumes, and the horses’ ribs began to show. The silence of the northern woods was the heaviest thing Odilon had ever felt. It wasn't a peaceful silence; it was a waiting one. "Did you hear that?" Kaelig asked on the fifth night, his hand trembling on his holster. "The wind," Odilon muttered, though he had heard it too—a high, whistling shriek that sounded far too much like a human voice calling a name. From the sled, Tremblay began to laugh. It was a wet, rattling sound. "He’s thin," the prisoner whispered, staring into the dark treeline. "So thin, Odilon. His skin is pulled so tight his bones are breaking through. He’s been waiting for us to run out of meat". "Shut up, Clement," Odilon growled, but he gripped his Winchester tighter. On the seventh day, the last horse collapsed. They had no choice but to slaughter it. As they ate the stringy, tough meat in the shadow of a granite cliff, the atmosphere shifted. The temperature plummeted until the trees themselves began to crack like pistol shots in the cold. Odilon looked at Kaelig. His partner’s eyes were bloodshot, staring at the horse meat with a terrifying, ravenous intensity. Then Kaelig looked at Tremblay. Then he looked at Odilon. "There's not enough," Kaelig whispered. Odilon Thorne realized that in this forest, gold was stone, and the only currency left was flesh. He looked back toward the south, toward the warmth of Chicoutimi. It felt a thousand years away. He realized then that the Elder hadn't been warning them about a monster in the woods. He had been warning them about the monsters they would become to survive the trip home. The Call of the Pines: The fire was a dying orange eye in the vast white skull of the forest. Odilon and Kaelig sat on opposite sides of the embers, their eyes darting toward every snap of frost-cracked wood. Between them, Clement Tremblay remained bound, his head bowed, his breath coming in shallow, rhythmic wheezes. Then, the wind died completely. The silence that followed was unnatural—a vacuum that made their ears ring. Suddenly, a blur of impossible darkness tore through the center of the camp. It was faster than a hawk’s dive, a jagged streak of obsidian that defied the flickering firelight. "Look out!" Kaelig screamed. Both men scrambled for their holsters. Odilon’s Winchester roared twice, the muzzle flashes blinding him for a split second. Kaelig emptied his revolver into the treeline, the lead thudding fruitlessly into ancient bark. The shadow didn't bleed. It didn't slow. It surged between the two hunters, a freezing gale following in its wake that nearly extinguished their fire. As it passed Tremblay, the shadow slowed for a heartbeat—long enough for a spindly, translucent hand to brush against the prisoner’s cheek. Tremblay didn't scream. He gasped, his back arching as if he’d been struck by lightning, and then the shadow was gone, melting into the black gaps between the spruce trees.