Here is a story one told of old
About the creature who crawls out at night.
It began with the cop in his house on the hill.
He exclaimed “a child is missing. And one adult too”
In wild fury his top blew
He blamed the deed by a creature more than a mile long.
Deep in the wood he hides,
And he only comes out at night.
Teeth as sharp as knives,
Hiding behind a deer’s smile.
Mangled and matted,
Tangled and tattered.
“mutilated humanoid body”
Covered in a smell gut wrenching,
A walking zombie.
With long monstrous claws.

Then the parents began to believe.
“Don’t go in the forest” to jimmy,
“Don’t leave my sight” to sally,
“Stay inside” to eve,
But they disappeared anyway.

But then there was Steve.
He believed but not in the bad
Like his dad.
His house was surrounded.
Mounted by trees last where the eye could see.
He had been in the forest 100 times over and never met this man before.
But maybe he didn’t go deep enough,
Maybe he wasn’t old enough.
(He was 11)
Wasn’t dark enough.
(Dusk at 8)
So he prepped a bag secret and swift after
12 he would depart to find this man.
While they all were resting.

Out his window Steve ran past the cedar trees
down with the breeze that fell faintly behind him.
Finding a stick long and thick he held it close.
He knew what he chose,
But still he rose with rosy retrospection of what the Wendigo was.
Suddenly the air became heavy,
moist with wet dew in the air,
Speckling the grass and leaves eloquently.
The smell of petrichor filled the air along with sweet nectars.

He stops.
His heart racing, faster and faster pacing.
He thinks of his home, his sister, mother, father.
There he is.
The Wendigo.
Just as his father described.
Or was it?
He hunkered down into a bush and watched the man wonder in his wares.
Steve listened to the tearing and cutting of flesh on the outside table of a little shack.
It’s dark.
Too dark to see a face.

He isn’t tall,
But looks like a deer.
He doesn’t smell.
He has claws, very sharp.
But he looks human.

Steve waits patiently before dawn and makes his way back.
He slips into bed and no one knew he was gone.
The sun kisses his forehead waking him from his light sleep.

There’s a Wendigo out there.
And his sister Lily is missing.

Steve keeps wondering,
Pondering,
Trying to find something he could never find in the woods.
Trying to understand the man.
no.
The Wendigo he saw.
Where the kids are.
Where they went.
How they’re doing.
A year passes.

He ventures deeper into the woods on that dreadful morn.
To that lorned desolate shack in the woods.
But there was nothing but a smell of copper and rot.
Examining tools,
Rusted tools
often used on mules and old crooked grass.
He thought,
“Did a farmer live here? Or maybe still does…?”

He left then ventured deeper into the wood.
Running as fast as he could,
his cheeks burning bright red.
He looks off into the brush and a tree begins to move.

An elegant creature has now appeared.
He stands a mile long,
With rounded teeth,
Long arms,
Covered with moss and lichens,
With the smell of honeysuckle and foxglove.

He found his childlike wonder once again
after growing a cold dose of reality.
People can be heard in the distance.

The creature slowly makes his was over to Steve on the cliff.
He says,
“I know the pain you feel of this world so real,
come with me for a great escape.
Everyone has a happy end if you just search for it.
I’m not the one you should worry about..”

Hesitantly Steve let go of reality and climbed onto the hand input the Wendigo.

The cops had followed him down the trail.
They were close on his tail.
They found his body at the bottom of the small cliff.
Caught in a small water drift
“The Wendigo” dragging him away.

This is the story of the Wendigo.
And of a boy I knew long ago.
Don’t go out too far you know.

Don’t trust the Wendigo.