For Posterity

I have scouted the area for the better part of 2 months now and have settled on building a permanent shelter here in the Blue Ridge Mountains, on a somewhat narrow plateau, roughly 600 metres from the crest line and a 2 day trek east down to the trading post of Foeblood on the Delaware River. I pray this is a wise decision. I share the bounty of these mountains with the Repokan, the native people of these areas. Though we respect each other from a distance I have had opportunities to learn a little of their language and have no reason to think they are not appreciative.

Let me apologise now if I am a little lax with my journaling in the forthcoming days. There is much work to be done and these moments are a guilty pleasure.

December 30th, 1682.

Hallelujah! Exhausted.

January 1st, 1683.

Lord, I pray this year will be a good year and the Winter will pass without incident.

January 6th, 1683.

The storm has been unrelenting for 4 days now. I am thankful I finished the cabin and had 3 days of peace in which to enjoy my labours before it set in. I am still hopeful this year will be good to me and Sleipnir.

January 13th 1683.

Nothing sleeps this Winter, Not even the black bear.

January 16th, 1683.

If I am to read this, far in the future, then let this be a happy reminder but if you are reading this now then let it be your warning.

I have returned from Foeblood, more tired than I ever expected. My stores are intact, my cabin as I left it. I will log what I have earned and spent after this entry, if sleep allows but suffice it to say that it has been a worthwhile trip, at least in this regard.

I should be more elated but I have sat heavy in the saddle for 2 days, weighed down by something more, it seems, than the load poor Sleipnir has carried back.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened on our way to Foeblood. Laden with 13 beaver and 19 otter skins from the southern and northern tributaries of last Summer, we camped on the first night under a moonless sky, at our usual spot above the lowland trail. The insects were biting but the fire kept most of them away and any lurking predators. We slept well, refreshed for the journey onward which started at first light. Making good time, we entered Foeblood as night fell, our first visit in 5 months and that was when I first registered an uncanny feeling of unease. I could not be sure whether it was a consequence of my isolation or if the icy stares I received would have made anyone nervous but I did not let it distract me from my mission, and I sold all my skins within the hour to my compatriot Mans Fleming. It was during that hour that he told me a story I would even now dismiss as incredible if not for the proceeding events of that night and the following day.

He would connect, into an eloquent tale, a number of rumours and opinions that attempted to explain strange happenings in Foeblood in recent months. I had initially thought he must have had a great deal of practice refining the story by regaling the many trappers and hunters with cruder versions over the many weeks I had been away but it transpired that I was the first he had seen in more than 2 months. I was about to joke that it may have had something to do with his miserly rates for skins before he offered me an astonishing 90 florins for my coat and three times the price I was expecting for my beaver pelts and otter skins. I thought he was fooling me but his surprising weight-loss since I had last seen him and his sickly complexion drew a deathly sincerity from the eager tones of his voice.

He saw my awakened curiosity and turned to a pile of ragged clothes in the corner and shouted at it sharply in something other than Swedish and to my amazement it shuddered before scurrying through the door of a closed backroom. As it shut the door it turned to me, my eyes finding the narrow opening in the hooded cloth as the shadows from the meagre light made more hideous the deformity of a face i had seen before. It belonged to the Repokan woman I was already aware he employed from my previous visits but she had been so quiet and still I had not noticed her.

He then explained that last Summer was his best season so far with the arrival of new settlers from Europe. But in the Autumn the Repokan hunters and trackers disappeared overnight, decimating his business. The land on which their settlements had been were reclaimed by herds of rutting deer, as if they had never been. We have known of a horrific disease called the small Pox which has ravaged their numbers over the years but this could not explain this mass vanishing and it dawned on me that I too could vouch for not having seen even a single Repokan man, woman or child in over half a year, dead or alive.

What was more disconcerting was that he went into great detail about how, around the same time, many Dutch, Finnish and Swedish huntsman went missing on their expeditions; how some were found dead but untouched, eyes bulging from their sockets around the charred remains of their campfires, their dinners burnt to a crisp in their cooking pots; and others, even women, eviscerated for sport and mere bloodlust rather than food. I asked him what he meant by that and I then learned of reports that told of how the spilled organs, limbs, head and torso of each of those mutilated bodies were all accounted for but some were skinned from head to toe, their skins missing. I cannot forget how his face crumpled with unresolved concern when he mentioned that, from the tracks around the bodies, the wolves had circled the carnage widely, seemingly too afraid to get any closer but the black bears had crossed right through, bloodying the earth and snow with their paws.

From the black bears’ behaviour and with no other plausible reasons for it, many people, he said, had begun to believe the Repokan were using black magic to take the form of bears bent on killing settlers and older heads did nothing to discourage these rumours, stoking up fears by suggesting the black bear numbers in the surrounding areas had doubled in a day and that their natural instincts had changed.

I suggested it could be a rogue bear, a freak of nature in size and temperament which had somehow lost its fear of man. A killer that roamed while others of its kind slept their winter sleeps. It was not unheard of, after all I’d killed one similar only a month back, but my compatriot’s initial interest seemed to wane into a noncommittal silence.

I must admit, though they seemed far fetched, these purported facts, if any are indeed facts, began to have an effect on me. I started to feel, what I consider, my open mind gradually withdraw into darker recesses for an explanation until, I was again sitting by my campfire on that previous night in the rocky outcrop looking down on the valley and, without warning, I began to experience a tingling at the notion that the lurking predators I believed my fire had protected me from had actually been using its solitary light to watch me.

I dismissed it believing I was more tired than I knew and it was time for me to have a decent meal with my windfall and a long indulgent visit to the bathhouse.

However, like a good salesman, Mister Fleming must have spotted the subtle change in my disposition as I buckled under the burden of my imagination and, suspecting I had one foot out of the door already, offered me a parting temptation. He asked me if I wanted to know the name the townspeople had given this being they believed the Repokan had transformed themselves into. He asked me to promise not to speak of it to anyone. Intrigued, I promised him on pain of death and as he paused first in the paranoid hush that followed I readied myself to hear him whisper its name. But instead, he held me captivate a moment longer, confessing that the foolish Repokan woman in his employ had said her people were not to blame, that they stayed away to survive.

From what, I asked. From the one that hides but has no fear, he said. The one of ten thousand names of ten thousand lost lives. She says the bear is only part of the story, she says it hides in the bear not because it’s a bear but because it’s black.

It is strange how I still remember his feverish words. “Naked like a breath in all things, it is clothed in black. It comes from the black, from the darkest shadows,” he said. “Waiting in the black, in your black powder flasks, knowing who you are, disappearing into the blackness of spent campfires, biding its time, moving through the moonless night, until you call it and it comes for you.”

How do you summon it, I demanded. But he could not tell me. What does she call it, I asked. I wanted to know. I needed to know whether the settlers and the Repokan spoke of the same thing. Then with his quill he secreted the names on a scrap of paper he tore from the back of his ledger, telling me only to read it in the sunlight before stressing that I was to burn it afterwards without fail. This paper, I still carry in pocket now, unread.

I feel guilt for acknowledging this here but it was good to make my excuse and bid Mister Fleming an abrupt goodbye, leaving him to the worry that had eaten away at him and walk into the open air, its breeze seeming instantly to clear my mind.

After sating my appetite on turkey and potatoes, I quenched a nagging thirst with brandy and walked sluggishly to the bath-house, increasingly softened in demeanour and strength. If ever there was a hellish place that was so welcoming for my wretched soul then this was it. The hot stones glowed orange beneath the timbers, steam hissing from the gaps and rising in plumes, engulfing the glistening bodies, the dim light hinting at the nakedness. The hollows of my body burned with each breath and I felt alive.

The darkness seemed to shift around me and i sensed an emptiness open up on the bench to my left. I could not see who vacated their place though I braced myself for the sudden chill of someone leaving the room but no one did. I sat down, the backs of my limbs and body instantly branded by the narrow planks of pine. I had begun to feel the itch and tickle of perspiration as it beaded and dripped down my body and I leaned my head back, succumbing to the seduction when I felt a breath in my ear, hotter than any current of air before it. ‘So strong to the touch,’ it said, the voice assured and assertive. It shocked me but not nearly as much as the shock that seized me when i realised it was not sweat but fingertips that had been running down my body.

Before I knew it, I was straddled by what my heightened self sensed was a woman and we began to consummate an irresistible passion. From the reflected glow I saw her eyes, wide like open mouths devouring, their glinting whites like bloodied teeth. She tore at my flesh as if she had claws. I had no will to stop her but as suddenly as she possessed the gloom before me, she vanished.

I left the bath house confused and agitated but waited as long as I could to see who would follow me out. No one did. The chilling air offered no relief and hardened my muscle and mind to one thought: to return to my cabin and the isolation of the mountains. Forgoing sleep, I departed immediately.

No sooner had i left the outer limits of town that I heard the terrifying screams, of a voice at once familiar but one I remain unable to assign a name to. Not willing to find out, I kept riding.

There were eyes in the darkness escorting us as the distant fires of the settlement were eventually swallowed up by the silent night. As dawn broke the presence slipped among the pines and Sleipnir reared up as a stirring wind swept past us. I guided him on foot through the deep snow and progress was slow. And as the sun climbed, we climbed, until by chance I took a look behind us and my eye caught a grotesque silhouette birth movement in the tree line. Then I saw something extraordinary. A woman, raven haired, with eyes sunken into shadow and naked, her skin as pale as the snow around us. She stood as if frozen but as i skirted the very clearing her eerie stillness occupied she seemed to turn imperceptibly, tracking me. Had my eyes deceived me? We were half a day from the settlement. There was no way on earth she could have followed us on foot and survived these temperatures. Was she Repokan? Was she alone? I approached to get a clearer look but as I leaned around a tree that only interrupted my vision for the briefest of moments she was gone and only the snowy bark of a slender tree cast in shadow remained.

This was the first of three similar sightings before I reached the cabin. And as I sit here now I cannot know for certain if I really saw what I saw or if they were the tricks of shadow and light.

So here I am. A man still standing when my father’s Gods have fallen. I am settling this new world. I am a hunter. If the Repokan want me dead and this creature is real then it has had ample opportunity to attack. This fell creature? I almost forgot it has a name. I must open the piece of paper Mans Fleming gave me and know it before it is lost.