So it is from this lunatic manuscript that I hope the story of the events in Korissia Valley survive, and that others may learn to not so foolishly discredit the accounts of superstitious locals. In the early afternoon of a February day in the winter of nineteen and ninety-five, I arrived in the antiquated, remote village of Haerdt, a backwoods collective of a modest size, built and maintained by an anomalously sequestered indigenous population. The people and populous here were my first stop on a journey, impossible by aircraft, that was to take me further north, to a yet more taciturn and clandestine folk. These natives, it was my course to study, being a moderately respected anthropological authority on the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest. The quasi-modernized Haerdt people were an interesting bridge between the Korissia people and modern Alaskans, but despite the prodding eyes of a scientist, welcomed me with as much hospitality as is charged the denizens of their nigh-uninhabitable domain. From the small Sesna I arrived in, I bade the pilot a warm farewell, and stepped into the frigid Alaskan air. From several yards across the strip, my stocky contact waved to catch my eye, and, bundled head to foot in skins and fur, shuffled awkwardly toward me. Once in earshot, he managed a muffled greeting in English, and offered a stiff, gloved hand with my sparse belongings. To give written account my surroundings, and the first days in Haerdt is to bid return of the exhaustingly negative miasma that coiled so venomously about my time spent there. The most pressing feature of the locale was the cold. This was winter in Alaska, after all, and to say cold was certainly not an unusual feature would be obvious to any laypersons. But I had dealt with cold before, and never had it affected me so. Perhaps my age was beginning to show prematurely, after a strained life of travel and exposure to a multitude of harsh climes. This, however, was a cold that stirred my innards into unusual motions, and summoned a dull, miserable, aching moan from every resounding string of my body. This unrelenting fixture of the village Haerdt and its surrounding air was inexorably taxing, and by the third day, my mood had turned from apprehensively determined, to that of a bitter and selfish child. The hosts of my boarding seemed not to notice my mental state, or at the least tolerate it very well. I, at times then, and still now, wonder if they felt the extreme frigidity as anything aberrant to the season and geography of their aboriginal lands. If they did indeed note the particular malice of that winter, they revealed no hint of concern, trudging through the manually intensive work of maintaining their fragile survival in this place so damnably reminiscent of Dante’s ninth circle. On the fourth day, the eve of my departure into the thick, knotted pine forests of Korissia Valley, I awoke to find an unwholesome commotion about the rustic village, and a nauseous, looming cloud about the locals. As I drew nearer the gathering, there unfurled about the scene a gut-wrenching gore, in fresh, alabaster snowfall. The juxtaposition of such sanguineous mess upon a pristine snowfall may lend itself to a sort of morbid poeticism in the mind of my dear reader. I can only say that the reality was unprecedentedly more visceral, crude, and ugly. The cruor remains were scarcely discernable as anything, but as I drew close enough, I felt the near tangible weight of mourning in my fellows and knew immediately that not a half day prior, this piteous mess was human. The victim was, that afternoon, identified as being a child of no more than 9 years, the only son of a widow, who vehemently swore through choking sobs to tucking in her child just the night before, and routinely locking the simple wooden door to her hutched cabin. The child must have left the cabin, for a reason now forever lost to the living. My dazed mind did not truly ruminate the implications of that grotesquery until quite later that evening, as I sank solipsistic and brooding into the wicker chair provided by my lodgings. Tomorrow morning, I was to take 4 hardy men of local expertise with me into the Korissia vale. If the woods held nearby a polar bear, the hostility to whom I naively attributed the death of the village boy, I should, in all rational mind, call off my expedition. A polar bear was a creature I did indeed fear and respect, but my weary mind calculated the risks and I resolved to continue my journey, if careful precautions were taken. That night, one of my travel compatriots relayed to me in hushed whisper the dark and furtive gossips that had arisen among the village. These fears were rooted in their ancient beliefs, which, though many were several generations removed from practice, they still maintained much reverence toward. The people spoke of a much feared creature, the wendigo, roughly analogous to werewolf myths of northern Europe. I knew well enough the rudimentary base of the myth, but allowed my trembling confidant to continue, bearing in my mind the dismissive condescension of a parent, listening to the detailed recount of a nightmare by his child. Oh, that I was so ignorant! This hobgoblin of lore, this demoniac telling of this creature simultaneously man, beast, and specter only served as impetus to my confidence. Goaded by the uniquely arrogant naivety only borne of expertise, I steeled myself for the journey. The hazy purple predawn of my fifth day in the village saw no relief to my foolhardiness. I gathered the four hardy Haerdt men, and after some preparatory checks, we began our march into the antediluvian pines.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 04:26:26 +0000
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