Day 417: The Wendigo

Seeing as how 'The Willows' was so deeply unsettling, I decided to wait until after dark to read the second of the two horror stories from Algernon Blackwood, 'The Wendigo.' Sadly though, this one didn't hit the mark in quite the same way as the first. I didn't feel the same horrible tension as was present in 'The Willows,' nor did I ever feel like something might be creeping up on me out there in the shadowed woods beyond my window like I had hoped I would. There were a few things working against this story that I thought Blackwood had perfected in 'The Willows.' This gave me the idea that maybe 'The Wendigo' was an earlier work, but no. It was actually published two years later which has left me at a bit of a loss. I'm not sure what changed between 'The Willows' and 'The Wendigo,' if anything, but the later sure didn't feel as complete a picture.

What really took the wind out of the sails of this story for me was the way it was presented by the narrator, Simpson, as having happened in his past, IE that the narrator had already survived the ordeal. I think 'The Willows' was the same way, but it was not as pervasive. In this one there were constant reminders that the narrator was no longer present in the goings on of the story. It broke my immersion and made it seem that there was no threat at all to Simpson, or even the rest of his little hunting party.

There were a few other things that got in the way as well: Characters who ranged from unlikeable to frankly goofy, quite a bit of head hopping (the bad kind), and just the plain fact that not much happened. The Wendigo didn't ultimately do much at all, and didn't seem to have a real goal or purpose either. It was just kinda there? In 'The Willows,' the primordial spirits that haunt the narrator and the swede feel as though they have a purpose beyond reckoning, that they function based on rules that the characters can only begin to grasp. The Wendigo on the other hand just felt like a hodgepodge of vaguely creepy features. I think the difference lies in the fact that nobody ever gives any indication of why the Wendigo actually wants to abduct people, despite the fact that a few of them have heard a lot about it before. The willows are angry at the characters' trespassing, which is easily understood, but still hints at some deeper motivation. The Wendigo meanwhile was entirely obscure, and I don't think that worked in its favor.

I will give the story plenty of points for the imagery throughout though. It begins with a spectacular description of the wild scenery, a wintery, hinterland Canada, swept by light snow and generally beautiful. The wildness of the setting is something it has in common with 'The Willows,' though the power of that primeval feeling is again hamstrung by the way the story is told. You just already know who survived and who didn't even as the wilderness, and even the monster itself, should be at its most awesome. The imagery itself is still powerful enough on its own to carry the story though. Its greatest strength lies in Blackwood's ability to define the creature using negative space, letting your imagination fill in the gaps by giving only glimpses suggestive of the titular creature's immense size and otherworldly nature. Its most present feature is that it has a distinct, acrid scent that haunts the characters throughout the story. The only dimensions given (and this was the most horrific part of the story for me) come after Simpson's French-Canadian guide, Defago, has been taken by the Wendigo, and Simpson decides to track them down. He finds a set of monstrous tracks to follow unlike any other animal he's ever seen, and as it says in the book:

They went straight as a ruled line whenever the trees permitted. The stride soon began to increase in length, till it finally assumed proportions that seemed absolutely impossible for any ordinary animal to have made. Like huge flying leaps they became. One of these he measured, and though he knew that "stretch" of eighteen feet must be somehow wrong, he was at a complete loss to understand why he found no signs on the snow between the extreme points.

This was the monster at its scariest for me because it was the first point where I started to realize what Simpson was dealing with. The creepiest thing it actually did though, was to lure Defago into the woods ... by calling his name in an inhuman voice. It was described as being like the wind, raspy, yet strangely delicate while also being very loud. The Wendigo seems to be an incarnation of the primordial landscape it resides in, calling out to 'men of a certain solitude' who find the wilds tempting. It plays on the idea that unconquered natural landscapes hold some terrible and transformative power over the people who dare enter there. The Wendigo does something to Defago, transforming him into some kind of zombie-like creature at first with hideously deformed feet, then later, Defago returns from the woods, stinking of the beast, his mind destroyed by the ordeal. His feet go back to normal, but he's forever deformed in a more important sense. It's pretty horrible to consider something like the Wendigo being out there, but as for the story itself, I just didn't find it very frightening or suspenseful. Something about 'The Willows,' with its cosmic brand of horror, struck a much more potent chord than 'The Wendigo,' but it was still a worthwhile read overall.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley