//------------------------------// // Chapter 40: Bad Moon Rising // Story: Brightly Lit // by Penalt //------------------------------//     Saturday evening had come to the Carmanah Valley and the shadows were growing long.  In a certain forested glen near the small town, there now stood a fully mature apple tree, complete with blossoms bearing the promise of future fruit.  A careful observer would have noted that it was still a little early in the season for apple blossoms and that these particular blooms were in all shades of the rainbow.     Looking around, that same person would have noticed how everything seemed to be just a little bit better in that glen by the ruins of the old building.  The foliage was just a little greener, the birdsong was a little sweeter, the play of sun and shadow just a little more lovely. Even the bugs seemed to be less inclined to make a meal out of a passing person.  It was all very harmonious. As if some benevolent sun goddess had placed her blessing on the tree and its surroundings.       But not everything in the Carmanah Valley was harmonious as day began to turn toward evening.     “John, what in the name of the nine thousand fleas of Perdition is going on?” asked the balding man, leaning over his burger and fries.     “I can’t tell you that,” John Wilcox replied, while trying and failing to keep a bit of the smug out of his voice.  He’d been worried that CKNW would send this particular man to find out why he’d suddenly quit the station, so he was glad for any cheering moment he could get.       “Oh don’t give me that piece of rotting sheep shank,” replied the man, sucking down a steak fry before continuing.  “I got you the job with the station, I vouched for you. I put my name on the line for you when no one wanted to touch a vet with PTSD and severe agoraphobia.  I want an explanation. I deserve an explanation.”     “You do, you do,” John admitted, looking back at his former lieutenant in the PPCLI.  When the RPG had buried him under a wall of rubble, it had been Lieutenant MacCrae who had been the one to dig him out.  Later, after John had been honorably discharged from the Forces, it had been then civilian Martin MacCrae who had gotten him the job with the radio station.       “So talk to me man,” pressed MacCrae, dipping another fry in mayonnaise before inhaling it.  “What’s got you clammed up tighter than a quartermaster’s purse strings?”     “You always did have a way with words, Marty,” John replied, and sighing pushed away his own meal of burger and coleslaw.  When he was stressed, meat just didn’t smell right. “I signed an NDA, you want me to go against my word?”     “Don’t give me that,” MacCrae shot back, using yet another fry as a tool to point with.  “We both know it’s nothing more than a bunch of lawyer crap to hide behind. C’mon, it’s me.  We fought and bled together. What if I gave you my word that whatever you tell me will go no further?”     “What are you going to tell the big-wigs at Chorus?” John asked, referring to the parent company that owned CKNW.   “Suppose I do tell you, what are you going to do when they say it won’t go any further if you tell them?”     “You think I’d say anything to Satan’s solicitors?” Martin snorted derisively.  “I’d sooner give them a steaming load of five-five-six as tell them anything anyone told me in confidence.”       "Have I mentioned you have a way with words?” John asked, finally taking up a forkful of slaw.  “How come you never use normal swear words?”     “When I was a kid, my teacher told me that swear words were the sign of a lazy mind,” MacCrae commented, putting down the remaining bit of his burger that he had wolfed down inside of ten seconds.  “So, I started coming up with my own to prove her wrong, and I just never stopped.”     “You’ve got some unique ones, I’ll say that,” John admitted, sighing as he slid his untouched burger aside.  “Look, what do you want me to do?”     “You don’t have to tell me everything, John,” MacCrae admitted, sliding his generous portion of remaining steak fries toward his former corporal while pulling the remaining burger over to himself.  “Just tell me what you can. I’ll make something up to fill in the gaps.”     Wilcox nodded in thanks as he picked up a steak fry and chewed it slowly to give himself a chance to think.  He did owe the man in front of him a lot, and an explanation was the least he could do, but there were five furry faces looking back at him in his mind’s eye.  Five faces that trusted him to protect their secret and guard their privacy for as long as he could.       “John, are you in some kind of trouble?” MacCrae asked, his voice low.  “I know that look. You're protecting someone.”     “Trouble?  No,” Wilcox replied, still chewing away thoughtfully.  “Just trying to figure out how much I can tell you that you’ll believe and not go running for the brain docs again.”     “No witch doctors or headshrinkers, I promise,” MacCrae said, dumping Worcestershire sauce onto the second burger patty.  “Just tell me why you quit a good job, turned your back on civilization, and worried a lot of people who care about you.”     “Don’t give me that,” John replied, rolling his eyes before quoting, “And when they build their statues, they will build none for me.”     “I really regret lending you my copy of Asimov back in the Sandbox,” Marty commented, shaking his head.  “Look, a lot of people give a damn about you and they’re damn worried. Talk to me, please.”     “Fine,” Wilcox said.  It was the “please” that had broken his last bit of resolve.  “But only if you promise not to tell anyone.”     “Just spit it out man,” the older man ordered, before taking a big bite of the second burger.       “SETI,” Wilcox tossed back.  “You know SETI?”     “Whoa, wait,” MacCrae replied, tilting his head and setting down the burger.  “You mean aliens?”     “Yeah, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ stuff,” Wilcox replied, pausing to see what sort of reaction he was about to get.     “Well, I know the States had a lot of listening…” the former lieutenant of the Princess Patricia Light Infantry stopped speaking as his mind slipped into high gear, and Wilcox again saw the working of a mind that saved his unit and his company more than once on the battlefield. “Are we talking contact?” MacCrae asked, almost a full minute later.  “And are you talking you personally, or someone else?” “More than contact.  We’re talking integration,” Wilcox commented, enjoying the bug eyes his former superior was displaying. “And not just me, most of the town, to one degree or another.” “John, are you sure?” MacCrae asked, a few heartbeats later that involved a quick scan of the rest of the diners in the small restaurant.  “And is this something our oaths cover?” “‘I will resist Her Majesty's enemies and cause Her Majesty's peace to be kept and maintained.’ You mean that part of the oath?” Wilcox asked, to which he got a small nod.  “No, near as I can tell everyone involved are peaceful, law-abiding citizens who just want to be good Canadians.” “Thank the hoary horns of Haggaroth for small favors,” MacCrae sighed, leaning back.  “Can you tell me anything else?” “Just that tomorrow it’s going to be out in the open.  I’m helping handle the publicity after they tell Horgan,” John replied, feeling a weight come off his chest as he was at last able to tell someone about the secret.  “You going to tell anyone?” “Hey, I promised,” Marty reminded him, picking the remaining half of the second burger back up.  “As long as there’s no threat to Canada, I’ve got no reason to blab. Can you give me any details before the announcement?” “Nothing that you wouldn’t think was full on crazy before tomorrow,” Wilcox chuckled.  “So, now that the big thing is out of the way. What’s new with you?” “Oh, just general work stuff,” MacCrae commented, and the rest of the meal was spent discussing the mundane and ordinary.  After the bill was paid and the two friends parted ways until morning, Wilcox felt assured nothing untoward would happen due to his revelation.  He would have felt significantly less assured had he been able to read the letter in MacCrae’s hotel room.  To: Lieutenant Martin MacCrae From: Captain J. Boyd, CFB Esquimalt Sir, Congratulations on your reactivation with the Canadian Armed Forces.  Upon receipt of this letter you are ordered and directed to travel to Bella Coola, British Columbia.  Upon arrival you will take command of the Bella Coola Patrol, 4th Canadian Ranger Patrol Group (4CRPG).  There you will conduct such activities as are consistent with the mission of the Canadian Rangers. Fail not in this trust. Vigilans   Something else that would have probably made both former reporters jump out of their seats and run was the conversation between Brian Cummins and Darrell Montcalm.  The two were sitting in the mayor’s small office that was part of the Village Hall and attached to Brightly’s Fire Hall via a short corridor. The whole of it overlooking the depression in earth where Miner’s Memorial Park was.     “So, how is everyone?” Montcalm asked, debating if his body could handle a shot of whiskey again tonight.     “Getting a little tired of keeping secrets,” John Cummins replied, the former reporter, now publicity agent/guardian of secrets looking smug.  “But overall everyone is doing fine. Proud of their people.”     “No anger, no resentment?” Montcalm pressed, as the gurgling in his belly forcibly reminding him that alcohol was something he wasn’t supposed to have anymore.       “Just from Godwinson,” Cummins replied, shield of smugness unmarred by the mayor’s questioning.  “I got her sorted out. She won’t be any trouble at all.”     “Just like that?” Montcalm shot back, raising an eyebrow.  “You had one chat with her, found out her ‘big secret’ and now she’s just going to sit and do nothing?”     “You would be amazed how much pressure you can put on someone if you know their secrets,” Cummins answered, self confidence beginning to wilt a bit under the continuous pressure from the older man.  “Why are you so worried about her? She’s just a bitter woman who has been trying and failing for years to get back at someone who had the nerve to fight her way out of hell.”     “A hell created and engineered by a relative of hers,” Montcalm pointed out.  “A relative who turned out to be a Grade-A sociopath. Someone who presented one face to the world and a very different one behind closed doors.”     “Yeah, Albert Krasnichuk was a piece of work,” Cummins reflected, his mind’s eye seeing an RCMP file from a decade in the past.  “No one blamed Jean for what she had to do to get herself and her girls clear of him.”     “No one except his family and kin,” Montcalm pointed out.  “You ever consider the possibility that Albert was just one fruit from a poisoned tree?”     “Even if the rest of the family was like him, it's not like they can do anything about it,” Cummins commented, smugness returning to a degree.     “Nothing like have one of their clan follow the woman that killed one of them?” Montcalm said, voice hardening.  “Follow her, try to ruin her life, destroy her attempts to rebuild, and maybe just maybe, wreak revenge on behalf of the rest of them?”     “You knew,” Cummins replied, his trained and practiced mind making connections like it always did.  “You’ve always known… You’ve been protecting Jean Pedersen for years!”     “Damn right I have,” Montcalm confirmed, the growl of an old warhorse in his words now.  “The parole board notified me and gave me the whole story before Jean even finished moving here.  Godwinson showed up two years later and immediately started stirring people up. It wasn’t hard to figure out who she was.”     “So, you are corrupt,” Cummins said, mouth quirking in a small grin.  “You have been using your power for something other than serving your town.”     “All I did was drop a word or two in a few people’s ears that someone could use a friend,” Montcalm protested, his tone daring Cummins to make an accusation again.  “My job is to protect and grow my community and I did just that. Much as I threatened it, I don’t have the power to say who can or can’t live in Brightly, but I can make someone’s life better by connecting them with others.”     “Okay, okay,” Cummins replied, holding up his hands in mock surrender, sarcasm in his words.  “You want me to rough her up like some sort of cheap hood?”     “I want you to do the job you said that you would do for me,” Montcalm fired back, his ire clear to Cummins.  “If there is one person in this town that could screw things up, it’s Godwinson. I want you to go back there and make absolutely sure she isn’t going to say ‘boo’ to anyone until after the meeting with Horgan tomorrow.”     “And Trudeau,” Cummins added, relishing the realization on the mayor’s face.  “My contacts with the Prime Minister’s entourage confirmed to me that he is definitely planning on crashing the award ceremony.”     “I didn’t think he’d actually come,” Montcalm said, rocked back by the news.  “I mean, I knew the news said he might, but Brightly is just a little town in the middle of the wilderness.”     “The Trudeaus have always been big on the wild places of Canada,” Cummins replied, nodding.  “Pierre made his biggest moves in politics after a month in the Arctic. Justin’s always been a hiker and outdoorsman. His brother Michel died in an avalanche in the Interior while cross-country skiing.  Trust me, the PM is going to love this place.”     “All the more reason for you to check back in on Godwinson,” Montcalm ordered.  “Let me know if she’s going to be a problem tomorrow, okay?”     “Yes sir,” Cummins answered, his stance and tone saying that he didn’t think there would be a problem and that Montcalm was over-reacting.  “I’ll head over there in the morning and make sure she won’t do anything stupid.”     “You’ll go over there right now,” Montcalm said, his voice that of a superior to a subordinate.  “It’s not that late, and I want you to make sure she hasn’t grabbed one of the other reporters in town and started talking their ear off.”     “Understood,” Cummins acquiesced, finally respecting the old steel in the mayor’s voice.  “If there’s any problems, I’ll let you know.”     With a final nod from Montcalm, Cummins left the room and the building.  Brightly wasn’t very big and it wasn’t even a ten minute drive to Godwinson’s home.  Cummins spent a moment after he turned off the ignition of his borrowed vehicle to look at the small home he had left earlier that same day.       The ticking sound from the engine as heat bled off was the only noise to be heard.  Godwinson’s house was one of the original miner’s homes, and had been rebuilt and refurbished at least a dozen times over its very long life.  It wasn’t big, but it was sturdy and at the moment the only light came from the kitchen at the back of the house.       Rolling his eyes as he remembered Montcalm’s worries, Cummins got out of his vehicle to once again confront the foul woman, in what was sure to be a wonderful conversation.  The metal of the gate felt oddly freezing under his hand as he opened it, but he pushed the thought aside as unimportant.       Knocking on Godwinson’s door he thought the door felt oddly slick compared to how a piece of painted wood should feel.  Not only that, the sound of his knuckles on the wood seemed to echo in a strange way. Sharper and tighter than it seemed to be from before.  Dismissing the details as unimportant for now, Cummins knocked again. Harder than before.     “Who could that be, at my door on this cold, cold night?” Godwinson’s voice called, from inside the home.     “It’s Brian Cummins, I’d like to talk to you again,” Cummins declared, wondering if the woman inside might be on something.  Her voice sounded… odd.     “What could you possibly want with a poor, defenseless, woman?”  asked the voice from inside, and Cummins noticed that there was a pair of shoes by the door.  A pair of slim woman’s shoes that certainly weren’t the kind of sort a harridan like Godwinson would wear.     “Is there someone there with you?” Cummins called back through the door.       “There is.  But don’t worry, they won’t say anything,” Godwinson replied.  “Come in, and we’ll talk.”     “Huh, that was a quick u-turn.  Guess having someone with her makes her feel safe,” Cummins muttered to himself as he pulled open the door.  “Coming in now.”     “Come in through the kitchen,” Cummins heard Godwinson say, as he closed the back door behind him.  “We’re in the living room.”     Brian Cummins walked through the cold kitchen and was surprised to see his breath fog the air.  A few more steps brought him into a dimly lit living room. Godwinson sat in an easy chair, beside a small lamp on an end table which was the only light in the room.  The woman gestured Cummins toward a chair near her own, and as he sat the reported noted the presence of another person in the room.   “Who’s this?” Cummins asked, waving a hand toward the figure whose upper body was hidden in the shadows of the room.  He could tell that it was a woman, and a younger one by the look of her jeans.   “One of my good friends,” Dora Godwinson replied, in a voice laden with contempt.  “Don’t worry, she’s already said that she won’t say anything.”   “I wasn’t aware you had any actual friends,” Cummins stated, picking up the verbal gauge and flinging it back.  “Just hangers-on, most of whom have let you hang.” “Yesss,” hissed the overweight woman.  “That’s a trait we share, isn’t it?” “What do you mean?” Brian asked, directly his attention fully to Godwinson now.   “Friends.  You don’t have any, do you?” Godwinson asked, her voice a hungry purr that sent a shiver along Brian’s neck.  “Or community. Or any real connections with anyone, do you?” “I have my work, I have my connections with my colleagues,” Cummins shot back, wondering where Godwinson was going with this.  “People know I’m here, if you’re thinking of doing something stupid.” “Stupid?  Not at all,” the harridan replied, and Cummins noticed for the first time how pale she was compared to others he’d seen locally.  Nearly everyone here almost lived in the outdoors and had some degree of tan year round.    “When was the last time you spoke with your wife?” “How did you know…” Cummins began to say, his train of thought disrupted.  “That’s none of your business.” “Been quite awhile now,” Godwinson commented, half closing her eyes and inhaling through her nose like someone inhaling the scent of a tasty meal.  “Hasn’t it?” “Almost a year,” Cummins admitted, before trying to bring the conversation back under control.  “But we were talking about you. Now then—” “No real friends, no real family.  At least not anymore,” interrupted the woman, almost cooing.  “You aren’t connected to any real community either, are you?”     “Reporters don’t have homes,” answered Cummins, feeling an icy line slide down his back as he tried to understand what the woman was angling at.  “We have places to hang our hats before heading out for the next story.” “That’s what I thought,” Godwinson said, smiling.  “You’re exactly what I need. I just didn’t have the right kind of eyes to see it before, but now I do.  Tell me, do you know of the legend of the windigo?” “Ancient native spirit,” Cummins replied, feeling the cold sensation creep around his feet.  He’d never gotten cold feet like this before, even during the harshest interviews. “Eternally hungry, eternally cold.” “Yesss,” hissed Godwinson, stirring in her chair.  “Capable of possessing those who are greedy or cannibalistic.  They prefer to prey on those who are alone or otherwise separated from their community.” Cummins still had no idea what this woman was playing it, but enough alarm bells were going off in his head for him to decide he had to get out of there.  Only to discover that he couldn’t move. It was as if something was holding him in place from the waist down. Something cold. “Wanting to leave so soon?” the heavy-set woman asked mockingly, standing up herself.  “Having a little trouble are we? Maybe you shouldn’t have been so arrogant in thinking that you knew everything.  That people had to listen to you because—you—knew—best.” The words stunned Cummins as they reminded him of how he had failed his long dead child.  A paralysis that lasted long enough for Godwinson to finish getting up and flick the switch for the overhead light.  The sudden switch from dim to bright caught the reporter by surprise, but after a few seconds of blinking he was able to see why he hadn’t been able to get up. There was a sheath of what looked like ice coating the lower half of his body, and for a few moments he threw himself against it.  Then, a gleam from elsewhere in the room caught his eye. Looking up, he saw the third person in the room, who had been silent all this time.   Brian Cummins looked in horror at the body of the woman who had been the cleaner for his hotel room.  The one who had been fired for snooping in his things and giving what she had found to Godwinson.   “Yes, my little spy,” Godwinson purred, sliding a hand over the ice that coated the other woman’s head.  Ice that was a good inch thick. “My own little Judas, who betrayed me the moment things got a little difficult.” “You killed her?” Cummins asked, reaching into his pocket to try to turn on his phone.  “Just because she stopped listening to you?” “Silly man,” Godwinson laughed, as Cummins noticed how sharp the woman’s canine teeth had become.  “She’s not dead. Not yet anyway. I’ve just put her on ice for awhile so I could feed off the sour tang in her soul.” “What are you talking about?” Brian asked, beginning to panic now and fumbling in his coat pocket even harder.   “You, are just what I need,” Godwinson said, stepping over and numbing Cummin’s arm into immobility with a touch.  “I’ve certain prey in mind, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to bring it down, even from ambush.  Then you showed up, and I remembered the bitterness in your soul. How you don’t trust anyone but yourself, how alone you make yourself, and how determined you are to show everyone else how terrible they are.” “Let me go, you crazy lady!” shouted Cummins, trying to strike out at Godwinson, who simply stepped out of his reach as her body seemed to stretch upwards, growing leaner and taller in front of his very eyes. “Yes, feeding on you will make me strong.  Strong enough to take down those two little mice climbing out of their burrow,” the Godwinson thing purred, and the smile of a predator was blatant now,  “Not in pitched battle, of course. But a smart predator lays traps and strikes from behind. Which is exactly what I’m going to do.” “What… are you?” Cummins begged, realizing it might be the last question he ever had a chance to ask.   “You already know,” the thing replied, nearly seven feet tall now with arms that stretched almost to the ground.  “Say my name, mortal.” “Godwindigo,” Cummins whispered, and he had a final searing moment of cold to realize how badly his arrogance and self-righteousness had caused him to again fail those who depended on him.