Monster Control Inc. 37
The Myth of the Misiginebig
James Redfeather had been straight with me during the wendigo situation, direct and practical and without any of the mystical theater that some of his counterparts in other regions apparently performed for credibility. So when I called him, he listened to my description of the holes and the marks without interrupting, and then he gave me a name and a number without hesitation.
Walter Two Horses was in his late seventies, and lived fifteen minutes southwest of the lake in an old house that long predated the gentrification of the area and looked as if it had been in his family since before the county road was paved. He met us at his front door with the careful assessment of a man who had learned to take the measure of strangers quickly, and apparently we passed whatever test that was, because he let us in after confirming we were with MCI.
His living room was warm and cluttered with the particular archaeology of a long life lived in one place. He had a fire going. He poured all three of us coffee without asking if we wanted it, or if we preferred it black.
It was hot. That was all that mattered.
“Redfeather says you’re not stupid,” he told me over his own steaming mug. “Says you actually listen to the wisdom of the people.”
“I try to.”
“Good.” He sat down in a chair that had conformed itself to him over decades of use. “What did the ice look like? The edges.”
I described the scoring. He nodded slowly, the way people nod when they’re hearing confirmation of something they already suspected rather than new information.
“Sounds like Misiginebig,” he said.
Reb sat forward, his interest clearly piqued.
“Say what?” I said.
“My grandmother warned me about underwater things,” Reb said.
Walter looked at Reb for a moment with what might have been a reassessment. Then he nodded “Your grandmother was right.”
Grant-Smyth had his casebook out. To his credit, he was writing instead of dismissing what Two Horses was saying, which was about as open-minded as Grant-Smyth could get.
Walter explained what Misiginebig were. Some called them underwater panthers, others thought they were great serpents, so it was clear they were something that were seldom seen clearly and resisted easy categorization. They were powerful. Old. Unlike the wendigo, they weren’t evil, exactly, just totally indifferent to moral matters in much the way animals are. They lived in the deep places, the darkest sections of the biggest lakes, in caves and rock shelves at depth where even the most experienced divers couldn’t reach without special equipment.
“When the ice grows thick enough to reach their caves,” Walter said, “they wake up hungry.”
The room was quiet except for the fire.
Grant-Smyth set his pen down. “You don’t actually believe these fairy tales?” He said it with more genuine curiosity than contempt, which for him counted as diplomatic.
Walter looked at him with the patience of a man who had answered this particular question many times. “My grandfather lost two cousins on this lake in 1951. His grandfather lost men here in the 1880s. They believed it.”
“There are old things in the wild and in the deeps here that are different than in the Old World,” Reb said. “Don’t ever think there aren’t.”
Grant-Smyth opened his mouth, reconsidered, and went back to his notes. He was annoying, but he wasn’t stupid, and both Reb and Two Horses spoke with the calm certainty of men who knew whereof they spoke.
Walter walked us through the traditional knowledge with the precision of someone who’d been the keeper of it for a long time. The Misiginebig were associated with specific sections of the big lake. They were territorial but generally inactive during normal winters. The thick ice was the problem — not the cold itself, but the pressure of thirty-plus inches of ice extending down toward the deep shelves where they denned. It disturbed them.
And once disturbed, they fed.
Helpful Scrubb is a good thing, Gamma using smarts to help.
Hungry and panther-like? If they pick up sound and vibration above, the new holes give good access. Roping off the area makes them range farther and hungrier. Nice setup.
Hungry sea-panthers. See? Anybody would be hungry and cranky if they woke up with that amount of ice on their doorstep.