Call of the Wendigo

***Call of the Wendigo*** is a horror one-shot story written and published by Antiliun. It was first published on May 7, 2019, before being taken down on January 12, 2021 for revisions. It was later republished on April 2, 2022.

## Synopsis

An Antiliun original one-shot. This short story was what motivated me to start writing on Wattpad, and what inspired me to publish my first series, the now unpublished Moose Valley Duology.

After a blizzard separates him and his hunting partner, a hunter sets out in search of him. However, the mountains are hiding a terrible secret.

## Plot

On December 29, 1878, in the mountains of Southwestern Alberta, a lost hunter named Wilson searches for his hunting partner, Carl, after having been separated from each other during a surprise blizzard the day before. As he drags himself through the snow, Wilson spots a nearby grove and decides to seek shelter there until the blizzard ends. He picks out a spot to dig a small hole to hide in for the time being, but as he digs into the snow, he finds something buried in it. He digs the object out but is left disgusted and horrified when the object is revealed to be the decapitated head of a black bear. After getting over his initial shock, he quickly realizes that the bear wasn't killed by a grizzly but something else.

Suddenly, the blizzard ends, and Wilson is met by a haunting sight. Dangling above him is the remains of a coyote corpse while various other animal carcasses decorate the surrounding trees. Unnerved by the sight, Wilson almost loses his nerves but manages to calm himself down before he hears a voice; Carl's voice. Thinking it was just the wind, Wilson is about to leave when Carl calls out to him again, and after confirming that it's Carl, Wilson heads deeper into the grove, where Carl's voice had came from. However, as he gets closer to Carl's position, Wilson notices something was off about his friend, whose chipper demeanor no longer radiated in his voice, which was also coming from deeper in the forest.

Chalking it up to Carl being dehydrated, Wilson arrives at a clearing, which is also littered with animal corpses, before he notices the sudden shift in the atmosphere. It had become eerily quiet and the air had become thick and stale. Realizing that he had been too caught up in his emotions, Wilson decides to find Carl quickly before getting out of the place. However, when he calls out to Carl and gets a response, he realizes that what he thought was Carl was actually something else; something... evil.

Frightened, Wilson unslings his rifle and begins backing up in the direction he came from before he notices something in the snow. Letting his curiosity get the better of him, he goes up to investigate it. The item turns out to be a coonskin hat saturated with water and blood; lots and lots of blood. Fearing the worst, he checks the inside of the hat, only to find Carl's initials inside. Wilson is left in disbelief as he tries to convince himself that Carl is still alive, but when Carl's corpse falls down from the tree and lands beside him, Wilson is forced to accept that his friend is dead.

As he mourns his friend's death, Wilson goes in to close Carl's eyes, only to realize that his body is still warm; he had been killed very recently. Looking around the clearing, Willson takes notice of the presence following him and readies his rifle. However, after feeling something staring into the back of his head and smelling a foul odor, Wilson hears Carl call out to him. He turns around, only to find himself staring at a pale, skinny, humanoid creature with milky white eyes and sharp teeth and claws standing several yards away near the edge of the clearing. Fear quickly overtakes Wilson as finds himself feeling the evil aura emanating from the creature. He tries to move but is stuck in some kind of trance as the creature slowly advances toward him. Then, once it reaches the center of the clearing, the creature lets out a terrible screech, which frees Wilson from his trance.

The first thing he does is to take a shot at the creature before running away. As he runs for his life, Wilson tries to reload his rifle but is unable to due to all the running, and stopping to grab another cartridge would only allow the creature to catch up to him, which is the last thing he wants. As he continues running, he hears the creature screeching and looks behind him to see it catching up to him. Frightened, Wilson tries to run faster, but the creature is faster and ends up knocking him into a tree. The force of the impact leaves Wilson paralyzed, as he is unable to move his legs, and he slowly comes to terms with his imminent death as the creature towers over him. The creature then picks Wilson up and impales him with its arm before dropping him to the ground, where he bleeds out and dies.

As he falls into the embrace of death, the last thing Wilson hears is the howling wind... and the call of the wendigo.

## Appearances

### Characters

* Wilson
* Carl Bannerman (corpse)

### Creatures

* Wendigo
* Black bear (disembodied head)
* Coyote (corpse)
* Skunk (corpses)
* Racoon (corpses)
* Cougar (corpse)
* White-tail deer (corpses)
* Wolverine (corpses)
* Moose (corpse)
* Lynx (corpses)
* Various snspecified bird species (corpses)
* Various unspecified rodent species (corpses)
* Grizzly bear (mentioned)

### Locations

* Southwestern Alberta
	+ Canadian Rocky Mountains
		- Wendigo Lair
			* The Grove of Hanging Corpses
			* The Clearing

## Conception

*Call of the Wendigo* was originally created in the spring of 2018 after your's truly heard several short stories written by several students during an in-school event called Writer's Week. The short story, at that point, had no clear plot from the beginning, with the only idea being that the main character was going to be killed by a wendigo at the very end of the story.

Eventually, this short story would become the foundation of the first Moose Valley draft (then called *Call of the Wendigo*), with the one-shot serving as its prologue. However, after it was decided that the first *Call of the Wendigo* draft was too identical to its inspiration, Until Dawn, the story was scrapped, though the one-shot would find itself serving as the prologue for the second draft of *Call of the Wendigo* before it was renamed to Moose Valley and the one-shot was made into its own thing.

## Trivia

* *Call of the Wendigo* was originally the prologue of the first draft of *Moose Valley*.
	+ However, this wasn't always the case, as it was originally meant to be a short story upon its conception.
* *Call of the Wendigo* is the only story that isn't directly connected with any other Guardianverse stories.
	+ However, it takes place in the same universe as the Moose Valley Duology
* *Call of the Wendigo* has the least number of characters out of all Guardianverse stories.
* On January 12, 2021, *Call of the Wendigo* was unpublished for a revision.
	+ It was republished on April 2, 2022.
* *Call of the Wendigo* originally took place on December 29, 1878. However, this date was bumped up to November 19, 1878 because hunting in December seemed a bit... illogical.
* Link to *Call of the Wendigo* on Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/story/186972144-call-of-the-wendigo-original-one-shot-short-story
* *Call of the Wendigo* is the only Guardianverse story that wasn't unpublished on January 7, 2023.