My involvement with this thing has come about all in the space of a few months, for it was just over two months ago, fairly early in August, that I first came to Navissa, Manitoba, on what was to have been a holiday of convalescence following a debilitating chest complaint.
Since meteorology serves me both as hobby and means of support, naturally I brought some of my “work” with me; not physically, for my books and instruments are many, but locked in my head were a score of little problems beloved of the meteorologist. I brought certain of my notebooks, too, in which to make jottings or scribble observations on the almost Arctic conditions of the region as the mood might take me. Canada offers a wealth of interest to one whose life revolves about the weather: the wind and rain, the clouds, and the storms that seem to spring from them.
In Manitoba on a clear night, not only is the air sweet, fresh, sharp, and conducive to the strengthening of weakened lungs, but the stars stare down in such crystal clarity that at times a man might try to pluck them out of the firmament. It is just such a night now—though the glass is far down, and I fear that soon it may snow—but warm as I am in myself before my stove, still my fingers feel the awesome cold of the night outside, for I have removed my gloves to write.
• • •
Navissa, until fairly recently, was nothing more than a trail camp, one of many to expand out of humble beginnings as a trading post into a full-blown town. Lying not far off the old Olassie Trail, Navissa is quite close to deserted, ill-fated Stillwater; but more of Stillwater later….
I stayed at the Judge’s house, a handsome brick affair with a raised log porch and chalet-style roof, one of Navissa’s few truly modern buildings, standing on that side of the town toward the neighboring hills. Judge Andrews is a retired New Yorker of independent means, an old friend of my father, a widower whose habits in the later years of his life have inclined toward the reclusive; being self-sufficient, he bothers no one, and in turn he is left to his own devices. Something of a professional anthropologist all his life, the Judge now studies the more obscure aspects of that science here in the thinly populated North. It was Judge Andrews himself, on learning of my recent illness, who so kindly invited me to spend this period of convalescence with him in Navissa, though by then I was already well on the way to recovery.
Not that his invitation gave me license to intrude upon the Judge’s privacy. It did not. I would do with myself what I would, keeping out of his way as much as possible. Of course, no such arrangement was specified, but I was aware that this was the way the Judge would want it.
I had free run of the house, including the old gentleman’s library, and it was there one afternoon early in the final fortnight of my stay that I found the several works of Samuel R. Bridgeman, an English professor of anthropology whose mysterious death had occurred only a few dozen miles or so north of Navissa.
Normally such a discovery would have meant little to me, but I had heard that certain of Bridgeman’s theories had made him something of an outcast among others of his profession; there had been among his beliefs some that belonged in no way to the scientific. Knowing Judge Andrews to be a man who liked his facts straight on the line, undistorted by whim or fancy, I wondered what there could be in the eccentric Bridgeman’s works that prompted him to display them upon his shelves.
In order to ask him this very question, I was on my way from the small library room to Judge Andrews’s study when I saw, letting herself out of the house, a distinguished-looking though patently nervous woman whose age seemed rather difficult to gauge. Despite the trimness of her figure and the comparative youthfulness of her skin, her hair was quite grey. She had plainly been very attractive, perhaps even beautiful, in youth. She did not see me, or if she did glimpse me where I stood, then her agitated condition did not admit of it. I heard her car pull away.
In the doorway of the Judge’s study I formed my question concerning Bridgeman’s books.
“Bridgeman?” the old man repeated me, glancing up sharply from where he sat at his desk.
“Just those books of his, in the library,” I answered, entering the room proper. “I shouldn’t have thought that there’d be much for you, Judge, in Bridgeman’s work.”
“Oh? I didn’t know you were interested in anthropology, David?”
“Well, no, I’m not really. It’s just that I remember hearing a thing or two about this Bridgeman, that’s all.”
“Are you sure that’s all?”
“Eh? Why, certainly! Should there be more?”
“Hmm,” he mused. “No, nothing much—coincidence. You see, the lady who left a few moments ago was Lucille Bridgeman, Sam’s widow. She’s staying at the Nelson.”
“Sam?” I was immediately interested. “You knew him then?”
“I did, fairly intimately, though that was many years ago. More recently I’ve read his books. Did you know that he died quite close by here?”
I nodded. “Yes, in peculiar circumstances, I gather?”
“That’s so, yes.” He frowned again, moving in his chair in what I took to be agitation.
I waited for a moment, and then when it appeared that the Judge intended to say no more, I asked, “And now?”
“Hmm?” His eyes were far away even though they looked at me. They quickly focused. “Now—nothing…and I’m rather busy!” He put on his spectacles and turned his attention to a book.
I grinned ruefully, inclined my head, and nodded. Being fairly intimate with the old man’s moods, I knew what his taciturn, rather abrupt dismissal had meant: “If you want to know more, then you must find out for yourself!” And what better way to discover more of this little mystery, at least initially, than to read Samuel R. Bridgeman’s books? That way I should at least learn something of the man.
As I turned away, the Judge called to me: “Oh, and David—I don’t know what preconceptions you may have formed of Sam Bridgeman and his work, but as for myself…near the end of a lifetime, I’m no closer now than I was fifty years ago to being able to say what is and what isn’t. At least Sam had the courage of his convictions!”
What was I to make of that?—and how to answer it? I simply nodded and went out of the room, leaving the Judge alone with his books and his thoughts….
• • •
That same afternoon found me again in the library, with a volume of Bridgeman’s on my lap. There were three of his books in all, and I had discovered that they contained many references to Arctic and near-Arctic regions, to their people, their gods, superstitions, and legends. Still pondering what little I knew of the English professor, these were the passages that primarily drew my attention: Bridgeman had written of these northern parts, and he had died here—mysteriously! No less mysterious, his widow was here now, twenty years after his demise, in a highly nervous if not actually distraught state. Moreover, that kindly old family friend Judge Andrews seemed singularly reticent with regard to the English anthropologist, and apparently the Judge did not entirely disagree with Bridgeman’s controversial theories.
But what were those theories? If my memory served me well, then they had to do with certain Indian and Eskimo legends concerning a god of the Arctic winds.
At first glance there seemed to be little in the professor’s books to show more than a normally lively and entertaining anthropological and ethnic interest in such legends, though the author seemed to dwell at unnecessary length on Gaoh and Hotoru, air-elementals of the Iroquois and Pawnee respectively, and particularly upon Negafok, the Eskimo cold-weather spirit. I could see that he was trying to tie such myths in with the little-known legend of the Wendigo, of which he seemed to deal far too positively.
“The Wendigo,” Bridgeman wrote, “is the avatar of a Power come down the ages from forgotten gulfs of immemorial lore; this great Tornasuk is none other than Ithaqua Himself, the Wind-Walker, and the very sight of Him means a freezing and inescapable death for the unfortunate observer. Lord Ithaqua, perhaps the very greatest of the mythical air-elementals, made war against the Elder Gods in the Beginning; for which ultimate treason He was banished to frozen Arctic and interplanetary heavens to ‘Walk the Winds Forever’ through fantastic cycles of time and to fill the Esquimaux with dread, eventually earning His terrified worship and His sacrifices. None but such worshipers may look upon Ithaqua—for others to see Him is certain death! He is as a dark outline against the sky, anthropomorphic, a manlike yet bestial silhouette, striding both in low icy mists and high stratocumulus, gazing down upon the affairs of men with carmine stars for eyes!”