Eyes of the Wendigo

5 -

Sarah Mercer sat at the small wooden table, staring down at the blank pages of the notebook in front of her. The fire in the hearth crackled softly, the only sound in the otherwise silent cabin. Outside, the wind howled through the trees, rattling the windows, but inside, it was still—too still. The kind of silence that pressed against your skin, made you feel like the world had stopped breathing.

Her pen hovered above the page, her fingers trembling slightly. She didn't know where to begin, or if writing anything down would help. But she had to try. The thoughts in her mind were a tangled mess, fragments of suspicion and fear swirling together into something dark, something she couldn't untangle on her own. She needed to make sense of it, to find a pattern, a reason for why everything felt so wrong.

With a deep breath, Sarah pressed the pen to the paper and began to write.

November 15th—They've been in the house.

Her handwriting was shaky, barely legible, but she didn't care. She wasn't writing for anyone else; she was writing for herself, to keep her thoughts straight, to try and stop the creeping sense of paranoia that had been gnawing at her since Rob's death. It had started small, just little things that felt off, like the way people in the village had been avoiding her, the way their conversations had stopped when she walked by. But then it had become something more, something undeniable.

Rob's things were disappearing.

At first, she thought it was just her mind playing tricks on her. Grief did strange things to people, made them forget things, made them see things that weren't there. But this wasn't grief. This was real.

The first thing to go missing had been Rob's old hunting knife, the one he'd carried with him for years. It wasn't a valuable item, just a worn, simple blade, the kind every man in the village had. But it had been Rob's, and he'd always kept it in the same place—on the shelf by the door, right where he could grab it before heading out. Sarah had gone to look for it one morning, intending to keep it with her as a small token of him, but it was gone. She'd searched the entire cabin, torn the place apart, but it was nowhere to be found.

Then his gloves had disappeared. The thick leather ones he'd worn during the winter months. They'd been hanging on the peg by the door, where they always were, but one day they were just... gone. Again, she'd searched everywhere, convinced she must have misplaced them, but there was no trace of them.

It wasn't until the third item went missing—the small silver locket Rob had given her on their wedding day—that Sarah had started to truly believe something was wrong. The locket was irreplaceable, a delicate piece of jewelry that Rob had saved for months to buy. It had been tucked away in her nightstand drawer, along with the few other mementos of their time together, and she had only opened it once since his death, unable to face the memories it held. But when she went to look at it again, the drawer was empty. The locket was gone.

That was when the paranoia had taken root, deep and strong. Someone had been in the house. Someone had taken those things—things that held no value to anyone else but her. She couldn't prove it, couldn't say for sure who it was, but she knew. She could feel it in her bones.

And now, as she sat at the table, the notebook in front of her, Sarah's mind buzzed with questions. Why would anyone take Rob's things? Why now, after all this time? And who? Who in the village would do something like this?

They know something, she wrote, her hand shaking as she scrawled the words across the page. They've been watching me, waiting. Every time I go outside, they're there, pretending not to notice me, pretending like they're just going about their day. But I know better. They're hiding something. They have to be.