Tighten your cloaks and don't look behind you. Don't listen to the wind and what might be on it. Shut your mind and your ears. For now it is time for the story... of Wendigo.
A story like this usually starts with a dark and lethally silent night. Perhaps snow or rain, and definitely a feeling of seclusion. But it is rare that monsters of the real world should hide away in the light. The sun doesn't mean that you're safe. It just means that you're easier to see.
So it was on a bright and perfect day, a day when one imagines that nothing could go wrong, that our warning begins.
The sun was hot, beating down upon the villagers as they farmed and carried water, when one looked up from the well and saw a figure too tall and thin for nature to have vindicated. It was there, between the trees, then it faded. The villager shrugged the fear away and blamed the heat. But it was no mirage. And a predator is never revealed unless it has already pounced.
There was no physical presence that day looming or watching. It was all around them, in them, testing the waters of their souls. The air was rank, pregnant with threat, but humans cannot sense such things. Humans never realize until it's too late.
There was no darkness in the day. But in their minds, the vine was growing. They suspected nothing. But the enemy was already among them. Within them. Breathing with them.
And then, it found the perfect mate.
A soul perfectly misaligned, just barely knocked awry. A tiny chink in the armor, leading straight to the heart. And the blackness shot in like a knife, taking hold, permeating and infecting every atom....
The victim continued their work. The force was patient. It wouldn't lash out. Not yet. Not until everyone was asleep. Helpless. Vulnerable. Weak.
So as the sun set and a black moon hung in the sky, the man rose from is bed, no longer in his own mind. Now he was merely a body, and his mind was overcome by the Wendigo. He left his house and went to every door. He crept inside each house, so silent that air itself would blush. He snapped every neck. He ate every body. Blood covered his face, his hands, his nails. And his own body changed as he ate. As his hunger grew, so did he. Taller, and thinner. An unreachable height, and unfillable need. He stopped through doorways now, and soon his body was in a permanent hunch. His hands touched the ground in front of him, feeling for flesh. For the next few hours, he was a beast, slave to the directions and cravings of the Wendigo who had taken his mind. And then...
...The monstrous form melted away. He was a man again. Covered in the sins of his demonic oppressor. Alone. Having murdered and eaten every man, woman, child, and elder in his village. And remembering every second. For tho he was not in control, though he was consumed in thought as much as he had consumed his people, he was aware of it all. And as he wept, fear and grief and shame and vomit spewing from his mouth and soul, the Wendigo took shape beside him, and consumed him bodily.
But after his bones were stripped bare of human flesh, after the Wendigo abandoned the bloody scene, the bones began to change. And his remains grew and morphed until he too was a Wendigo.
And to this day, Wendigo, undead, unkillable, and as eternal as their hunger, stalk the Earth restlessly in search of their next meal.
