Le Carcajou by Kevin 'Jaqhama' Lumley

[Jaqhama]

Word Count: 2266
Reading time: about 15 mins.

This story was originally published (but never paid for) in the ill-fated print anthology Creature Feature, published by Ghostwriter Publications, in the UK.

Le Carcajou
by
Kevin Lumley

(Dedicated to my wife, Linda)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They got me easily enough.

The girl, hitching, the story about her arguing with the boyfriend, he stopping the car and shoving her out, here, in the early hours of the morning, on a deserted country road in America’s heartland.

I, riding my motorcycle down the aforementioned deserted road, going slow, wary of deer and other animals, seeing her standing there, waving me down.

I stopped, we talked.

She only lived a few more miles away, down a dirt side road.

Sure I could give her a lift.

*

If there had not been a light in a downstairs window I would have sworn the decrepit looking house was abandoned.

She takes her arms from around my waist, slips off my bike, glides up the steps.

I follow.

Walk through the open front door, into the lit interior.

Something slams down onto the base of my neck, where it joins the shoulder! I grunt and stagger. My legs are kicked out from under me and I topple onto a bare wooden floor.

My hands are quickly tied behind my back and I am dragged to my feet.

The girl, standing in front of me, smiling. Two lean, stringy looking guys, dank and unkempt, supporting me on either side.

The one with the long greasy hair grins at me, showing his teeth.

“Hi there,” he says.

Before I can say anything they half drag me over towards a darkened doorway. I don’t resist. They force me through the doorway, I feel stairs under my feet, one of them shoves me. I catch a stair and stumble, the light from behind me shows me where the bottom of the stairs are and I leap down onto a solid stone floor. I fall over and cry out. I yell that my ankle is broken.

They laugh, the girl loudest of all.

I writhe around in the dust, on the cold stone, screaming at them; my ankle’s broken, what do you want? Let me go.

“If ya ankle’s broke we won’t have to tie ya feet I guess,” one of the guys snickers.

The door above me is slammed shut.

I lie on the cold floor, squirm around a little in the dust.

Darkness, silence. I wait.

After about ten minutes the door is re-opened.

A light is turned on.

The three of them stand at the top of the stairs and look down at me. I’m curled up in a fetal position.

The girl walks gracefully down the stairs, they creak ominously under her light tread.

She’s got long black hair, very pale and thin features, her eyes glow when she looks at me. Like her two male companions she is dressed in form fitting black clothes.

She bends down near my feet and I shy away, she reaches out and grabs my slightly bent right foot, grasps it hard. I yell and try to jerk my foot out of her grip.

She smiles cruelly.

“Ouch,” she says.

Turns and looks up at the other two. “It is broken, he’s not going anywhere.”

They smile and nod.

She releases my ankle, stands up.

One of the guys says, “It’s too late now, we’ll have to wait till tonight.”

“Ok,” she agrees.

“Wait for what?” I yell. “What do you want with me, what’s going to happen tonight?”

She smiles at me once more, shows her teeth. “We’re going to eat you,” she says. “Alive!”

She starts to giggle, above her the two males also begin to laugh.

She turns and walks back up the stairs, re-joining her two companions.

They walk back through the doorway at the top of the stairs and the door slams shut again.

The light goes off.

I lie on the cold stone floor, in the dust, close my eyes and go to sleep.

*

I awake a few hours later, much refreshed.

The door is still closed above me.

It must be daylight outside, although there are no windows in this basement a few streaks of sunlight slip through cracks in one of the side walls.

I sit up, slide my bound hands underneath my buttocks and bend my knees. Without difficulty I slip my hands under the soles of my boots and bring them up in front of myself.

Stand up. Stretch a little.

There’s nothing wrong with my ankle, that was just me play-acting.

The stone floored basement is empty of everything except an old and broken furnace heater and a bench with a vice attached to it.

I walk over and rub the cord binding my wrists together back and forth along the jaws of the vice. In a few moments I’ve cut through the cord and flick it away from me.

I look around the bare basement, it’s gloomy but the little bits of sunlight filtering into my new domain allow me enough light to see by.

There are some ominous looking stains on the floor in places. A few bones scattered about here and there. Not animal bones. I bend down and pick up one of the longer ones. Peer at it closely. Looks gnawed on, it’s even been cracked open to get at the marrow inside.

I guess they think I’m terrified, because of who they are, what they are.

They don’t know they’ve made a mistake. Of all the people, in all the world, they ended up with me in their house.

I look at my watch; it’s only about 9am.

I’ve got plenty of time.

I walk softly up to the top of the stairs; they creak under my weight as they had under the lighter footsteps of the girl.

The door is solid. Very. It’s possible that I could kick it open, but that would make lots of noise and maybe alert them.

I yawn, sit down on the top step and plan.

*

I’m still wearing my leather bike jacket, my jeans, my heavy duty combat boots. My riding gloves are still stuffed in a pocket. I slip them on and get to work.

*

Darkness falls.

Footsteps and laughter on the other side of the door.

It swings open.

The light goes on.

The girl is three steps down the stairs before she realizes she can’t see me anywhere, she takes two more steps before she turns in puzzlement to her two companions.

“Where’s he…”

Before she can complete the sentence I jump down from my position above the open door and shove one of the guys in the back. He falls forward, onto the other, who careens into the girl. Their combined weight, falling together, causes the old wooden steps they are standing on to collapse. That and the fact that I had pulled all the steps loose some hours ago. Only the top six steps are still attached to the frame that supports them.

Shrieking and yelling they crash down onto the dusty stone floor, the broken timber landing amongst them.

I stand on the top step, in the doorway, looking down at them.

I turn my head and strain my ears, just in case there are more of them in the house.

Below me the trio have regained their feet, they don’t appear to be hurt, I didn’t think they would be.

One of the guys glares up at me. “You’re dead,” he shouts. “You’re freaking dead, man!”

The other runs forward and attempts to leap the distance to the remaining steps. He manages to catch hold of the lowest remaining step with his fingers.

I take a couple of steps forward myself, he grunts as he levers himself upward. I plant my boot on the top of his head and push him backwards. With a curse he falls back down into the basement.

The girl hisses.

“You won’t get away. I’ve got the key to your bike right here.” She taps a pocket in her skin-tight black jeans.

“This basement won’t hold us for long, and you already know you can’t kill us,” one of the two males points out.

“The basement doesn’t have to hold you for long,” I tell them. “And I can kill you, in fact I’m going to.”

I take off my jacket and fling it thorough the open doorway behind me.

They don’t understand, yet.

“We’ve very fast,” one of the guys boasts. “Even if you think you can stick a stake in our hearts you won’t be able to, we’re much stronger and faster than you!”

I undo my watch and toss it atop my jacket.

“I doubt that,” I say, as I sit on the top step removing my combat boots.

They mill around restlessly underneath me. Talking excitedly amongst themselves.

The girl takes a running leap and catches hold of the lowest step, she twists and is almost completely upright on it when I punch her full in the face and with a cry she falls back down again.

I take my t-shirt off.

“What the hell are you doing?” one of the males asks me. “Are you crazy, is that it, have you gone insane with fear?”

At this the girl laughs and says that must it, I must be off my head in terror. My capture by them and the knowledge of what they are, and what they are going to do to me, must have driven me nuts.

I slip out of my jeans, toss them behind me. Slide my boxer shorts down and take them off as well.

Still arrogant, still not convinced that they are in any danger, the girl laughs and taunts me.

“Hey, nice dick, man. I’m going to enjoy getting my teeth into it.”

I stand on the top step and flex my not inconsiderable muscle. Tendons pop, bones crack, flesh and sinew ripple all over my body. Perhaps my features twist a little.

“Listen,” says one of the guys. He sounds a little nervous, unsure of how the situation is changing, perhaps not to his liking. “Listen, you stop trying to keep us down here or it’ll go worse for you. We can keep you alive for days if we want, weeks even, we can make you beg for death, you understand me, mister?”

“You won’t have to beg me for death,” I reply. “It’s coming right now.”

I hold up my right hand and the flesh twitches and ripples, talons break through my fingertips, short, thick, dark fur spreads down to my wrist.

“Oh my God,” says one of the guys. “What the hell is this? What are you?”

“You’re not a werewolf!” screams the girl. “You can’t be, they don’t exist. It’s just stories, legends.”

The dark fur spreads across my body, from head to toe. It’s glossy black with a few pale stripes here and there, my hands and feet are clawed, my muscles have swelled and enlarged. My face is becoming bestial but I can control the change after all these years, and my vocal cords are still human enough that I can growl out human speech.

“Why would vampires question the existence of werewolves?” I ask them.

They look at me in shock. The small fangs in their mouths look pitiful against my own.

“But I’m not a werewolf,” I tell them. “I’m worse. I’m Le Carcajou!”

“What?” screams the girl. She is terrified, I can see it in her face, in her body posture, smell it on her scent.

“Le Carcajou. The Indian Devil!”

I kick the basement door closed behind me.

I reach out and flick the light switch off with a talon.

The room is plunged into darkness.

Screams and yells of consternation greet me as I leap down onto the dusty stone floor.

Red vampire eyes meet my own. The trio begins to run around the room in terror stricken panic.

I leap over to one of the males, grab hold of an out flung arm and rip it off of the body.

The screaming is music.

The blood an aphrodisiac.

I decide I’ll take my time with the girl, do things to her she’s never dreamed of.

Not even in her vampire nightmares.

*

In the end it was she who begged me for death.

Which I granted.

Eventually.

*

They say shoving a wooden stake through a vampire’s heart kills them.

I have discovered that tearing them limb from limb and separating their heads from their bodies seems to work nicely as well. Just to be on the safe side I tore the hearts out of the chests and crushed them to paste in my clawed fist.

I thought about eating them, but I dislike ingesting carrion.

*

In my human form once again I dress and investigate the old, decrepit house. It’s slowly falling to pieces. Mold and rot and decay leech out of it everywhere.

The electricity was supplied by a generator, stored out in an old barn.

My bike is there.

I had retrieved my key from the pocket of the girl and now I’m sitting on my bike, waiting for the engine to warm up.

Werewolves.

I smile.

The werewolf folk tremble when Le Carcajou walk amongst them.The Indian Devils, brothers to the most cunning and vicious omnivores in the world. The Wolverine.

The End

This story copyrighted to Kevin Lumley: 06/06/06.

[Dave]

Hey Jaq -

I enjoyed this. I really like the energy and immediacy first person present tense brings to a story. Is Le Carcajou real? I confess to a Google search after reading your story but didn't find anything...

[Jaqhama]

Le Carcajou is French Canadian for The Wolverine. American and Canadian Indian tribes believed Le Carcajou was an evil spirit or devil creature, thus early trappers came to call it The Indian Devil.

The Wolverine is a tremendous character…. a personality of unmeasured force, courage, and achievement so enveloped in a mist of legend, superstition, idolatry, fear, and hatred, that one scarcely knows how to begin or what to accept as fact. Picture a Weasel—and most of us can do that, for we have met that little demon of destruction, that small atom of insensate courage, that symbol of slaughter, sleeplessness, and tireless, incredible activity—picture that scrap of demoniac fury, multiply that mite some fifty times, and you have the likeness of a Wolverine.

--Ernest Thompson Seton, 1953

Le Carcajou

'As stories pass through the generations, man’s imagination builds upon them until minor incidents become legendary feats. Such is probably the case with Gulo, the gluttonous, squat, shaggy wolverine. French-Canadians call him Carajou.

Though his ferocity and cunning may often be overrated, there is probably no other North American animal which could match, pound for pound, the vicious disposition and tenacity of the wolverine.

So impressed were the Indians with the little, bow-legged bundle of fury that they believed his body housed evil spirits. Even among many northland trappers, it was believed that only a silver bullet could end a wolverine’s life. And woe to the trapper who found his trapline scourged by this species for, reportedly, the destruction of trapped animals, caches and trap sets could mean almost total loss of a season’s work."

Possessed of an almost supernatrual intelligence and strength Le Carcajou avoided the most complex traps and poisons.
Pound for pound the wolverine is the strongest animal in the world.
There were stories that whole Indian villages would pack up up and move a hundred miles to get away from a wolverine that had begun to infiltrate their tipi encampment. The creature would kill dogs and rip open tipis in the night to get at food inside...often in complete silence. The occupants would awake to find their tipi sliced open, their guard dog dead and whatever food had been inside the tipi gone.

This is a true story of a man be-devilled by a wolverine.

MEGUIR AND THE WOLVERINE

It happened years ago when an old Dog-rib Indian, called Meguir, was
living and hunting in the vicinity of Fort Rae on Great Slave Lake.
The Dog-rib and his family of five had been hunting Barren Ground
Caribou, and after killing, skinning, and cutting up a number of deer,
had built a stage upon which they placed the venison. Moving on and
encountering another herd of caribou, they killed again, and cutting up
the game, stored it this time in a log cache. Again setting out on the
hunt--for they were laying in their supply of deer meat for the
winter--they again met with success; but as it was in a district devoid
of trees, they simply covered the meat with brush; and while Meguir and
his wife set off to haul the first lot of meat to camp, the three
grandchildren set to work to haul in the last. On continuing their
work the next day the children brought in word that a wolverine, or
carcajou, had visited the log cache; so Meguir set off at once to
investigate the story.

When he arrived, he found the cache torn asunder, and the meat gone.
Wolverine tracks were plentiful and mottled the snow in many
directions, but on circling, Meguir found a trail that led away, and on
following it up, he came upon a quarter of deer. He circled again,
trailed another track, found more meat, and after a few hours' work he
had recovered most of the venison; but on smelling it, he found that
the wolverine, in its usual loathsome way, had defiled the meat. Then,
on going to his stage, Meguir found that it, too, had been visited by
the wolverine, as the stage had been torn down and the meat defiled.
Indignant at the outrage, the old Dog-rib determined to hunt the
carcajou and destroy it. But before doing so, he made sure that all
his deer meat was hauled to camp and safely stored upon the stages
beside his lodge. That night, however, his old wife woke up with a
start and hearing the dogs growling, looked out, and discovered a
strange animal scrambling down from one of the stages. At once she
screamed to her old man to get his gun as fast as The Master of Life
would let him, as the wolverine was robbing them again.

Half-awake, and that half all excitement, the old man rushed out into
the snow with his muzzle-loading flintlock and let drive. Instantly
one of his dogs fell over. Roaring with rage, the old Indian re-loaded
with all speed, and catching another glimpse of the wolverine in the
faint light of the Aurora Borealis, let drive again; but as ill-luck
would have it, the gun went off just as another of his dogs made a
gallant charge, and once more a dog fell dead--and the wolverine got
away!

Nothing would now do but that the old man must seek his revenge at the
earliest possible moment, so when dawn broke he was already following
the trail of the malicious raider. All day he trailed it through the
snow, and just before dusk the tracks told him that he was very near
his quarry; but rather than run the risk of firing in a poor light, he
decided not to despatch the brute until daylight came.

According to the northern custom, when he camped that night, he stood
his gun and snowshoes in the snow far enough away to prevent their
being affected by the heat of the fire. In the morning his snowshoes
were gone. Tracks, however, showed that the wolverine had taken them.
Again the old man trailed the thief; but without snowshoes, the going
was extra hard, and it was afternoon before he stumbled upon one of his
snowshoes lying in the snow, and quite near his former camp, as the
"Great Mischief Maker" had simply made a big circuit and come back
again. But of what use was one snowshoe? So the old hunter continued
his search, and late that day found the other--damaged beyond repair.

That night, filled with rage and despondency, he returned to his old
camp, and as usual placed his gun upright in the snow away from the
heat of the fire. In the morning it was gone. New tracks marked the
snow and showed where the carcajou had dragged it away. Several hours
later the old man found it with its case torn to ribbons, the butt
gnawed, and the trigger broken.

Tired, hungry, dejected, and enraged, old Meguir sought his last
night's camp to make a fire and to rest awhile; but when he got there
he found he had lost his fire bag containing his flint and steel--his
wherewithal for making fire. Again he went in search, but
fresh-falling snow had so obliterated the trail and so hindered his
progress, that it was late before he recovered his treasure, and
regained his dead fireplace. Yet still the wolverine was at large.

But instead of thinking of wreaking his rage upon the wolverine, the
poor old Indian was so completely intimidated by the wily brute, so
discouraged and so despondent, that he imagined that the whole
transaction was the work of some evil spirit. As a result, he not only
gave up hunting the wolverine, but he gave up hunting altogether, and
he and his family would have starved had not friends come to their
rescue and rendered them assistance until his grandsons were old enough
to take charge.

From Alfred Heming's most excellent book: The Drama of the Forests.

Available as a free ebook here:

http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenb...8495/18495.htm

Chers: Jaq

[Dave]

That's for the additional tale - very interesting, and certainly good fodder for stories. Perhaps you should revist your Le Carcajou; there seems to be a lot of life there, and werewolves and vampires have been done to death. About time for a were wolverine to take over.....

[John M. Whalen]

Nice! I was skeptical when I read that he fooled the vampires by pretending to have a broken ankle. How can anyone do that? But then we find out he's not just anyone, he's Le Carcajou. It's a character with possibilities, Jaq.

[Jaqhama]

Thanks guys.
As I doing the copy and paste here I also thought that maybe I should write another Le Carcajou story. In fact a second tale popped into my head almost without any effort.

John: You should download that ebook I listed above on your Kindle. It's very much your kind of story I think. A collection of strange and unusual non-fiction events that Alfred Heming witnessed or heard about in his years in the wilderness, back in the late 1800's to early 1900's.
There's a great story of a wolverine that pretends to be dead, to draw a wolf in closer and closer, until the wolverine leaps up and ambushes it.

Chers: Jaq