The Fate of Farmer Silas Pelletier

 

By Charles C Cole

 

            I’d moved from California to Maine for work and quickly fell in love with my future wife, Rebecca. During my “audition” with her extended family, we visited her grandparents’ 80-acre farm, tucked back against the White Mountains National Forest. While Rebecca and her grandmother wandered the extensive gardens, her grandfather and I got acquainted, sitting in the dining room sipping whiskey and watching nature out the windows.

           He'd been catching Sunday sports on TV, but turned the volume down when we arrived. He was quiet. I didn’t know what questions to ask. I didn’t want to be overly nosy, but the silence was unbearable. I noticed the glass-fronted cabinet in one corner, storing three rifles. I had heard they hunted deer and bear, while I was a vegetarian. Hunting season was weeks away.

          “Got your hunting permit yet?” I asked.

          “Just counting the days,” he said.

           I joked: “Must be tempting to start early when you see the deer gliding through the apple orchard.”

           He smiled. “Very.” Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Always best to follow the rules. If the spirit of the woods finds out you’ve been cheating, she tends to get even. It ain’t pretty. Know what I mean?”

           I sort of nodded like I understood, but then I shook my head, hoping my honesty would be endearing.

           “You’re not from around here,” he said, “so you probably never heard of farmer Silas Pelletier.”

           “Can’t say that I have.”

           “Don’t talk about him much now. Be surprised if Rebecca recalls the story. He was my father’s cousin. Liked to do things his way. The game warden says: ‘One deer per one man.’ But ol’ Silas got a hunting permit for himself and another for his dog. Back then, the state didn’t bother verifying who was living with you.

           “The way Pa told it, they was together over to Ikey Field. Silas had been in the service and was a dead shot, but Silas had already got his deer that season. This next one was for Old Yeller, or whatever he called his latest bluetick coonhound. They had two 4-point bucks in their sights, close enough to hit with a baseball. You watch baseball?”

            “Not regularly,” I answered vaguely.

            “Well, BLAM!” He smacked the table with his palm loudly. “Two deer collapse where they’re standing, like they’d been turned off. Pa and Silas walk over to make sure the deed is done, each to his own reward. Just then, this thing they’d ignored because it looked like a tree from the ground to above their heads, turns out to be a bark-wearing Wendigo, a fifteen-foot skeletal woods she-demon.”

            “A demon?” I scoffed gently.

            “The spirit of the woods, like a warden only she works for the animals, not us. And she takes rule-abiding deadly serious.”

            “Like Mother Nature?”

            “No, son, a demon.”

            “What happened?” I asked.

            “According to Pa, while Silas was yelling and struggling, the Wendigo grabbed him and threw up in his mouth and then hugged him tight until he had swallowed most of it.”

            I just nodded at that point.

            “You see, it was getting inside him, literally. That’s how you make another Wendigo.”

            “What happened?”

            “Pa pulled him free and rushed them through the woods back to the farm, Silas spitting out what was still in his mouth. Pa told Gramps and Gammie what had happened. Gammie had Silas swallow some bear fat, a natural cure, though it don’t always work. They kept some at the house for just this occasion. Silas was white and his face gaunt, like he hadn’t eaten for weeks.

            “He excused himself and vomited into a bucket Gammie had on the floor beside him. His color came back a little, but not for long. Gramps said Pa had to go back and stab the Wendigo in the heart then light it afire. Apparently, they burn like dried pine. That was the only solution. But Pa couldn’t find it, nor find the dead deer neither. On his way back to the farm, Pa saw two deer watching him, glaring, like the two had come back from the dead and weren’t happy none with the way they’d been treated.

            “They drove Silas to Stephens Memorial in Norway, saying he had the stomach flu. Next thing you know, Gramps got a call that, in a fit, Silas had bitten a nurse on the hand, a sure sign the Wendigo in him was waking. They’re all about eating humans. Silas quit talking, just licked his lips and stared out the window. Got hisself transferred to the Augusta Mental Health Institute, what used to be the Maine Insane Hospital.”

            The old man stood and twisted his neck back and forth with a shocking snapping sound. He grabbed his glass. “Want another round?” he asked.

           “I would, but I’m driving,” I said.

           “Wendigo don’t like the smell of alcohol. Must be why I’m so partial. It keeps ‘em away like bugspray keeps away mosquitoes. You sure?”

            I acquiesced: “Okay. Beats the alternative.”

             Later, while my head was swimming, Rebecca drove us home to Windham. 

            “You okay?” she asked.

            “Ever hear of Silas Pelletier?”

            “Sure. He’s the relative from back in the day who went round the twist,” she said. “You worried our kids will catch some rare genetic disease? What’s up?”

           “Do you know why he went round the twist?” I asked.

            “Something in his well water, I think. Infected deer meat? There’s all sorts of theories. Nobody really knows.”

            “Your grandfather knows,” I said. “And, to quote him, ‘It ain’t pretty.’”

            “He was probably just testing you, seeing if you’re going to stand by me, through sickness and health.”

            “I hope so,” I said. “I can’t wait to get back to the suburbs where we only have to worry about the registered sex offenders down the street.”

            “You’re silly,” said Rebecca. She swore I was just being teased, but neither of us ever brought up the subject again with her grandfather.

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     Charlie C. Cole lives in the Maine woods and loves cats. He has been writing flash fiction for about eleven years. Black Petals has previously published some 31 of his pieces, the last in 2017.

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      Luke Lester is an artist and writer from Victoria, Canada. He has recently been published in Absolute Underground, Black Petals, Flash Fiction North, Paragraph Planet, Ultramarine Literary Review, and Yellow Mama. More of his art and writing can be found on his blog: The Other Place.