Author: Majoki
He hadn’t planned on becoming a ghost hunter, but that’s what Mordem Letac felt like now. A trained naturalist, he’d come to the northern reaches of the Yukon Territory earlier in the summer to study migration patterns in the face of ecosystem collapse related to rapidly accelerating climate change.
In some ways studying ecosystem collapse prepared him for becoming a ghost hunter because the once-thriving tundra he was surveying and cataloging had turned into something of a ghost town. Most of the native species had disappeared leaving little but the harsh winds of a bleak winter to come.
And now he was hunting for a ghost. In his own mind, Mordem felt he was humoring a few of the locals from Old Crow, a town of a little over 200, mostly Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation. Many of whom said, privately, that if he wanted to know what had happened to their caribou, foxes, hares, ermines, musk oxen and even wolves, grizzlies and polar bears, he needed to talk to the Silent One, a legendary spirit who at catastrophic times appeared near an ancient stone-ringed berm a couple miles outside of Old Crow. Atop the wide berm was the battered remains of a homestead.
Turned out Mordem wasn’t much of a ghost hunter. He didn’t have to be. The Silent One was there when he sidled into the structure through some missing clapboards. She was as grey and grained as the floorboards she was hunched over. She was painting figures in bright red paint. Paint that Mordem quickly realized was blood.
The blood came from a large carcass off to her right. A carcass that Mordem couldn’t identify: large, bluish, with crocodilian jaws and massive webbed claws. A trail of blood led from it to the Silent One’s brush.
The Silent One ignored Mordem. Cautiously, he approached to examine the figures being meticulously brushed. He immediately recognized the painted shapes: caribou, foxes, ermines, wolves, grizzlies, musk oxen, polar bears. With sweeping strokes the Silent One was creating wave after wave of them in parallel and convergent motion. It was mesmerizing and beautiful.
And then she brushed a larger figure at the rear of all the others: the croco-frog-carcass thing but with snapping jaws and slashing claws bearing down on the other creatures.
A hunt. An uber predator on the prowl.
It hit Mordem like forty degree water: the Silent One was painting a pattern he was very familiar with: migratory routes. And the predators that followed the migration. Whatever that hideous carcass was, it was likely responsible for the disappearance of the area’s mammals.
Mordem took out his phone and began snapping photos trying to process what it meant. An obviously alien species was preying upon the creatures of the Canadian tundra. It was surreal, but not frightening to him. As a naturalist, it made sense. Not the alien species, of course, but the migration and the predators.
Then the Silent One began painting another figure behind the croco-frogs. It was three times the size of a croco-frog and even more vicious looking. Mordem moved for a closer look, and the Silent One met his eye for a moment.
Her eyes were primordial, bright, rich like nebulae ready to give birth to suns. She gave him a very knowing look. And then she was gone. Vanished before his eyes. Only her blood-stained brush remained. Mordem looked down at her last drawing. It was terrifying to behold, but what paralyzed Mordem was what she’d painted in the creature’s fists: a wicked-looking weapon. Some kind of firearm with energy beams flaming forth.
Deep down, Mordem, like every other predator in the wide, wide, wide universe, feared a new alpha predator, another top dog with teeth bared, hellbent and hungry for conquest.
He saw clearly, as the Silent One saw, that it was time to get moving.
He just didn’t know where the human race could flee.