"Tom Easton - Mood Wendigo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

Mood Wendigo
by Tom Easton
_Analog,_ May 1980

When did this story begin? It's hard for anyone here in town to say. It looped back on itself and tied its
bit of time in a knot. No one is really sure just what happened, though we do know we lost a good boy.

Did it start when Lydia Seltzer told her high school biology class about the wendigo? She was talking
about the world's mystery beasts, the Abominable Snowman, the Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster
and its cousins in other lakes around the world. She told them about all the expeditions, the lack of
results, the questions -- are the searchers simply crackpots? Or do elusive things still exist in the hidden
corners of the world? And then she mentioned the wendigo, a thing that had never been more than a
story, a superstition, something no one had ever believed in enough to check it out. Its name was Indian,
and it was known across the Northeast, from Maine to Ontario. It screamed in the night, and anyone
who sought the screamer disappeared without a trace. If they ever returned, they were mad, too blown
of mind even to say what had happened to them. There were no descriptions of the wendigo.

Or did it start the day our town acquired a second Lydia? Mad she was, and raving, but she was the
same Lydia we had all known for a decade. The same wide mouth, the nose a little larger than she liked,
the black hair worn short and curled over her collar. Neither was any beauty, but neither were they ugly,
and it seemed surprising that she had never married. Or perhaps it was no surprise after all. She was
tough-minded as only a woman can be, and she showed it at an unusually young age. Most women wait
till their forties and later to show their steel. But not Lydia. She brooked no nonsense, in class or out, and
for as long as we had known her she had been given to severely tailored pant suits, wool for work, denim
for evenings and weekends.

When did it start? Who can say? The best I can do is tell you where I came into it. That was some time
after the wendigo class. I was at home, sitting at the kitchen table, going over the town budget for the
fourth time. Sarah, my wife, was in the living room, watching something inane on TV. We didn't talk
much anymore, not about her job at the bank, nor about mine. We had no kids.

When the buzzer sounded, I heard her chair creak as she rose to answer the door. There was a murmur
of voices, steps in the hall, and "Harry? Miss Seltzer wants to see you." There was a glare with the
words. I ignored it, raised my head from the papers and said, "Duty calls, then. Have a seat, Lydia.
Coffee, a drink?"

"Do you have any tea?" As Lydia pulled the other chair out from the table, Sarah disappeared. A
moment later, the sound of the TV rose, as if to drown out anything that might give my wife's fantasies the
lie. But my attention was for Lydia. She seemed more serious than usual, if possible and there was a
folded paper jutting from her bag. I wondered what was on her mind as I filled the kettle. I found out
soon enough.

She sat still, watching me as I moved about the room, saying nothing until our tea was before us and I
had sat down again. Then she said, "Mayor, I need a leave of absence. A short one."

She stirred her cup, squeezed the bag and dumped it in the ashtray half full of my pipe ashes. "Of
course," I said: "But shouldn't you be asking the superintendent about this?" I was puzzled. It wasn't my
chore to handle the teachers, thank goodness. I was the town's unpaid mayor, and there were
professionals, paid ones, to handle day to day affairs.
"I will," she replied. She looked at me, her brown eyes unblinking. I remember thinking that for all her