Elkwood Processing

Welcome to another edition of Monsters in the Americas, where we'll explore and uncover the horrors of folklore beasts in the Americas, with a modern twist, of course. This week, we'll delve into a tale about a stubborn factory supervisor who must accept indigenous wisdom to save his workers from the ancient hunger of the Wendigo possessing them.

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Fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead, casting their sick yellow light across the processing floor. Cal Reddick stood at the observation window, clipboard forgotten in his hands, watching his workers scatter to dark corners with their lunch pails. Not one of them sat together anymore. Not one of them spoke.

"They're eating it raw now," Dinah Grasscloud said behind him. "Have you noticed?"

He had noticed. Three nights ago, he'd watched Marcus Dent tear into a slab of pork shoulder with his bare teeth, blood running down his chin, eyes fixed on nothing.

"People get strange on night shift." Cal turned from the window. "It's the hours. Throws off your system."

"This isn't that." Dinah's voice stayed level, but her knuckles had gone pale against her own clipboard. "My grandmother called this place hungry ground. Said something bad happened here before the plant. Before the town, even."

Cold air seeped from beneath the door to Cold Storage Three. Cal felt it curling around his ankles, wrong somehow—too sharp, too deliberate.

"The refrigeration units in Three are broken," Dinah continued. "Been broken for a week. But there's frost on the walls. Thick frost."

"I'll call maintenance."

"You won't." She stepped closer, and in the yellow light her face looked drawn, older. "You'll keep running the lines because we're behind quota. You'll keep pretending nothing's wrong because admitting it means admitting you don't know what to do."

Heat flared in his chest. "I've run this plant for eleven years—"

A scream cut through the processing floor. High and ragged, then abruptly choked off.

Both of them ran.

Past the hanging carcasses they sprinted, past the silent workers who had pressed themselves against the walls, past the blood gutters and the bone saws. Through the swinging doors of Cold Storage Three, into air so cold it burned Cal's lungs.

Yancey Holm crouched in the corner, shirtless despite the temperature, his fingernails broken and bleeding where he'd been clawing at frozen beef. Frost clung to his bare skin. His eyes were black and starving and utterly empty.

"Get out," Cal ordered Dinah. "Call the police, call—"

"That won't help." She grabbed his arm, her fingers digging hard. "Cal, listen to me. This is what she warned about. The hunger that never stops. You have to let me—"

"I'll handle it."

Pride. Eleven years of pride. He shook off her grip and walked toward Yancey with his hands raised, voice steady.

"Hey, buddy. Let's get you warmed up, okay? Let's—"

Yancey unfolded. There was no other word for it. His spine cracked and elongated, his jaw stretched wide, and the sound from his throat was not human. Had never been human.

The thing lunged.

Cal hit the floor, cold concrete splitting his lip, and the creature's weight crushed him flat. Its teeth snapped inches from his throat, and the stench of it—rotting meat and winter wind and something older than stone—filled his nose.

"Dinah!" he screamed. "Dinah, help me!"

Her voice rose through the frozen air, words he didn't recognize, sounds pressing back against the cold itself.

The creature hesitated.

"Say it with me," she commanded. "Say it now!"

And Cal, believing at last, opened his mouth and added his voice to hers.

The Seventh Spot

Welcome to another edition of Monsters in the Americas, where we'll explore and uncover the horrors of folklore beasts in the Americas, with a modern twist, of course. This week, we'll delve into a tale about a skeptical surgeon who must reconcile science with Cherokee spirituality to save her comatose brother from a mythical serpent's curse.

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The fluorescent lights in the ICU hummed with a frequency that made Dr. Sarah Mankiller's molars ache. She stood at the foot of her brother's bed, tablet screen casting blue light across her face as she swiped through CT scans that made no medical sense.

"These lesions." Her voice came out flat. "They're arranged in a pattern."

Beside the ventilator, their uncle Joseph lifted his head from his hands. Gray streaked his braids like frost on black wire. "You see it now."

"I see tissue damage." She pinched the screen, enlarging the image. Seven distinct points of necrosis ran along David's spine—equidistant, symmetrical, burning like stars on the scan. "Environmental exposure. Something in the cave system where you found him."

"The seventh spot from the head." Joseph stood, joints cracking. "That's where the heart and life are."

Through the window, dawn bled orange across the Smoky Mountains. Sarah's reflection hovered ghost-like in the glass, superimposed over peaks their grandmother had named in Cherokee when Sarah was small enough to ride on her shoulders. Before medical school. Before she'd stopped returning calls.

"He touched it," Joseph continued. Rain from last night darkened his denim jacket. "The ulun'suti. Said it burned cold, like holding a piece of winter sky."

"Hypothermia can cause—"

"Look at his eyes."

She didn't want to. Had been avoiding it since she'd arrived at three AM, paged by a night nurse who knew her maiden name. But Joseph's tone carried the same weight it had when she was seven and he'd pulled her back from a copperhead den.

Turning, she stepped closer to the bed. David's eyelids twitched beneath closed lids, rapid-eye movement that should have meant dreaming. She lifted one lid with her thumb.

The pupil gleamed. Not reflected light—actual luminescence, pale green like foxfire in rotting wood.

"Jesus Christ." Her hand jerked back.

"Not the name you should be using." Joseph moved to David's other side, touching his nephew's shoulder with the casual tenderness of someone who'd never left. "The scans show seven spots. Cherokee stories say the same. Your science and our knowledge are pointing at the same truth."

Outside, a freight train howled through the valley. Sarah gripped the bed rail, metal cool against her palms. David's chest rose and fell with mechanical precision, the ventilator doing the work his brain stem couldn't manage—decreased function in the exact pattern she'd seen in drowning victims, as if he'd inhaled water that wasn't there.

"If this is real." The words tasted like ash. "If he encountered something and it's inside him now—"

"Then you need to decide if you're going to treat him like a contaminated patient." Joseph's eyes held hers across David's body. "Or like your brother who went looking for medicine to heal you."

"To heal me?"

"He knew you were coming home. Knew you'd need a reason to reclaim who you are." Joseph reached into his jacket, pulled out a leather pouch darkened with age. "The ulun'suti chooses who sees it. David saw it for you."

The monitors beeped their steady rhythm. Sarah's pager vibrated against her hip—another emergency, another crisis she could fix with scalpels and sutures. But her brother's pupils glowed brighter as the sun rose, and the seven spots on his spine pulsed on the monitor like a constellation she'd been taught to read in a language she'd tried to forget.

Recursive Depths

Welcome to another edition of Monsters in the Americas, where we'll explore and uncover the horrors of folklore beasts in the Americas, with a modern twist, of course. This week, we'll delve into a tale about a disconnected adopted developer who must appease an ancient water spirit before her VR game kills users.

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The hospital's fluorescent lights hummed against Maya's skull as she stood outside Jordan's room, watching through the observation window. Her lead tester lay motionless, VR headset still clamped to his face, fingers twitching against sterile sheets. Twenty-three hours since he'd entered Lake Voices.. Twenty-three hours of whispered words about copper and debt.

"He's the third one." Dr. Patel emerged from the room, stripping latex gloves with sharp snaps. "Neurologically, they're drowning. Oxygen saturation dropping, pulmonary edema forming. But there's no water in their lungs."

Maya's throat tightened. "That's impossible."

"So are the reports I'm reading." Patel handed her a tablet displaying beta tester feedback. Seventeen separate accounts of a horned creature manifesting in the simulation. Different descriptions—some saw copper scales, others saw fur like oil slicks, a few reported antlers that fractured light like prisms. "Your AI is generating something you didn't program."

Through the glass, Jordan's lips moved. Mishipeshu wants what was taken.

Before launch, Maya had spent forty hours in the code herself, hunting the anomaly. The creature had materialized beside a digital rendering of Sleeping Bear Dunes, water rippling around its impossible form. Sunlight filtered through the virtual lake in columns that seemed too precise, too deliberate.

"You opened a door without permission," it had said, the words arriving not through her headset's speakers but directly inside her chest, vibrating against her ribs. "What your people knew—you must reclaim it."

She'd logged the encounter as a pattern recognition error. The AI scraped thousands of Great Lakes images; it had absorbed some Indigenous iconography and regurgitated it. Technical problem. Technical solution.

Now Marcus Wells sat across from her in the hospital cafeteria, tobacco pouch resting between his weathered hands. The adoption agency had given her his number with reluctance. In case you ever want to explore your heritage, the social worker had said, as if culture were a hobby.

"Your grandmother called you three times before she passed." Marcus's voice carried no accusation, fact alone. "Eloise Blackwater. She knew you were building something that touched the lakes."

Maya's coffee had gone cold. "I deleted the voicemails. I didn't—I wasn't ready."

"Ready for what?"

"To be something I never was." The words tasted like admission. "I grew up in Ann Arbor with white parents who loved me. I don't speak Potawatomi. I don't know the stories. I'm a developer who made an educational game."

Marcus opened the pouch, pinched tobacco between thumb and forefinger. The scent cut through antiseptic air—earth and smoke and something older. "The AI didn't create Mishipeshu. You created a space where it could reach through. Digital water's still water. And you used our knowledge—Great Lakes ecology, seasonal patterns, sacred sites—without asking permission. Without offering respect."

"I researched. I cited sources."

"You took without giving." He stood, bones creaking. "And Mishipeshu's been watching these lakes get poisoned for two hundred years. Your game was the last insult—turning sacred spaces into entertainment while pretending to educate."

Outside, Lake Michigan stretched gray beneath November clouds. Marcus led her to the shoreline, sand dark and wet beneath their feet. He handed her tobacco, demonstrated the offering with cupped palms extended toward the water.

"We enter together," he said. "You wear your headset, I wear mine. But first you speak truth."

Maya's hands trembled as she lifted the tobacco. Waves folded against the beach, rhythmic and patient. In her pocket, her phone held the deleted voicemail file, still recoverable. She'd never had the courage to press play.

"I erased myself," she said to the lake. "I was ashamed. Scared of being different, of claiming something I hadn't earned. So I took what I wanted and called it research. I made profit from your stories without honoring them."

The tobacco scattered across the water's surface, dark flecks vanishing into gray-green waves.

Back in Jordan's room, they synchronized their headsets. The simulation loaded, and Maya found herself suspended in digital water, code rendered so perfectly she felt cold pressure against her skin. Marcus floated beside her, but in the VR space he appeared younger, dressed in traditional ribbonwork.

Mishipeshu materialized from the depths. Horns curved like questions, scales reflecting light that had no source. Its eyes held the copper color of ore beneath the lakes, the same mineral her game had rendered in such painstaking detail.

"You return," it said, and the words resonated through her bones.

"I'm asking—" Maya's voice cracked. "Not for forgiveness. For instruction. I opened this door without understanding. Teach me how to close it properly."

The creature circled them, massive tail creating currents that felt real enough to push against. "Honesty is the first offering. Will you carry the second?"

"Yes."

"You will hold every person harmed by what you built. You will carry them like stones."

"I will."

Mishipeshu's form began dissolving, scales scattering like data fragments. Through her headset, Maya heard Jordan draw air, heard hospital monitors stabilize, heard the sound of three people returning.

When she removed the headset, her left hand burned. The skin had split along her palm, forming a pattern of overlapping scales, permanent as ink and twice as deep. Marcus wrapped it in tobacco leaves while she tried not to scream.

Later, standing in the hospital parking lot, she played her grandmother's voicemail. Eloise's voice emerged thin but certain: The water holds everything, Maya. Even what we forget about ourselves.

Her hand throbbed in agreement, aching like prophecy.

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When the Sky Remembered Fire

Welcome to another edition of Monsters in the Americas, where we'll explore and uncover the horrors of folklore beasts in the Americas, with a modern twist, of course. This week, we'll delve into a tale about a guilt-ridden firefighter who seeks redemption for a deadly blaze, but denial and ancestral wrath block forgiveness.

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The wind had not stopped moving since Calen returned to the Uinta Basin. It carried the scent of wet ash and sagebrush, a bitter mix that clung to his throat. From the ridge, he saw where the fire had torn through the valley—miles of blackened trunks rising like ribs from the soil. His father’s cabin crouched in the middle of it, roof caved in, windows hollow. When he pushed open the warped door, the hinges cried out. Inside, the air still held the smoke. A cracked photograph of his parents hung above the stone hearth, the glass clouded.

“Could’ve been worse,” Jonas said behind him, voice low and scraped from years of smoke. The older man’s yellow jacket was streaked with soot. “I’ve seen whole towns vanish in less time.”

Mara stood in the doorway, arms crossed, boots muddy from the search. “Doesn’t feel worse mean much, Uncle,” she said. “Not when it’s ours.” Her voice had an edge that made Calen look away. He heard the faint ticking of cooling metal from the stove, like something alive shifting in its sleep.

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They had been walking since dawn, following hoof prints through the wet ash. The livestock had scattered during the fire; a few might have survived along the riverbank. The silence between them was broken by the hum of thunder and the crunch of char underfoot.

“Those shapes,” Mara said, pointing toward a stand of trees near the slope. The trunks were pale beneath the soot, each marked with a clean outline where bark had burned away. The forms were unmistakable—wings spread wide, talons curled.

Jonas squinted, shading his eyes. “Birds, maybe? Heat pattern. Happens sometimes.”

“Not like this,” Mara said. “They’re perfect. Look—every one the same.”

Calen touched one of the marks with the back of his hand. The wood felt smooth, almost polished. “Maybe the wind drove sparks here,” he offered. His voice came out thinner than he expected.

Jonas snorted. “Or maybe the fire got creative.”

When they moved on, Calen lagged behind. The shapes followed them in rows, silent witnesses in the burned grove. He tried not to look up, but the urge was constant—something waited above the clouds, just beyond sight.

That night, they camped near the creek where the air was cooler. The wind hissed through the reeds, carrying faint static. Jonas lit a small stove and poured coffee from a dented tin. “Tomorrow we’ll reach the southern fence line,” he said. “If any stock’s alive, that’s where they’ll be.”

Mara sat across from Calen, her face faintly lit by the lantern. “You keep staring at the ridge,” she said. “You see something?”

Calen hesitated under her gaze. “Just the weather.”

“Looks calm to me.”

He shrugged. “Storms move fast out here.”

Jonas leaned back on his heels. “Leave him be, Mara. Man’s got reason to look nervous.”

The words settled heavily. Calen’s pulse quickened. From somewhere far off, thunder rolled again—deep, deliberate. He glanced toward the ridge and saw it: a dark sweep across the stars, too vast to name. It vanished as quickly as it appeared.

“Did you see that?” he whispered.

“See what?” Mara turned, following his eyes. The sky was clear. A flicker of heat lightning touched the horizon.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just… nothing.”

Jonas grunted. “Get some sleep. You’ll see plenty come morning.”

But sleep did not come. Lying in his tent, Calen listened to the low murmur of the creek and the occasional pop from the fire. The air felt charged, as though the earth held its silence. When the next flash came, he could swear he heard wings—a sound too heavy for wind.

By dawn, the sky had darkened again. Clouds stacked over the mountains, silver-edged and restless. Jonas moved slower that morning, one hand pressed to his side. “Old bones don’t like damp,” he muttered. Mara packed the gear without speaking, her jaw set. Calen felt the air tightening, the static returning like a wound reopening.

Near noon, lightning struck the ridge. The flash was blinding, white-hot, followed by a crack that seemed to split the world. Jonas stumbled back, clutching his shoulder. Smoke rose from the ground beside him.

“Jonas!” Mara shouted, running forward. The old man’s sleeve was charred but his eyes were wide, dazed.

“I’m fine,” he rasped, though his voice shook.

Rain began to fall in thick, warm drops. The smell of ozone filled the valley. Calen stood frozen, watching the ridge where the bolt had hit. Above it, the shadow circled again, vast and silent.

Mara turned on him, rain streaking her face. “You knew,” she said. “You knew something was wrong here.”

He shook his head, backing away. “I didn’t—”

“Don’t lie to me, Calen. You’ve been seeing things, haven’t you? Since you came back.”

He looked at her, the ground trembling under another strike. “It’s my fault,” he said. “All of it. I started the backburn. The wind shifted.” His voice cracked. “I thought I could control it.”

Mara stared, disbelief hardening into fury. “You should have told us.”

“I didn’t think it mattered anymore.”

“Everything matters. Look around you.”

Lightning flared again, close enough to feel the heat on their skin. The sound was like a roar swallowed by the clouds. Jonas groaned softly where he sat, rain soaking his jacket.

Kneeling in the ash, Calen felt something give way inside him. The words rose unbidden, old syllables his grandfather had taught him as a boy. He spoke them aloud, his voice trembling but steadying with each breath. The storm answered—not with anger, but release. Rain poured down harder, washing the soot from the trees, cooling the burned earth.

Mara knelt beside Jonas, eyes still on Calen. The thunder rolled once more, deep and distant, as the great shadow dissolved into the clouds. The valley darkened, then quieted.

When it was over, rain was all that remained. The trees stood black and wet, the marked, clean outlines where bark had burned away in the shape of wings gleamed faintly in the fading light—reminders of what the fire had taken, and what still endured beneath the storm.

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The Thunderbird is one of the most powerful and iconic beings in North American Indigenous folklore. It appears in the mythologies of numerous Native peoples across the continent, particularly among tribes of the Pacific Northwest Coast, the Great Plains, and the Great Lakes regions.

Under the Ice, She Streams

Welcome to the first edition of Monsters in the Americas, where we'll explore and uncover the horrors of folklore beasts in the Americas, with a modern twist, of course. This week, we'll delve into a tale about a skeptical teen influencer who seeks online fame through a fake monster challenge, until guilt-haunted echoes demand truth.

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Wind clawed across Baker Lake’s frozen skin, scattering fine snow like powdered glass. Mira crouched at the edge, her phone trembling between her gloved fingers. “If the Qalupalik’s real,” she whispered into the lens, her voice quivering with half-dare, half-prayer, “maybe it’ll take me too.” The words drifted away, swallowed by the emptiness around her. Beneath her, the ice gave a low hum—a vibration that rose through her bones.

Nothing moved. Then the hum thickened, alive somehow, resonating with an undercurrent like distant breathing. The camera’s light blinked against her pale face, a trembling beacon in the dark. Mira leaned closer, her reflection flickering on the slick surface. A thin line cracked through the mirrored image, spreading with the delicate sound of glass sighing.

“Did you hear that?” she murmured, half to her followers, half to herself.

The comments scrolled faster than she could see—hearts, jokes, dares. A gust skated across the lake, pressing her hair flat against her cheek. She smiled, nervous and exhilarated, and bent lower. The ice shimmered greenish under the phone’s light.

The water shifted. From within her reflection, a shape stirred—a shadow dragging itself closer. Mira’s pulse quickened. “Wait—what—” she began.

A hand, pale and webbed, clawed through the reflection and broke the surface.

She screamed. The sound tore through the air, sharp and raw. Her phone slipped from her hand, clattering on the ice, lens spinning skyward. For an instant, it caught her face—eyes wide, mouth open—before the image spun to black.

On the livestream, her scream looped before the feed froze. Then came the flood: laughing emojis, taunting comments, the churn of digital noise.

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Hours later, in a dim apartment across town, Noah watched the replay for the twelfth time. The screen glowed cold against his face, illuminating the tremor in his jaw. “It’s a stunt,” he muttered, though no one was there to hear. The sound glitched again—Mira’s voice breaking through static, whispering his name.

He froze. “Mira?” His throat tightened.

From the phone speaker, a whisper rasped again, too low to be sure. He turned off the sound, then on again, each time catching a syllable like a sigh behind the interference. The radiator clicked in the corner, the only steady sound in the room.

When he stood, the floorboards groaned. “You’re just hearing things,” he said, forcing a laugh that died too quickly. He crossed into the bathroom, the phone still in his hand, its cracked screen a ghost-light. The sink dripped—slow, deliberate drops that echoed like a pulse.

As he leaned closer, the whisper returned—this time through the drain, faint but unmistakable. His name again. Drawn air, then silence.

He stumbled back, hitting the counter. Water quivered in the basin. The phone camera flicked on, unprompted.

“Noah here,” he said shakily, voice too loud for the small room. “This is... look, I’m proving it’s fake. Okay? It’s all fake.”

The lens caught his reflection, pale and sweating. “She probably edited the sound in. Or someone hacked the feed.” He tried to smile for his viewers, but his jaw wouldn’t obey.

From the tub, a faint ripple stirred. Water began to rise, not pouring but swelling upward, breathing, expanding with each pulse of light from the phone.

He turned toward it slowly. “No,” he whispered. “No, no—”

The water lapped against porcelain, forming waves that climbed higher, exhaling mist into the air. The bathroom filled with a damp, icy scent—salt and something old, like seaweed left to rot.

“Noah,” came the voice, barely audible beneath the surface.

He shivered, clutching the phone tighter. “It’s just—audio feedback. I’m not—” His words faltered. The sound came again, tender, coaxing.

Kneeling, he set the phone on the tile, the glow flickering over his hands. His breath came in ragged bursts, visible in the chill air. For a long stretch, he stared at the water’s rhythmic movement.

He whispered, “I’m sorry.”

The words seemed to stop the room. The hum of the pipes ceased. Even the air felt suspended.

Then the water stilled—perfectly smooth, black as obsidian. The screen flickered once, twice.

Through the shimmer of the surface, her face appeared—Mira, smiling. Not the frantic grin from her stream, but serene, luminous, eyes bright with something unearthly. Beneath the faint ripples, her hair drifted like ink.

Noah’s hand reached forward, trembling. “Mira?”

She did not speak. But her smile widened, soft and radiant, as though freed of something heavy.

The phone screen dimmed, the light sputtering out. In that fading glow, her reflection glimmered one last time, smiling up from beneath the ice.

Then everything went still.

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The Qalupalik is a creature from Inuit folklore, particularly among the Inuit of the Arctic regions of Canada and Greenland. It’s one of the most famous beings in Inuit mythology, used both as a cautionary tale and as a spiritual symbol. The Qalupalik’s main role is that of a child-snatcher. According to legend, it preys on children who wander too close to the water or disobey their parents.