“Oh, it is, only I’m more of a researcher these days.”
“Research?”
He shot me a startled glance, possibly because of the tone of that one word.But I couldn’t help it.The last “researcher” I’d met had almost killed me, and his research had created a monster.
“Uh, yes.Into past lives, reincarnation, that sort of thing.”
He said this with a straight face.
“Past lives?”
“Yes.Many native beliefs incorporate the idea of certain spirits of the dead returning to the human world either as beneficial, protective forces or as the opposite.Some, it is believed, are reborn into new bodies as rewards for a life well lived, while others return to defend it from malignant spirits who wish to harm it.There are many different stories, varying from tribe to tribe, and I find them fascinating—”
“Sure.”
“My current work concerns the Skudakumooch, also known as the Ghost-Witch, a figure from Wabanaki folklore, said to be created when a practitioner of black magic dies—”
“Must be a lot around Vegas.”
“—and their spirit refuses to rest.Instead, it animates a body and uses it to attack others, consuming their souls through their flesh.The only way to destroy one is to burn the body to ashes with the spirit inside it, and scatter themtothe winds—”
“Fascinating,” I said, wondering how to change the subject
“Yes, it is!I’ve been working on a paper on the parallels between the Ghost-Witch and other, somewhat similar native beliefs, such as the Wendigo from Algonquin tradition, the Nalusa Chito of the Choctaw, the Baykok of the Ojibwe, and the Wechuge, a cannibalistic being from Athabaskan legends—”
“That’s a lot of people eating.”I wondered if I could just slip away and he’d continue talking.I wondered how rude it would be if I got caught.
I sighed inwardly.
Probably pretty rude.
“Yes, but the Skudakumooch is the most interesting to me, as they are said to retain their magic after death,” he said happily.“Resulting in the absolutely terrifying concept of an undead spirit feasting on the souls of its victims to increase its magical prowess!”
“Yep,” I agreed, because that would be pretty terrifying.And pretty unlikely, as it hadn’t shown up in any of the Corps’ lectures on “rare magical creatures and how to kill them.”And I guess my skepticism finally got through, because he smiled.
“I get that a lot.”
“No, I mean…” I stopped, because I’d just been in a fight with a bunch of zombies, so what did I know?Not much, I was beginning to suspect.
But Dave had already moved on to riffling through his sheaf of papers.“But back to our current concern, I started with the harmless-looking… what do I call them?Refugees?”
“Family.”
He looked up at me and blinked.“Yes.Yes, of course.I wanted to assuage Sienna’s concerns before the move, but many of the… family… here are older and partly deaf, or just not very cooperative.Not that I blame them; they’ve had reason to learn caution.But it does make things harder.”
“Where did they all come from?”I asked because there were more older ones than I’d expected.A makeshift dorm right across the hall seemed to be mostly housing eighty-year-olds.One was putting in his teeth so he could eat, making me visualize the prospect of a toothless werewolf.
It boggled the mind, frankly.
Like the idea of how they’d survived on the streets for so long.
“They haven’t,” Dave said when I asked.
“What?”
“Most of the older ones you see are newvargulfs.People of their age have a short life expectancy when suddenly finding themselves unhoused.”
“But what could someone their age do to piss off their chiefs?”I said, as the toothless guy nonetheless wolfed down a mountain of pulled pork with no discernible trouble.
