Nunani: Tickler (Part two)

RACHEL QITSUALIK

The woman assumed that the noise outside had to be her husband, since she knew that no other families were camped nearby. So, thinking that her man was simply preoccupied and not paying attention (a phenomenon all too familiar to women), she decided to go out and ask him what had cut his hunting trip short.

She paused for a moment, suddenly aware of a new sound. Was it … chuckling? It didn’t quite sound like her husband, either. For the first time, she began to suspect that a stranger was lurking about outside. The hair began to rise on the back of her neck.

She stood listening for long moments, but the chuckling had ceased — if it had been there at all. Perhaps she had imagined it. But dread had settled into her now, and it was with stiff movements that she worked her way to the porch of the igluvigaq.

She bent down, listening carefully. Nothing. She crawled a little way into the porch.

“Husband?” she called.

Suddenly she was seized and pulled into the porch. She had only a glimpse, the merest flash of spindly limbs and a leering face, and something was pinning her down with fantastic strength. She twisted frantically as something — several icy cold things — found their way onto the flesh of her belly.

She screamed, but her scream was twisted in her throat as it turned into some awful mockery of a giggle; she was being tickled. And she realized then that the icy coldness she was feeling were many fingers, inhuman fingers, working their way across her torso.

She tried to throw her attacker off, but it held her down with preternatural power. Her head was wedged against the ground, so that she could see nothing. And the tickling was increasing now. It was not the kind of tickling that one feels in play, but a digging, raking, malevolent kind of tickling. She was wracked with it, twisting violently beneath it, and increasingly frequent squeals finally gave way to screeches, then to choked sobs.

The tickling never ceased, but only increased in intensity. It was nothing other than pain now. And her wails were such that she was beginning to have trouble drawing breath. Each gulp of air seemed smaller than the one before it, until she was wheezing, gasping for it in desperation. And over her own suffering, she could again hear that chuckling as she had before, except that this was in her ear now, as though the thing that held her was relishing her torment. As it chuckled over her, its fingers only dug deeper and deeper into her flesh.

She could no longer breathe, and she was weakening. That voice that laughed over her began to seem distant, and pinpoints of light began to dance before her vision, as darkness swelled inward and at last engulfed her.

Two days later, the man returned.

He was wiping frost away from his moustache as he approached the igluvigaq, so he didn’t see it at first. But as he looked up and noticed the porch, he spotted a dark mass lying inside. He ran to it with an agonized cry, recognizing his wife. As he grasped her, he felt sick, for touching her was like touching an animal that had been killed some time ago — frozen solid.

He felt numb for some time. All was quiet except for the distant sounds of his dogs. Then, in that Inummarik way, he acted as though life went on regardless of tragedy. There were things to do.

As much as it pained him to do so, he dragged his wife’s body out of the porch and examined it. She had been plump and healthy before he left, no sign of fever. Why had she died? No wounds, yet she had died with her eyes open.

He thought, for a moment, that a spirit might have attacked her. But they had no enemies, no one who would have sent a spirit to do such a thing. He was trying to puzzle it out when he noticed the finger-marks. They were like the scantest of little rashes, or scratches, on her belly and sides, and he was sure they had been left by an attacker.

And whatever has fingers, he thought grimly, can bleed as well.

(Concluded in part three.)