Orenda: Eternal Vendetta

CHAPTER 8

The Manitou spread itself loosely among the rising molecules of air. It thinned itself slowly in the wind, letting the density of its structure billow gently outward, spreading among the heavier, gaseous molecules of the atmosphere. Eventually, it would become thousands of times less dense. Then the molecules which made up its flimsy structure, and were held together by the force of its being, would begin to rise. When it reached desired altitude, it would halt the thinning spread of its substance, and would float with the movements of the air surrounding it, drifting with the wind. Even with its molecules clustered thickly to itself, it was far too tenuous and thin to be visible to human eyes.

It made no conscious decision to leave the dark caves and heavily wooded security of remote Manitoulin Island. Indeed, it was incapable of `consciousness'. Like a shark drifting on the heavier currents of the ocean below, the Manitou drifted on the ebbs and counter flows of the gaseous mixture of the upper atmosphere. Like the shark, searching always for food. It did not feed on flesh, as the shark, but on the trauma-released energy of extreme pain.

Fear drew it like a magnet, for shortly on the heels of this low-level burst of energy, would come the super-nova released by exploding agony; a shrieking torrent of food for the Manitou.

It traveled only during the winter months, for the heat agitated air of summer made it impossible for the Manitou to hold itself together. The molecules of summer air moved too quickly, often swirling. And the flow of electro-magnetic energy in the atmosphere increased, which disrupted the tenuous, constantly flowing energy bonds which constrained its being in loose cohesiveness.

For a million years before there were men, the Manitou had existed. It had spent a longer period, encased in a mile thick slab of ice, than man had walked upright. It had been much smaller in those pre-human eons, however, because food had not been as abundant. With the coming of man, it had begun to grow to its present immensity.

It did not feed exclusively on man. Indeed, anything which lived, and released mental energy when inflicted with pain, was fodder to its appetite. But since the appearance of humankind, food had been more than plentiful; the world of the Manitou well fertilized.

The Manitou did not `know' these things. It held no knowledge except the instinctive urges to hunt and feed, and to seek the cool caverns of Manitoulin Island when the sun made its world unmanageable. Up until the past two centuries, a time period to the Manitou as a single blade of grass is to the vast Asian steppes, it had not had direction; merely floated on the cool winds, its flimsy structure tuned to the ebb and flow of the magnetic field in which it existed.

When an anomaly occurred in the field, specifically the short, static bursts of energy released by an animal experiencing fear, the Manitou's whole being sensed it, as if it were a giant antenna. If the anomaly was strong and sustained, the Manitou would begin pulling itself inward, until the mass of it could no longer be supported by the currents of air on which it rode, and it would descend over the prey, an invisible and nearly intangible cloud. It would envelope the area in which the anomaly had been detected, and wait until the rich stream of pain-released energy gushed forth; absorbing it into the parts of its being that were closest to the emanations of the prey.

Sometimes, the stream of energy-food would spiral upward in intensity, a mounting crescendo which would climax in the release of an incredibly rich outpouring of sustenance so strong that when the surge hit the electro-magnetic grid, which was the Manitou's being, it would cause a visible glow as the incoming current ran along the normally invisible lines of force which held the living filigree together. After this strong surge of power, the prey would become quiescent, no longer emitting frequencies of any kind, and the Manitou would move on.

Steadily, the Manitou rose into the jet stream, and began drifting south. It was not cognizant of the directions being issued to it. Nevertheless, it continued to thin itself, rising higher into the fast moving river of air. It was at an altitude too high to hunt, and had it been able to reason, would have questioned the wisdom of riding the jet stream to the south. There was, after all, an abundance of food within a few hundred miles of Manitoulin Island.

Yet this winter, as it had every winter for nearly two hundred years, it rose into the strong south and eastward blowing winds of the jet stream, to let the current carry it nearly a thousand miles to a river valley, nestled among the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. This area had once been rich in food, but now hunting the area wasted more energy than it generated. Fear and pain were sparse and sporadic, now that most of the humans had gone. There was absolutely no reason, from the Manitou's perspective, to travel to the Tuscawarus River Valley.

To the thin web of slightly denser molecular make-up which occupied, roughly, the center of the Manitou, however, it was a different story. It had to come to the Tuscawarus valley. From the spirits which dwelled there, it drew its strength. The strength it needed to control the Manitou. The strength it needed to wreak its vengeance.

It sapped, from those spirits, the energy of their tenuous being, leaving them weak and suffering. Its presence had the effect of a short circuit in their dimension, and its ravenous appetite gobbled up and used the energy they had stored through all the previous months. It had to do this in order to ride the Manitou, because it was part and parcel of it; and there was no other way for it to seek out the targets of its revenge.

Unlike the Manitou, it had a memory of sorts. It was not a billionth of the memory it had once stored in a physical brain; which it had been forced to abandon when it mounted the Manitou. But it sufficed. That phase of its existence when it needed a human mind was long dead.

It had left the physical plane two centuries before. It had been dying then, encumbered by a torn physical body in such pain that the mind could not encompass or contain it. The Manitou had come to feast on its agony, and the dying man had felt the invisible monstrosity sucking greedily at the energy it was giving off. Cunningly, he let loose of the pain-wracked, failing physical body before it died, and leaped into the massive being of the Manitou. Because it still lived, it was not absorbed into the grid, but remained intact; melding with the Manitou, but not dispersing along its invisible lines of force. It brought a quality with it that the Manitou lacked. It had a will.

That will had become its memory, the totality of its being, and it held the intimate knowledge of four names: Sullivan, Neiderhaus, Schoenbrunn, and Bimeler. It did not hold these memories in the form of merely words anymore, rather an almost mnemonic cognizance. It held, in the singing electrons of its being, total knowledge of the four genetic lines it sought.

It could sense them by the minute differences in body odor they effused. It could recognize the variance, from other humans, in the intensity and color of their body heat. It could discern even the miniscule bifurcation in the vibrations of their voices. Within a hundred miles of a descendant of those four genetic lines, it literally oscillated from the reception of their Alpha waves.

Only this limited but extensive body of knowledge did the once-human mind contain. It was enough. It was all that was necessary to fulfill its malevolent purpose of revenge. There was no other reason for it to continue to exist.

Yet it would continue to exist as long as the Manitou, on which it rode. The only times that it was vulnerable were those brief hours when it left the Manitou to join with a physical host, and exact its bloody retribution.

The river of air upon which they flowed moved swiftly, carrying arctic cold to its southern destination. Soon the Manitou would descend over the hilly terrain of the Tuscawarus Valley, and the spirit being, once known as Orenda, would begin to suck energy from his vanquished people. They were not people in the human sense anymore, but existed on a plane similarly phantasmagoric, but not the same, as Orenda.

Here, as always, the search would begin. The Manitou would hover over the deserted village of Zoar, its finely tuned being searching for more than just fear and pain; for the being that had become integrated with it hunted for the genetic spoor of its quarry. If no trail could be found, the Manitou would begin to cast outward from the village, searching until suitable prey was located. Orenda would then descend into the physical plane and exact his bloody revenge; and the Manitou would graze placidly upon the proceeds of the hunt.

Finally, when spring approached, Orenda, having depleted the energy bank of his people, and exacted what retribution he could, would loosen control over the Manitou.

In time, faithful to its instincts, form would the ageless life head north towards the placid waters of Lake Huron. The high cliffs of Niagara would lead it to the North Channel, and from there into the dark caverns of the sacred island called Manitoulin; where it would summer, safe from the ravages of heat.