67 pages • 2-hour read
Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology
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Stories 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 1 Summary: “Kushtuka” by Mathilda Zeller
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, pregnancy loss or termination, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual content, death, racism, and child abuse.
While cleaning salmon, the mother of an Inuit woman named Tapeesa suggests Tapeesa have a child with Hank Ferryman. He is a wealthy man who oversees mining operations, and Tapeesa’s mother believes he will pay them to keep quiet about any child. Tapeesa accidentally cuts herself and goes inside to clean the wound. She finds Pana, her love, waiting. Pana tells Tapeesa that he and some elders are taking Hank Ferryman’s son, Buck, hunting over the weekend. When Tapeesa returns to her mother, her mother tells her that she volunteered Tapeesa to work at Hank Ferryman’s party that weekend.
Hank drives Tapeesa to his lodge, and Tapeesa is amused by neither his jokes nor his advances. Hank asks Tapeesa to tell him a story, and she tells him about kushtuka, spirits that appear as loved ones to lure people away. In the headlights, a figure appears on the road that looks like Tapeesa, with black eyes and a horrifying smile. Hank screams and runs the figure over. At the lodge, Tapeesa looks back and sees the figure in the bed of the truck.
Inside, Tapeesa notices spears on Hank’s walls, and though he claims they are artifacts, Tapeesa knows they are her grandfather’s. The party begins, and when Tapeesa takes a break to use the bathroom, she watches as a shadow passes by the bathroom door. She hides as screams fill the lodge. When silence descends, Tapeesa surfaces to find a massacre. She grabs her grandfather’s spear as well as other “artifacts,” runs to the barn, and harnesses dogs to go home. As she leaves, the kushtuka grabs her. Tapeesa shakes the spirit off and flees.
The kushtuka chases Tapeesa but stops after it is shot. Tapeesa stops and Pana grabs her, explaining that Buck lost his grip on reality during their hunt, killing the elders he was with. Buck approaches the kushtuka and begins strangling it. Tapeesa yells for Buck to stop, and as he raises his hands, the kushtuka impales him with a spear. Suddenly, Tapeesa finds herself holding the spear in place of the kushtuka.
Story 2 Summary: “White Hills” by Rebecca Roanhorse
Marissa loves White Hills, the gated community she lives in with her husband, Andrew, grateful to have escaped her impoverished beginnings outside Chillicothe, Texas. She is pregnant but has kept the pregnancy secret, as Andrew does not want children. Marissa decides to tell Andrew, hoping he will change his mind, but is disappointed when Andrew texts her that he plans to watch a football game at the country club and will not be home that night.
Andrew is unhappy when Marissa joins him at the club. When the man next to her complains that one of the teams playing changed its name because of “social justice warriors” (26), Marissa comments that she is part Indigenous American and that offensive mascots never bothered her. As Andrew forcefully escorts her out, Marissa trips and shouts, “The baby!” That night, Andrew asks Marissa why she never told him she was Indigenous.
The next morning, Elayne, Andrew’s mother, brings Marissa to Houston to see a specialist. Alone in the office, Marissa feels uneasy when she notices the walls are covered with drawings of human heads being measured. When Elayne comes in with a smoothie for her, she is wary but drinks it because Elayne insists it is for the baby. Elayne then asserts that she will not have an Indigenous grandchild. When Marissa cramps suddenly, Elayne goes to get someone, leaving Marissa bleeding and writhing on the floor in pain.
Later, Marissa realizes that Andrew knew what Elayne was doing. When Elayne arrives the next morning, she demands Marissa cut off her pinkie finger to “purge” the part of her that is Indigenous. Marissa refuses, but Elayne threatens her with annulment papers, saying she can make Andrew and the life Marissa loves disappear. As Marissa considers, Elayne sneers, “Chillicothe.” With this, Marissa makes up her mind, slides her wedding ring off, and picks up the knife. Marissa tells Elayne, “I want White Hills” (37), and swings the knife.
Story 3 Summary: “Navajos Don’t Wear Elk Teeth” by Conley Lyons
Joe meets Cam one morning when he goes outside to untangle his pride flag. Cam is walking by and flirts with Joe, demanding that Joe see him later. When Joe meets Cam for a walk, Cam shows Joe his necklace, from which a small elk tooth dangles. Cam explains that he collects animal teeth. This makes Joe uncomfortable, so he performs oral sex on Cam to avoid further conversation. Cam is violent and, when he is done, doesn’t reciprocate, instead telling Joe to rub himself against his leg. The next morning, Joe finds Cam in his house. Cam acts as though having broken in is normal and initiates sex when Joe suggests that he ask before coming over. Cam moves in, as Joe cannot outmaneuver Cam’s effortless charm.
When he was younger, Joe, angry that his grandfather called him tenderhearted, demanded to know how to fight. However, when his grandfather told him to punch his palm, Joe couldn’t, not wanting to hurt him. Joe’s grandfather then told him not to overthink things if he ever needs to fight and warns him never to get cornered: “[I]f you’re cornered, you’re desperate. And desperate men do things they might regret down the road” (49).
Cam treats his tooth collection better than he treats Joe, and when Joe sends a picture of it to a friend, he tells Joe it includes human teeth. Joe laughs it off, but his friend promises to prove it. Joe soon loses all sense of attraction to Cam as Cam becomes jealous and possessive. One day, Cam jokes that he will break Joe’s family crockpot, passed down through generations. When Joe tries to hold the tooth collection hostage as retaliation, his friend texts back, confirming that there are human teeth in the collection.
In a daze, Joe takes the collection and walks to the beach, leaving his phone. Cam follows and assures Joe that he does not want to hurt him, though he is clearly hiding something in his sleeve. Joe throws the tooth collection at Cam and attacks him. Cam loses hold of whatever he was hiding, and it flies to the side. When Joe realizes that Cam is no longer struggling, he walks away and finds pliers on the ground.
Story 4 Summary: “Wingless” by Marcie R. Rendon
An unnamed protagonist watches as a boy named Punk pulls wings off flies outside their foster house. Punk is 12, two years older than the protagonist. Punk sleeps on the screened-in porch and does work outside while the protagonist lives in the attic and cleans the house. One morning, as the protagonist hid under the table from their violent foster mother, Punk taunted the woman, who chased him and saved the protagonist from a beating. Punk was in turn severely beaten and cannot move his arm the next time the protagonist sees him.
Their foster mother beats them and forces Punk to eat parsnips, which make him vomit, every other night. Punk retaliates by singing obnoxiously at church one Sunday. During the sermon, Punk also shows the protagonist a voodoo doll of their stepmother that he made, which he stabs with a pin. As punishment for his singing, their foster mother does not allow Punk to eat for a week.
Later that week, the foster parents make Punk and the protagonist help them slaughter chickens. Punk chases the headless chickens while the protagonist plucks them. When Punk begins singing, the foster mother hits him in the neck, knocking him out. The protagonist, disgusted by the job and angry about Punk’s treatment, takes the cleaver the foster mother uses to gut the chickens and chops off the woman’s hand. The protagonist cannot explain these actions but does remember Punk looking on approvingly when the police arrived.
Stories 1-4 Analysis
While the characters in Never Whistle at Night often encounter monsters and ghosts, the most dangerous threats often come from other people. In “Navajos Don’t Wear Elk Teeth,” Joe begins a relationship with Cam, believing it to be a summer fling. However, when Cam not only moves in unasked but also becomes very possessive of Joe, Joe begins experiencing doubts. Cam’s desire to control Joe extends to Joe’s home and belongings, including Joe’s family’s crock-pot, which has been passed down through generations and holds great significance for Joe: “With a dark lip and interior, but a pale glaze outside, it featured line drawings of the Three Sisters—corn, beans, and squash—on the front in faint brown strokes. Looking at it made me imagine how many generations of flour- and oil-spotted hands had picked it up” (52-53). Joe sees the crockpot as an item that connects him with his ancestry. Cam, however, is not quiet regarding his distaste for it: “Cam took every opportunity he had to let me know how much he hated it” (53). The conflict between Joe and Cam (who is white) over the crock-pot becomes a focal point for Resistance Through the Preservation of Cultural Identity, with Cam’s desire to get rid of the crockpot representing an effort to erase Joe’s cultural identity and isolate him from his family. Joe resists by threatening Cam’s precious tooth collection, which symbolizes Cam’s predatory behavior.
In many of the short stories in this collection, horror is a legacy of historical crimes, introducing the theme of Intergenerational Trauma as the Legacy of Colonization. In “White Hills,” Marissa must confront deep racism toward Indigenous Americans from her mother-in-law, Elayne. After discovering that Marissa is Indigenous, Elayne does not want Marissa to have a child with her son and goes so far as to strip Marissa of her bodily autonomy to stop it. Elayne’s views and actions demonstrate colonialism’s ideology of racial hierarchy. Elayne, a white woman, sees Indigenous Americans as lesser and herself as superior: “But ‘part Native American’? I’m sorry. We can’t abide that. And in a grandchild of mine? Well, do we know how dark the baby might be? How savage they might be?” (32). Elayne’s assertion that she does not want an Indigenous grandchild is not merely based on skin color but also on her belief that such a child would be inherently “savage” (though the parallel sentence structure equates the two, evoking racist pseudoscience’s efforts to tie physical traits to moral or psychological ones). Her words reflect and perpetuate the racist ideology that was used to justify violence against and oppression of Indigenous Americans. Elayne also embodies the paternalism that has characterized colonialist policy toward Indigenous Americans at various times; she believes herself entitled to make decisions for Marissa, manipulating Marissa and refusing to let her make her own choices.
The supernatural horror in Never Whistle at Night often comes from Indigenous mythology. In “Kushtuka,” Tapeesa must face a kushtuka, a murderous shape-shifting spirit, while also confronting her own feelings toward the white men around her. The kushtuka in this story takes the form of Tapeesa, terrorizing Hank Ferryman and his friends and ultimately killing them with the “artifacts” that Hank stole from the Indigenous community around him (a small-scale version of Hank’s mining operation, which exploits and destroys Indigenous land for profit and resources while offering little in return). Tapeesa feels visceral anger over his theft and treatment of her and her community, and this suppressed rage finds an outlet in the kushtuka: “Buck screamed. There was a spear in him. The Kushtuka on the ground held the spear, grinning widely. I was on the ground, holding the spear. I was holding it, with my own hands, as Buck’s blood trickled down and warmed them” (18). The kushtuka’s actions reflect Tapeesa’s desires, and in this moment, they become one. By featuring the mythic kushtuka, this story explores Tapeesa’s feelings as they relate to The Intersection of Tradition and Modernity. Hank and his mining represent the intrusion of modern capitalist colonialism into Indigenous life, while the traditional and mythic bring justice and restore balance.
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