Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

The Wehtigo is a spirit that hungers. Before the Other People (i.e., white colonizers) came, the People (i.e., Indigenous Americans) were scared of it. However, the Other People erased the People’s stories. Now, it lures Empty People, who are missing something inside, whispering to them until they let it in. 

The Wehtigo finds a fraternity party and whispers to a young man until he lets it in. A woman of the People then arrives, drawing the Wehtigo’s attention. She glances at the young man possessed by the Wehtigo, and the Wehtigo’s hunger grows. It can feel its host’s own violent, sexual impulses toward the young woman. The woman, Summer, talks to the man. The Wehtigo speaks through him, but she finds the conversation odd and leaves. She steps outside to call her cousin, saying she is coming home. The Wehtigo follows her through the city, into a park.

The Wehtigo believes Summer is scared. She stops in the park, but just before the Wehtigo can grab her, it hears a whistle. Summer turns around to face it and greets the Wehtigo fearlessly. The Wehtigo smells sage and realizes Summer “has been cleansed in the smoke of the sacred medicine” (90). Summer blows powdered medicine at the Wehtigo and touches it with a cedar branch, burning it. The Wehtigo screams. Summer is joined by her cousin, Rain, and they trap the Wehtigo between cedar branches.

As they prepare to banish the Wehtigo from its host, the Wehtigo feels fear for the first time. The women light their cedar on fire, and the smoke drives the Wehtigo into the sky. The young man wakes up confused and accuses Summer of “Indian voodoo shit” (93), telling her not to come to his parties anymore. In the sky, the Wehtigo pieces itself together, preparing to hunt again.

Son grows up in Toronto but moves to Florida the first chance he has. He eventually settles in New Orleans, working service jobs until the death of his mother brings him home. After the funeral, a cousin suggests Son visit his father, who lives alone to the north. Son stays with his father, often in silence, through the winter into fall. Son’s father constantly suggests they go hunting, but Son refuses.

Only when Son’s father dies peacefully in his sleep does Son finally pack up his gear and head out to the family cabin to hunt. On his first morning, Son spends hours in the forest but sees no animals. He returns to the cabin and sleeps. When he wakes, it is night and he is hot. He peels his clothing off, disgusted to find a tick embedded in his stomach, slowly growing. Son rushes around the cabin trying to find something to remove it with. He plans to cut it out, but as he reaches for his knife, he falls and hits his head.

While Son is unconscious, his father visits him in a dream. Coyotes howl and Son’s father tells him that animals come for those who forget, not those already dead. When Son wakes, the tick is the size of a softball. Son makes two small incisions in his stomach with his knife and begins to pull the tick out. When Son succeeds, he loses his grip and the tick flies across the room. Weakened by blood loss, Son struggles to make it to his truck outside. Before leaving, Son reflects that with his father is gone, he has no one left to remind him of what he forgets. As he starts the car, the tick crawls into the bed of the truck, unseen.

The disembodied voices of murdered Cherokee men from Tenkiller wander. They look for the ones who killed them and their own missing women. They come to a barn and find a sick horse, Gray Horse. They take him into the night and encounter their killers near the river. The ghosts want to attack but are shocked when their killers invite them over. Discomforted that their killers do not cower, the ghosts nevertheless join them and wait for the right moment to attack. The killers joke and laugh, drinking. They do not seem to remember or care about the atrocities committed against those they killed. The ghosts are shocked that their killers do not sense their intentions and can ignore the history that has led them all here.

The general of the killers speaks of peace but soon passes out drunk, mumbling about how he was the true mastermind behind the killings at Tenkiller. The moment approaches for the ghosts to attack, and their killers sense it. Suddenly, the missing women appear from the trees and join the men. They feel the generations of terror and pain inflicted upon them by the killers and, along with Gray Horse, attack. The ghosts drive the killers into the river and watch as they drown, comforted even though they will eventually meet the killers’ ghosts.

Peter, who is of Indigenous Alaskan descent, is hiking with his cousin Maddie and her boyfriend, Adam, when they find some sandstone red rocks covered in petroglyphs. When Adam and Maddie reach out to touch them, Peter yells at them, explaining that the oil on their hands is destructive. Adam scoffs, refusing to listen, and starts scraping the petroglyphs with his car keys. Peter tackles him, and Adam loses the keys. As he and Maddie search for them, Peter makes an offering with ground corn. When they cannot find the keys, Peter suggests they walk back to the car before it gets dark.

Darkness falls and Maddie complains that her feet hurt. Adam seems to be hallucinating, thinking he is at the beach. Maddie notices sores oozing green pus all over her body, while Peter notices that Adam’s stomach is swelling. Adam appears pregnant, something clearly moving inside him. Maddie begs Peter to do something, accusing him of putting some kind of curse on them. Maddie and Peter watch as a rattlesnake bursts through Adam’s stomach. Adam reaches down and takes the snake in his arms, calling it his son.

Peter manages to rouse Maddie and convince Adam to follow him. Dawn arrives and the trio meets Maddie’s father (Peter’s uncle) and two park rangers on the path. Maddie’s father is horrified, and when the park rangers take Adam by the arms, the snake jumps out of his pocket and bites one of them. They rush back to the road to call an ambulance, leaving Peter with his uncle. Peter’s uncle admonishes him for using magic. Peter initially denies it but eventually admits he did so because Adam and Maddie disrespected his ancestors.