Notes contain spoilers!
Many thanks are due to the tireless Mods who work so hard at getting this Big Bang together. Thank you very much, ladies, for all your help and support!
My beta was soupdragon, who did her usual professional job in record time - my thanks to her a thousand-fold. Any errors that remain are mine alone.
I was very fortunate that PattRose was allocated as the artist for this story. She has gone about the work with her customary imagination and flair, and the result is a whole raft of really atmospheric pictures which add so much to the overall tone and impact. Thank you, PattRose, for such amazing work!
This story started as a prompt for the Spook Me challenge on Live Journal. But the outline quickly grew to such proportions that I hadn’t a hope of meeting the deadline, so it fell into abeyance until I realised it might suit the 2014 Big Bang.
The main elements of this tale were, in fact, conjured up in an actual goddamn tipi, in the middle of a howling gale on a Welsh hillside. Soupdragon came up with so many key elements of the structure, and I am forever indebted to her twisted imagination. What our fellow campers thought of the raucous laughter emanating from our tipi that storm-tossed afternoon, we shall never know….
Soupdragon also did her inestimable beta job once again for this fic – thank you, matey! Any errors that remain are mine alone.
My prompt for Spook Me was ‘mad scientist’, followed up by a HP Lovecraft tarot card for Herbert West, here.
In Lovecraft’s fiction, West was a “re-animator”, bringing dead bodies back to life, until he was destroyed by his own monstrous creations. I have changed the emphasis of this, by making my ‘Burt Weston/West’ a controller of minds and bodies in a different, but hopefully equally repellent, way!
The stories mentioned by Blair, including those about the Wendigo, are very much part of the traditional stories of the Native American peoples. The Wendigo myths mainly congregate in the north eastern US and Canada, but certain peoples such as the Ojibwe moved westwards long ago into Montana, so I am making the presumption that the Wendigo legend came with them into the north-west generally.
Blair isn’t sure himself, obviously! But cannibalistic monsters/evil spirits wreaking retribution on humanity feature in many legends across the world, it would appear, so it seemed worth a punt as a feasible element of this story. And I have given the manifestation the characteristics of Lovecraft’s “Ithaqua” (or Wind-walker/Wendigo), just for bit of symmetry!
There really is a place called Indian Heaven in the south-west of Washington State where the huckleberries are still an important part of local culture and the old festival grounds are visible. Whether there is still a Native American peoples’ festival there nowadays (as opposed to a commercial “Huckleberry Festival” which I believe does exist), I haven’t been able to verify.
The song lyrics used are, obviously, from “Hotel California”, by The Eagles. The brief quote from the episode “Night Train” is courtesy of Becky’s wonderful transcripts,
Extra points are given for anyone spotting the Mighty Boosh joke slipped in!
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