Artisanal Mud Claws

The tripod leg was bent, a cheap piece of aluminum that didn't like the uneven floorboards of the cabin. I jammed a folded matchbook under it, watching the level on the screen until the little yellow line turned green. The light in the Kenora district during late April is a joke. It is too bright, too honest, hitting the dust in the air like they are evidence of a crime. I needed it darker. I pulled the heavy wool curtains, the ones that smelled of mothballs and wet dog, even though I didn't own a dog yet. I adjusted the ring light to its lowest setting, a cool, sickly blue that made my skin look like raw dough.

I checked the frame. On the table, I had arranged a copy of 'The King in Yellow,' a skull I bought at a garage sale in Toronto that turned out to be plastic, and a mug of cold black coffee. The steam wasn't showing up on camera. I took a hit from my vape, blowing the thick cloud across the table. It looked like fog. It looked like mystery. I hit the 'Go Live' button and watched the numbers crawl up from zero. Seven. Twelve. Fifty-six. The comments started rolling in, a blur of 'king' and 'aesthetic goals' and 'is he okay?'

"The silence here is heavy," I said, my voice pitched low, scraping the back of my throat to sound more haunted. "It is a weight you carry in your lungs. I can feel the trees watching. They don't want me here. They want the blood back in the soil." I looked away from the lens, staring at a patch of peeling wallpaper. I was thinking about my bank account, which was sitting at twelve dollars and forty cents. This move to Kenora was supposed to be a reinvention. A 'descent into the primeval.' If I didn't get a sponsorship deal by June, I was going to be descending into my parents' basement in Mississauga.

I stood up, the floorboards groaning under my boots. I had bought these boots specifically for the 'tortured explorer' look. They were leather, uncomfortably tight, and they squeaked with every step. I grabbed the phone, switching to the back camera as I pushed open the cabin door. The spring air hit me like a wet towel. It wasn't crisp or refreshing. It was damp and smelled of rotting leaves and the oily discharge of the melting snow. The ground was a mess of gray slush and black mud, a landscape of decay that the sun was trying, and failing, to make look beautiful.

"We're going to commune with the void today," I whispered to the three hundred people watching me through a piece of glass. "There were noises last night. Not animal noises. Something older. Something that doesn't have a name in our language." I walked toward the tree line, my boots sinking into the muck. I hated it. I hated the way the mud clung to the leather. But the view count was at six hundred now. They liked the mud. They liked the idea of me being out here, losing my mind for their entertainment.

Then I saw them. The prints. They were huge, uneven, and deep. They started near the edge of the porch and veered off toward the dense thicket of spruce trees. The slush had melted slightly around the edges, making the tracks look even more distorted, like long, clawed hands had been dragged through the slush. My heart actually did a little skip, a quick, sharp thud against my ribs. It wasn't fear, not exactly. It was the realization that I had content. I had a hook.

"Look at this," I said, my hand shaking just enough to make the video feel frantic. I knelt in the mud, bringing the camera close to the track. "These aren't paws. Look at the gait. Look at the depth. This thing is heavy. It's bipedal, or trying to be. It's the manifestation. The forest is finally taking a shape I can see."

The chat was losing it. 'Wendigo?' someone typed. 'Bro run,' said another. I stayed there for a long time, narrating the tracks, building a history for a monster I was inventing on the fly. I talked about ancient hunger and the way the shadows in Kenora seemed to move when you weren't looking. I was good at this. I was a storyteller. I was an artist of the unreal.

"Hey! You the one renting the Miller place?"

The voice shattered the mood like a brick through a window. I looked up, squinting against the harsh spring sun. A man in a high-visibility orange vest and a camouflage cap was standing about twenty feet away. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder and a look on his face that suggested he thought I was an idiot. I didn't turn off the stream. This was a conflict. Conflict was good for the algorithm.

"I am Simon Tanner," I said, standing up and brushing the mud off my knees. "I am documenting the phenomena of this wood."

The man walked closer, his boots making a much more confident sound in the mud than mine. He looked down at the tracks I had been filming. He poked one with the toe of his boot. "Phenomena? You mean the dog?"

"This is no dog," I said, my voice dripping with practiced condescension. "Look at the stride. The uneven pressure on the metatarsals. It’s a manifestation of the psychic rot in this region."

The man looked at me, then back at the tracks. He started to laugh. It was a wet, wheezing sound. "Psychic rot? Kid, you're being delulu. That’s just Brenda’s labradoodle, Marshmallow. He got out three days ago. He’s got a bad hip, so he drags his back left leg. Makes 'em look weird in the slush."

I felt a flush of heat crawl up my neck. I looked at the camera. The chat was moving too fast to read, but I saw the word 'delulu' pop up five times in a row. "You're a local hunter, aren't you?" I asked, my voice cold. "You're part of the fabric here. You can't see the horror because you are the horror. You're an NPC in a tragedy you can't even comprehend."

He stared at me for a beat, his eyes narrowing. "A what? Look, if you see the dog, call Brenda. She's worried sick. Don't go shooting it with your phone or whatever you're doing. It’s just a dog."

He turned and walked away, his orange vest a bright, ugly blotch against the greening trees. I turned back to the camera, my face a mask of weary wisdom. "They can't see it," I told the audience. "The locals are conditioned to ignore the truth. They invent names like 'Marshmallow' to hide the darkness. They call the abyss a labradoodle because they aren't strong enough to look into the teeth of the void."

I ended the stream there, at the peak of the tension. My hands were freezing. I went back inside, my boots leaving thick, black smears on the floor. I didn't clean them. It added to the look. I spent the afternoon editing clips, adding a grainy filter and a low-frequency hum to the audio. I researched Wendigo legends, cherry-picking the parts that fit my narrative and ignoring the ones that didn't. I was building a masterpiece. I was going to be the face of the New Gothic.

By evening, the wind had picked up, whistling through the gaps in the window frames. The cabin felt small. The shadows were long and sharp, stretching across the floor like fingers. I lit a vintage brass lantern I’d found at a thrift store. It leaked kerosene and the smell was making me dizzy, but the light it cast was perfect—amber, flickering, and ancient. I sat at the table, watching the door. I had set up the tripod again, framing the door in the background. I was waiting.

"The beast is close now," I whispered to the camera. I hadn't eaten since morning. My stomach was cramping, a sharp, twisting pain that I told myself was dread. "I can smell it. It’s not the smell of an animal. It’s the smell of old earth and forgotten sins." I was really feeling it now. The isolation, the hunger, the flickering light. I was becoming the character. I was the protagonist of a story that ended in blood.

Every sound made me jump. A branch hitting the roof. The settling of the foundation. The ice on the lake cracking with a sound like a gunshot. I leaned into the camera, my eyes wide, the lantern light reflecting in my pupils. "If this is my last broadcast," I said, "know that I saw it. I saw the truth of the world. It’s not a dog. It’s never been a dog."

There was a thud on the porch. A heavy, wet sound. My heart stopped. I gripped the edge of the table so hard my knuckles turned white. The door handle rattled. I didn't move. I didn't breathe. This was it. The viral moment. The end of Silas and the birth of a legend.

The door pushed open. It wasn't locked. I’d left it unlocked on purpose, though I’d forgotten that in my panic. A woman in a thick purple parka and a knitted toque stepped into the frame. She was holding a neon-pink leash. Behind her, a large, shaggy creature covered in mud and burrs trotted into the room. It smelled like a swamp. It had one ear turned inside out and a tongue that lolled out of the side of its mouth.

"Oh, thank god," the woman said, her voice loud and startlingly normal. "I saw your light on. I’m Brenda, from down the road. I saw Marshmallow’s tracks leading right to your porch. He’s such a goober, always looking for a handout."

I stared at her. I stared at the dog. The dog wagged its tail, hitting the tripod and knocking the camera off-center. The frame was now mostly a shot of Brenda’s sensible winter boots and a pile of mud.

"He’s not a beast," I whispered, my voice cracking.

"What? No, he’s a labradoodle," Brenda said, reaching down to clip the leash to the dog’s collar. "He’s twelve. He’s got arthritis in his hip, poor baby. Did he scare you? I saw your little light and thought you might be doing some of that influencer stuff. My niece does that. She makes videos about sourdough."

She looked at the table. She looked at the plastic skull and the kerosene lantern. "You okay, dear? You look a bit peaked. And that lantern is leaking. You’re going to give yourself carbon monoxide poisoning sitting in here with that thing."

I couldn't speak. I looked at the phone. The stream was still live. The comments were a wall of 'LMAO' and 'MARSHMALLOW THE WENDIGO' and 'RIP CAREER.'

"Come on, Marshmallow," Brenda said, patting the dog’s muddy flank. "Let's get you home. Thanks for keeping an eye on him, Mr. Tanner. You should really get some air. You smell like a gas station."

She left, closing the door behind her. The silence that followed wasn't heavy or ancient. It was just empty. I sat in the flickering amber light, the smell of kerosene thick in my throat. I reached out and turned off the phone. The screen went black, reflecting my own face back at me—pale, ridiculous, and completely alone in the mud.