Advisory: The line between man and machine blurs in this brutal tale of a millionaire’s gamble gone wrong. Mechanical Wendigos of pure Lyon Mountain iron run wild in the Adirondacks, and only an ex-logger’s grit can stop them.
THE GREAT CHATEAUGAY LAKE HUNT
The hunt had begun, but what Reginald Whistler III didn’t know—what no one knew—was that it was already too late.
You didn’t need to look at the man to know Reginald Whistler III was trouble. He reeked of it—like expensive cigars and cheap cologne, rolled into one grotesque package. A sportsman, they called him, though the word felt as wrong as an oil-slicked dove. He was the type who dropped dollars like a drunkard drops glasses. In 1905, men like him were rampant, strutting around with a belly full of gin and a head full of delusions. And that’s exactly how he came into possession of the mysterious blueprints.
A drunken gambler’s mistake in a Philadelphia den of vice. Someone might’ve said it was fate, but anyone who knew better knew that fate had a way of kicking you in the face just when you thought you were doing all right. The blueprint wasn’t something that should’ve been handled by someone with the moral depth of a puddle. It wasn’t just ink and paper; it was the key to power. To something darker than anyone could comprehend.
The blueprints, scribbled with the insane genius of one Cinatha Aubay, was a diagram of nightmare. Machines—a bastard hybrid of metal and something far worse. A mechanical Wendigo. Not the whispering forest terror of Native myth, no. This was something… more. It was a spirit, shackled and twisted in iron—a thing that could rip through the flesh of anything unlucky enough to cross its path.
“You’re sure this is it?” Reginald had asked, voice smooth as velvet, smug as only a man who’d never had to work for anything in his life could be.
The den of filth around him reeked of smoke, sweat, and poor choices. He flicked through the blueprint like it was a damned travel brochure—light on the details, heavy on the fantasy.
“What are you gonna do with it, Mr. Whistler?” someone asked, a low voice almost drowned in whiskey slurs.
“Make a sport of it, of course,” he sneered. “Don’t you see? This is it. A real hunt. Out in the woods—my woods, of course. Get a pack of these modern beasts, control them. Turn them loose.” His laughter echoed off the walls like broken glass.
He thought it was a joke. Thought it was just another game. The new inventinon would be, after all, just another toy to him—a novelty, something to line his pockets and capture his amusement
But the gods don’t play games. They aren’t like us. They don’t hand out toys for giggles.
In the Northern Adirondacks, Buck McGrath watched the storm clouds gather like a devilish army.
Buck “Scrap” McGrath from Cootyville was the last man anyone wanted to deal with if you were on the wrong side of something ugly. A former logger turned modern-day Bark Worshiper—he’d spent decades tearing apart the land and now spent his nights trying to piece it back together. Rugged. Tired. Haunted. He was what you’d call grizzled if you wanted to be polite. Dangerous if you wanted the truth.
“You hear about the Whistler?” Buck asked one night at the tavern, his voice low, his eyes narrowed as he wiped the grease from his hands. The rest of the Tree Sentinels nodded. A ragtag bunch of guides, fishermen, visiting natural philosophers from Syracuse, and rich summer folk who liked to play at nature.
“What’s he up to this time?” one of the guides asked.
“Not what you think,” Buck muttered. “He’s back up here, over at Deer Spring Lodge again, doing something out there in the woods, with contraptions you can’t even dream of.”
By the time they made it to the backside of the Upper Lake, things were already off the rails. Whistler had been careless with his toys—naive as a child, arrogant as the devil. The first Wendigo was already loose, its iron claws tearing through the underbrush. There wasn’t anything left to stop them.
The mechanical beasts, half-human, half-machine, moved with the kind of ruthless precision only a machine could understand. They stalked through the trees, their glowing eyes piercing the gloom of the overcast sky. Rain poured in sheets, short-circuiting their wiring—turning them into creatures of pure terror. Whatever sanity they once held snapped like an old rope under pressure. Their eyes turned glassy, lost. They were wild now.
And as Buck McGrath raced through the woods with his band of leaf-lover warriors, he couldn’t help but wonder if they were hunting beasts or just looking for their own end.
“Keep your heads,” Buck growled. “We’re hunting machines. Not ghosts.”
The howl of one of the beasts cut through the air. It sounded like a damned monster. A scream wrapped in metal.
Reginald Whistler III, meanwhile, had stumbled into something he wasn’t prepared for. There’s a kind of reckoning that comes when a man meets the monsters he thinks he controls. His pack of Wendigos had become something else entirely—unstoppable, dangerous, and now, uncontrollable. They weren’t just machines anymore. They were predators.
Now soaked with blood and rain, fingers trembling, he stared at the chaos.
“What have I done?”
It wasn’t just regret. It was panic. His wealth and privilege hadn’t bought him mercy. It hadn’t bought him control. What it had bought him was a one-way ticket to hell.
As Buck and his team of woodsy philosophers pushed forward, the battle had become something else—something primal. Humans and machines, tangled in the shadows of the Adirondacks, fighting for survival. The woods had become their battleground.
When it was all said and done, there wasn’t much left to tell. Reginald Whistler III didn’t survive the hunt. In the end, it didn’t matter how much gold he had. It didn’t matter how many cigars he smoked or how grand his name was.
As for the Wendigos?
Well, they’re still out there. In the rain. In the dark.
The wilderness had its revenge. And as far as anyone knew, the hunt was still going.
“It’s a dangerous thing, playing with forces you don’t understand,” Buck muttered, watching the mist rise from the trees.
“But the woods? They know the score.”
And no amount of money—no amount of arrogance—could ever change that.
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?