By Algernon Blackwood

On a whim last night, I decided to read this short story. I’d heard much about it, intended to read it for some time (it had been languishing in my Kindle app on my iPad for months) and finally got around to it.

Glad I did.

The story takes place on a hunting trip in the Canadian wilderness at the beginning of the 20^th century and was the first to introduce the mythology of the wendigo into “mainstream” (read: white) culture.

It’s a horror story, a classic. Now, I can’t say that it was the type of story that had me hesitate to turn off the lights or drove me to chills and goosebumps. For me, its horror is of a more satisfying (and disturbing) type; existential horror about the nature of man and the universe. The wendigo is unsubtly a metaphor for the uncertainty of human life beyond civilization, for what happens when, as Nietzsche says, “the abyss looks back into you.” There’s a cold reminder in this story that, for some of us, our personalities and identities are stable only because of our circumstances—that in another place and time, or just a different situation, we might be surprised or terrified by who we might become. I’m not sure that there’s any horror so horrifying as the loss of selfhood.

There’s an illusion about writers of bygone eras. The archaic feel of the language they employ, however slight in reality, gives this feeling that they write with an aplomb illusive to the modern author. This is a trick, of course, and there are in fact scores of awful writers throughout history (just as there are today; check your bookstore).

Blackwood, however, writes in a style that provided noticeable pleasure to read. His words evoke both the beauty of the virgin wilderness and its intimidating expanse and uncaringness. We are made to feel small in the vast apathy of the universe. Judging by Lovecraft’s writings from about the same time, that feeling is par for the course in the genre.

To say much more is to intrude upon the story itself, to ask you to think more about the story than to experience it. That would be a shame.

Instead, I’ll simply state that I think it’s worth reading, especially since you can likely get it on Kindle for free. It takes an hour to an-hour-and-a-half to make the journey; I don’t think you’ll find it time wasted.