Half an hour into their trek home, Patreak sensed the old husky had stopped, and he turned to look for him. A few yards back, Sorkay stood transfixed; ears back, tail down, a low whimper coming from somewhere deep within.
“What is it, boy? What do you see?”
Sorkay’s nose twitched while he slowly backed up, keeping his snout to the wind. Patreak followed the dog’s gaze. There, only yards from where they stood, was a four-legged figure, easily twice the size of Sorkay. It blended so well into the whiteness of the descending snow that he wasn’t sure if it was a wolf or a polar bear. One thing was obvious: Sorkay didn’t want any part of it. The dog had already lowered himself to the ground and burrowed into a drift.
Patreak turned toward the apparition and thought he saw it move, but then it vanished so quickly he wasn’t sure it had been there at all. But Sorkay knew.
After staring into the void, squinting past flakes the size of his gloved fist, Patreak wondered if the presence they felt could be what the Inuit call Saupa Anernerk, the White Ghost. Apprehensive, but determined to keep moving, he urged the dog to get up. “Okay, boy, come on, it’s getting cold and we have a long way to go before we reach Nungak.”
Sorkay whimpered in dismay but stood up when his master approached. He ambled toward the young man, nudged his leg, and then tentatively walked ahead a few paces, turning briefly to make sure his companion was following.
Patreak yanked his backpack higher onto his shoulders, pulled his fur hat down to cover his ears, and shoved off. The rapidly accumulating snow, almost knee-high, was wet and heavy, making trudging onward as tough as he could ever remember. Trying to keep up with the powerful sled dog, he leaned into each step and focused on the paw prints in front of him and the course the Husky was taking.
From time to time, another set of tracks mysteriously appeared alongside Sorkay’s and then would vanish, only to reappear a few hundred yards later. They were as big as a polar bear, but not the same shape. In fact, they were like nothing Patreak had ever seen before.
Uneasy at possibly being in the company of a predatory animal, Patreak knew they had to keep moving because the village would be a safe haven from the cold, the snow, and whatever else they might be sharing the night with.
The two companions crossed the frozen lake and the encircling hills. They fell into a rhythm, with Sorkay plowing through the mounds of snow and Patreak high stepping to keep his snowshoes from post-holing, making their way toward the tiny town at the edge of the mountains a few miles away.
Patreak stopped when the snow abated and a patch of sky and stars appeared overhead. He reached into his pocket for the compass. It was never easy to get an accurate reading this far north, but he looked at it anyway. The dial trembled between W/NW, and he nodded, knowing they were at least heading in the right direction. If he could gain some higher ground, he might see the lights of Nungak, providing the snow let up long enough.
He returned the compass to his pocket and glanced around for the dog, but there was no sign of him.
Whenever they were out walking, the husky would often run ahead and disappear for an hour or more, but would always come trotting back. Patreak called out, shrugged, and pushed on, expecting the dog to sidle up alongside him at any moment.
After twenty minutes and a few more shouts into the darkness, the snow began to fall as heavily as he had ever seen. Patreak became concerned over Sorkay’s whereabouts and that he himself might lose his sense of direction or become disoriented.
He listened for a few seconds, then knelt and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Sorkay! Sorkay!” He tried to whistle, but it got lost in the wind. “Damn it. Where are you, pup?”
A low, grumbling sound made Patreak swing around. Startled and a little frightened, he called yet again, “Sorkay? Here, boy!”
He waited, listening for the dog, trying to determine where the noise had come from, thinking it might be the wind, but then he heard the sound again. This time it was longer and seemed closer, and it wasn’t like any animal sound he knew. Heart racing, he grabbed the halogen headlamp strapped around his hat, held it away from his body, and started a sweep of the surrounding area. But the snow was too heavy, and the shaft of light only magnified the blizzard’s intensity, like high beams in a whiteout when the flakes head straight at the windshield.
When the two had started, the temperature was ten degrees above, but Patreak sensed it had already dropped to minus fifteen or twenty. Worried about Sorkay and clammy from anxiety, he felt chilled and was uneasy about being so far from a fire to warm him.
He removed the neck gaiter from his backpack and pulled it over his head, adjusting it to cover his mouth and nose. Snow on his lashes began to freeze, and his toes were starting to numb.
Patreak sighed heavily, looked around one more time, and then kicked up one snowshoe. As he stepped forward and started walking, the compass slipped from his pocket and was quickly buried in the snow below his feet.
While he walked, he thought of Sorkay and recalled how ten years before, Ugalik, the owner of the trading post, had given him the runt of the litter from his sled team’s Alpha. The old Inupiat had said Sorkay was too tiny and timid to be a sled dog and let Patreak take it. Patreak was happy and scooped up the puppy, stuffing it into his coat so only its nose poked out. From that point on, the two were inseparable. As Sorkay grew into adulthood, he could hold his own against any creature. Once he even stood his ground against a Kodiak bear, they had come across in the forest; growling, snarling, and barking wildly, he sent the beast hunkering off into the woods.
Patreak smiled at the memory and felt comforted that the dog would be okay this night, no matter what was out there.
The thump-slap, thump-slap of snowshoes moving through the drifts was the only noise Patreak could hear as he trudged onward. A large, dark shape emerged about ten yards ahead. He approached cautiously, trying to determine if it was a tree stump or something else. As he got closer, the shape materialized into the carcass of a freshly killed caribou. Blood stained the snow around the animal; its throat had been ripped open, and the belly eviscerated. There was no sign of struggle, and there were no tracks in the snow surrounding the carnage. No Eskimo would do this, he thought. They would never leave behind a dead animal like this or have torn open its throat. Patreak was cold, tired, and troubled by the way the caribou was killed. Frightened for himself and his companion, he screamed, “SORKAY!”
As suddenly as the snow had started, it ceased. A swath of night sky, with a few pinpoints of light flickering in its void, appeared on the horizon and silhouetted the ridge a short distance away.
Patreak pulled the gaiter away from his face and sucked a long, deep breath into his aching chest and headed for the knoll.
Reaching the crest and panting deeply, the frigid air seared his lungs and pinched his nostrils shut. Patreak fished in his pocket for the compass to take another reading. His stomach churned when he realized it was gone.
Scanning the distance, he thought he saw the lights of Nungak, but they were blinking stars. He dropped to the snow, pulled his knees up to his chest, and pressed his chin against his parka. Hugging himself for warmth, he wondered if he should dig a snow cave and crawl inside until daybreak. The aurora borealis reflected light on the snow around him, turning it a blue-green color, and it was then that he saw the paw prints. He tracked them for a few yards, thinking they might belong to the husky. The prints headed down the hill, then abruptly turned back, traversed the summit, and stopped at a deep, crater-like depression that looked as if something had fallen into it from above.
Perhaps an animal had been there, lay down, and then left, but there weren’t any tracks leading away from the site. He checked around and then forged ahead, hoping he’d find the husky and reach town within the next hour. Finally, dim shapes in the distance revealed themselves to be Nungak, and he moved as fast as he could to get to the safety of the village.
Most of the modest modulars and trailers that made up the town were dark, but a pale-yellow light shone through the frosty windows of the combined saloon, post office, and meeting hall. Only two men were inside. Koder stood by a pellet stove dressed in his Carhartt overalls, his backside almost touching the cast-iron housing. Bonard, a scraggily, ruddy-faced man of indeterminate age, tilted back on a chair’s hind legs with his legs sprawled out in front of him, one hand grasping a bottle of Canadian Whisky. When Patreak swung the door open, the chair legs hit the floor with a thud.
“Jeezus Christmas, Patreak, you scared the hell outta me!”
Words tumbled from Patreak’s mouth, “Bonard, have you seen Sorkay?”
The man moved his head from side to side, “Hell no! Ain’t been outside since this morning. What’d he do run off again?”
The other fellow stepped away from the heater so Patreak could get to it and asked, “You look like you seen a ghost. What happened?”
Patreak removed his gloves and stumbled toward the stove, placed his curled fingers and bluish hands against the stove pipe and muttered, “I just maybe did. Y’know the White Ghost the Inuit are always talkin’ about? I think it’s out there. I mean…”
Koder glanced at Bonard and then back at Patreak. “Yeah, well,” he said, “I don’t believe that crap. Them eskee-moze are too superstitious. Ain’t no such thing as a whi-i-i-i-i-te ghost.” He stretched the word out and wiggled his fingers. “Ooooo, spooky.”
Patreak shook his head. “Believe what you want but I just saw a lot of things I never saw before … and so did … Sorkay.”
Bonard tilted the chair backward again. “Like what? What kinda things?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Patreak. “I need your help finding my dog.”
“Jeezus, Patreak,” exclaimed Bonard, “it’s thirty below out there. Don’t your dog always come home anyway?”
Koder stood, took a rifle from behind the bar and hesitantly put on his parka. Bonard shook his head, shrugged and grabbed his coat, “Ah, what the hell, let’s just go. I gotta see this here white ghost thing. That is if it really exists.”
They stomped across the plank floor, went outside, and mounted Skidoos. Patreak sat behind Bonard and explained what had happened and which way to head. With engines roaring and headlights illuminating their way, the three of them sped off to look for Sorkay and … the white ghost.
They had covered a lot of ground in a few minutes when Patreak told Bonard to stop. Koder pulled up alongside and cut his engine. They scanned the vastness and listened for any sounds. At first, only their breathing could be heard. Patreak got off the snow machine and took a few steps into the darkness and waited.
Koder shouted excitedly, “Hey! Look at this!”
He was pointing at dozens of deep indentations in the snow.
“What do you think these are? I ain’t never seen no paw prints like that.”
Patreak knelt to look at them.
“Those are like the ones I saw on the other side of the ridge.”
He moved around looking for more evidence. “See what I mean. They stop. They disappear like something dropped from the sky, walked around a bit, and then vanished.”
Bonard held up his hand. “Hold it…did you hear that?”
They fell silent. From a distance came faint growling, then a snarl, and finally an angry barrage of loud barking.
“That’s Sorkay!” cried Patreak. “I know that sound. He sees somethin’. C’mon!”
They raced toward the noise until they spotted two large figures grappling in upright positions. Patreak pointed a searchlight in the direction of the commotion.
“Bears!” shouted Koder, raising the rifle, but Bonard pushed the weapon downward. “Hold on, them ain’t no bears—one of ‘ems a wolf. I don’t know what the hell that other thing is.
Patreak strained to see in the darkness. “Fire a warning shot,” he said.
Koder pointed the rifle high above the brawling figures. There was a flash from the muzzle, followed by a delayed cracking sound that echoed into the night. Then it was silent. A minute later, Sorkay trotted toward them, no other creature in sight.
Patreak ran toward the dog and fell backward as they barreled into each other. The husky licked his companion’s face while they rolled around like children in the snow.
Koder and Bonard tramped over to where the clash had been and searched for evidence of a second animal, but only one set of prints was to be found and nothing to suggest a battle had taken place.
Koder rubbed at his chin, holding the rifle in the other hand.
“I coulda swored there were two of ‘em. I know I saw two of ‘em.” Bonard said nothing; he just stared at the spot in disbelief, then looked up to the night sky and shook his head.
Patreak examined Sorkay for bruises or signs of a struggle, saw nothing, and patted him loudly on the flank, “C’mon, boy, let’s go home.”
In Memoriam
Stew Mosberg
January 7, 2019
Arts Perspective honors the memory of our longtime contributor and colleague, Stew Mosberg — a gifted writer, editor, and arts advocate whose insight and passion helped shape the cultural voice of our region.
A freelance writer and former arts publisher, Stew brought a lifetime of experience to his work. He authored two books on design, taught at Parsons School of Design in New York, and wrote widely about the creative life in Southwest Colorado and beyond. His thoughtful storytelling and dedication to elevating the arts community left a lasting mark on readers and fellow writers alike.
Stew’s legacy continues to inspire those who value curiosity, creativity, and the written word.
