Free Black Fly Season by Giles Blunt

he found the trail that ran beside Nishinabe Creek. Winter had been particularly snowy this year, with blizzards into March, and snowfalls to the end of April. In a normal summer, you could almost jump across the creek, but now it was bursting its banks with runoff.
    Cardinal hurried up the trail, toward the pool he knew was at the next ridge. The ‘island’ (little more than an outcropping of rock, really) where he was to meet Delorme wasn’t far above that. There was a faint hiss in the air. As he approached the ridge, the hissing grew louder, until it sounded like radio static. The falls. He had forgotten about Nishinabe Falls. Cardinal stopped.
    Most years, Nishinabe Creek is too small to boast anything resembling a falls. The pool is fed by a trickle of water - about what you’d get from your eaves-troughs in a summer storm. But this year the heavy snows had turned it into a glassy curtain of water that tumbled over the rocks and hid the cave-like recession behind it. Cardinal gripped his collar round his neck, staring.
    Had the hiss of static reminded Red of this rushing falls? Of something that had frightened her up here? The water foamed and frothed at Cardinal’s feet. Further out in the pool it was black as onyx. A fly gouged his scalp, and he swatted at it, hurting his ear. He badly wanted to rush uphill, find Delorme, and flee these miniature vampires, but he was stopped by the
     
    sense that Red had been here, perhaps in search of something. Perhaps against her will.
    When he had been up here on a hike a couple of years back, Cardinal had crossed the creek stone by stone, but now the stones were submerged in froth. Luckily, beavers had been busy nearby and there was a birch tree sprawled across the water. Cardinal stepped on to the trunk, and it crumbled under his foot. It was stronger higher up. When he had a good footing, he edged his way out across the water. A fly bit into his neck and he cuffed at it, nearly toppling.
    As soon as he was near enough, he leaped to solid ground and went after the flies in a fury, slapping his neck, the side of his face, the crown of his head. Anger and frustration were aggravated by the consciousness of looking ridiculous, even though there was no one to see. He climbed a series of boulders and then he was at the edge of the pool with the falls before him. He stepped under the overhang and right away he could smell the sickly odour of rotting meat.
    Cardinal edged between a rock and the falling water. He stopped again and listened. The black flies had abandoned him now, driven back by the spray. Something else had Cardinal’s attention.The granite face of the wall behind him was defaced, not with the usual graffiti, but with long columns of hieroglyphics. They looked ancient, but Cardinal knew they had not been there two years ago.
    There were pictographs of arrows three or four
     
    inches long that intersected each other in weird patterns. Others were heaped in bunches with one longer arrow extruding, as if indicating a direction. Along the edges of the rock, there were drawings of the moon in various stages - full, half, three-quarter, new - and everywhere there were numbers, inscribed in coloured chalk.
    Cardinal moved away from the rock face and stepped around a sharp corner of granite. The smell on the other side was nauseating. He pulled out his shirttail and covered his mouth and nose.
    The thing on the floor of the cave had once been human but there was nothing lifelike about it now. The body was naked, male, with muscular arms and legs. All that working out hadn’t come to much, though: a pale heap of flesh in a dark, cold cave. However this human being had lived, his death had been savage. The hands and feet were missing, as was the head. Maggots heaved on the major wounds, giving the appearance of movement.
    There was a noise, and Cardinal whirled around.
    Delorme was staring at the body from behind the corner of granite.
    ‘I don’t know about you,’ she