Maeve looked sideways at Dr. Stiles as he tossed the broken dreamcatcher to the floor. She hated his arrogance. She knelt and picked up the discarded pieces of wood and cotton. In the center, now a tangled mess of string, was a polished piece of snowflake obsidian. Balancing the dreamcatcher on her clipboard, Maeve untangled the stone and put it in her pocket. She looked back at Caleb’s cell door, maybe she could at least slip him the stone later, after Dr. Stiles left. Caleb had told her that the stone helped stop the nightmares too. Maeve had worked closely with Dr. Blevins and Caleb for at least the last year and a half. She, like Dr. Blevins, was beginning to believe there was something more than lunatic raving to Caleb’s wild tales. Now she just wished Dr. Blevins hadn’t left her.

As she ran one of the soft feathers that had dangled from the bottom of the dreamcatcher through her fingers her skin grew ice cold. Maeve shivered as she looked up to see Dr. Stiles sprinting down the hallway. Confused, she opened her mouth to call after him, but screams behind her stole her voice. Maeve dropped her clipboard, and clutching the ruined dreamcatcher, turned to see the two husky orderlies pinned against the wall. A pale misty form, like fluid, viscous frost surrounded them. Maeve watched and backed away in horror as the two men began to shiver, trying to scream through frozen lips. Frozen beads of sweat from their fight with Caleb glistened on the orderlies’ heads. As the pale form caressed them, their skin turned transparent. Maeve could see their blood darken and freeze. The pale shape began to solidify, a wrinkled, white hand reached out from the fluid frost, grabbed one orderly’s fingers, and snapped it off. Maeve stared at the sparkling, icy ghost hand as it brought the finger up to wet, sharp teeth, and she ran.

Still clutching the dreamcatcher, her heart racing, Maeve pounded on Dr. Stiles door.

“Let me in you ****! You better let me in! I know what that is out there and you don’t stand a chance without me,” Maeve waited. The door swung open and Dr. Stiles pulled her inside, bolting the door behind her. He grabbed the demolished dreamcatcher from her hands and sat down at his desk. Screams echoed from beyond the door.

“What is that?” He asked, his head down as he attempted to piece together the splintered wood of the dreamcatcher’s frame.

“It’s a Wendigo.”

“Is that what he told you?” Dr. Stiles began wrapping Scotch tape around the rejoined seems of the dreamcatcher.

“Yes, Caleb told me he sees it in his dreams. The Wendigo, the ice man. In Ojibwa oral histories it is a cannibalistic monster. It is supposed to be avarice personified and when you kill it, you’ll see the body of the greedy person it possessed.” Maeve was standing by the door, listening to the sobs and screeching of people running past.

“Well, how do we stop it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Dr. Stiles threw the mangled dreamcatcher in the trash and leapt at her. He grabbed her arm, digging his fingernails into her skin.

“You said you did,” Dr. Stiles hissed.