The Hunger(48)

Funny how dearly we hold on to some truths about ourselves, the power these truths have over us. I told you a little bit about my upbringing. My father was a backwoods preacher in Tennessee. Some would consider him a revivalist, same as the men I exposed in those articles I wrote. But unlike frauds like Uriah Putney, my father made no attempt to deceive. He tried to preach and minister as best he could with his limited education. There was no tolerance in him, no forgiveness. He saw himself as a man of God, but his God was judgmental, fierce-tempered, demanding. And naturally, he modeled himself after his God.

As you can imagine, my childhood was hellish. It was a stifling atmosphere for a curious boy. My father allowed no questioning of faith or his interpretation of that faith. He allowed no questioning, period. I decided at an early age that I would not follow in his mold but would learn to question everything.

I resolved to become a man of science, and there is no greater science of our time than medicine. I apprenticed with a local doctor, Walton Gow. He may have come from the mountains of Tennessee (and would later take me with him to Kentucky), but Dr. Gow was no backwoods sawbones. Walton was highly respected for his skill and thoughtful approach to medicine. His powers of observation were remarkable. He developed a reputation for being able to save the lives of patients in the most dire of situations, but most know him as the man who saved Davy Crockett by removing Crockett’s burst appendix when he was in the Tennessee legislature. Walton was a young man at the time and just happened to be one of the few surgeons in the territory.

Being a nurse, dear Margie, you understand that a doctor sees things that make him question what he thought he knew about the world. This happened to me and to Walton Gow one night not long after we’d moved to Kentucky.

I never told you the story, fearing you would think me mad. But in order to understand, you must know the truth.

We were making rounds in a very remote region when we heard of a curious case in Smithboro. We were asked to attend a local man who had been attacked. The curious thing was that his wounds didn’t look quite as though they were made by an animal. He told us he wasn’t sure what had attacked him, but there was something about his story that rang false. After Dr. Gow insisted we needed the truth in order to help him, the man told us that he had been attacked by a demon that lived in the woods surrounding Smithboro. This demon was known to the locals, but for obvious reasons they were reluctant to discuss it with outsiders. The demon, he explained, had once been a man, but he underwent a strange transformation—no one could say why—and suddenly began living in the woods like an animal. He attacked his neighbors’ livestock to survive, killing sheep and goats and dragging their carcasses into the woods.

We thought the townspeople were suffering from a kind of collective insanity. They were adamant that the story was true. And the man’s wounds did look odd, too vicious to attribute to a human!

Gow and I refused to believe their tales, of course. But person after person came forward to tell us of a sighting, an encounter. They told stories of Indians they called skinwalkers who had the power to change into animals, usually for nefarious purposes.

It is commonly accepted that mythologies around the world, in all cultures, often contain narrative elements that derive from a desire to explain unusual natural or medical phenomena, and after a while, Gow and I couldn’t help but wonder if such a notion might be at work here. If so, it meant that this disease, if it was one, had affected people in a variety of locations and at different times throughout history, appearing in various waves or epidemics.

I became obsessed with this bizarre case. It was partly the reason I gave up medicine and decided to become a reporter instead. Writing for newspapers, I was free to travel widely and ask questions. Walton didn’t understand why I couldn’t live with this unsolved mystery, and yet in his most recent letter to me he has finally admitted to feeling haunted by it, too.

Here and there, I came across other stories of people attacked by wolves who appeared to recover but then became strangely violent. There was even one stupefying case where a family in Ireland was suspected of having been transformed into creatures much like the old European tales of werewolves, except for one member, a young girl. The rest of her family had disappeared like the man from Smithboro, but she remained and, mystifyingly, showed no sign of the affliction. Is it possible for certain individuals to be able to resist a particular disease and, if so, how to account for it?

What I have seen and heard seemed to overlap with various Indian beliefs and legends and this was the purpose of my Western journey: to meet with the tribes in question and speak with them directly. Not to learn their mythologies, exactly, but to try to discover whether some of them share common roots in actual medical histories.

But as I write these words, lost in the wilderness, I am forced to question what good will come out of my endeavors. I thought I was chasing the truth and knowledge; I fear now that maybe all I have done is throw my life away.

Dearest Margie, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for the foolish choice I have made. I can only hope that God smiles on my quest and will keep me alive. With his help, I will return to your side.

I remain your loving

Edwin





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE





Who knew that Eden could be found in the foothills below Pilot Peak? After crossing that godforsaken salt desert, the dry, cracked-brown patch of land looked like the most beautiful place Reed had ever seen.