The Hunger(97)

But she didn’t find anything to eat. She found instead, beneath a pile of sticks—as if intentionally hidden—a stack of papers tied together with a thin strip of leather. She knew she should hurry, should leave, but a horrible feeling of suspicion rooted her to the spot. It was dim inside the cabin with the sun setting outside, but she squinted, her hands trembling as she lifted the papers and saw what they were. Letters.

Letter after letter after letter, all of them from Edwin Bryant, addressed to Charles Stanton. How long had they been hidden? Her eyes were bleary in the darkness and she feared that she might be hallucinating all of this, but something compelled her to open them, one by one.

They began as urgent warnings about the hazards of the trail—turn around, avoid the Hastings Cutoff—and then became more rambling, describing rumors of spirits and creatures that fed on human flesh.

Tamsen shivered. Bryant knew. He knew about them.

The truth sent a shock through her fingertips—it was just as Tamsen herself had suspected, but seeing it written out felt like a new weight had fallen inside her stomach.

She read on. In his later letters, he referred to the creatures as diseased men. He talked about a kind of contagion.

She thought back on everything that had happened. Halloran had been acting funny ever since his dog bit Keseberg. Had even Halloran caught the disease, that early on the trail?

Keseberg.

Lewis Keseberg knew, too.

He’d kept the letters, hidden them from the others.

But why? She’d never liked Keseberg, knew he wasn’t trustworthy—but what could he possibly stand to gain from keeping the truth about this disease from the rest of the group?

It was then that she heard the creak in the old wooden door, and swiveled around.

She gasped, dropping the letters, and nearly fell backward against the wall. Keseberg stood in the doorway. She’d thought that after weeks stranded at Alder Creek, she would be overjoyed to see another person, anyone from the wagon party again, even Peggy Breen. Anyone but him.

The last of the evening’s light fell on his shoulders, and from where Tamsen was crouched in the corner of the cabin, he seemed even bigger than she had remembered.

In his hand was an ax. He’d been chopping wood somewhere, then—for the fires, maybe. Maybe the others were still alive. Maybe, maybe . . . Her pulse raced and her mind refused to form a clear thought.

“Well, well, Mrs. Donner. You came back,” he said, with a smile.

She scrabbled away until her back was up against the far wall, but she was still only a few feet from him in the small space.

“I suppose you know my secret, then,” he said, with a nod toward the letters. “Suppose it was sentimental but I couldn’t bring myself to burn ’em. Didn’t know how long I’d be able to keep those safe from prying eyes, but attacks from wild, bloodthirsty creatures do tend to distract a crowd.”

Her stomach twisted and she fought the urge to retch.

“What—what have you done to the others?” she demanded. “Where are they?”

Keseberg sighed. “Your girls are all right. You know I like the pretty ones.”

She was tempted to dive at him, scratch his face, but was too afraid.

“The Breens,” he went on, listing methodically. “A few of the kids and both parents. Doris. There’re a handful of us yet, near forty.”

“But the camp is so quiet.”

“They know to keep inside. It’s what we agreed. To keep ’em safe.”

“To keep them safe,” she repeated dumbly. From the creatures, of course. That’s what he meant.

Cautious relief began to course through her—they were alive. He’d said they were alive. Keseberg was a liar and a cheat—but why would he lie about that?

They were just around the bend in the lake. So close by. She could holler and they would hear. In a moment, her girls would be in her arms again.

“So you—you’ve kept away the awful . . . things,” she said cautiously. “How?”

“Fires,” he said. “I was just about to start up tonight’s.”

She nodded slowly, and began to stand. “I ought to be seeing the girls, then.”

She tried to slip past him, pushing back out into the brisk cold, where moonlight now hit the snow and sent up a faint blue glow from every surface.

She was about to use the last of her energy to dash the few hundred yards toward the other huts, when something—she couldn’t say what, but it was a kind of knowing, deep in her bones—made her turn around again.

Keseberg was still standing there, watching her. She looked at his face, really looked at him in the moonlight. There was that leering quality that had always unnerved her but something else in his expression, too, that she couldn’t quite name. She might have said it was loneliness. That was when she understood what was bothering her: He didn’t look hungry. He didn’t look as if he’d lost weight, as if he’d suffered much at all.

Then she glanced down again at the ax. Its blade was covered in blood.

“I—I . . .” She backed away.

But his voice came out calmly across the cold air. “Tamsen, wait.”

She turned and tried to run, pushed through a low scrub of trees, but then tripped on something and fell to her knees. It was a large, heavy stick strewn in the snow.