Hunger

by Natalie Huber Rodriguez

 

They say there are very few things in life that you don’t get used to over time.  Take pain for example, be it a pain of the body or a pain of the heart.  No matter how much it hurts, if you live with it long enough and learn to carry it with you as you march on through life, over time, the sting becomes less and less potent until eventually, you hardly feel it at all.  Not that it’s no longer there, of course, but more like you’ve become numb to it in a way, so that it no longer has the power over you that it once did.  Having been through more than my fair share of pain in life, both of the body and heart, I can confirm this to be true.  Hunger, on the other hand, now that’s something entirely different.

No matter how long you live with the feeling of hunger, of utter emptiness constantly gnawing at your belly, it never gets any easier.  I should know, as I’ve spent the majority of my thirty years on this earth hungry, and as each year passed, and I felt myself growing older, I found that the pain of hunger never grows weaker or number, but rather, only grows stronger.  I was born in the slums of Glasgow, where all people are born hungry and die the same way.  From the moment that babes cry out to the world for the very first time to the last breath that they draw as bent, frail old men, the hunger is always there; sharp and raw as ever.  Both of my parents died this way, as did my brother and two sisters, and two of my sister’s children.  In Glasgow, hunger was just a fact of life that we all had to live with until it eventually got the better of us.

I, however, decided that I didn’t want to reside myself to this fate, which is why I left the gritty, gray streets of the starving city as soon as I could.  I’d heard that in the New World, no one was hungry.  There was more than enough food and wealth to go around, and even the poorest man could live like a king in a matter of weeks if he only had the nerve to make the journey across the sea to the newfound land of riches and opportunity.  And so, after years of working my hands to the bone on the docks of the Glasgow Harbour, living on nothing but scraps of rotting fish, I jumped the first ship bound for the New World, determined to never be hungry again.  No, I would die a fat, wealthy man, with both my pockets and my belly full.

As a bright-eyed, twenty-year-old young rogue, I finally set foot in the land called New France.  Apparently, the Frenchies had set up a pretty lucrative business in the fur trade, based out of an area called Hudson Bay.  That was where the money was; just one beaver pelt could buy your bread and meat for a week.  I’d done a bit of trapping and hunting in the surrounding countryside of Glasgow when I was a lad, mostly rabbits and the like.  I figured trapping beavers couldn’t be that much different.  Little did I know how wrong I was. 

Even after an entire month with the Hudson Bay Company, I hadn’t managed to catch so much as a rat let alone a beaver.  I was just as poor as I’d been when I left Scotland and just as hungry, not to mention freezing thanks to the wind that blew off the bay and made the winters colder than a witch’s tit.  I suppose that’s what led my pathetic arse to a Cree Indian village after yet another long, fruitless day of attempted fur-trapping, looking for something hot to eat and a fire to warm my frigid bones by for a bit.  Naturally, I didn’t have any furs to trade, but I did have an old copper pot that I used to boil water, and from what I knew, Indians were willing to trade a lot for copper pots and pans from us folk.  The dented old pot that I offered was enough to get me a hot meal, the first I’d had in God knows how long.  Thankfully, it seemed the chief of this particular village had learned a fair amount of English and was able to make a bit of small talk with me as I sat and ate eagerly by the fire.

“You’re a fur trapper,” he repeated questioningly after I’d told him I worked for Hudson Bay.  “Then why do you have no pelts to trade?”

“I’ve been having trouble tracking beavers, especially when the snow gets thick,” I replied, embarrassed.  The Indian chief nodded.

“Beaver are clever,” he said as an adolescent girl with long black braids then came over and held out a bowl of berries to me.  “My daughter, Wawetseka,” the chief said as he gestured towards the girl.  I nodded my thanks.  “’Beautiful woman’ in your tongue,” he went on to explain, and I realized this was the meaning of the girl’s name.

“Very beautiful, aye,” I agreed, giving the girl a small smile as she shyly turned her face away from me.

“You have a wife?” the chief then asked, catching me off guard.

“No,” I replied.  “Not yet anyway.”  At this point, the chief turned to an older woman sitting next to him, who I assumed had to be his wife, and exchanged a few words with her in his own language.  As they spoke, I noticed their daughter suddenly turn her face towards me once again, eyes wide.  At last, the chief turned back to me just as I was finishing my meal.

“You take my daughter for your wife,” he then said plainly, causing me to nearly choke on my last bite of food.  “She cooks well and will bare you many children.”

“That’s a very generous offer,” I managed to say once I’d finally found my voice.  “But – “

“She will also show you where beaver are,” the chief then continued.  “And when you catch them, you give half your pelts to the white men and half to me.”  This, I had to admit, was a tempting offer.  If anyone could help me trap beaver, it would be one of the Indians who lived alongside them.  They knew the land and the habits of the creatures.  I hadn’t really thought much about marriage up until that point, but it seemed that an Indian wife would do me a lot of good.  Not to mention, she was, as her name suggested, quite beautiful.  So, I took the chief up on his offer, married his daughter, and agreed to give half of the pelts I acquired to him and his people.

Taking Wawetseka as my wife turned out to be even more beneficial that I’d initially thought.  Not only did she know exactly where to find the beaver, but she also knew how to track other game animals for me to hunt as well as where to find edible roots, nuts, seeds, and berries, even in the dead of winter.  She also seemed to know every track of the land like the back of her hand.  She knew where all the important Indian villages and trading posts were, and even managed to help me scout out a few French settlements to sell some of my extra pelts in.  She also proved to be rather clever in other ways in that she learned English from me relatively quickly, and even picked up a little French from the other fur traders we dealt with.

Within a few years, I’d managed to establish myself as a successful fur trapper for Hudson Bay.  With my earnings, I had purchased myself a small plot of land up in the mountains that Wawetseka had cited as prime beaver territory.  We built a modest, but comfortable cabin and had four children together, and I soon began teaching my eldest son, James, about the fur trapping trade.  Thankfully, unlike me, my children didn’t have to go to bed hungry as I had so many nights during my youth.  But then, during the winter of my tenth year in the New World, that all changed.

It all started with the early frost that came that autumn.  Wawetseka had noted that this was a sign that the coming winter would be a long and cold one, even more so than the ones we’d already managed to weather.  I admit, I wasn’t too concerned at first, until the beaver began disappearing.  Eventually, it got to the point where I could no longer maintain my quota of pelts for the Hudson Bay company, let alone provide pelts to my wife’s father, no matter how desperately I searched or how many trapping methods I employed.  It wasn’t long before my contract, along with those of many other fur trappers like myself who had fallen on hard times due to the unusually hard winter, was terminated. 

We had some rations stored up for occasions such as this, and my wife knew how to seek out other sources of food that could survive the harsh weather, such as nuts and several types of berries.  She was also good at making a pemmican; a mixture of tallow, dried meat, and berries that the Indians used as a nutritious and durable food source during hard times.  This allowed us to hold out for several weeks without issue.  But as game remained scarce and with so many mouths to feed, including my newborn daughter, Abigail, it wasn’t long before our emergency supplies began to dwindle as well.  I had hoped that, as long as we could make it through the worst of winter, things would improve once the spring thaw set in, which typically begun around the end of February.  By late March of that year, however, the temperatures remained low and the snow continued to fall with no sign of breaking anytime soon.

We continued rationing as best as we could, but each day, the portions grew smaller and more meager, which did not go unnoticed by our children, especially the twins, William, “Billy,” and Mary.  I would do my best to supplement what little we still had by continuing to go out hunting each day, but often with little luck.  Within about half a year, I went from trapping beaver by the dozen to considering myself lucky if I managed to catch a rabbit or squirrel for my family’s supper.  I couldn’t help but feel a newfound empathy for poor, unfortunate Job as it was almost biblical how dramatically and quickly our fortune had managed to change, and on the night that my wife was unable to produce milk from her breasts to quell the hungry wailing of our infant child, I knew our situation was truly dire.

“We have to leave this place,” I said to Wawetseka late one night after she had finally managed to calm our hungry children’s cries with a bit of water and pemmican scraps to chew on.  “On the next clear day, we’ll head south.  Much of the game must have migrated in that direction to seek out warmer climates.”

“No game in the south…” Wawetseka said somberly in the dim candlelight next to me.  “No game anywhere.”

“Then I’ll find work in one of the settlements,” I replied with slight frustration.  “Either way, it’ll be better for us there than here.”  My wife was quiet for a moment.

“Road to the south will be long and dangerous.  Hard for the children,” she lamented at last.

“Well what else are we supposed to do?!  Stay here in the and starve to death?!” I then snapped, feeling that old, familiar ache of hunger begin to burn its way from my stomach upwards.  Wawetseka then gasped, but not in response to me.  No, her face turned to the window beside our bed, and when I tried to question her, she immediately put up a hand to silence me.

“Listen…” she said in a barely audible whisper.  I did as she said, and it was then that I heard it.  It was faint, but clear, carrying across the cold stillness of the night air.  A low, guttural howl of sorts, unlike any I’d ever heard before.  We listened in silence for a moment until there was a pause in the sound.  I attempted to speak again, but again, my wife silenced me with her hand.  Sure enough, the sound came again, slightly louder this time, as if whatever was making it had moved significantly closer.

“Wolves,” I said, quickly reaching for the rifle at my bedside.

“Not wolves,” Wawetseka whispered immediately with a stricken expression of utter horror on her face.  “Wendigo…”

“What?” I asked with confusion as I loaded my rifle.

“Wendigo!” she repeated in a frantic trembling voice, but before I could question her further, she immediately bowed her head and began muttering a string of incomprehensible words in her native tongue, increasing the volume and altering the cadence of her voice as the bizarre sound came yet again.  Realizing I didn’t have time to ask questions, I immediately shot up from the bed and headed outside into the frigid night in nothing but my underclothes. 

“Oi!” I shouted into the frozen darkness, hoping to scare off whatever was frightening my wife so.  My voice was met with silence, and after a few seconds, I thought perhaps the culprit had gotten the message, when suddenly, it came again, louder than ever, and this time, it sounded less like a howl and more like something between a scream and roar.  Wawetseka was right; whatever it was certainly was not a wolf, nor a bear, nor any other animal in these mountains that I was familiar with.  It was a sound so bizarre and otherworldly than I found myself frozen in place as deep shudder ran its way down my spine, as if the unearthly shriek was rattling its way through my very bones.  Not only that, but the sound seemed to be coming from all around me in the darkness as opposed to just from one particular direction.  It was only when I heard a small yelp of fright from one of my children within the cabin that I regained control of my senses and immediately fired three rounds from my rifle into the darkness.

In response, I heard several more shrieks of fright and surprise from my wife and children inside our home, but I managed to ignore them and, instead, listened carefully for the bizarre noise again.  Thankfully, I didn’t hear it; it seemed my shots had, thankfully, managed to scare off whatever it was.  Upon coming back inside, I found Wawetseka fearfully huddled with our children in the corner of the room, hushing them in her own strange tongue.

“It’s alright,” I said. “It’s gone now.  Everyone back to bed.”  Still holding baby Abby in her arms, my wife cautiously got up and ushered James, Billy, and Mary back to bed.  After returning to our bedroom and putting the baby in her cradle, she agreed that we should leave as soon as possible.  It seemed that the whole experience had spooked her enough to agree to my proposed plan, which was just fine by me.  And so, after packing up what little we still had, we left three days later and began the long trek down from the snowy mountains.

As Wawetseka had predicted, the journey was a difficult one.  Even if we hadn’t all been as hungry as we were, the descent down the steep, frozen terrain was treacherous and exhausting, especially for the children.  My wife carried the baby in a sling on her back and James did his best to help his younger brother and sister along, but we hadn’t gone but a few miles before all three were complaining of fatigue and hunger.  I allowed them to stop and rest and rationed out a few bits of pemmican and squirrel jerky that we’d packed for the road, but as I looked at their sunken cheeks and large, hungry eyes, I knew that we had to get to the nearest town in the south as quickly as possible.  When the sun finally began to set, we stopped and made camp for the night. 

As we all huddled, shivering, around the fire, Wawetseka did her best to hush our fussing babe once again.  Thankfully, this time, she’d managed to nurse the child a bit while the older three looked on with longing and envy if their eyes as their younger sister fed contentedly for a few, precious moments.  My own hunger was beginning to get the better of me as well.  Up until that point, I had done my best to ignore it for the sake of my family, even forfeiting much of my share of our limited food so that they might have just a little bit more.  While earlier, I had been somewhat distracted from the pain of my hunger during the first leg of our trek down the mountains, I now felt it flare up and throb within me once more as I sat idle by the fire.

“Don’t worry,” I suddenly said to my family, attempting to reassure both them and myself.  “We’ll reach the first town in a few days.  There’ll be plenty to eat there.”  No one responded, at least not until several minutes later when my daughter Mary spoke up.

“Papa,” she asked.  “Did you kill the monster outside our house the other night?”  I was somewhat taken aback by her question; we hadn’t spoken of the incident at all since it happened, but then, Mary had always been the most outspoken of our children.

“It was no monster, my wee darling,” I while a small smile in attempt to comfort her.  “Just a wolf that Papa had to scare away.”  The small girl said nothing for a moment as she cast her eyes down into the fire.

“That’s not what Mama says…” she then said in a hushed tone.  Upon hearing this, I saw Wawetseka’s eyes widen.

“Oh?” I asked, turning a questioning gaze to my wife.  “What does Mama say?”

“Mama says it’s an evil spirit who’s always hungry!” my younger son Billy then chimed in enthusiastically after his twin.  “She says it’ll drive us mad and then eat us all up!”

“Hush now!” I said firmly.  “That’s just one of your Mama’s stories that her people tell to scare children.  Isn’t that right, love?” I then said to Wawetseka, urging her with my eyes to confirm what I’d said.  Instead, she just looked at me with fear and uncertainty before looking over at our children.  Knowing that her hesitation was hardly reassuring, I began to grow frustrated.  “Tell them!” I then said in slightly louder, firmer tone.  Still holding the now sleeping Abby, she reached her free hand over to our children and began to caress their faces as she spoke softly in her own tongue once again.

“No!  Tell them in English!” I then commanded, so loudly that my wife flinched and my children stared at me.  Still cringing slightly, my wife turned back to our children. 

“Don’t be afraid,” she said softly at last.  “Everything will be alright.”

“There now, see?” I said, figuring that was all I was going to get out of her.  “Now, let’s have no more of this foolish talk, yeah?  There’s no evil spirits.  Go on to bed now; you’ll all need your strength for tomorrow.”  The following morning, my wife and I were up before the children.  I’d barely slept at all the night before due to the hard, frozen ground and the gnawing pain of my empty belly and I was more than a bit irritable as a result, which is perhaps what led me to confront Wawetseka about the previous night’s incident.

“Why would you tell the children such a story?” I said to her.  “Things are tough enough right now without you scaring them with malarkey like that!”  She looked up at me with a grave expression.

“Wendigo is real; not a story,” she said somberly.

“Bollocks!” I spat dismissively.

“Has preyed upon us since the days of my grandfathers’ grandfathers!” she insisted.  “Always hungry for human flesh and blood, but never satisfied!  Drives people mad and consumes them!”

“Enough!” I then shouted.  “Wheest your mouth right now, woman!  I’ll hear no more of this rubbish, and nor will the children!  Do you understand me?!”  My shouting caused baby Abby to awaken with a wail in her mother’s arms and her attention quickly turned to calming the infant. 

“Pa?” I then heard James’ voice say as I turned around to see him standing behind me with a concerned look on his face.  It was then that I realized that my shouting at his mother must have woken him.  “Is everything alright?”

“Aye, lad.  Aye…” I quickly sighed with exasperation, suddenly overcome with guilt.  “Everything’s fine.  Go on and wake your brother and sister now so we can get a move on, yeah?” I then said as calmly and cheerfully as I could manage.  My son cast a quick gaze in his mother’s direction before nodding dutifully and going to rouse his siblings.  “Look, love, times are hard right now,” I then said to my wife, forcing myself to adopt a softer, gentler tone.  “There’s no need to go frightening the children on top of it, yeah?”  Wawetseka kept her head down though, refusing to look at me as she attempted to breastfeed Abby once again, but with little success.  Hearing the infant’s hungry cries was almost more than I could bare, and I gritted my teeth and tried to block out the miserable sound.

By the time we stopped to camp the following night, I was so utterly exhausted that I could barely speak.  After making up the fire, I left my wife to put the children to bed as I curled up alone to try get any amount of rest that I possibly could.  But between the hard ground, the winter cold, and the gnawing hunger in my gut just as sharp as ever, I knew it would be yet another restless night.  By the time I felt Wawetseka finally lie next to me, I had just managed to start drifting off to the sounds of our baby still whimpering unhappily. 

This night, though, my dreams were especially vivid.  I dreamt I was sitting before a turkey feast, with its sumptuous and savory aroma wafting through my nostrils.  I was so overwhelmed by the mouthwatering scent and my own painful hunger that I completely forgot any manners I may have learned and simply dug in voraciously.  I grabbed one of the turkey’s plump legs, pulled it off, and began tearing into it without utensils of any kind.  That first, juicy bite all but melted in my mouth, and was so sweet, so tender and gratifying that it made me instantly want another even bigger one, though I’d barely even finished chewing the first, and then another, and another still.  I ate with no regard whatsoever to the pure carnal gluttony that I felt, right down to the bone, which I greedily sucked upon as if it were mother’s milk until every last morsel was cleaned from tit. 

It was as I was licking the remaining grease and fat from the bone that I then heard it; a deep, guttural growl unlike that of any man or beast.  At the same moment, I saw the remainder of the turkey snatched out of my grasp by an unseen force.  In the darkness that now surrounded me, I could hear the crunching of bones and the gnashing of large teeth.  So close it all sounded, but I couldn’t figure out from where exactly it was coming.  It was all around me, as if I were within the very source of it, or perhaps…from within my own head?  No, I could feel the presence.  Something was definitely there with me in the darkness.  It had to be right behind me, looming like an ominous shadow, but the moment that I dared to turn around, a horrific, blood-curdling shriek rattled my skull before I was suddenly awakened by a rush of cold morning air blowing in through our tent.

I sat up with a gasp, still caught somewhere between the real world and that of my subconscious.  My body was trembling all over, both from the fright and cold.  That’s when I swear I heard rustling outside of the tent.  Grabbing my rifle, I stepped outside, feeling the cold air stab into my lungs, and looked around in every direction.  Upon a quick survey of my surroundings, I was relieved that that there was no growling, shrieking creature, and not footprints in the snow to indicate one had ever been there.  This relief, however, was soon replaced with the painful disappointment of reality setting back in.  Looking back into the tent, I saw my children huddled against one another, frozen and pitiful as always, and my wife in a similar state.  With a heavy sigh, I pulled on my overcoat and prepared to search for fresh wood for the morning fire.  I had barely gotten my gloves on when my wife’s scream shattered my ears.  Before I could think another thought, I saw her run out into the snow, barefoot and barely clothed as she screamed and frantically looked about, a look sheer terror upon her face. 

“What’s the matter with you, woman?!” I exclaimed as I grabbed her, doing my best to hold her and force her to face me as she flailed like a wild animal caught in a trap.

“Baby is gone!” she shrieked as she finally looked me in the face, holding up the child’s empty blanket.  I stared at her blankly for a moment.

“What?” I asked with shock and confusion.

“Baby is gone!” she repeated, even more hysterical as she grabbed me desperately by the collar of my shirt.  Thinking she had to be mistaken, I quickly went back into the tent, scrutinizing every corner of the small space, but all I saw were our three elder children, quickly waking from the commotion and looking at me with shock and confusion in their eyes.  Upon soon realizing that our youngest child was, indeed, not there, I went back outside to Wawetseka.

“How can this be?!” I demanded of her.  “You had her at your breast all night, did you not?!”  In response, my wife merely wailed despondently as our children came rushing outside.  She continued to scream for Abby, and the older children soon joined her once they realized what was happening.  We all began to frantically search the area, looking and listening for any movement or sounds of the infant, but there was nothing but snow and silence.  It was as though she had completely vanished into the whitewashed forest. 

After nearly two hours of fruitless searching, still reeling and struggling to wrap my head around the situation, I grabbed Wawetseka once again.  “Oi!  Listen to me!” I said to her as I took her face in minds, looking deeply into her bloodshot, almond-shaped black eyes as I tried to get control of her.  “I’m sorry, love…” I said to her with a painful sigh and ache in my chest.  “But it seems as though a beast must have taken the child in the night…” This was the only plausible explanation I could come up with, wild as it seemed, and it would certainly explain my dream and the noise I had thought I had heard outside the tent afterwards.  The lack of tracks around our tent, however, still put a significant hole in the theory, along with the fact that none of us had been wakened or attacked by the supposed predator.  My wife’s tearful black eyes widened at my words and I heard her take a deep inhale of breath.  Before I could say another word, she quickly shook her head, slowly at first, then faster, before letting out yet another scream of despair as she sunk to her knees, throwing herself into the snow as she continued to wail with grief and hysteria.

“Go and pack everything up, now!” I quickly commanded my children as they watched their mother fall into her fit of agony.  Despite their obvious distress, they rapidly obeyed, thanks to James’ encouragement.  It then fell to me to scoop my despondent wife up from her pathetic pile on the snowy ground.  “Listen to me!”  I commanded her once again, doing my best to speak over her miserable wails.  “We have to keep moving, yeah?  We can’t stay here, especially if there is such a beast in the area,” I told her plainly.  “The sooner we get to town, the sooner we can get help.”  She didn’t seem to hear or even acknowledge my words though as she continued to weep and slump limply in my arms.  I held her for a moment, feeling her shuddering against me as she sobbed.  I admit I was both terrified and confused as to what kind of beast could have managed to creep its way into our tent as we slept and steal away our child completely unnoticed.  It was unusual behavior for even the hungriest of wolves or bears, and as I recalled the growling from my dream, I was shaken to the core, but I couldn’t allow my family to see that. 

As stunned and horrified as I was by the abduction of our infant, my survival instincts soon overwhelmed me and all I wanted to do was get my family out of this unforgiving wilderness and closer to town.  After comforting my wife for a moment, I urged her to go help our children pack up and get ready.  I could hear her still crying softly all the while as she did so.  Once everything was finally packed, we took off again without a word.  Thankfully, James seemed to pick up on my desperate desire not to discuss the tragic incident that had occurred and was keeping his two younger siblings from asking me or their mother any questions.  I did my best to ignore my wife’s continued weeping as she walked, head down, by my side and instead, focused on the trail ahead.  After awhile, figuring we had to be nearing a town soon, I stopped to pull out a map, only to find myself stunned and bewildered at what I saw on the print before me.

“This can’t be right…” I mumbled to myself, looking at my surroundings, feeling dread creep into my veins upon realizing that we were nowhere near where we should have been according to the map.  There were no sounds of other people or horses and carts around us, no scent or fire or smoke, no signs of life or civilization whatsoever.  There was nothing; nothing but the same cold silence of the winter wilderness.  “Bleeding hell!” I cursed angrily to myself, realizing that I must have gotten turned around somewhere despite my attempts to follow the map precisely.  With the temperature dropping and the fast-approaching nightfall, I felt my dread begin to verge on panic.

“Pa?” I then heard James say as he approached me.  “Why are we stopping, Pa?  Is something wrong?”  I could see the concern etched on his face as well as those of his two younger siblings huddled behind him.  Knowing that I couldn’t afford to show my fear and frustration at this time, I simply took a deep breath of cold air before shaking my head.

“No, lad.  Everything’s fine.  Just…a little mix-up in the trail is all,” I said as casually as I could manage.  I immediately saw Wawetseka’s eyes widen as she looked at me.

“What?!” she suddenly exclaimed.

“Oi, it’s nothing!  Alright?” I tried to reassure her.  “It’s just going to take us a little longer to get to town.”  I could tell by her face that my wife was not at all reassured by this.

“How long?” she then asked. 

“Another day at least.  We’ll have to camp here again for the night since the sun will be going down soon.”  The moment I said this, Wawetseka let out noise of distress and Billy and Mary began making whines of protest as well.  “Oi!  Enough of that!” I then barked at them.  My wife immediately stood in front of them, as if shielding them from my scolding.

“Children are weary and cold!” she said to me. 

“Well there’s nothing else we can do, so we might as well just start making camp,” I said through gritted teeth, feeling my temper flaring.

“Children are hungry!” Wawetseka continued to protest.

“We all are, dammit!” I then roared at her so loudly that I heard my own voice echo through the frozen trees around me.  Upon seeing my wife and children cower from me in response, I quickly tried to reign in the overwhelming and near-maddening rage that I had felt in that moment.  In all the times that I had scolded my wife and children in the past, never had I felt as angry, as hateful of them as I did in that moment, and it both confused and terrified me.  Curling my shaking hands into fists, I breathed deeply once again, doing my utmost to quell my temper.

“Here now…” I said, forcing a calmer tone.  “The sooner we set up camp, the sooner we can get to sleep, get up tomorrow, and keep moving.”  I then silently got to work, gathering wood and building a fire.  By the time darkness had fallen, I was distributing the very last scraps of food that I had to my wife and family.  It was then that Mary finally spoke her mind.

“What happened to baby Abby?” she suddenly asked, catching both her mother and I off guard as we had sat in relative silence for a long period of time before then.  Upon hearing her question, I heard Wawetseka immediately begin to weep yet again into the blanket draped around her shoulders.  Before I could manage a response, however, her twin brother immediately answered.

“The wendigo took her…” he said in an ominous tone as he gazed into the fire with glassy eyes.  “Right, Mama?” he then said as his gaze turned towards his mother’s.  In response, my wife merely let out another broken wail that pierced my ears.

“None of that again!” I immediately snapped at all of them.

“But it’s true!” Billy insisted.  “I heard it last night!  Growling like it was right outside the tent!”

“So did I!” Mary then chimed in before turning to her older brother.  “Didn’t you, James?” she asked him, but he said nothing and merely turned his gaze away.  Wawetseka quickly grew even more hysterical, burying her face in her hands and sobbing as she mumbled various words in her native tongue.  Finally, I could stand it no longer.

“What the HELL is the matter with all of you?!” I bellowed furiously at my children.  “Is it not bad enough that we’ve lost your sister that you now have to go making up these wild tales and upsetting your mother?!”  Billy looked as though he was about to respond, but James quickly shot him a look that discouraged him from doing so.  Mary then began to sniffle before crawling her way over to her mother, huddling against her apologetically as they both softly cried.  I was rapidly feeling my patience slipping away from me.  The combination of hunger, fatigue, and now grief and fear over the loss of my child was taking its toll, and I knew it was likely doing the same to my family.  I knew we had to get to town fast.

“We need to rest now,” I grunted wearily at last.  “Tomorrow, if we start early and move quickly enough, we can get to town and everything will be alright.”  No one said a word as I quickly laid down and turned away from all of them.  Soon after, I heard the children and my wife do the same, except the latter did not huddle against me as she normally did this time.  Too exhausted to wonder or care about this, I soon fell into another deep, yet troubled sleep.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep when the ear-shattering scream woke me.  My eyes flew open to nothing but more pitch darkness as the fire had gone out and it was still the dead of night.  Within the darkness of the tent, I could hear the continued shrieking of one of my children and feel them flailing about beside me.  I could also hear the others beginning to rouse and crying out with confusion.  In the chaos, I quickly fumbled as best as I could to locate my lantern and matches.  Once I’d finally managed to light it with a shaking hand, I held it up to reveal the face of Billy, blanched and horror-stricken as he continued to scream and gawk down at his arm, or what was once his arm.  Now, all that remained was a stump at the elbow, gushing crimson blood all over both him and myself.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” I exclaimed with terror as I reached for him helplessly, but he only shrieked even louder.

“NO!” he screamed before scrambling out of the tent and running off into the frigid night.

“Oi!” I called to him as I immediately got to my own feet and attempted to chase after him.  It was even darker outside than it had been inside the tent.  Using nothing but the dim light of my lantern, I attempted to pursue Billy, but he had taken off so fast that I hadn’t even seen which direction he had gone.  Instead, all I had to go by were his footprints and the trail of blood staining the blanket of white snow beneath my frozen bare feet.  I called out his name over and over again as I tried to follow his trail, but soon, the tracks and blood appeared to vanish altogether.  Baffled, I could hear my wife and two other children crying out desperately for him from back at the tent.  I continued to try to re-locate his trail and search for him for as long as long as I could, but soon, the cold began to get the better of me and I knew that if I didn’t get back to the tent, I would succumb to frostbite or maybe even freeze to death.

By the time I returned to our campsite, Wawetseka and the other two children were hysterical, especially Mary.  She continued to cry out frantically for her twin, and even tried to run off to search for him, but James held her back.  “We have to find him!” she wailed, struggling against her older brother’s hold.

“There’s nothing more we can do tonight…” I replied to her somberly.  “We’ll look for him in the morning once it’s light again.”

“But he could be dead by then!” Mary protested.  Knowing she was right, I couldn’t find any words to reply with.  The only response was a broken sob from Wawetseka.

“If he can hang on until tomorrow morning, we will find him,” I finally managed to say, but my daughter only became more hysterical in response.

“No!” she screamed as she began to squirm and thrash wildly about in her older brother’s arms.  “I’m going to find him!”  Seeing that James was struggling to hold her as she continued to throw her tantrum of despair, my wife stepped in and put her arms around the seemingly possessed child, attempting to console her as best she could before dragging her, kicking and screaming back into the tent.  Not eager to subject myself to more torment than I was already suffering, I delayed re-entering the tent myself for a moment despite the bitter cold.  Instead, I just stood there for a moment, trying desperately to make sense of what had just transpired.  It was then that I noticed that James was also lingering outside with me.

“Better go on inside with your mother and sister before your freeze…” I mumbled to him numbly, but he remained.

“Pa…” he said at last in a soft voice.  “Did you see his arm?” I found myself turning my face away from his gaze, doing everything I could to avoid it.

“It’s late and it’s cold,” I replied, but James remained where he was.

“What happened though, Pa?!” he then asked, coming closer to me.  “What’s going on out here?  I mean…first the baby, and now – “

“No more!” I then snapped at him angrily, pushing him away from me as he attempted to put a hand on my arm.  He looked at me stunned, but I didn’t care.  “Get in the tent!  Now!”  He hesitated for only a moment, still gazing at me with that fearful, wide-eyed expression before retreating into the tent.  I myself continued to linger out in the snow for a few moments longer, preferring the numbness and solitude provided by the bitter cold and night than the reality of what I would have to face upon re-entering the tent.  I suppose that frozen numbness must have managed to stay with me for awhile longer because I can’t say I recall the remainder of that night.  All I know is that when I awoke early the following morning, I could already hear Wawetseka’s panicked voice.

“What’s going on?” I demanded as I arose groggily.

“Pa!” James cried out as he ran to me.  “She’s gone!” Before I even had a chance to ask who, I quickly noticed that Mary was not present.  I scanned our surroundings for a moment, but as usual, all I saw was the typical endless landscape of trees and snow.  No sign of my daughter or her twin brother. 

“Dammit all!” I cursed bitterly.  “She must have gone to search for Billy,” I finally managed to say.  “We’ll search for them once I – “

“No!” My wife then suddenly cried out, much to my surprise.  “There is great evil here!  We must leave, now!” she exclaimed as she grabbed James, our only remaining child, and clutched him close to her as if she were clinging to him for dear life.  I looked at her utterly bewildered.  Considering how loving and devoted she had always been as a mother to our children, and how utterly devastated she had been upon the disappearance of Abby and then Billy, I couldn’t believe that she didn’t even want to at least attempt to find him and Mary.

“Listen to me…” I said as I approached her, figuring she must merely be in a womanly fit of hysterics preventing her from thinking clearly, but she simply held up a hand to keep me at bay and cried out once again.

“It will not let it take my last child!” she screamed as she looked at me like a rabid animal, eyes blazing red and mouth all but frothing as her jaw quivered.  She looked so very unhinged and inhuman in that moment that I barely even recognized her.  Feeling that I was on the brink of utter madness myself, along with my desperation to get to town and get out of this frozen hell at last, I conceded.

“Fine…” I seethed, doing my best to ignore the pain that had begun to throb in my temple.  “We should reach town today.  Then we can get help to find the children.”  I added the latter part only half-heartedly as I knew that the idea of either of the twins still being alive at that point was all but impossible.  But my sensibilities had rapidly shifted from emotional to primal.  My sole mission at this point was to survive with what was left of my family.  Losing the other children was unfortunate, of course, but death is part of life.  I was already well acquainted with it from my youth.  Clearly, even the New World wasn’t exempt from this rule.  If anything, at the very least there would be less hungry mouths to feed now in our impoverished state. 

With this mindset, we packed up the camp and continued on our way without a word.  At this point, we were completely out of food of any kind, and it had felt like years since I myself had had anything to eat.  I honestly couldn’t even remember how long we’d been traveling at that point.  The frozen days were beginning to blur together in a white haze and any memories I had of life before this nightmarish journey seemed to be fading.  It was as if all I had ever known throughout the entirety of my miserable existence was cold, exhaustion, and most of all, endless hunger.

I wasn’t sure how far we had gone when I soon became aware of thick, white flakes of snow falling from the sky.  Within a matter of moments, the wind picked up as well, and the flakes thickened even more, clustering on my hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, and beard.  The sky above darkened, and the snow began to pile up higher and higher around our feet until it was nearly up to our knees and we were struggling to trudge our way through it.  Keeping my head down so as to shield my face from the wind and snow as best I could, I suddenly lost my footing in the deep snow and fell into it.  I cried out and cursed bitterly in response to the shooting pain I suddenly felt in my knee.  My wife and James quickly rushed to my side and attempted to help me up.

“Get the hell away from me!” I thundered furiously at them.  They both quickly recoiled fearfully from me as I struggled back to my feet on my own, groaning and cursing all the while.  When I’d finally managed to regain my bearings, I looked and saw the two of them still cowering from me.  Wawetseka was clutching James tightly and whispering something to him in her own language while they both kept their wide, frightened eyes on me.  I knew that my reaction to them trying to help me was unwarranted, but I didn’t care.  I was too angry, too tired, and too hungry to care.  

“We can’t keep going like this,” I finally gasped out at last over the increasingly strong wind.  “You can’t see a damn thing in this blizzard.  We’ll need to stop and make camp here until the storm lets up.”  Upon looking at my wife’s face, I could already see that she was about to protest.  She had barely managed to open her mouth when I lunged for her and grabbed her by the throat.  “I said make the bloody camp, woman!  NOW!” I then shouted in her terrified face, literally trembling with rage before throwing her down into the snow.  I heard James gasp and cry out as he rushed to his mother’s side.  I knew she was whimpering, but I ignored it.  Instead, I busied myself with struggling to set up our tent in the blizzard.

Since the storm was so bad, we were unable to make a fire.  Instead, all we could do was hunker down in our flimsy tent, which flapped precariously in the wind, and try to stay warm as we waited out the storm.  I remained on one side of the tent while my wife and son huddled on the opposite side.  I sat with my knees drawn up to my chest and my arms wrapped tightly around them as I hugged my thin blanket around myself.  The only sound was the wind howling around us and our teeth chattering as we waited in the darkness.  What pathetic creatures we were.  The last thing I remember thinking before I must’ve nodded off was how in that moment, I would’ve sold my soul to the devil a thousand times over for something hot to eat. 

As I slept, I dreamed of food again.  This time it was a large, juicy suckling pig that was laid out in front of me, making me salivate desperately at its sight and smell.  However, unlike previous dreams of this nature, this time, my wife was there as well.  Before I even had a chance, she leapt on the pig and began tearing into it ravenously with her bare hands, eating so quickly and gluttonously that the meat was rapidly disappearing right before my eyes.  When I cried out to her, she merely looked at with red eyes and a savage, animalistic expression, much like the one I had seen earlier that day.  As I looked on, her face then rapidly began to morph into something even more frightening before my very eyes.  Her cheeks sunk in and the flesh on her face and body shrank back so that it was now clinging taught against the bones, exposing the ribs and joints.  Her eyes turned black and hollow and her teeth elongated into vicious looking fangs, dripping with blood.  The meat she held in her now gnarled, claw-like hands turned red and bloody as well, and the pig she was feasting on now resembled a mutilated corpse.  The hellish beast that my wife had become snarled deeply before letting out a piercing, ungodly shriek and lunging at me.

I awoke with a start and sat up in the cold darkness once again.  On the opposite side of the tent, I could just barely make out the shape of my wife, bent over James as he lay on the ground with her hands on him and her face close to his.  I was vaguely aware of what sounded like chanting in her native tongue.  It was then that the image of the monstrous creature from my dream feasting on the corpse flashed before my eyes, and I found myself lunging at Wawetseka with a blinding rage the likes of which I had never known before. 

“You wicked, wretched creature!” I roared as I dragged her out, screaming, into the snow.  “You and your heathen Indian ways!  You’ve cursed our journey from the very beginning!  And you’ve killed our children as well, haven’t you?!”  Wawetseka was sobbing and pleading with me, but I wouldn’t be fooled this time.  All I heard was the horrid snarling and shrieking of the creature from my dream.  I quickly produced my hunting knife as I used all of my weight to hold the flailing woman down.  “You will pay for your barbarism in hell!”  With that, I plunged the knife into her chest as the snow quickly stained red with blood.

This was my last somewhat memory before I came to find myself in a dark, dingy cell.  I would then meet several men over the next few days who turned out to be various authorities from the town.  They questioned me over and over about the events of the journey that had claimed the lives of my wife and three of my children.  I told them all that I could remember, which wasn’t much.  James, however, had told them a slightly different story it seemed. 

On the night of my wife’s death, he was drifting off to sleep to the sound of a song she was singing, supposedly to protect him, when he heard me shout and her scream.  He awoke and ran out of the tent to discover me feasting on her bloody corpse, tearing flesh from her body with nothing but my teeth and bare hands, “like a demon.”  He then took off and ran as fast as he could to the town, whereupon he reported that I had killed and eaten his mother as well as at least two of his siblings. 

When they found me, they claimed that I did not appear to be malnourished in the same way my son was.  They also mentioned that I was covered in blood, but sat perfectly calmly and did not struggle or resist in the slightest when they apprehended me.  In fact, I didn’t speak or really move at all, they said, but just stared vacantly as they put me in chains and brought me to the jail.  One of the officers even later remarked that it was as if I wasn’t even a man at all, but rather, a soulless husk, and I’d be lying if I said I felt otherwise in those final few days.  They found my wife’s remains as well; mutilated bones covered in human teeth marks.  Supposedly, some officers later returned to search the area and also found scattered scraps of bloody cloth from the garments belonging to my other children, which confirmed James’ claims.

At some point, I was visited by a doctor who claimed that I had suffered from something called acute psychosis, brought on by starvation which caused me to resort to murder and cannibalism.  The local Indians, however, whispered that the real culprit was something quite different; wendigo.  None of it really mattered though; I was bound for the noose either way.  Having resigned myself to this unavoidable fate, I saw no point in repeating my story for the hundredth time or trying to explain what had happened to me out there in those cold woods, for I could not explain any of it any better now than I could then.  Perhaps this why, on the day of my execution, when a priest visited my cell a few hours prior to my march to the gallows and asked why I had committed such a horrendous, incomprehensible crime, I could only shrug and answer with three words; “I was hungry.”

 

END