Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year – Volume One

From the start it was clear that some would not last the year out. A great depression settled over our camp like a funeral pall, and many succumbed to its all-embracing pressure. It was most prevalent among the men-not least in my dear husband John. From the first he reproached himself, and for many days after our arrival, half-crazy with remorse, he would not stir from his bed of leaves and moss in our cabin. Many times I spoke with him, and sought to assure him he was not to blame for our predicament; but he would not be consoled, and turned his head away to the wall. Greatly I feared for his life; that he would give up the will to live, and fade away like so many of the others.

But my husband John Buell was a strong man, and a brave one, and soon enough he arose from his bed and was about the general business. He managed to trap some small animals for the pot; hares and crows and the like. He helped weather-proof our cabin, and the cabins of our neighbours. And around the middle of December, when folks were dying and all hope seemed forlorn, he set forth a plan.

Together with three of the other man-Bill Doerr, Martin Farrow and young Kent Shorstein-he purposed to cross the mountains on foot and fetch help. The Indians, Charley and Josephus, would accompany them, guiding them safe through to California. It was a desperate plan, fraught with much peril and offering but little chance of success, but it was voted the last best hope of our pitiful assembly, for all were in agreement when the plan was presented for approval. Here I must be honest, and record that in private I counselled against the expedition-I wept and pleaded with John, that he should stay with us and not throw his life away on such a rash and impetuous undertaking. He would not listen, though: it was as if he saw in this reckless plan a last chance, not just for our beleaguered party, but for himself-as if he might thus redeem himself in my eyes, when all along he was my hero and my one true love.

They set out in the second week of December; and soon afterwards Hiderick presented his awful proposition to the remainder of the party.

Now I must be brave, and record the facts of the matter without flinching. Hiderick said that the rescue party were doomed to failure, and would undoubtedly die in the mountain passes; we should not rely on them for assistance. I could have struck him-that he could thus impugn my husband, and his brave allies, when he had not the courage to do aught save cower in his cabin! But I must tell it aright, and not let myself be sidetracked.

Hiderick said that we were doomed, and should not make it through to the spring, save for one chance. He said that we were surrounded by fresh meat, if we had only the brains to see it, and the nerve to do something about it; he said he was a butcher by trade, and would show us what he meant. If I live another fifty years I shall not forget what he did next.

He went to the door of the big cabin and flung it wide open. The snow rose up in drifts all around, parted only where a path had been cleared between the cabins. All around were the graves of those who had already succumbed to the hunger and the cold; maybe nine or ten by that time. We could not dig them in the ground, for that lay ten feet beneath the snowdrifts, and was frozen hard as iron. Instead we lay them wrapped in blankets in the snow, where the cold would preserve them till the spring.

Hiderick pointed to the nearest of the graves-little Missy Shorstein's. "There's your meat," he said, in his thick guttural voice. "Like it or not, it's the only vittles you'll get this side of the thaw."

There was an uproar. Old man Shorstein struck Hiderick full in the face, and swore he would take a pistol and spill Hiderick's brains on the snow before he ever disturbed the grave of his daughter. Hiderick wiped the blood from his cheek, licking his hand clean in a way that made me sick to watch, and merely said, "You'll see. None need eat his own kin, if we handle it right."

But Mr Shorstein himself was in his grave before Christmas-day, and two others with him. Two more the next day, and three the next-and soon after that the first of the families took to eating the dead.

Hiderick dressed the bodies, and distributed the parcels of meat. Like a terrible black-bearded devil he passed from cabin to cabin; always he would knock upon our door, and always I would refuse to answer. Sometimes the ghoul would show his grinning face at the window; I would hold little Mary-Kate close to my bosom, and pray for our deliverance. Five of the seven families partook; let the record show that the Buells and the Shorsteins never ate human flesh. It is not my place to judge them-Mama told me more than once that survival runs close to the bone, closer than anything save the blood. But the flesh of our friends and fellow-Christians! Dear Lord, no.

I trapped what I could, enough for Mary-Kate at least: back in Vermont when I was but a little child, Mama had showed me many ways to catch the small creatures of hills and woodland. Still the hunger was always with us, and Mary-Kate grew awful thin and pale; yet no unholy flesh passed our lips. As for the rest of them: they ate or fasted according to their consciences, and yet even for those who chose to partake there was scarce enough meat to grow fat on, so little was there left on the bones of the dead. They cheated death for but a little while, but at what cost, Lord? At what cost?

Even this grisly feasting was all but through by the January, and folk were dying again almost daily, when out of the mountains staggered Kent Shorstein and the Indian Josephus, carrying between them the body of my dear brave husband John Buell.

We buried John in the snowdrifts out back of the cabin. Kent Shorstein told me of the great hardships endured by the five of them up in the mountains; he said that they lost their way searching for a pass that was not entirely blocked, and so within a week they were starving and nigh to death themselves. Doerr and Farrow were for killing the Indians, and eating their flesh; on this Charley rose up and ran Martin Farrow through with a knife, and Bill Doerr shot Charley dead on the spot. Josephus would have killed him for it, but John and young Kent restrained him. Best if they had not, maybe, for next morning when they awoke they found Doerr eating Charley's liver by the campfire. Kent and my dear John refused to join him in the gruesome repast, and instead they entreated Josephus to lead them away, back to our camp by the lake. The last they saw of Bill Doerr was him raving and singing to himself among the pine trees, waving a gobbet of meat on a stick.

Poor Kent Shorstein told me all this from his sick-bed; he shivered like a man with the ague, and I was not surprised when two days later, his body was taken for burial by his grieving sisters. Soon they too had joined him at rest; and then began the grimmest passage of my travails.

With John dead and the last of the Shorsteins gone also, there now remained of the party only Mary-Kate and I who refused to eat the flesh of the deceased. Hiderick was now pre-eminent among us; he roamed from cabin to cabin like a robber baron, adorned-I can scarce bring myself to speak of it!-adorned with a gruesome sort of necklace, fashioned from small knuckle-bones and vertebrae strung on a leather strip. He said they were from the mules and the oxen, though everybody knew this to be a lie. Who though could reproach him? He fed them, and they depended on him. On his shoulders he wore a cape of wolfskin-the wolves surrounded the camp but would not come close, for I had set up snares all around as Mama showed me how to do, and we still had ammunition enough to shoot them.

It was the practice of the families to place over the bodies of their loved ones a marker made of wood, together with a small tag hung round the neck, lest anyone should eat his own kin. In the cases of the Shorsteins and us Buells, this marker served to warn away the ghoul Hiderick entirely. Imagine then the distress and the horror with which I found, when going to pray awhile at John's graveside, that the bodies of Adolph and Bella Shorstein had been dragged from their sacred resting-place around to Hiderick's cabin, whither I dared not go. What to do?