Led to the Slaughter Read online

  Why is he mad at me? I wondered angrily. I’ve done nothing to him! But even as I thought that, I realized that was the problem. I’d had nothing to do with him all these many days. I’d probably acted like a conceited, spoiled brat to him, all unknowing.

  I vowed to do better. After all, we were all beginning anew. We were all lowly pilgrims to a new land.

  #

  I progressed farther into the crowd, feeling less exuberant after my encounter with Bayliss, but the festive mood soon had me smiling again. I was passing by a giant tent that was set apart from the others when I heard what sounded like a cry for help. There was much shouting on this day, for everyone was excited, but this had sounded like the scream of someone in pain––a scream that had been cut off.

  I moved close to one corner of the tent and listened. I heard another cry, which was also choked off, followed by the growling of animals.

  There was a gap in the canvas between the ties. I dared to peek through the narrow gap, but couldn’t see anything. Scarcely believing my own brashness, I forced the opening larger and stuck my head in. At first, it was too dark to see anything; then I made out a tight knot of animals, shifting and snarling as they milled around something. They looked like dogs. This was probably a kennel, I decided, owned by someone selling the pioneers dogs to help protect the wagon trains.

  I must have heard one of them yelp, I thought. I began to pull my head out of the gap, but something about the movement of the dogs made me look more closely. Perhaps it was an illusion, but I suddenly realized the dogs were huge, larger than any I had ever seen. Their frenzied movements, amplified by their shadows on the canvas behind them, were wild and terrifying.

  They were fiercely devouring something; something that, for a moment, looked like…

  No, I thought. That is not possible.

  Whatever creature was being consumed swatted feebly at the dogs, then fell to its side, as if offering itself up to its attackers. Its head, which had been thrashing frenetically, now lolled in defeat.

  My mind denied what my eyes were seeing. I realized too late that I had cried out in alarm.

  Across the tent, one of the dogs lifted its head. Then, with a movement so fast it froze me in place, the animal broke away from the others and sprinted in my direction.

  Run, my mind told me, but my body had turned to stone. I stood there, struck dumb with fear, waiting for the nightmare to take me. I wanted to scream, but could only shake my head in denial of what was happening.

  Then, thankfully, my body reacted and I managed to pull my head out of the tent and step back. I stood blinking in the sunlight, letting the warmth soak into me, trying to comprehend what I had just witnessed. I must have been mistaken, I decided. It was dark in the tent, and I had been too frightened to understand what I was seeing.

  A man stuck his head out of the gap in the tent, forcing the opening wider. His chest was bare and covered with scars, and I sensed that he was just as naked below the flap of canvas. His red hair was long and wild, and his dark eyes seemed to glow.

  “What do you want, girl?” he snarled. “Why are you snooping around?”

  “Forgive my intrusion, sir.” I tried to sound innocent. “I thought I heard something.”

  “What business is it of yours if you did?” he asked. He spoke words, but I could have sworn I heard them as guttural growls. “Anyway, I am only feeding my dogs the carcass of a pig.”

  I didn’t respond at first. He was lying. But why was he bothering to lie to me? And who was he?

  “I’m sorry, Mister…?” I was shaking and still had the urge to flee, but I sensed it was important not to show fear to this man. My voice was calm, and my inquiry had been surprisingly matter-of-fact, given the circumstances.

  He hesitated and then gave me a humorless grin, as if to say, I don’t care what you saw; if you speak of this, you will be the next pig I feed to the dogs.

  “Aren’t you a brave girl,” he said mockingly. “My name is Keseberg. So now that we are friends, why don’t you come in? You can pet the dogs.”

  “No, thank you, sir,” I said. “I have very important things to do. I have to… ” I tried to think of something impressive, but failed. This man gave me an uneasy feeling on several counts. Whatever had happened in that tent had been bad. It couldn’t have been what I’d thought at first, but I knew it had been wrong. “I have to get back to my family,” I finished lamely.

  He reached out suddenly, and for a moment I imagined his fingers were blood-covered claws. I blinked and leapt back, just managing to avoid his grasp. I heard a snarl behind me as I hurried away, but when I looked back, the flap of the tent was closed and there was no one pursuing me.

  CHAPTER 3

  From the personal notes of Jacob Donner, Secretary of the Wolfenrout, Independence, Missouri, May 18, 1846

  The Wolfenrout met today and voted for a Foregathering of the Clans to take place in the last week of October in the mountains of California. It will be the first Foregathering of Our Kind in fifty years. Before that, there wasn’t a full Foregathering for more than a hundred years. Before that, it had been a millennium since we’d gathered enough of Our Kind to pass laws.

  The Wolfenrout meeting started well enough, possibly because the ceremonial sacrifice satiated the bloodlust of the more aggressive among us.

  My daughter, Marilee, went to a local tavern and enticed the town drunk back to our tent. He was a disgusting, smelly creature.

  “What’s this, then?” the man slurred when he saw the gathering. “You want me to meet your family, do you?” He looked a little uneasy, but did not yet understand the danger he was in.

  He laughed, then faltered as the silent gathering closed around him. “Get back!” he cried, grabbing Marilee’s arm. “What… what’re you doin’?”

  She shrugged him off and began to undress. She had a calm look on her face, dispassionate, as if she was undressing for bed. He could only stare. A few moments before, he had wanted nothing more than to see her naked, but now the coward averted his eyes.

  Solemnly, the other twelve members of the pack disrobed and surrounded the sacrificial offering.

  “What’re you folks doin’?” he cried. “Stop it! This ain’t natural!”

  I don’t know what shocked the human more: our nudity, or when we began to Turn.

  My daughter transformed first. Her arms distorted, her fingers becoming sharpened claws; her legs lengthened, became thicker at the haunches, and narrowed to paws. Her torso elongated and her chest widened. Finally her head changed, her face squeezing outward, her teeth getting longer, her eyes growing larger, and her ears moving to the top of her head and becoming pointed.

  Marilee stood upright, like a wolf standing on its hind legs. The man fell to his knees and began to cry.

  “Please… I don’ unnerstand this. But I won’ say nuthin’ to no one. If you be devils who reckon to punish me, I swear I won’ never steal or hurt no one, ever again. I won’ never have another drink. Jus’ let me go.”

  Marilee reached down and, putting one long claw beneath his chin, gently lifted his head. She leaned toward him, growling as she bent her head to his as if to give him a lover’s kiss. Instead, she licked his face with her long tongue.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “God, please God,” he chanted. “Please God, forgive me. I don’ wanna go to hell.”

  My daughter’s barking laugh misted his face with spittle. He voided himself. In my human form, I would have been disgusted, but when Marilee began to eat the hand the man was holding up in self-defense, I was overwhelmed by the smell of fresh blood.

  He was screaming, and even as I became wolf, I worried that someone might hear. Keseberg, as usual, transformed faster than the rest of us. He leapt on the drunk and clamped his jaws around the man’s neck, and his cries faded to a low, horrid hum. We fell upon his bleeding body.

  The man was barely aware that he was being eaten alive. The shock to which humans succumb is a blessing of nature, a
nd proof that they are meant to be our livestock. Mercifully, the man soon fell unconscious. I say mercifully, but only in hindsight. At the time, I wanted him alert, aware of what was happening, his eyes open so that I could stare into his soul as he died.

  Each time I think we have progressed beyond our primitive nature, these sacrifices remind me of the satisfaction of tasting the flesh of humans, of eating their essence, of watching the life leave them, the horror of it shining in the blackness of their eyes. Each time, I feel as though I have eaten their souls, and that as they vanish from this Earth, I grow stronger. The God they call on to save them never comes, and as I devour them, I always think, If He did, I’d eat Him as well.

  In the middle of the carnage, there was a small gasp near the front of the tent. We paused in mid-meal. Keseberg instantly transformed back into human form, and again I was impressed by his control. Bloody and naked, Keseberg went to see who it was.

  He came back a few minutes later. “It was just some nosy little girl,” he growled. “Hey, save some of that for me.”

  He transformed back to wolf and pushed aside some of the weaker members of the Wolfenrout. It troubles me that they let him. Keseberg is even stronger than we have been led to believe.

  We resumed feeding on the now-dead man.

  It is at such times that I fear my brother’s plans to reform the Wolfenrout are hopeless.

  One thing I know for certain: if my dear brother is smart, he will delay the Wolfenrout vote until well after the ceremonial sacrifice. I suspect that with blood on our muzzles, even the most civilized among us will vote with Keseberg and his brethren’s more aggressive solutions to the problem of humans.

  We have attached ourselves to a small wagon train, one of the last of the season. It was always our plan to join a human party, one that we could delay and control. Inevitably, there are those who fall by the wayside on these long, dangerous migrations. We will be well fed while we travel, without the need to reveal our true natures.

  I fear, however, that the daily proximity of Keseberg and his followers to humans who are unaware of the danger is only asking for trouble.

  CHAPTER 4

  Virginia Reed, Independence, Missouri, May 19, 1846

  The unpleasant incident at the tent was still running through my mind the next morning as we got ready to leave. I’d dreamed all night about heaving shadows on the canvas of a tent, blurry canine shapes surrounding me, and the mocking voice of Mr. Keseberg. I could not shake the memory of that forlorn cry.

  It was only a pig, I told myself. Nothing more. What I thought I’d glimpsed in the shadows was impossible, of course. The dogs were probably just in a feeding frenzy over that poor pig, as Mr. Keseberg had said.

  I was reluctant to voice my suspicions to anyone. I’d vowed to myself that this trip would be a new beginning: no more of the type of exaggeration and storytelling that made my mother roll her eyes. From now on, I would only tell the strictest of truths, without any imaginative flourishes. By the end of the journey, Mother and the rest of my family would take me seriously, as a proper young woman.

  Still, I wanted to tell someone about the strange things I’d seen. I certainly couldn’t tell Mother. She would think her overly imaginative daughter was just making up stories again. Father might believe me, or pretend to, but he seemed so happy that I was behaving myself that I decided to keep what I had seen secret for now.

  I had slept late, which was unusual for me––and of all the days to do it on, too! I thought ruefully. My nightmares had kept me up most of the night. I rolled up my bedroll and gave the room one last cleaning. We were one of the few families who possessed the money to escape the wagons, and had rented a room in a boarding house. It was to be the last time we had a solid roof over our heads until we got to California. My mother, sister, and I, my brothers, and Grandy had all crowded into the small room. Father had slept with the wagons, to keep them safe. The sleeping arrangements had been uncomfortable, but we all knew there were much greater privations ahead of us on the trail.

  The framework of the bed Mother and Patty had slept in and few other pieces of crude furniture had been pushed aside in the cramped space. The walls were bare wood, and there were names carved on them: the names of those who had gone on to Oregon and California before us. I wondered how many of them had arrived safely. I wondered if any of them would ever return––if we would ever return.

  Most of my family had already left the boarding house. Our luggage was already gone as well, except for two small cloth bags. Only Grandy was still in the room, perched like an old owl on a chair in the corner, blinking at me. She seemed perfectly happy to be doing nothing at all, but I could see the disquiet in her watery eyes. Underneath her calm exterior was a welter of silent fear and pain. For as long as I could remember, she had been ill, her life slipping away.

  I helped her get dressed, and she smiled at me and reached out with a shaking hand covered in paper-thin skin. Even if she didn’t quite know who I was, I was grateful for the gesture.

  I had always been her favorite, before she disappeared into silence. To Grandy, at least, I wasn’t a relative half-removed: I wasn’t a half-sister, as I was to my siblings, or a stepdaughter, as I was to Father––though he accepted me with all his heart. I had been her first grandchild, and she had showered affection on me.

  I was checking the room one last time when I noticed a small locket on top of the dresser, its tarnished brass blending in with the wood. It was the locket that my mother always carried, containing a lock of little Frank’s hair: Frank, my infant brother, whose sudden death had finally compelled mother to give up our home and travel to a new land for a fresh start. She would be frantic if she found it missing. I slipped the locket into my cloth bag and helped Grandy down the stairs, and we set out to find the others, moving at such a slow pace that I wanted to shout in frustration.

  We wound our laborious way through the excited crowd. Amid the festive mood, my misgivings receded, and soon I was smiling at everyone.

  I heard Father’s booming voice before he came into view. He stood at the back of our magnificent wagon, the sun burnishing his dark hair and long beard. This is the image of him that I carry with me to this day: Father looking down on me with an indulgent smile. He was forgiving of my mistakes. When I told a story that seemed to stretch the truth––well, it was the truth as I saw it!––he commended me for my imagination. When I wasn’t quite the lady my mother wished me to be, all prim and proper, he supported me with the words, “She has spirit! Let her be, Margret!”

  As Grandy and I shuffled our way those last few yards to join the rest of the family, Mother turned and saw us. She rushed toward us and embraced Grandy, kissing her on the cheek. “Oh, Mother, you’re going to see a new land with us!” she cried. I dug into my bag for the locket. Mother’s eyes opened wide in surprise when she saw it, and she smiled at me gratefully as she took it from me and slipped it around her neck.

  Here, at the beginning of our long quest, Father was quivering with energy, his voice overly loud with excitement––but his listeners forgave such enthusiasm. Indeed, his fervor was contagious. He had attracted a crowd. He was tall and lean, with a thick black beard, and had a ramrod posture that made him seem even taller. His eyes were deep-set and piercing. He rarely smiled, and yet he always gave the impression that he was amused by what was happening around him.

  We gathered at what the young men called “the jumping-off place.” I loved the sound of those words. We were jumping off into the unknown. Our journey was to take about four months, we were told. There were few among us who really knew for sure, strange as that may sound. We were relying on guidebooks that would prove to be inaccurate, sometimes nearly fictional. Some of our guides meant well, but what was possible for a lone traveler on horseback often proved impossible for a heavily laden wagon. Others were little more than charlatans, only interested in selling their books, or in selling routes they had a financial interest in.

  “It
is our duty to settle these lands,” Father declared. “It is America’s destiny to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and no one must stand in our way. The savages will have to give way before us. Foreign nations must be warned to get out. It is our land on both coasts and everything in between, and by God, we will take it!”

  There were murmurs of agreement, even a couple of cheers, but George Donner shook his head. He was scratching his ample belly thoughtfully, his white hair and beard making him seem wiser than his actual years––he was only slightly older than the rest of the family patriarchs. His round face was guileless, his manner slow and thoughtful.

  “I’ll be satisfied with a plot of land with good, fertile earth,” Donner said. “And I will not care if I have to pledge allegiance to the Brits or the Mexicans or the Russians––or the damn savages, just as long as they leave me and my family alone.”

  There was laughter from some among the crowd. Mr. Donner was well liked and seemed to enjoy puncturing Father’s pretensions. I knew from overhearing conversations around the camp that not everyone liked Father’s outspoken opinions, or his support of Abraham Lincoln and the abolitionist movement. Nor did everyone enjoy the lectures about Manifest Destiny that were ever on Father’s lips.

  “Hear, hear,” Patrick Breen said. He had joined us at the last minute when he realized our group wouldn’t reject him because of his Catholic faith. “As for me, I only wish for a chance to worship without interference. In California, we will be free; we will live as good Catholics should live.”

  “Indeed, it is by divine will,” Father said.

  “Oh, let’s just get on with it!” Keseberg shouted.

  “Well… ” Father said, looking a little deflated. “We all have our reasons for heading west.” He regained some of his enthusiasm as he continued, “It doesn’t matter why we are going, as long as it we get there. We Americans are a blessed people. It is our destiny to remake the wilderness, to turn it into the paradise of our ideals.”