The Darkness You Fear Read online

  The scrabbling sound returns, but this time, there is more than one rat. They come boldly to within inches of me. I strike out, and the little feet patter away, then come back. “Help!” I try to shout, but it comes out as a croak. I search the darkness for the ghosts, for I realize now that the rats run away each time one of the ghostly figures appears.

  “Little bastards,” I try to say, not sure if I mean the ghosts or the rats.

  All that comes out of my throat is a squishy sound. I see colors in the darkness, as if my brain is trying to supply vision: the red of a dull throb, the white stars of the sharper pains when I move abruptly, a kind of blue color that is my weariness.

  I’ve lost a lot of blood, and I am weak. I reach over my shoulder, and amazingly, my pack is still there. I manage to slide it off. I reach in, feel for the waterskin, and bring it to my lips. The water enters my mouth, flows down my throat, and emerges from the hole in my neck, splashing over my chest. But a small amount reaches my stomach, and within minutes, I am feeling slightly more alert.

  With the alertness comes a sharper awareness of the pain. It is the price I pay for consciousness. I almost long for oblivion. It would be so much easier to simply lie back and let it happen. It won’t take long. The loss of blood, the lack of water, and my own despair will take me quickly. I won’t be awake when the rats come.

  Strangely, it is the thought of the little beasts feeding on my corpse that motivates me to try to save myself. I reach into my pack again and find the matches.

  Almost afraid of what I’ll see, I strike a match against the rock.

  The light flares, but only to one side. My other eye is dead. My surviving eye struggles to compensate, to take in the full scope of my predicament.

  I see something scurry away from the light. I can’t get a good look at the rat, but it is bigger than I expected. The match goes out.

  In the darkness, I catch a glimpse of the ghostly children glowing in the shadows. I can’t make out their expressions, but it seems to me that they are sad. If they are haunting me, they are gentle in their persecution.

  It makes no sense. The entrance to the cave had been covered by a rockfall until we cleared it away. Why are there children in here? What could have happened to them?

  It has to be an illusion, I tell myself. I am filling the darkness with my fear.

  I shake my head, and my pain redoubles with the motion. I don’t have time to waste, I think.

  In the darkness, I count the matches carefully, one by one. There are twenty-four of them. But I don’t need them for most of what I need to do. I know the direction I want to go. I simply need to turn around and start climbing.

  I start crawling into the darkness, hands outstretched, feeling my way.

  ***

  It is impossible to move. My leg is useless; I’m too weak to haul myself upward by my arms alone. My hands feel like unfeeling lumps of flesh. My heart is pounding so hard it is as if it is trying to escape my chest.

  I light a match and nearly sob at the sight it reveals. Only a few feet down is the smeared puddle of blood where I lay before. I let the match go out, barely noticing it burning my fingers.

  I see the ghostly children above me. Soon I will join them. Once again, despair and guilt overcome me. I see Jenny’s smiling face as if it is before me. Why did I leave her?

  In the darkness, I reach out and grab a rock and pull myself up another few inches.

  ***

  Sharp teeth tear into the open wound on my leg. There is downward pressure, as if the teeth are trying to grab ahold of my flesh and drag me backward. I slap at the rats and hit my broken bone instead. I scream, but the sound is only inside my head. Outwardly, only a wheezing sound emerges.

  I am tugged downward, as impossible as it seems. I am dragged slowly over the sharp rocks, each inch sending waves of pain through my body, helpless, wordless pain.

  I reach into my pocket, bringing out the little muff gun. I bought it at a cigar store in Portland, a small gun, made to fit in a woman’s muff, as the name implies, or her handbag. I thought it simply an extra precaution, carrying it loosely in my pocket.

  The weapon has only a single bullet in it, but there are more than one of the creatures. I hold the gun in my hand. I will save that single round for the end.

  My leg has stopped hurting. I reach down and feel the wound. My hands feel something sticky, and I lift my fingers to my nose and smell the odor of decay. It is my own rotting blood.

  The rats continue to drag me downward. I light another match, and the rats move off a short distance but don’t hide. I see their glittering eyes and white teeth.

  I am back where I started. I barely feel the match burning into my thumb before it blinks out.

  Now it feels as if teeth are biting into every part of my exposed flesh. Something is burrowing under my clothes, and a fresh pain erupts in my stomach, as if the creature is eating its way into my body.

  I fumble for the last match. I still want to live. Fire will drive the beasts away, if only for a moment. I light the match, and my one blurry eye sees nothing but lumps under my clothing, and where each bulge squirms, I feel teeth ripping into me.

  The ghostlights approach again. The children illuminate the darkness, and the rats scurry away. Remorse at my wasted life fills me again. The children bring guilt and shame with their presence, and I realize that I am indeed being haunted. The children are no longer blurry, but seem as real as my own existence. I know that they will stay with me to the last. I pull out this journal and start writing.

  ***

  My mind is slowing to a crawl, and a peaceful lassitude is washing over me. I can barely hold the pen. I have the muff gun in my other hand, and with the last of my strength, I will bring the muzzle to my temple, and I will put an end to this existence.

  Strangely, it is the ghosts of the children who give me peace, for if they exist, so too must an afterlife of some kind. I search my heart and believe I have been a good man in this life. I feel sorry for my little ghost companions, for I sense that something terrible must have happened for them to be here. I am now certain I will not linger on here as a ghost, nor will I sink down into the fires below. I am strangely at peace.

  I’ll just lie here for a while. I don’t really need to move. Here is good enough.

  Chapter Ten

  Diary of Ellen Meredith

  The Oregon Trail, June 19, 1851

  Over the last week, Jonathan has rejoined our company—in mind and body, at least, if not in spirit. After Sarah’s body was taken, he stalked off into the open plains by himself, taking no supplies, not so much as a canteen of water. He returned a day later, but would speak to no one. Then, yesterday morning, he joined the daily discussion at breakfast.

  I believe that he knows that Sarah is better off now, and that it needed to be done. Yet I don’t believe that he has forgiven any of us. His eyes are cold now, and he never smiles.

  Our map informs us of landmarks along the trail, names like Chimney Rock and Scott’s Bluff and Devil’s Gate, but these marks on paper do not prepare us for the splendid beauty of these places. They seem placed at our convenience, for as soon as we leave one landmark behind, we spy the next on the horizon, and it beckons us forward, giving us a goal where we can happily end our day, having reached our destination.

  While these places no doubt will become happy memories for most of my fellow overlanders, for me, each of them represents an argument or a fight, or their aftermath, the bitter, silent recriminations.

  Jonathan did not strike me again for some time. Indeed, he seemed contrite, and for a time he was mindful of my needs. But as the trip has gone on and the frustrations have built, he has begun to lash out again. He never speaks of Sarah, but I know that with every angry outburst, he is thinking of his poor daughter.

  The other couples are starting to keep their distance, though to their credit, they haven’t abandoned my children and me. They keep quiet when Jonathan is around, for he can be wi
thering in his scorn.

  He is certain he knows best in all things. If one of the others suffers a mishap—ties a knot incorrectly so that a horse gets loose, or fails to secure a load on a river crossing, or suffers a broken wheel—according to Jonathan, it is their fault and they should have known better. He will help, but only because he knows it is expected of him. He does not hide his scorn.

  Yet if the same thing happens to us, it is simple bad luck—or worse, someone else’s fault. Jonathan does not handle adversity well, for he always had his way at his ranch, always had others in his employ to do his bidding. One of those who were under his orders was my own dear Cullum. I have begun to question the story, told to me by Jonathan (for Cullum never complained), that it was he who had kept Cullum from failure. I wonder, rather, if it wasn’t Jonathan’s inheritance that bought him success. I wonder, even, if it wasn’t Cullum who kept Jonathan’s ranch going.

  Such thoughts are strangely comforting; to know that once I loved such a man, and such a man loved me. Life is hard; this I know. But I experienced those few short years of happiness with Cullum, and for that, I will always be grateful.

  My younger children spend most of their time with the other children under the care of Mary Perkins, and while my mother’s heart mourns the loss of their company, I know it keeps them safe, away from Jonathan’s harsh words and glowering disapproval.

  June 28, 1845

  We will soon leave the plains, and in the distance, the Rocky Mountains are looming. They look impassable, but our maps—and the many trekkers before us—assure us there is a way over them.

  “We shouldn’t always trust the map,” Gus said one night around the campfire as we inspected the route. “There are hucksters selling their own routes for their own reasons.”

  “Aye, but perhaps we are blindly following the blind,” Bart said. “If a better way is found, are we to distrust it without even chancing it?”

  “We left Independence late in the season,” Jonathan said. “It will be a close thing if we do not find a way to shorten our journey.”

  In the end, it was decided that we would to continue to follow the well-worn ruts and avoid the dotted marks of paths unproven. Though my husband didn’t see it, it was his urging to try the shortcuts that decided the matter, for whatever he suggests, the other men reject, though of course they don’t say so out loud.

  It adds to my husband’s frustration, however, and it is slowly, inexorably turning into rage. The others don’t see the coming storm. But at night when we are alone, with deep, urgent tones, especially after he’s been drinking with the other men, he insists that we are being fools; that we are missing our chance to get to Oregon faster.

  I have learned to stay silent as he slowly winds himself into a rage the longer he talks. His whispers become louder until I am certain that everyone can hear him. Still, there is nothing he can do without our lone wagon striking out on our own, and even he is not so foolish as to do that.

  At night, Jonathan thrashes so violently from his nightmares that I must move to the wagon and sleep as best I can on the wooden floor. He cries out “Sarah! Sarah!” over and over again, and it breaks my heart.

  July 14, 1845

  We have reached the South Pass of the Rockies, which is far less strenuous than any of us expected. By now, so many have crossed this way that the trail is clearly marked, and there are helpful signs along the way, scratched into the sides of boulders, carved into tree trunks, telling us where to find water, where there is plentiful fodder for the livestock, and where we can find firewood already cut and dried.

  I, for one, am glad to be leaving the flat, dry plains, which are intolerably dusty one day and as windy and rainy as a hurricane the next.

  Both of my boys are enamored of Becky Catledge. The other children already follow her, and I sometimes wonder if Mary Perkins is in charge of Becky or if Becky is in charge of Mary, for the younger girl seems more mature.

  One day, as we reached a high meadow surrounded by stands of ponderosa pines, we decided to end our travels early, glad for the brook that burbled through the grasses. The women set about cleaning clothes, and the men took the opportunity to relax and do minor repairs.

  The boys went hunting, with Becky trailing along. Jed has been given a rifle, and Jonathan sometimes lets Edwin carry his if he doesn’t think he needs it.

  They came rushing back a few hours later.

  “Becky shot an elk!” Edwin cried out the moment they entered the camp.

  “An elk!” Bart cried, springing to his feet. “Are you certain?”

  None of us had yet seen an elk. We’d seen buffalo herds in the distance, but we were told to leave them be if we didn’t want confrontations with Indians. Since we were still well provisioned on the Great Plains, we obeyed this stricture. Once, I saw some lean, tan creatures leaping high in the air as they fled from us, and I understood them to be antelope. Deer are plentiful, but not so easy to kill as one might think. Gus is a good hunter, Bart sometimes gets lucky, and Jonathan has had to be satisfied with one giant buck he stumbled upon, but which was, in truth, the biggest of the prizes.

  I wasn’t sure I even knew what an elk looked like. A big deer, I supposed.

  “You left it untended?” Jonathan asked.

  “It is so big, Father,” Jed started to say. “We couldn’t…”

  Gus interrupted before it could become an argument. “How far?”

  “Just over the ridge,” Becky said. “Come on!” She went running up the hill. Edwin ran after her. The rest of us followed more slowly, either through fear or the infirmities of age.

  As we neared the crest of the hill, we saw Edwin and Becky standing stock still, and when the clearing came into view, the rest of us saw the reason.

  The elk was huge indeed, its rack of antlers as big as a small deer. It was lying on a slope, its belly and head slanted up at an ungainly angle. But sitting above the huge animal was a creature that was even bigger.

  It was a bear, but unlike any bear I’ve ever seen, not like the smaller black bears that sometimes ventured near the farm looking for scraps and who ran away at the first smell, sight, or sound of humans.

  This bear was a light tan color, with long, shaggy hair, and an enormous head. It looked up as we reached the top of the hill and grumbled warningly. For a moment, none of knew what to do. In hindsight, we should have simply retreated and let the bear have its prize.

  In their rush, neither Bart nor Gus had thought to bring their rifles. Both Jed and Edwin were still carrying theirs. Without a word, before any of us could raise an objection, Jonathan grabbed the rifle out of Edwin’s hands and raised it.

  There was single loud click. Jonathan’s arms dropped, and he looked at the rifle in shock, his face white. Then he turned to Edwin, who avoided his glance. The boy had forgotten to reload the rifle.

  The click succeeded only in alerting the grizzly to our intentions. It rose up on its hindquarters and roared, and I swear that the hair on my head stood straight up and my blood froze in my veins. Jed was fumbling to unsling his rifle and take aim, but I had my doubts that a single bullet was going to stop this monster from reaching us. Beside me, I saw Gus pull his bowie knife, and I nearly began to laugh hysterically.

  And then Becky rushed toward the bear, waving her arms and screaming at the top of her lungs. Moments later, Edwin joined her.

  I couldn’t take it in. It didn’t seem possible—this slight blonde girl charging such a beast, and my own youngest son following her. But the bear seemed to hesitate, and when the rest of us saw that, we joined in, raising our voices, swirling our arms about frantically.

  Becky Catledge was too much for that bear. It turned slowly and loped away, looking over its shoulder in alarm.

  It took us the rest of the day to drag the elk carcass to the camp. We slung ropes around its antlers and dragged it downhill. It was so enormous, we gutted it right there on the ground, and then quartered it so that we could deal with the smaller p
ortions. We built a large fire and made sure all our weapons were ready in case of a return visit from the bear.

  That night, Edwin sat beside me by the fire while the elk meat cooked. He was staring at Becky, who was sitting with the younger children, laughing as if nothing unusual had happened.

  My twelve-year-old son turned to me and said, “I’m going to marry Becky Catledge.”

  I didn’t laugh. I considered it. He is such a dear, sweet boy, and I see Cullum in his manner and in his looks. I said, “I think that would be a fine idea, Edwin. A fine idea.”

  Jed was cleaning his rifle a few yards away. Though he wasn’t staring at Becky quite as obviously as his younger brother was, he was sneaking glances whenever he could. Jed doesn’t have the smiling, happy presence of Edwin—instead, he has taken on some of Jonathan’s anger and scorn. I think he will be a formidable man someday. I saw the resolute look in his eyes as he took aim at the grizzly.

  It is clear that Edwin has a rival suitor for Becky’s affections, and as much as I love Edwin, I think he will be fine without the help of a good woman. But Jed could use a woman’s tempering touch.

  Becky looked up at last, and her gaze went to Jed, not Edwin. Jed looked down at his gun as if he didn’t notice, but Edwin did, and it broke my heart to see the look of dismay on his face.

  Chapter Eleven

  Portland, Oregon Territory, August 1851

  Dearest Frank,

  I know that you do not approve of me taking the Skoocoom gold, regarding it as unseemly wealth, but if you accompanied me to Portland or on my other travels (an entirely unfair statement, since you have begged to come with me), you would see how important wealth can be. How much gold we possess may not matter so much at our ranch—gold does not feed the horses, plant the crops, or milk the cows—but here among the crowds of the city, wealth can be everything.