The Curious Journal of Henry Abernathy

The Journal of Henry Abernathy

Growing up, my family always told the story of how we could trace our lineage back to the Revolutionary War. “Your great-great-great-great-great, was that too many greats? Well, anyway, Grandfather Thaddeus Abernathy fought with Washington!” My father would say. I never put too much thought to it, always assuming it was the hyperbole of family lore, until this year. Starting my junior year at Arizona State University, (go Sun Devils!), I was enrolled in a genetics class that had me wondering if there was any truth to the reports. So, I started digging.

I won’t bore you with the details, but one thing led to another, and I found myself sitting at my grandmother’s bedside while she produced an old family bible with a cracked and weathered spine that rivaled her own. Thumbing through the thin yellowed pages she pointed me to a family tree that spread out and blossomed, covering generations of Abernathy men and women.

While my grandmother carefully placed the bible back into a heavy trunk at the foot of her bed, I couldn’t help but notice another book, half wrapped in cloth. The book, just as tattered as the family bible turned out to be the journal of my great-great-great-great uncle Henry Abernathy. I’ve decided that the best way to carry on our family history would be to lovingly digitize this diary. I haven’t read it in its entirety so, you and I, patient reader, will be learning the family lore together. Without further ado…

September 9th, 1850

I find it quite fitting that my first entry into this diary should also mark the birthdate of the great state of California, towards which I am traveling. As of today, it is no longer a distant territory or a fevered dream but a state!— which exists in a state of promise of prosperity for those bold enough to claim it.

My name is Dr. Henry Abernathy, and as of this morning, I am no longer a practicing physician within the city of St. Louis, having shuttered my doors to join the tide of adventurers and dreamers, braving the westward trek.

I have not made this decision lightly, much to the dismay of my beloved brother Silas who believes that I am departing too late in the season. “You’ll end up like the Donner party!” He shouted at me during our final supper yesterday. The cautious soul has always been the more pragmatic of my siblings. Yet, I cannot resist the saccharin sweet lure of the siren’s song! The unknown has a way of burrowing in, taking root, in even the most rational of minds. What greater adventure is there than to leave the familiar, venture into lands where maps falter and society’s rules bend like saplings in a storm?

I admit, though I wax poetic and wear the face of the intrepid adventurer, I sit with a mild unease that upsets the intestines. As a physician, I cannot ignore the peril. As a man, I cannot resist the call. Aboard this wagon, I ruminate on the words of Caesar to Calpurnia “Cowards die many times before their death.” I shall not be a coward; I shall arrive in California valiant!

For now, I retire to my modest lodging for the evening, my mind alight with equal parts anticipation and trepidation. Tomorrow, I shall take my first steps westward, and the world I know will be left behind.

May this diary serve as a record of the days to come and, God willing, an account of my safe arrival in California.

Adieu for now, a bright-eyed wanderer, eager for the horizon

***Editors note: After transcribing the first entry, I realized there will be areas where context or clarification may be needed. I’ll add annotations when appropriate, as I’ve done here. ***

September 14th 1850

I must confess, I have been remiss in my duties! Cataloguing this adventure has proven more difficult than I imagined. The days and miles pass slowly, like cold molasses poured from a jar. I fear I, too, have grown thick and sluggish as the aforementioned molasses, I am dulled by the unrelenting tedium of the trail.

To pass the time, I have made it my business to converse with my fellow travelers, particularly one Nathaniel Wainwright, a cheery young towheaded fellow from Boston. Tired of the fisherman’s life, he has already traveled for months to join this expedition. How the young man tolerates another second of monotony is beyond me! Day after day, it’s one foot in front of the other. Ox and man, ceaselessly trudging along the flat, endless stretches of this vast country we call home. I fear if I continue any longer, I shall have more in common with the beast!

I must also note a curiosity: I cannot seem to escape the specter of the Donner party! Just last night, as we gathered around the dying embers of our dinner fire, Nathaniel and our leader, Mr. Hatfield, discussed the projected timeline of our journey. Both are uneasy about our late departure and are eager to increase our pace, lest we share the fate of those poor, doomed souls.

Between you and me, I confess I couldn’t help but think of an off-color joke, the Donner Dinner Party! There’s a bit of grim wordplay to be had there, though I mean no disrespect to the unfortunate victims of that tragedy. They did what they must, though I cannot fathom the depths of desperation that would drive one to view the flesh of a companion with avaricious eyes. As for me, I shall content myself with rabbit stew at MY trail dinner parties!

Adieu for now, from a wanderer with a full belly and blistered feet.

**Editors note: Using an estimation of previous gold rushers average mileage, I’ve guessed at the possible date of this entry. The entire page is splattered in a rusty-brown stain and areas are smudged. Sorry, Uncle Henry, if I’m way off the mark. Also, there appears to be a recipe or list scratched into the margin. From what I can make out “Tallow, salt, pepper, **illegible**”

September 25th

We have maintained the steady but quite brisk pace set by Mr. Hatfield and have arrived at Fort Kearny! The month of September almost gone, along with a portion of my sanity! What a positively mind-numbing experience travel is. I was encouraged to leave behind my books and medical journals as the added weight would’ve encumbered me beyond measure. While I recognize the intelligence within the decision, I still find myself wondering whether a little added discomfort would have kept me from repeating the same lackluster lines of questioning with my companions. At the risk of sounding vain, I have yet to find an intellectual equal among the troupe and though Nathaniel and I enjoy trading riddles and stories to pass the time, it is quite easy to outwit him and solve his puzzles without much mental taxation.

I apologize; my tone has grown unkind. Today was the first morning that I awoke and found myself incensed by the chill of impending autumn. Ha! Incensed. From the Latin word “incendere”, to burn. I find it amusing that though the weather bites I find words that inflame. To be incensed is to carry a firestorm in one’s chest, embers ignited by fury. I am incensed by this turn of the weather.

Though Fort Kearny provides some respite it is not the grand citadel I hoped for, rather, it is a smattering** of wooden structures huddled along the Platte River vainly attempting to imitate the trappings of civilization. There are no grand walls or imposing ramparts here, only roughhewn timbers and sod buildings.

The soldiers that man this “fort on the river” are pleasant enough yet they continue to admonish me and my fellow travelers for our decision to make this trek so close to winter. Is the way ahead truly so difficult? So impassable? Between the chill, the monotony, and mediocrity of company, I am beginning to have my regrets. Silas, you bastard, you may have been right after all.

Adieu, from a traveler with cold feet—in more ways than one!

***Editors note: The following six entries in the journal are very badly smudged, likely by water damage, and are nearly unreadable. I have omitted these entries. However, from what I can make out, Uncle Henry and Nathaniel became fast friends and even vied for the attention of a schoolteacher that was traveling with the group. (Spoiler: it seems neither were successful and the young woman parted ways with the company at Fort Kearny in modern-day Nebraska). ***

October 20th 1850

By GOD we have arrived at Fort Laramie! While still not the grand bastion I imagined when I pictured a frontier fort, the site is wondrous! We have been here but an hour and I must sit and tell you of a phenomenal encounter lest I forget a single detail!

No sooner had we unhitched our oxen and set them upon the frosted grass at the fort’s perimeter did we hear a commotion. Mr Hatfield and Nathaniel sprung from the wagons to see a crowd forming at the entrance to the fort. As I, and the other men, hurried to be of assistance, the crowd parted like the proverbial Red Sea and there before me was the most gruesome a sight! Two soldiers carried a third man dressed in a severely bloodied furs through the front gate, heading towards the institution’s hospital A hospital! A real frontier hospital!. “He’s been shot!” one of the men cried, “Make way! Someone fetch Doc Everett!” another shouted.

“I’m a doctor!” I offered as the men passed by. A burly sergeant, his uniform smelling of bacon grease and pipe smoke, grabbed me by the collar and dragged me forward.

“You’ll do,” he growled, pulling me along with the current of bodies that surged toward the hospital.

The air in the room was heavy and nauseating, the iron scent of blood mixing with the stench of sweat and rot causing me to reel momentarily. I fear that my experience as an internalist has not exposed me to the intricacies of traumatic injuries so while we laid the man upon the table, I believe I may have appeared as peaked and gray as the victim before me. Never in all my years of practicing medicine have I seen an injury such as this.

Someone pulled back the man’s clothes to expose a hole about the size of my pinky in the left lower quadrant of the patient’s abdomen, just above his hip. The wound pulsed slow and steady, emanating an odor much like sour beef as though it had already begun to fester.

“It was an accident, doc.” stammered a young soldier, his face pale beneath his freckled cheeks. “We was hunting and.. and.. we thought he was a deer! He’s one of the fur traders that’s been passin’ through. The Frenchman. Or Canadian. Aw, hell, I don’t remember.” Suddenly the doors to the room flew open with a slam that silenced the room.

In strode a towering man, his boots pounding the wooden floor like cannon fire in the heavy silence. “We can argue his heritage later.” The man rumbled. Without hesitation, he rolled up his sleeves and grabbed a bottle of whiskey from a shelf at the back of the room. Uncorking it with his teeth in one fluid motion, he took a long, savage pull before upending the rest of the amber liquid onto the Frenchman’s wound.

The reaction was immediate. The man jerked upright, his body convulsing as he let out a strangled, heavily accented cry, “Merde!! It burns!!”

“Settle down, frog!” the towering man bellowed, shoving the patient back onto the table with one massive hand. “Better the burn now than the burn of a fever tomorrow!” His words carried an authority that silenced the Frenchman’s continued protestations. With the back of his hand, he wiped the remnants of the liquor from his big red beard. He turned to me, his sharp blue eyes boring into mine. “You the other doctor?” he asked, his tone gruff and laced with a challenge.

Trying to shake away the queasiness that threatened to make its presence known to everyone in the room I swallowed hard and managed to squeeze out “I am. I am Dr Henry Abernathy, Internalist.”

“Internalist, eh?” he said, his lips curled into a grin. “Well, I’m Doc Sam Everett. Out here, we don’t have the luxury of specialties.” He punctuated the statement with a playful, jarring, punch to my shoulder that staggered me.

I stood there, awestruck, as he turned back to his patient, his massive hands working with surprising precision. This was no polished surgeon of the city—this was a man forged by fire and blood, a master of his craft. In this instant, all doubt about my decision melted away. I would become a man of similar caliber in these wild and untamed lands. This was man of grit! The man I was meant to become!

Adieu— no, adieu feels wrong now. Until the next page, from a doctor discovering his mettle.

**Editors note: The next entry doesn’t have a date but rather a time, I am assuming the early morning hours of Oct 21st***

3am

He is dead.

I offered to relieve Doc Everett and keep an eye on our patient over the night. Around midnight by my watch, the Frenchman began to moan, low, haunting wails that seemed to rise from some deep well of despair. His brow drenched in sweat, radiated an almost infernal heat. Each time I placed a cool, damp rag upon his forehead, it was as if the fever drank it dry, leeching away its chill and leaving behind only tepid warmth. I raced back and forth to fetch more, a Sisyphean effort that consumed me for the better part of an hour.

It was during one of these trips, as I leaned over him with another rag, that his eyes flew open—wild, glassy, and wide with terror. Before I could recoil, his hand shot out and clamped onto my wrist with a strength far greater than I believed his failing body could muster.

“It follows,” he rasped, his voice barely audible over the sound of his labored breathing.

“What man? What follows?” I asked struggling to make sense of the man’s fevered words. With a start he grabbed my shirt and pulled me close. His hot fetid breath assaulted me as I strained to make out what he said next.

“The hunger, the… wendigo.” I tried to pull back, but the man held me, unrelenting, unyielding, his fingers digging into my skin like iron claws. A rancid stench came like a wave with every breath he took. From the corner of his mouth a thin trickle of blood-tinged saliva made its way down his chin. His eyes darted to the corners of the room as though expecting some unseen force to emerge from the shadows. “You feed it once, and it stays. Always hungry, always hunting.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded, my voice sharp as his gaze bore into me with such intensity that I felt the words falter in my throat.

“Famine,” he wheezed, his chest rattling. “It takes. It changes. It… devours.” His breathing grew shallower, his grip slackened, and for a moment, I thought he might have fallen into unconsciousness. But then he jerked violently, pulling me so close that his lips nearly brushed my ear. “Beware the hunger, Doctor,” he hissed, his voice cracking with effort. “It starts small… but it grows. It will consume you. Consume us all.”

With a final, shuddering gasp, his body tensed, and then he released me, collapsing back onto the cot. His chest rose and fell one last time before a stillness overtook him, leaving only the oppressive silence of the room and the lingering stench of sweat, blood, and death.

I believe myself to be a man of science. A learned, rational man. I have cared for many a patient clinging to the final fraying threads of life. Deathbed confessions are not foreign to me. But this man— this man— the terror in his eyes, his tremulous voice. It has taken hold of me in a way I cannot explain.

I sit here now, penning these words with trembling hands, his lifeless body lit only by the dim, flickering glow of candlelight. This room is cold. This flame offers no warmth. I can shake neither the hammering in my chest nor the oppressive weight of the air, nor the pervasive sense that this man’s omen was meant for my ears. Was this man a harbinger of ill tidings yet to come?

I must leave this place. Death permeates these rafters and its heavy, suffocating cloak weighs down my spirit.

October 28th, 1850

It has been five days since we left Fort Laramie. The fervor I felt upon my departure from St Louis is gone. I can no longer bring myself to write, to learn, to travel. I have been utterly sapped of energy and spirit.

I briefly entertained an invitation to stay with Doc Everett, to learn more of the ways of frontier medicine but I could not bring myself to spend another minute in that hospital. A lingering dread clung to me every time I gazed up at its ramshackle timbers.

The feelings of affection I once had for what seemed a noble refuge for the sick and injured in this unruly world have evaporated. In its place a resides a disgusting residue, a sour sick feeling rises in my throat at the thought of spending one more night near that cursed building. The dying words of the Frenchman continue to sit with me. After asking around the Fort for any more information on the man I was only able to ascertain that he had been missing for a month, that he had left with a compatriot that has still not been found.

The only details of the “wendigo” I could uncover were superstitions from Laramie’s other French-Canadian fur trappers. Superstitions passed on to them by their Cree guides. Incredible that the tales have reached this far south. But, as Virgil wrote in his Aeneid: Fama Volat!—Rumor flies! What is a superstition if not a rumor cloaked in the trappings of the mythic?

Yet why does it still hound me? Every time I sit for a meal with Nathaniel, as the hunger pangs begin to twist my stomach, I am reminded of that man’s words. “Beware the hunger, it will consume you.” How can I beware my body’s natural call to take in sustenance? The thought continues to gnaw at the edges of my mind. Sad, I can no longer derive any pleasure in simple wordplay.

It has started snowing.

November 8th

What started as gentle flurries has turned into a relentless snowstorm, burying the landscape under thick heavy layers. A blanket of snow they call it. A blanket of snow. Ha! What a twisting of language. Why do we attempt to pervert the imagery of cozy, homey, comfort by associating it with this frozen scourge? A blanket of snow? More like an iron maiden of snow. This is no gentle embrace, each flake, each biting gust of a wind, is a cold driving nail skewering us as we plod onward. It is a white deathbed of snow, not a sanctuary.

Nathaniel has taken ill. It started with another member of the party and now he has taken to coughing. It is a dry, hollow cough, unproductive, and nagging. I hear it join the chorus of coughs building among the group, echoing off the walls of the South Pass. We should turn back before it gets any worse. Try to seek shelter at Laramie through the winter. Heavens forbid I spend one more night in the shadow of that dreadful fort. But I am beginning to fear for our endurance.

*** Editors note: There is no date for the following entry ***

Something terrible has happened. One of our wagons became mired in this filthy, unyielding snow. The wheels sank deep into the slush, and as the men scrambled to free it, Nathaniel joined them at the rear. They pushed and strained against the weight, their boots slipping on the frozen ground.

Just as the wheel began to clear the rut, Nathaniel was overtaken by a violent coughing fit. In that moment, the wagon slipped backward, lurching with dreadful finality. He fell, and the wheel rolled onto his leg, with a thunderous SNAP that echoed over the roaring blizzard.

The bone is surely fractured. With what little I had at hand, I splinted the limb, fashioning a crude brace to keep the jagged edges aligned. In a moment of mimicry, I found myself pouring whiskey over the raw abrasions and bloodied skin. “Better the burn now than the burn of a fever!” I said, though my voice rang hollow. Nathaniel, for his part, was far more interested in the whiskey as anesthetic than as a cleanser, and I did not deny him.

Though he wears the stoic’s mask, the sweat beading on his brow and the tremor in his hands betray his agony. His endurance is remarkable—this man who has traveled all the way from Boston to this unsettled western land with a fire in his heart that refuses to be extinguished.

He must make it to California.

November 10th

The snow continues to fall and the party’s pace has paused. I am gripped by a fear for Nathaniel, between the cough and his injured leg, the poor man is in dire straits. Mr Hatfield pulled me aside earlier to discuss options for the young man. The party is fracturing under the strain, with tempers flaring. There is growing dissent among the party with several of us believing that our best hopes lie at Laramie while others believe we need to press on. Mr Hatfield being in the latter camp. They believe California is within reach, that the promise of gold and prosperity lies just beyond the horizon.

In truth, I am torn. The thought of retreating to Laramie feels like surrender. Yet, what I think what would be best for my patient— for my friend, is the meager infirmary at Laramie. We have been forced to make camp and how best to proceed will be the subject of heated debate in the days to come. For Nathaniel’s sake, I only hope reason prevails.

November 11th

Our party is split. No consensus was met last night and the tensions were as heated as the weather cold. It remains bitterly cold, we are only a few days out from Laramie thanks to this godforsaken snow. It continues to fall. Continues to dump from the sky in stuttering torrents.

I have caught the cough and joined the chorus. The insistent nature of this illness along with the cold have stirred in me a simmering rage I have never felt before. I joined in with the shouting last night, unleashing my own vitriol on Mr Hatfield and his wife who insist on pressing onward despite our dwindling supplies.

We were fools to not carry more. Prices for goods were steep at Kearny, astronomical at Laramie. As such we were only able to procure what we believed would be just enough in the best of conditions, now starvation rations under the circumstances.

In spite of this, I, and three other conspirators, have made a pact to steal away from the group and escort Nathaniel back to Fort Laramie.

Nathaniel grows weaker with each passing hour, and I can no longer stand to watch him deteriorate while we march toward an uncertain future. We will only take a handful of supplies so our absence from the group will not overburden the dwindling stock. We will leave under cover of darkness, heading back southeast towards Laramie.

It is a gamble, I know. Laramie may hold only the shadow of salvation, but I cannot ignore the feeling that to remain with the group is to condemn ourselves to the snow’s icy grave.

November 13th

What fools we are. To think we could best God’s righteous fury made manifest by this frigid cold. One day removed from the main group and we are already swallowed by this infinite whiteness. Though we could not see three steps in front of us through the blizzard our splinter group carried on yesterday. We left as the pale moon rose providing just enough light for us to see the tracks of the person ahead—until it did not.

I swear I could not have lost focus for more than a few seconds but when I looked up, only virgin, undisturbed snow lay before me. With Nathaniel limping along beside me we tried to circle back but only found our own meandering tracks looping back on themselves. We huddled together under a woolen blanket with feeble fire for warmth. The wind and storm howled around us, screaming, howling at our hubris. We thought we would surely perish by morning.

And yet, we awoke to the dawn sun thawing our stiff bones. We spent another hour searching for the others but could not even find our own tracks leading back to the main camp. Though his cough has progressed to the point of producing bloodied sputum, Nathaniel believes that together, we can limp our way back to Laramie. I resent the man’s optimism. He is god damned fool. We will die in this wilderness.

1pm

I know it is a foolish thought, but as the wind and snow swirl around me, I cannot shake the feeling that we are being pursued.

The sensation has haunted me since the first night, though at the time, I lacked the words to name it. Now, it feels more insistent, yet delicate in its urging. Like a spider delicately dancing along my spine, its gossamer threads brushing against my skin, an invisible caress that refuses to relent as we trudge onward.

My breath plumes in the frigid air, yet it is stifling, suffocating. The cold gnaws at my flesh, but it is the silence that unsettles me most. I pause, straining my ears for the faintest sound of life, but the world is devoid of it. Even the crunch of our boots against the ice and snow is muted, muffled, as though swallowed by a forest starved for sound.

I am on alert—and I am starving.

The rations we shared at camp were the last time I tasted anything substantial. Now, I have only a handful of hardtack, reduced to brittle crumbs by my desperate, small bites. Each mouthful dissolves into a dry paste that does little to sate the gnawing ache in my stomach.

We must find food soon. The hunger twists inside me, a silent tormentor. It clouds my thoughts, dulls my senses, and yet sharpens one cruel edge: an awareness that if we do not eat, we will not survive.

And still, that feeling persists—that we are not alone in this wasteland.

November 14th

Through divine providence or blind luck, we have stumbled upon a hunting shack. Or at least the remnants of one. This one room building, covered in snow was almost missed had it not been for Nathaniel’s sharp eyes. I am lucky to have such a companion. While my spirits flag, his remain steadfast as ever.

“Look at our new lodgings, Henry!” He cried through a coughing fit. “We are home, set us a fire while I rest, my good man.” I laughed at his imitation of high society.

“At once, M’lord.” I laughed until the coughing took me as well.

November 15th

Twigs. Bark. Snow. We have nothing to eat.

Yesterday, I thought I had caught small game—something, anything, to quiet the relentless gnawing in my belly. I went to check my traps, hopeful, but instead found an incredible wolf, its hulking frame hunched over the fragile twig-and-twine trap I had fashioned.

With one enormous paw, it stepped down, crushing the structure, mocking my feeble efforts. Then it set to its gruesome task, tearing into the prize that should have been mine. Flesh and fur scattered as it fed, steam rising from its muzzle in the bitter cold.

I wept silently as the snow fell around me, clinging to my eyelashes, melting against my fevered cheeks. My fingers curled into the frozen ground, useless as the creature ate its fill and then lumbered off.

This place devours.

It devours flesh.

It devours minds.

It devours until nothing remains but a steaming pile of bones, stripped clean by the hunger of this wasteland. It will consume us all.

When the wolf had gone, I scooped up what was left—the cooling remnants, scraps of flesh and shattered bone. They shall make a broth tonight. Bitter, thin, but it will be something.

November??

The storm rages without end. There is nothing we can do.

I tried to open the door to our shack yesterday, but it wouldn’t budge. The weight of the snow, stacked high and far, presses against it like the hand of death itself. Peering through a crack in the sod and timber, I can see nothing but an endless expanse of white. This shack, this place we thought would be our refuge, shall instead become our mausoleum.

Nathaniel worsens by the day, though he tries—God help him, he tries—to keep my spirits up. He speaks to me in riddles, simple games meant to distract from the unrelenting torment of our predicament. But I cannot care for his riddles. What is a riddle compared to the puzzle of life or death?

Do I eat this last bite of hardtack, or save it for Nathaniel? Do I pour the last drop of broth into his cup, or keep it for myself? Each decision, no matter how small, feels like a cruel arithmetic, a grim calculus of survival that turns every moment into a test of will.

I cannot take it anymore.

I hate him.

I hate this snow.

I hate this cursed, unyielding land.

Why? Why did I do this? Why did I leave behind the warmth and safety of St. Louis? What foolish ambition drove me here, to this frozen grave?

The storm continues to howl, and with it, so does my soul.

December??

I mark this passage with December though I fear I do not truly know what day it is. I tried to keep time through the pages of this journal but what? Was one page a day? An hour? Time stretches on. I sleep, I dream of eating. I wake, I cough and think of the food I could kill to have. Every moment of the day I am faced with this unrelenting hunger, this isolation, this fool of a companion. WHY DID YOU THINK YOU COULD PUSH THE WAGON IN YOUR CONDITION, NATHANIEL!?

I hear the thought echo in my head, over and over again, a refrain I cannot silence. And yet, I cannot fully blame him. No—this was my doing. It was my idea to steal away from camp under the cover of darkness, to sneak away like thieves abandoning the scene of a crime. We were the ones who left them behind, not the other way around.

I stare now through the crack in the wall, the thin gap between sod and timber. Outside, the snow blows and drifts across the landscape, shifting and slithering like some great beast. It undulates in waves, alive and malevolent. It whispers as it moves, though I cannot discern its words.

My thoughts drift to the others. Did they fare any better? Are they warm? Are they fed? Are they alive?

Are we all doomed?

December??

The snow persists and I fear I shall not much longer. It has been days since I have eaten much more than boiled snow seasoned with our remaining salt, pepper, and tallow. My fever has returned. It feels as the Frenchman’s. it feels as a fever of demonic origin, though the Infernal himself has seared his mark into my very flesh. This cough rattles in my chest, thick, wet, tenacious. A sputum that feels entitled to the passages of my lungs and resists the order to evacuate. Who am I to blame it? The order I issue is weaker than kittens, my cough a mere suggestion. An obligatory motion. I am ill, therefore I should cough.

Nathaniel is in worse shape than I. I can sense he is not long for this world. The steady rise and fall of his chest has grown shallower. Twice already I found myself with ear to his lips, feeling for air movement though I see none in his gaunt chest.

You were right Silas. I was not meant for this world. I am the frail boy still, not the burly frontier surgeon. What I would give to be home once more, to taste our mother’s roast, to drink her gravy. Though, she never got it quite right, if I think hard enough I can feel the gelatinous clumps of undissolved flour. If I strain my tongue’s memory I can the succulent beef. I must put down my pen, I have grown too weak to hold it.

*** Editors note: The following entry is undated. The two pages are heavily splattered with rust-brown stains, consistent with earlier damage. The handwriting is hurried, slanted forward, as though the author’s thoughts were spilling faster than his pen could capture . ***

He is dead and it was I that did it. WHY WOULD YOU NOT DIE? Breathing shallower and shallower, DID YOU THINK YOU WOULD TRULY SEE CALIFORNIA? This shall be my confession, his blood is on my hands. I did not realize I was doing it!

One minute listening to the faint hiss of breath.

The next digging through the pack for our remaining hunting knife.

The next feeling the sticky, wet, warmth of his blood on my hands.

I scrambled to find a vessel to fill!

Waste not the precious nutrients, Henry, my mind whispered

At first the concoction was impossible— salty, thick, far too warm to stomach. But then…. Mother’s gravy.

Yes. There it was!

Mother’s gravy, filling my mouth!

Ah! Yes! There are the congealing bits, rolling around my tongue, the imperfectly blended chunks of flour—not at all the results of coagulation, no. No, NO! This was mother’s incomplete recipe!

If Nathaniel held the secret to mother’s gravy there must be other recipes hidden within his flesh.

So I cut.

Remembering the surgical precision with which I was taught to manipulate cadavers—NO!

Remembering the way the BUTCHER slaughtered! This was a butcher’s ART!

I found the joint. I slid my knife in. With a twist and a SNAP! I pierced the cartilage, freeing the hunk of meat.

“You are free!” I whispered.

Now to free the meat from its prison of flesh. I have no desire to smell the burning of skin, of hair, only succulent meats.

A pan!

A pan! Yes, I must find the pan. And a recipe, a simple one:

The last of our tallow.

A pinch of salt.

A dash of pepper.

And Nathaniel.

I am sated.

December ???

The hunger has returned. I can feel it. I can feel the hunger. The Frenchman was right, it shall consume me. From the inside out. I can feel each and every one of my frail ribs, feel the skin stretching tight as a drum.

And this fever. Hell’s mark upon me searing my flesh as I seared—

I buried Nathaniel’s remains yesterday.

I dug in the frozen snow with my bare hands until I met the cold, hard ground beneath and I dug some more.

I look now upon my fingers, the nails cracked and falling away.

I apologize, but I lacked for a shovel.

I am warm. No, I am HOT. I am an inferno in this small hunting cabin. I am a CONFLAGRATION.

But it is cold outside. A thought occurs to me.

I shall go for a brisk walk.

I shall amble through the infinite beauty of this white wasteland. I shall allow the falling drifts of snow to cool my skin. Allow them to soothe the fire roaring within me.

I shall be but a moment.