27. Retreat
We had to get back to the cabin. Steve would never make it to the next creek, and we couldn’t leave him behind. With the monster on the prowl, it was our only point of safety in the vast wilderness.
When we eventually left our hiding place, I stamped my numb feet, praying frostbite hadn’t set in. There was nothing to be done at the moment; we needed to put as much distance between the creature and ourselves as possible.
Our pace was agonizingly slow. We tried to support Steve, but our snowshoes tangled together, making it difficult. Though his legs were unharmed, he moved like an old man, holding his ribs on the left side and trying not to cry out. The aurora twisted overhead, hissing snakes of green and red that turned the landscape into something almost dreamlike.
“We have to stop,” Eleanor said at last. “We need a fire, or we aren’t going to make it much farther.”
We chose a spot near a timber jam on the creek, hoping the frozen mass would block the light somewhat. At Steve’s instruction, I climbed to the top of the bank and found seasoned wood left behind by last spring’s floods, along with some dead, dry spruce boughs. I built the fire with care, under Steve’s supervision, as he knew more about campfires in snowy conditions than either Eleanor or me. At last it blazed up with blessed light and warmth.
“Make us some food, while I tend Steve,” Eleanor ordered.
I unbuttoned my coat to pull out the rashers of bacon I carried beneath, in order to keep them thawed with the heat of my body. We still had our packs, so I fried them in a skillet over the fire. The smell broke through exhaustion; I was desperately hungry after so much exertion, and it was all I could do not to cram the meat into my mouth half-raw.
Steve sat as close to the fire as possible while Eleanor peeled off the left arm of his coat, thick shirt, and union suit. The skin thus revealed bore a shovel-shaped black bruise, made by the coffin bone of a long-dead horse.
“The ribs are definitely broken,” she said after a brief examination, during which Steve set his jaw against the pain. Taking out her bandages, she wrapped his chest and shoulder, then helped him redress before the cold could nip the skin.
“We should re-wrap your forehead, as well,” she said to me. “Blood is seeping through.”
“After we eat.”
As we gobbled up our shares of bacon, Steve glanced at me. “Why does it call you Colin?”
The question caught me off guard. “What do you mean?”
“That wasn’t your original name, right? You took it much later. So why would your dead sister, who knew you only in childhood, call you Colin?”
I paused, stunned I hadn’t noticed. “I…it’s how I think of myself, I suppose?”
“So it isn’t ghosts speaking through it,” Eleanor murmured, half to herself.
Steve shook his head. “I don’t think so, no.”
“Thank God.” Her shoulders sagged, as if some weight had been lifted from them. “My father was a cruel man; it would have been very like him to find me even here, if he had the means.”
“You don’t have to tell us,” I said quickly.
“No, I…I want to. Anna knew some of it, but not everything.” She’d been so pale and withdrawn since Anna’s death, but now her shoulders straightened. “Father used his money to control everyone and everything around him. All had to be to his exacting—impossible—standards. We had trouble keeping servants, and…well. My mother died from drinking carbolic acid. I always thought she did it just to get away from him.”
Steve looked stricken. “That’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”
Eleanor chewed some more bacon, perhaps out of hunger, perhaps to give herself a chance to recover before speaking again. “He injured his back in a fall when I was fifteen. It left him bed-ridden, which, needless to say, didn’t improve his temper. He insisted I learn nursing—not at a Nightingale school, but a weekly series of courses to keep me close to his side. He thought it would be cheaper than hiring a professional, you see.”
The bitterness in her voice was unmistakable. I put a hand to her shoulder, and we shared a brief look of commiseration. Both of us knew what it was like to have tyrannical fathers.
“It won’t come as a surprise to learn he was a horrid patient,” she went on. “Due to the pain, he needed regular doses of morphine, and in time became a morphinomaniac. I argued that he was risking his life by taking so much so often, but as always his word was law. I found him dead in bed one morning.” She swallowed hard. “You will think less of me, but…all I felt was relief.”
“No.” I put a brotherly arm around her shoulders. “I understand. Truly.”
She leaned into me. Steve put his hand over his face, shoulders shaking as he sobbed quietly into his mitten. I put my other arm around him, drew him in.
“Roland seemed like a good father.” I squeezed his shoulders. “I’m sorry he’s gone.”
Eleanor reached out for him as well. “I’m sorry, too. I know I-I did wrong by him, but I never wished him ill, and I’m sorry he’s g-gone. He didn’t deserve what happened.”
We held each other in a knot of three for a while, all of us weeping. I cried for Roland, and Eleanor, and Steve. For Doug.
Maybe even a little for myself.
* * *
We didn’t weep for long. The arctic night had no pity for our sorrows, and would kill us just as surely as the creature.
Despite our exhaustion, we pressed on. Thankfully, the weather stayed clear, and we heard no sound from the monster that stalked us, though I didn’t doubt it was out there somewhere. Searching, perhaps—or worse, simply watching as we struggled.
What did it want from us? Was it feeding off us in some fashion? Was it angry? Had God sent it to punish our sins?
I’d left behind my belief in a benevolent overseer of creation long ago. Centuries past, heretics claimed the Devil had created the world; I began to imagine they had the right of it.
A strange mixture of despair and relief touched me as our cabin came into sight. Relief to have a place to shelter once again. Despair, because we were now as trapped as we’d been during the snowstorm. Even if we survived the winter on what remained of our stores, there was no reason to think the beast would let us go when the weather turned warm and the sun returned.
Clarke had gotten away from the creek. Because Bill had provided some sort of distraction? Once Steve healed, could he go for help if I held its attention? Would it even matter? Clarke had died at his own hand eventually. Did that have anything to do with the creature?
I remembered how intently he’d scanned the line before spotting us. As though he’d been waiting for a specific person to pass by.
Then he’d given us his story about the claim, and a shotgun shell packed with gold dust and a bracelet identical to Bessie’s down to her initials. I no longer believed that was a coincidence, not after everything that had happened. The bracelet was hers, somehow.
Clarke couldn’t have known. But perhaps the creature could have. Had he carried its influence out along with the gold?
The mine shaft gaped like an enormous maw as we limped past, ready to devour us all. Above it, the bucket swung slowly back and forth, the rope creaking in the breeze. The dump piles—one of muck, one of bone, and the last of paydirt, were completely crusted over by snow and ice.
We might have a hundred thousand dollars sitting in that pile, and it did us no good.
“Did we leave the cabin door open?” Eleanor asked suddenly.
My heart quickened. “I don’t think so.”
Steve’s face was white with pain, and he squinted blearily at the cabin for a long moment before saying, “No. I’m certain I remember latching it as we left, to keep animals out. Not that there are any animals this time of year.”
“Stay behind me,” I ordered. I wasn’t certain what I expected to find, but Steve was in no shape to do anything, and I wasn’t about to risk Eleanor. I took the hatchet for cutting firewood out of my pack and held it before me as I approached the cabin. Not that I imagined I could kill the unnatural thing that hunted us, but perhaps I could buy some time for the others to escape if it was lurking within.
Holding my breath, I sidled up to the open door—then quickly through it, hatchet raised to strike.
The cabin was empty; that was the first, relieved thought I had. I could see the entire cabin easily, because the dividing curtain lay in a torn pile of scraps.
As did the scanty food stores we’d left behind.
Flour scattered everywhere, ground into the floor, thrown onto the frozen walls. The bundles of bacon were ripped open, the meat gone and only the wrapping left behind.
My first thought was that some bear had roused despite the winter and ransacked our cabin. But the truth was much worse, as proved by the open tin cans, the knife slashes in the sacks of dried beans and powdered soup.
Human hands had done this.
And the only possible pair of hands in this isolated place belonged to my brother.
* * *
Numb with despair, I mechanically set about restoring what I could, while Eleanor built up the fire. Steve collapsed into a chair, staring around with dull eyes at the destruction.
I salvaged what food I could, but it wasn’t nearly enough for three people to survive until spring. If we rationed carefully, we might have enough to last two weeks. By then, the furious cold would whittle us down to nothing, even if we devoted ourselves to no activity more strenuous than tending the fire and lying motionless in our beds.
If we stayed, we would starve. If we left, the creature would kill us.
No matter what choice we made, we were going to die.