The Hunger

by Alma Katsu

She’d known plenty of women like Harriet over the years, women who looked as if their faces had been slowly compressed between the pages of a Bible, all pinched and narrow.

In this, at least, his grandfather had been correct. Evil was invisible, and it was everywhere.

So many women seemed to turn their words over in their mouths like sugar cubes, until you could never be sure of the shape of the original thought.

“I don’t believe in monsters,” Stanton said. “Only men who behave like them.”

Spirits prowling the woods, dressed as men. My name is Legion, for we are many. Mark 5:9.

Ounces, grains of sand, seconds falling through an hourglass: Life was all accounting, and at the end of it, the same tab for all.

For many people did not like the truth, it seemed—thought it was a dirty and distasteful thing, impolite and complicated. They didn’t have the patience for it—for numbers, liters, rations, portions, reasons. Many simply preferred the sweet, momentary pleasure of hearing whatever they wanted to hear.

“Then the Lord must be mightily displeased with you, because he has led you into the valley of death. Make peace with your Lord before it is too late, because the hungry ones are coming for you.”

Hope, Tamsen realized, could be a very dangerous thing, especially when dealt to desperate hands.

Reed once thought that love was akin to passion, but he saw now that it was something different entirely; that it was, perhaps, a kind of faith.