by Tim Curran
"That doesn't concern you. When the time comes…"
Perry stood up and began walking to the door, silently.
"He's here to feed on us," Claussen gloated. "To destroy all we've built, to take back his lands. And to breed. Blood is his wine…give unto him…"
13
Perry said, "The church has been wrecked. Claussen is out of his mind."
Longtree heard him out and did not like any of it. Lauters had assaulted the man and he had now gone quietly-or not so quietly-out of his mind. That much was true. Lauters needed to be put under arrest.
Perry just shook his head. "He's raving, Marshal. He believes this creature is some sort of god and he is its priest."
"Did he call it by name?"
"Yes." Perry swallowed. "Lord of the High Wood. Skullhead."
Longtree paled. "Maybe he's not as crazy as you think."
Perry just stared at him. "What do you mean by that?"
So Longtree told him everything he knew. Told him in detail even though he didn't really have the time to do much explaining. But it was important that the doctor know.
"Like some sort of ogre," was all Perry said. "A monster from a story book."
"Yes," Longtree admitted. "But far worse."
14
An hour later, the carnage at Sheriff Lauters' farm was discovered. And as the fates would have it, Lauters discovered it himself. He was sober when he rode out to the farm, his hurt arm bandaged and aching. He knew something was wrong when he'd rounded the little hill that overlooked his spread.
I had a funny feeling, he said later, a tickle at the back of my neck…
He'd paused up there on the hill. What he saw was a cold, unnatural stillness enveloping the grounds. The boys weren't out tending to things. No chickens squawked, no pigs squealed, no horses whinnied. No trail of smoke issued from the chimney.
What he found was slaughter. His family murdered.
Longtree could pretty much put together the rest. Lauters had rode into town and informed everyone, before collapsing with hysteria. He was now at Dr. Perry's, sedated. Perry said he'd sleep until evening.
Longtree toured the crime scene, his stomach in his throat. The remains of Lauters' eldest son, Chauncey, were discovered in the barn, mixed in with those of several pigs, two horses, and a blizzard of feathers from the chickens. In the house, a body ripped like a bag of meat and cast about was thought to be what was left of Lauters' wife, Abigail. Upstairs, were the headless corpse of Abigail's cousin Virginia Krebs and a collection of pitted bones thought to belong to Jimmy Lauters. The youngest boy, Jo Jo, was nowhere to be found. The window to the children's room was broken outward, so it was thought the fiend leapt out with the three-year old in tow. Bloody, inhuman footprints nearly covered by snow wound out into the distance.
Alden Bowes was, for all purposes, the sheriff of Wolf Creek now. He knew Lauters' family well and none of it was easy for him. But he had a job to do and do it he would.
"I can't believe this," Bowes kept saying. "What kind of animal does something like this?"
"No animal," Longtree said.
Bowes narrowed his eyes. "These people had nothing to do with that lynching, Marshal. I think… this puts your little theory to bed."
Longtree frowned. "Not at all, Deputy. It couldn't find him, so it went for his family."
Bowes paled and walked off, joining Spence and Perry as they examined the atrocities in the barn. Longtree didn't blame the man for how he felt; the other victims were bad enough, but this…this was obscene. No other word could be applied here. Women and children. Longtree had seen plenty of killing in his time. Enough to turn most men sick with the awful potential of their fellow man. But never had he experienced the aftermath of such gruesome savagery before.
Longtree joined the others in the barn.
Perry was examining a human femur stripped of flesh. There were huge indentations in it. "Teeth marks," he said in disgust. "This thing must be incredibly powerful. I've seen the leftovers from a grizzly's meal…but never anything like this…" He coughed then, fighting against tears.
"It must be insane," Wynona Spence said, "this beast. Even a pack of hungry wolves stop…they fill themselves and let the scavengers have the rest. But this thing…by God, it eats and eats. It kills for pleasure, for the fun of it."
Longtree lit a hand-rolled. "You better get a posse together, Deputy. You get some men and tracking dogs on that thing's trail, you might find it. Trail's still fresh."
Bowes nodded. "You coming?"
"I'll join you later. Something I have to follow up first."
Bowes got on his horse and rode off.
Longtree pulled Perry aside. "I hate to add insult to injury, Doc, but when this is wound up, I may have to arrest the sheriff."
Perry didn't look surprised. "Why?"
Longtree told him about the masked gunman. "I figure you dug a bullet out of Lauters' arm last night, did you not?"
Perry nodded grimly. "Just wait until this is over, son. Do that for me. I suspect the sheriff is guilty of a great many crimes around here." He looked back at the litter of bodies. "God help him," he sobbed. "Oh, Jesus, Marshal, the children…"
Longtree watched him walk away stiffly, wondering just what the doctor knew and what he didn't know. And feeling for him, this entire town, a great compassion.
15
Skullhead, the last of the Lords of the High Wood, was far away from Wolf Creek by the time the posse was organized and dispatched. He was watching the Blackfeet camp in the hills, his stomach growling. He'd slept off last night's feast in a shelf of rock a half mile from town. He woke just after dawn, realizing he'd fallen asleep, bloated and gassy, while in the process of eating the child. The boy's innards were strung around him like a threadbare blanket. They were quite frozen and unpalatable.
He left the remains for scavengers.
After his long walk up into the hills, he was famished. He still had one more of the white men to kill, but no law stated that he couldn't take his sacrifice before they were all dead.
He approached the camp carefully, being silent as possible. Once the dogs started barking, he'd have to kill them. Too bad there wasn't some way he could simply slip in there and twist their necks without being noticed. But that was impossible. No longer able to contain his lusts, he moved into the camp.
The dogs began to bark.
Two of them ran at Skullhead and he slashed them into ribbons with a single swipe of his nails. A third and forth were torn asunder by a sweep of his bony, jagged tail. No more came. There was screaming now, crying. People were running about, gathering up children and retreating into the forest. Skullhead let them go. He went from one lodge to the other, tearing them down and stomping them into the snow with childish glee. A few of the tribal elders weren't quick enough to escape their lodges and Skullhead grinned as their fragile bones crunched beneath him.
There was shooting suddenly and Skullhead grimaced in pain as bullets swept over his back. He turned and chased down the defiant ones. He killed the first by merely tearing out his throat, the second by detaching his limbs, and the third by crushing him in a hug that forced his viscera to exit from any available opening. There was another and Skullhead beat him into submission with ragged, bleeding parts of the others, then opened his skull with a blow from his own rifle.
But this was merely for amusement.
His real interest was the sweat lodge. It was set away from the others at the fringe of the forest. It was in here that would be the men who summoned him, the Skull Society members. They knew their debts and would not run. Skullhead forced his way in, the tanned flap of buffalo skin that served as a door coming apart in his fingers. The men in here squatted on the earthen floor, their naked bodies painted up with streaks of white, black, and red. They chanted and mumbled meaningless prayers.
They did not attempt to hide or flee.
These were the ones that had called him. It seemed so silly to think that these
weak, cowering creatures had summoned him from his grave. Of all the absurdities. Skullhead emasculated them one by one, laughing with a dry roaring sound as he did so. He watched them bleed and cry and moan and writhe on the ground. Bored with this display, he crushed their heads to jelly and brought the lodge down on top of them. It was how sacrifice was offered and received.
Outside, he smelled meat cooking on the fire. Strips of it smoking and sizzling on wooden racks. The stench was sickening…yet Skullhead was curious. He snatched a strip and chewed the vile substance, forcing it down the cavern of his throat. When it hit his stomach, the reaction was instantaneous: he went to his knees and vomited. This done, he pulled himself up dizzily, remembering now the ancient taboos concerning cooked flesh.
He would do well not to forget again.
Skullhead decided now that these dark-skinned people were not worthy of worshipping him. As he devoured a woman and her child he decided they could only be of use as meat. The white men and their kin…they would be his new flock. They were the ones with power, with imagination. They reared cities like the ancients. A brutal and savage people. Skullhead liked them. They would do.
Moving into the forest, he found small packs of the dark-skins hiding under the cover of trees and rock. He took his time in claiming them. When he'd filled his belly to the point of bursting, he staggered back into camp and doused the fire with a stream of piss. Remembering that this was an old way of marking territory, he emptied his bladder throughout the camp. All who came here would know now that this place belonged to a king.
A Lord of the High Wood.
16
As the posse ran in circles outside town, Wynona Spence returned to the body of Mike Ryan. It had been very fortuitous of Ryan to order his elaborate headstone some days earlier. There were various stories circulating about how he had known of his approaching demise-everything from death threats to second sight-but Wynona was of the school that some men just knew when their time was coming. It hadn't been the first time a man had ordered a stone only to be placed beneath it a few short days afterward.
Such was life…and death.
Wynona had spent most of the morning at Sheriff Lauters' farm, sorting through the rain of flesh and bone, separating human from animal. The remains of Lauters' family had already been buried in the cemetery outside town in one mass grave. A headstone would be placed tomorrow. It took a team of five men, volunteers all, several hours to dig through the snow and frozen ground and hollow out the grave. Nasty business that. But Wynona was used to death and dying and nothing surprised her anymore. The money was good, but her heart was heavy. This town was cursed.
She covered Ryan's body with a sheet and settled into her chair, her head aching. She'd always considered herself something of an optimist. Her father had said that both optimists and pessimists were in truth fantasists; that a realist was someone tucked safely between. And maybe he was right. Her optimism told her, assured her, that this beast, this monster would be caught and killed. Pessimism told her it would never happen: the beast would kill everyone and then move on. And realism told her it would be killed but not before it slaughtered a great many others.
Realism was safe; it avoided the extremes.
Sitting there, thinking of Marion and her love for her, Wynona decided she would be a realist now. Under the circumstances, it was a safe thing to be. A cloak of pragmatism that could be donned and would safeguard against all circumstances.
But she forgot about fatalism.
Until she heard the door to the back room crash in, that was. And suddenly she knew some things were unavoidable. As she peered into the back room, her eyes trembling with awe on the blood-encrusted giant standing there, its massive head brushing the roof beams, she knew it was all at an end. She was dead. No weapons or locked doors would change that. The beast was here and the beast had business with her.
She'd flirted with death for years and now here it was, huge and pissed-off and smelling.
"My God," she muttered.
And the beast advanced, teeth gnashing.
17
Lauters was awake when Longtree walked into Dr. Perry's surgery.
Longtree wasn't surprised; he expected this very thing. Perry had said he'd given the sheriff enough drugs to keep him unconscious most of the day, but somehow, Longtree figured, given the state of the sheriff's mind, he wouldn't be out for long.
"Sheriff," Longtree said, staring down the barrel of his gun, "there's no need for that."
Lauters was a big man. Huge, really, bloated from alcoholism, but still a very large man in his own right. His eyes were red and puffy, presumably from crying, his face damp with perspiration.
"I've taken as much as I'm going to from you, Longtree," he hissed, "you've pushed me around for the last time. My family…oh, Jesus…"
Longtree felt pity for the man. But he also felt the gun on him.
"Put it away, Sheriff. Please."
Lauters gaped at him through tear-filled eyes. His bandaged nose making him look all the more pathetic, pitiful.
Longtree swallowed. The sheriff had his Colt on him. Even if he drew and drew fast, Lauters would still shoot him and probably in the chest. Such a wound had a high mortality rate.
Longtree held his hands out before him, innocently. "If you're gonna kill me, Sheriff, least you can do is hear me out first. That ain't asking too much, is it?"
Lauters stared at him. "I'm listening."
Longtree eased himself slowly in a chair. "You killed that Carpenter girl, didn't you?"
"Yes." Atrocity had brought honesty at last.
Longtree nodded. "You were part of that ring, the Gang of Ten. You boys set up Red Elk with that murder because he knew about you, then the other gang members lynched him and you stepped aside. Am I right?"
"You are."
"And now you're the only one left, the last of the gang."
Lauters nodded. "You're very good, Marshal. I always knew you were and that's why I didn't want you here. The beast is coming for me now…even the law can't change that. Your badge is useless, boy."
Longtree licked his lips. "What you did was wrong, Sheriff, and I think you know that more than any man could. But you've been punished beyond the limits of the law…I'm not going to arrest you."
Lauters lowered his gun. "Then why are you here?"
"Because I wanted to have this little talk with you." Longtree slipped a cigar from his pocket and lit it up. "You lost your family to this monster, Sheriff. You've suffered enough. Putting you on trial would be pointless, particularly given the fact that the witnesses and co-conspirators are all dead now." Longtree let that sink in. "What happened a year ago happened and we'd just better forget about it. The people in this town have a lot of respect for you and I've got no interest in dragging your name through the mud. Let 'em think you're a good lawman…because down deep, you probably are."
Lauters said nothing to any of this. A single tear slid down his cheek.
"We've got us a real problem here, Sheriff. We've got a monster that's killed a lot of people and it'll keep on killing until it's stopped. I think it's up to you and me to stop it."
"How?" Lauters asked.
"I don't rightly know," Longtree admitted. "But I do know that it'll be coming for you and I'm going to be there when it does."
"All that'll do is get yourself killed."
Longtree stood up. "It's my job to die fighting this thing same as it's yours. So get dressed. It's time we go hunting."
"You want me to help you?"
"Damn right. We're lawmen. Let's kill this thing or die trying."
It was about this time they heard shooting in the distance.
18
The posse led by Deputy Bowes was made up of eight men. Bowes had gathered the best and bravest shooters from the mining camps and the various ranches outside Wolf Creek. They were tough men, Bowes decided, but more than that they were angry men. They were sick of the killings, sick of being able to do noth
ing. They lived hard, frustrating lives. They had a lot of aggression to spend and they had been given a target to spend it on.
"There!" someone cried. "The undertaking parlor!"
Bowes turned his head and saw. It seemed impossible in that first second of realization that something this hideous could possibly walk, let alone in full daylight. It moved hunched-over, knees bent, arms crooked, hands dangling limply. Its great tail swung from side to side and when it stooped over (as it did coming through the door of the undertaker's), the tail rose up as if it were part of some fulcrum that balanced the beast. The beast staggered out into the streets, taking the door to Spence's place off its hinges in the process. It waltzed out and stood up to its full height.
The men dismounted their horses. The horses had to be immediately tethered: some vague racial memory had stirred in them and they remembered this thing, its kin, and what they were capable of. The horses whinnied and bucked, some throwing riders before they could hop off. Others ran off down the streets.
And Skullhead, Lord of the High Wood, advanced on his flock.
"All right, you men," Bowes cried out, "hold your fire! Spread out, goddammit! Spread out!"
The men, most of them pale and trembling like babes now, fanned out in a skirmish line as the beast approached. There was a stink of feces and Bowes knew someone had shit their pants. He did not blame them.
Bowes watched the creature. It gave off a sickening, acrid stink. It was tall, bulging with muscularity. Its huge and deformed head bobbed, blood freezing on its lips.
Some brave woman had circled behind it and slipped into the undertaker's. She stormed out now, falling into the street, vomiting. "Wynona!" she gagged. "It got Wynona…she's…all over the place…"
Bowes motioned for someone to get her inside. A man, presumably her husband, did just this.
