Skin Medicine

When he was done stuffing his sausages, whistling some old Indian deathsong he’d never once heard in his life, he nibbled on a little finger food he’d boiled from the bones below. One of Gleer’s legs was spitted and roasting over the fire, carefully seasoned. It was getting nice and brown, gobs of fat dropping from it and sizzling in the flames beneath. The meaty, rich smell filled the cabin and went up the flue.

Cobb knew the meat-smell would bring the others home.

They wouldn’t have a choice.

And he would welcome them, surely. He figured two more kills and he’d have more than enough meat to put up until spring, if he practiced a little conservation, that was. Avoided his usual gluttony. But he was no savage. He would invite both Barlow and Noonlan to break bread at his table. He’d give ‘em both a good meal before putting them to the knife.

It was the Christian thing to do.

So Cobb nibbled and waited, a curious light flickering in his eyes.

He remembered the night he’d crept back up to the cave, something in him telling him it was the right thing to do. That what was in there, what was hiding in the cracks and crevices and maybe the bones, too, was the very reason he had come. Not gold. But… it. Whatever in the hell it was. The very thing them injuns had cut from the ground. He could remember it started with that gassy smell. A foul, yellow odor it was, a terrible sweet smell of unburied corpses and miasmic tombs.

It had touched him.

Physically touched him.

In his head? as it held him tightly, nursed him against its breast like an infant? it had told him what to do. How long it had waited for him. How it was he could survive if he could simply overcome certain social taboos, that was.

But Cobb would not listen, would not.

He’d been thinking along those lines, but he wasn’t ready just yet.

And the thing had pressed him into itself, squeezed him so that he thought his bones would come busting out of his mouth. It told him there was no other way. If he wanted power…and he did want that, didn’t he? Then there was only one way to have mastery over men. Same way you had mastery over animals? by eating them. Devouring the flesh and absorbing all that they were and could be.

This, it said, was the path to invincibility and immortality.

But Cobb just was not sure, so the thing sweetened it a bit for him. It talked to him like an old friend. It didn’t try to intimidate or terrify him, it just talked in a natural, easy rhythm. And, funny thing, it had a deep Southern accent, a hellbilly accent just like his kin from the Missouri Ozarks.

Well, at least it seemed that way…but maybe it was just a breathing gray sibilance forming words in his head.

Now, let me tell ye something, Jimmy Lee. Jus’ mind me and listen, hear? Shet up now, this here’s important. Once upon a time, there was these injuns what lived up here in these hills. Just yer ordinary savages, I reckon. They was some shirttail kin of the Shoshoni called themselves the Macabro. Well, cousin, these Macabros, they started tunnelin’ in the earth like worms into pork…well, sir, weren’t long before they dug somethin’ up, somethin’ mebbe they weren’t a-supposed to find at all. It jumped up, said hello and how you be, and rode down hard on them savages like Christ come to preach. Now this thing here, it crawled into their skins. Ran roughshod all over the tribe like Yankees marching through Georgia. I shit you not. Ye remember them bad things what were supposed to live down in them hollers back home in Missourah? Yessum. This thing, it was like that. Now, it weren’t exactly neighborly, this critter. It got into them injuns deep. Sure as Christ was hammered to the cross, the Macabro belonged to this thing.

Now, cousin, lemme tell ye how it were fer them.

These injuns, they took to etin’ human flesh and what not, sacrificin’ their firstborn and all. The shaman would et the little shitters raw and wrigglin’. Yep, their own children, that’s what I said. But adults, too. Jus’ about anyone. And virgins…heh, that sumbitch what out of the ground, he was real sweet on maidens, see. Now, the Macabro were always fighting one tribe or another. When they caught some, they’d make burnt offerings of their enemies, nail ‘em upside down to poles and sometimes put ‘em to the flame and sometimes jus’ left ‘em there to rot to bone.

Now wait, son, keep yer Henry in yer pants…yep, there’s more. See, these Macabro…they started digging up their dead and the dead of anyone they could find, yessum. Started worshipping bones and skulls. Made altars of ‘em and doin’ things with the dead uns ye just don’t want to think about. They was jus’ real soft in the heads, this bunch.