Skin Medicine

Now these shaman, priests? whichever ye want to call them baby-rapin’ devils? they was quite a bunch. They called all the shots. Sumbitches didn’t cotton to bathin’ no how. A filthy lot what jumped and hopped about in their cloaks of baby-skins, snakes just a-twisting in their long filthy hair. They sang them profane songs and wore skull masks and chattered their teeth what were filed to points to rend and tear, ye see. These shaman, they controlled everything. Their bodies were tattooed with snakes and symbols and witch-sign, what they called the Skin-Medicine. Some sort of conjurin’ and magical formula written right on their skins. It was said that with this Skin-Medicine, them heathen devils could control the spirits of the dead and change themselves into man-eating beasts jus’ any old time the need struck ‘em. Now on nights of the full moon, the Macabro priests would light big fires and them injuns would dance naked in the snow while the priests read from their own skins. Injuns what had been captured from other tribes would be slaughtered, their flesh eaten, and the snow would just stain red with their blood. And if the Macabro could get some of those injun’s young-uns, well, a regular party they’d have chompin’ up that fine, fat squib.

Well, cousin, ye get the picture.

These injuns was mad, yessum, but they had it half-right about etin’ other peoples to absorb all they had. Now the Macabro, they was all wiped out by the Ute two-hundred year ago, but what ye found in the cave, yes sir, that was their legacy. See, the Ute herded them Macabros what weren’t killed outright and all the dead uns up into that cave, burnt ‘em up alive, seeded their bones in them pits. Yessum, the cave. It was fitting, I reckon, in that the cave is where a lot of that pagan sacrificin’ went on.

And now, Jimmy-boy, ye understand? Do ye? Do ye?

Cobb didn’t remember much after that.

Just that he wasn’t quite the same. Sometimes he was himself and sometimes part of the thing that had impregnated his mother and sometimes part of that rabid hillbilly out of the cave. Sometimes they were all just one mind. The next day and all the days after, Cobb just waited and plotted the getting of skin and meat and bone.

And that’s how it all came about.

Cobb, a chunk of finger meat packed in his cheek, went over and turned Gleer’s leg on the spit. He poked it with a fork and the juice ran free and clear, telling him it was done. His belly was rumbling at the nauseating stench.

Just then, he heard movement outside the cabin.

He grinned, his eyes flashing with hellfire. It was Barlow and Noolan being real quiet and stealthy, sneaking about like red savages. They were doing a good job of it, too, but Cobb heard them. The sound of their boots breaking the crust of snow. The roar of the blood in their veins, the throb of their hearts. And mostly, yes mostly, he could smell their fear and to him it was like freshly uncorked brandy.

Cobb went about setting the table.

His back to the door, they came bursting in, the both of them. They held pistols on him and they were both shaking from the cold, their faces pinched and mottled and edged with fear.

“ You’re crazy, Cobb, you sick sonofabitch,” Barlow said. “Now real careful like, I want you to take that pistol out of your belt…with your left hand. Real slow now, let it drop to the floor…”

But Cobb just giggled. “Ye stop with that talk, friend. I’m just a-setting the table here. I want the both of you to sit with me and have a fine meal. Ye know ye want to, so why fight it? We’ll have us some eats and discuss this like men.”

Barlow and Noolan just stood there, not sure what to do. Cobb was insane, sure, but why was he so damn calm? What was that funny light reflected in his eyes? There was something very wrong about all this and it wasn’t just the cannibalism either.

“ We better just shoot him,” Noolan said.

“ That wouldn’t be very neighborly, cousin,” Cobb said.

“ See? See? He’s crazy! Watch him now, watch him real careful, because James Lee Cobb he’s right fast with that Colt,” Noolan was saying. “He can pull it so fast you-”

“ Drop that gun on the floor,” Barlow said.

Cobb sighed, shrugged, went for the gun with his right hand. And actually cleared leather before two bullets ripped through his belly. But all that did was make him laugh as his blood dripped to the floor. He dipped one finger into the hole in his buckskin shirt like a quill into an inkwell. He pulled it back out, licked the tip. His face was narrow and pallid, real tight like a skull wearing skin, his eyes lit like glowworms.

But he had his Colt out and, barking a short laugh, put a slug right between Barlow’s eyes, dropping him dead in the doorway.

“ Now,” he said to Noolan. “Why don’t ye join me for supper? What’s say?”