Skull Moon

Longtree told Moonwind the story, realizing now that he had finished, he was shivering. Despite the blazing fire and Moonwind's warm body pressed to his own, he was shivering.

"You ask me if I believe in the supernatural," he said, rubbing his tired eyes. "And I guess I'd have to say yes. The white man in me conjures up all sorts of rational explanations for what happened that night, but none of 'em fit."

Moonwind held onto him, looked upon him with great compassion.

Longtree just shook his head. "I know what you must think-either that I'm totally crazy or that I pissed-off that ugly old chief and he taught me a lesson. And maybe you'd be right on both counts."

This elicited a short, but welcome laugh from her. "You weren't crazy. You ran up against a medicine so powerful it reached out from the grave. Such things are not unknown to our peoples, Joseph."

"I suppose. Since I came to Wolf Creek, I been thinking about that old chief and how they said he was part of some ancient race. It gives me pause to think. Food for thought, don't you think?"

But Moonwind pulled him down next to her and would hear no more.

16

The next morning, Dr. Perry spent an hour or so with the cadaver of Dewey Mayhew.

With forceps, scalpel, and post mortem knife, he urged the body to give up its secrets. What it told him was nothing he didn't know or suspect: Mayhew, like the others, had been killed by a large predator. He was, for the most part, less mauled and mutilated than the others, given the fact that the beast had been surprised as it plied its trade on him. Mayhew's abdomen had been opened from crotch to mid-chest, but none of the viscera were disturbed. Death had been caused probably from massive bleeding and trauma brought on either by the abdominal wound or the wedge of flesh and muscle bitten from his throat. And given such injuries, shock had played a major part.

"That's about it," he told Wynona Spence.

Wynona nodded and draped a sheet back over the body.

Perry packed his instruments back in their respective cases. He'd brought his microscope along for minute examination of fluids and tissue. This told him nothing new either. The only interesting, but not surprising, thing was the discovery of several coarse hairs lodged in the wounds. These matching the ones Perry had taken from Nate Segaris' house exactly.

"Tell me, Wynona," he said. "How is Marion getting along?"

Wynona looked at him, then looked away. It might have meant nothing…but it might have meant everything. "Oh, fine, just fine."

"She ever come down?"

"No, she prefers solitude. I tend to her needs."

Perry just nodded. He supposed it was none of his affair. "I see."

She cleared her throat, fell into character. "I'll have to leave you now, Doctor," Wynona said. "I have an appointment to keep."

Perry badly wanted to ask with who, but he knew it wouldn't be polite. She was an odd woman, yes, but her affairs were her own business and no one else's. So he bit his tongue and said, "Go on, I'm pretty much done anyway."

Wynona grinned slightly. "If any of my customers get restless," she said, "do calm them…they've already been paid for." She laughed a morbid cackle. "It's my motto: 'No one gets out of here alive.'"

Perry just stared at her.

If anyone else had said it, he would have jumped down their throat. But Wynona? No, he couldn't bring himself to do it. He had known her since she was a baby. Her father had been one of Perry's few friends and one hell of a chess player. Wynona had always been a deadpan girl, buttoned up tighter than a corset. It was only in the past few years she'd developed this morose and aberrant sense of humor. Something her father always practiced so well. She was finally showing some life and Perry was not about to crush it. No, let her have that. Maybe, like her father, it made the grim nature of the business go down better. Merely human nature, he supposed. The same way medical students (even himself, once upon a time) made unwholesome and sometimes downright gruesome jokes about the cadavers they dissected.

Whatever it takes, Wynona, Perry thought, just do it.

"On your way, Wynona, you damn ghoul," he said.

She chuckled. "As you wish, sir."

Perry managed a smile himself, but it didn't last long. Too many things worried him these days. Just too many things.

Wynona hadn't been gone but a few minutes before Reverend Claussen came in, looking disturbed. "I think it's time we had a talk, Doctor."

Perry's drooping mustache seemed to droop a bit lower. "What could we possibly have to talk about, Reverend?"

"The well-being of our flock," Claussen said in all seriousness. "You tend to their physical wounds, I to their spiritual wounds and wants."

Dr. Perry wasn't a religious man. After his wife died during an influenza outbreak ten years before, he hadn't stepped foot in a church. "I'm listening."

"What do you know of the supernatural?"

Perry sat down, sighing. His eyes swept the shelves of chemicals and instruments. He didn't look too happy. "Not a damn thing."