Skull Moon

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.