Skull Moon

His was a reptilian brain-a mass of nervous tissue devoted to need, want, and desire. He was hungry, so he ate; thirsty, so he drank. His loins ached, so he raped; his territory was threatened, so he killed. Simplicity itself. The perfect hunter, the ultimate predator. There was logic and reasoning in that brain, too, but it was generally only applied to methods of the hunt, to slaughter, to self-indulgence. The little men existed only to feed, clothe, and worship him. And they should do these things, his brain decided, because he wished it.

So the beast lay on the altar, beneath ravaged symbols of Christianity, a god in his own thinking, sainted by atrocity, immortal through his own appetites. In God's house he waited, bloated with sin and suffering, his belly fat with human meat. A Christian demon, as it were, in the flesh.

26

Longtree grew tired of waiting.

When the posse was but five minutes away, he entered the church. He was carrying his usual armaments-Winchester rifle, Colt pistols, and Bowie knife. There was death in his eyes as he entered through the main door. It was hanging from one hinge as if it had taken a tremendous blow and from the claw marks drawn into the wood, the marshal knew what had struck it. He paused just inside, lighting a cigarette and listening. He could hear movement, but the movement of a man, a sort of limping gait.

He moved up the nave, sighting the man just ahead. It was Claussen or a beaten, bleeding, and bedraggled version of the same. There was a fire going in the aisle, a small one fed by prayer books and shards of wood.

"The marshal," Claussen said lifelessly. "I wondered when you'd show."

Longtree looked at his arm. There was no hand, just a stump burnt black. "What happened, Reverend?" he asked calmly.

"I was bleeding. The master…he took my hand…sacrifice," Claussen mumbled. "I cauterized it." He grinned madly at the idea.

No sane man could thrust his arm in a fire even if it meant saving his own life. The pain would be unthinkable. "Where is it?" Longtree inquired. "The beast."

"The master?" Claussen looked suddenly sheepish, but his eyes blazed with the embers of lunacy. "Have you come to serve? To worship?"

"I've come to kill it."

"Get out of here," Claussen demanded.

Longtree scanned the dimness, eyes bright. "Where?"

"You can't kill him, Marshal. No man can. If you've not come as a brother to him, then run before he discovers you."

There was a glint of humanity left in the reverend, but little more. "You're ill, Reverend. You'd best leave now, I've got business-"

"You've no business here. Not anymore."

Longtree moved up the aisle. Claussen blocked his path.

"Step aside, Reverend, or I'll shoot you," he said, spitting out his cigarette.

Claussen launched himself forward and Longtree easily sidestepped him. He slammed the butt of the Winchester into the man's belly and snapped it up aside his head. Claussen fell, whimpering.

"Where is it?" Longtree demanded.

Then a sound: a single grumbling moan.

Longtree looked up to the altar. In the shadows…the beast.

And in the time it took him to see the horror, its wretched form, Claussen was on him. The icy fingers of his remaining hand were cutting into Longtree's throat, the stump beating him around the face, eliciting cries of pain from its owner each time it struck. It was as much the insanity of the situation as the attack that made the marshal drop his rifle and stagger back, shielding his eyes. Claussen was on him, kicking, striking, clawing, trying to bite. Longtree shoved him away, kicked him fiercely in his lamed leg and struck him in the face with a series of quick jabs. Claussen, old cuts on his face opening, fell to his knees.

Longtree, picking up his rifle, walked slowly to the altar.

A ghostly, smoky light rained in through the stained glass windows. They had been defaced with perverse drawings now. The pulpit loomed ahead, the defiled altar, and the beast, bleeding and asleep.

Dr. Perry had been added to the fiend's roll call of victims. He had been crucified on the great wooden cross, spikes stolen from the shattered altar driven through his hands and ankles. He hung above the beast, an aged and depraved Christ, rivers of red wine staining the altar cloth below.

Longtree looked down on the beast.

He wondered if it was dead. For just one hopeful, fleeting moment, he thought it might be. Dead or dying. But he knew it was neither. In his mind he saw the butchered faces of its victims, the dead children. Had it visited the Blackfeet camp yet? Were Laughing Moonwind and her folk dead now?

No time to think.

The beast was sprawled on the altar. A blood-streaked, stinking mass of foul intent. It was tight with throbbing muscle and jutting bone. Its shoulders broad, its head huge. Its cavernous mouth open, black spiny tongue stuck to its lower lip. Its eyes were wide and staring, but it did not have lids as such.

It was a horror.