sound. There was only the quiet ragged breathing of the terrified patrons and the sickening wet slapping sounds of the strange infants as they flopped forward on the floor.
Then McFarland saw it.
A charred and blackened figure, wearing what looked like the tattered remnants of a priest's collar and uniform, stood at the front of the saloon, gazing at the crowd with unnaturally white eyes. The skin on its face was burnt horribly, peeling off in large flakes. Its hands and fingers were twisted almost into claws. Behind the figure, a large hole had been torn through the wall next to the door.
McFarland sidled up to the deputy, swallowing hard. 'What is it?' he whispered.
Chmurashook his head.
'Sinners,' the black figure said, then chuckled. Its voice was grating, inhuman.
Chmuragasped. 'Selway,' he said. 'Father Selway .'
McFarland could hear the whisper traveling through the crowd as others recognized the figure.
'Ask and you shall receive,' the thing said, its voice mocking. It smiled, revealing crooked blackened teeth. 'I have come to set you free.' Its grating voice chanted something in an alien tongue, and it pointed into the crowd with one charred finger. Through the hole in the wall, more infants came, fifteen or twenty of them moving slowly forward en masse. There was the sound of workmanlike scratching from atop the roof.
Chmuralooked around crazily. 'It's not human,' he said. He grabbed the shotgun from McFarland's hands and pointed it toward the figure's head. He pulled the trigger. There was a deafening roar and then . . .nothing.
The slug neither tore the figure apart nor passed cleanly through it.
Instead, the blackened head seemed to accept the slug and absorb it.
The head did not even move backward from the impact.
Chmurafired again. Nothing happened. And again. Nothing. The figure smiled.
McFarland grabbed the shotgun from the deputy.
'You've been bad, Carl,' the thing said. 'You have been straying from the path.' It moved forward, the crowd parting in front of it as people scurried out of its way. McFarland found himself inching away from the deputy. The figure stopped directly beforeChmura . 'Bad Carl.'
The deputy did not even try to move away. He remained rooted to the spot, apparently in shock, and he did not flinch as the creature reached out and grabbed his arm, ripping it from its socket. It held the arm high, blood dripping onto the floor, and grinned.
StillChmura did not move. He remained standing, blood flowing freely from the open socket, and stared up at his severed limb.
The noises on the roof grew louder.
McFarland could take no more of this. He raised the shotgun high and shoved it hard into the figure's blackened face, pulling the trigger.
The end of the shotgun sank easily and deeply into the burned head, but the creature did not seem to notice. No slug emerged from the back of the skull.
The thing turned to appraise McFarland, jerking the weapon from his hands and tossing it aside. It smiled at him.
There was the sound of splitting wood, and McFarland saw out of the corner of his eye tiny malformed infants dropping from the roof onto bare heads and cowboy hats. These were not slow and plodding like their brethren flopping along the ground. They moved quickly, surely, with purpose. One landed on a burly man nearby and started digging in, small arms and small mouth working in tandem as it ripped apart the flesh on the man's head, the man trying in vain to pull it off him.
The Colt was filled with wild screaming as more fell from the roof and began attacking.
'I hope you said your prayers before going to sleep last night,' the burnt figure said in its grating voice. It laughed.
McFarland struggled as a strong hand gripped his neck. He could smell the fried flesh.
Denise! he thought. / should have called Denise!
And then Father Selway pulled his head from his body.
Brother Elias sat alone in the well-lit conference room of the sheriff's office, thinking back upon the time when he was not known as Brother Elias. He had had darker hair in those days. And shabbier clothes, in keeping with the times. Then, he had called himself Father Josiah. Before that, it had beenIktap-Wa . And, before that, WikiupAsazi.
Names changed, but people remained the same.
Evil remained the same.
He stared down at the black-bound Bible on the table in front of him and smiled slightly. He liked Christianity. It was a simple religion, with few standardized ceremonies, and it was easier to incorporate into the ritual than most. And, unlike some of the more holistic Eastern religions, Christianity understood that there was a clear dichotomy between good and evil.
Even if it didn't understand the true nature of evil.
Brother Elias maintained the placid smile on his face and stared benignly at the wall, aware that he was being observed through the small window of safety glass embedded in the steel door. One of the sheriff's deputies came to check on him every few hours, keeping tabs on what he was doing. As always, the man stared through the window for a moment then quickly disappeared.
Brother Elias knew what was happening in the town. He knew that attacks were being made at various weak points. He knew that the evil was growing quickly now, that it was making firm inroads. He had seen it all before. In other towns, other times.
In Randall.
Brother Elias touched the small gold crucifix that served as his tie clip. He could not afford a debacle like the last Randall excursion.
That time, four of the six men involved had been killed. The evil had been contained, its power effectively drained for the next century and a half, but they had come perilously close to failure. Only he and Ezra Weldon had come down from the Rim alive.
He was afraid the same thing would happen this time.
Or something worse.
It might be too late already, he knew. He should have gotten to Randall much earlier. Things weregeting out of hand. But neither he nor Andrews nor the sheriff nor Gordon would have been ready. He was not sure they were ready now. The chance that they would succeed in their mission was slim.
But he could not voice his fears. He could not show his lack of faith.
He had to be strong for all of them. He had to provide the courage they did not possess themselves.
If the ritual was done correctly, if everything went according to plan, there would be no mishaps, there would be no sacrifices. But nothing ever went perfectly. There were always variables. There were always changes to be made according to circumstances.
There were always deaths.
The narrow dirt road wound through the forest, tall pines lining the rutted trail like silent sentinels, black and forbidding against the moonless sky. Gordon walked forward, his eyes trained ahead, tripping periodically in shallow shadowed holes he could not see, stubbing his bare toes on rocks he could not quite make out. Before him, the trees seemed to be growing closer to the road, edging deliberately in on the dirt path, and it appeared as though eventually the road would dwindle away entirely.
Gordon continued walking. He did not know what lay ahead of him, but he felt an increasing sense of menace, a growing paranoia, the deeper he penetrated into the woods. He wanted to turn back, but something inside him made him press on. On the sides of the road, between the trees, he could hear sinister whispering noises and what sounded like low chuckling. He increased his pace.
Ahead, something large and black lurched out from behind a tree and stood directly in the middle of the road, blocking his way. The night was dark, but the figure was darker, and it loomed before him, standing completely still, not moving. Its very lack of movement seemed threatening, and Gordon forced himself to stop. He nervously coughed. 'Who are you?' he asked.
