and checked the horses on the other end. They were silent. They usually started snorting when someone came, thinking it was feeding time, hungry for attention.
'Old Joe?' he called. 'Blue Boy?'
The first thing Chauncey's brain took notice of was that their stables were broken open, the wood shattered as if by an ax and cast about. The next thing it took notice of brought him to his knees and stopped his heart.
Oh, God, no…
The horses had been killed; more so, butchered. There was blood everywhere, the straw red with it. They'd been taken apart like dolls a child has grown tired of-bits of them scattered everywhere. They'd been gutted, decapitated, stripped to the bone. The head of Old Joe was impaled atop a corral post. Blue Boy had been skinned, his hide driven into the wall with spikes. The wet, still steaming intestines of both were strung like Christmas garland through the stable fencing and up into the rafters.
Chauncey went down on his knees, vomiting, his head spinning. This couldn't be, this just couldn't be. Nothing could do this…nothing. No beast was this savage, no man this deranged. When the dry heaves had subsided, Chauncey looked upon the atrocities once more, tears in eyes, bile on his chin.
Something wet struck him in the back of the head.
Chauncey turned. There was a clump of damp warmth in his hair. With a cry he pulled it free. A piece of bloody meat…no much worse: a tentacle of flesh connected to a single swollen eye. Blue Boy's. Chauncey threw it aside, his guts churning. Another object came whirling out of the darkness, flipping end over end. It came to rest against a stack of hay bales. The remains of Blue Boy's head…skull cracked like an egg, brains scooped out, tongue chewed free, eyes licked from their orbits.
Chauncey screamed.
Something else whistled from above: A femur stained red, shattered, a hunk of bloody meat and white ligament trailing from the knob of bone like a pennant. He ducked and it missed him.
Chauncey went red with anger, gray with fear. He glared up at the hayloft. 'Who's up there?' he croaked. 'Who the hell's up there? I've got a gun…'
A lie, but it gave him strength.
There was a low growling sound, then a wet ripping followed by chewing. Nothing more. A segment of vertebrae was dropped into the hay. It had been sucked clean.
Chauncey's brain was telling him to run; anything that could take apart two draft horses with such ease would make a nasty mess of him. But he couldn't run. He wanted to see this thing, look it in the eye and make it feel his raw hate.
There was a groan from up in the loft and a blur of motion.
No time to run now.
The beast landed about seven feet away. Chauncey stared at it, drinking in every hideous detail. Chauncey was nearly six feet tall, but this thing dwarfed him. Its flesh was scarred and raw. And that face, lewd and colorless and revolting.
The beast took a step forward. Its huge, misshapen head quivered with grotesque musculature, scant, threadbare tufts of fur bristled. Its jaw was thrust out, almost like a snout, its eyes red as spilled blood and slitted, covered with a shiny transparent membrane.
Chauncey turned to run and promptly slipped on the horses' entrails, stumbling forward and catching a coil of intestine across the neck that put him promptly on his back.
The beast had him by then, one huge hand locked in his hair, bending him back over the bony ridge of its knee. Chauncey opened his eyes and saw the mouth opening, the shaft of the black throat. Crooked teeth jutted from discolored gums which were pitted with wormholes. Chauncey smelled the charnel odor of its breath, saw the flickering lantern light gleam off those needled teeth and then they were in his throat, buried to the hilt. When they came away, he had no throat, just a bleeding flap of flesh. The pigs began to squeal.
Skullhead moaned low in his throat, the taste of hot human blood an ecstasy of no slight intoxication. It filled his being with a sense of roaring omnipotence that was almost too much for even him. The horses had been amusing, sweet tidbits to torture then kill, but they were gamy things, they lacked the satisfying richness of the boy. Skullhead ate him slowly, savoring every honeyed clot of marrow, every hot sip of blood, every sweet nibble of gray matter.
And then it occurred to him and he couldn't understand why it hadn't before: He was a god. A king. A lord. Nothing less. And the people, those that had called him and those that opposed him, were his servants, his cattle. He could picture it in the hazy, red confines of his brain. Picking out the tasty ones, killing the others for sport; slaughtering the old ones to relieve boredom, dining on the young ones. It was their destiny-to fill his belly. He'd eat women and boys, pull apart the men like fragile flowers, snack on the heads of infants like candies.
Yes, that was how it had been in the Dark Days and would be again.
Skullhead, caked with dried blood, Chauncey's spine lying across his swelling belly, thought about these things. He knew there was a reason he was brought forth from the boiling firmament of the grave. It wasn't merely to kill the white men, it was to kill everyone. Appetite was his destiny and it was enough. What more could he want?
A poet might have said: He ate to live and lived to eat.
It was so childishly simple. Skullhead closed his eyes, belched, and waited for necessity or mere boredom to force him into the house, the dining hall. There were others there…he could smell their parts-hot, secret, wanting. Skullhead dreamed as the wind blew cold and the lantern went out. He dreamed of a fine tanned smock knitted from the soft hides of children. Warm and toasty, covering his innumerable bare spots.
He waited for carnage. It was all he knew.
9
After Longtree had turned over the body of Mike Ryan to Deputy Bowes, he had a look for Sheriff Lauters. No one had seen him. He wasn't at Doc Perry's and Perry claimed he didn't know where he was.
Longtree didn't believe him.
He knew the doctor was a friend of the sheriff's and had been for some time. Perry knew where he was, but he wouldn't tell, not even if Longtree put him under arrest and slapped him around. Perry was a very loyal man. Longtree respected this. Lauters was out there somewhere, holed up in some saloon or whorehouse, drinking himself blind. His career was over and he knew that now. He was in hiding and the only thing that would bring him out was the Skullhead. And sooner or later, this would happen.
Longtree stabled his horse in the livery across from the Serenity Hotel and set out on foot. He had to find Lauters and if that meant checking every saloon in town, then this is what he'd do. He didn't want to arrest Lauters just yet, merely put him under a sort of protective custody. Whether the sheriff liked that or not didn't concern Longtree. He wanted the man behind bars in the jailhouse so Bowes and he could get a crack at the beast when it came for him.
It was a plan.
The snow was still falling, the wind still blowing when Longtree passed the smithy shop. He stopped there. Dick Rikers was the blacksmith and according to Bowes' records, he'd been one of the few to witness the vigilantes actually stringing up Red Elk.
Longtree went in.
It was hot in there, Rikers working branding irons at the forge.
'Marshal. What can I do for you?' Rikers asked, his powerful arms wet with sweat.
'I'd like to ask you a couple questions, if I may.'
Rikers nodded, setting aside his work and wiping his face and neck with a towel. 'Just fashioning a new set of irons for the Ryan combine. It can wait, though.'
'Mike Ryan?'
'Don't know of any other.'
Longtree rolled a cigarette and lit it slowly. 'Ryan's dead, Mr. Rikers,' he said.
'Dead?' Rikers looked shocked.
