'Yeah, murdered. Killed by the same thing that's killed the others. The thing you saw, I believe.'
Rikers went pale, remembering the night he'd seen the creature run off after assaulting Dewey Mayhew. 'Ryan,' he said, 'Mike Ryan.'
Longtree nodded. 'I don't think he'll be the last, either.'
'Something had better well be done.'
'Oh, we're trying, Mr. Rikers, I assure you of this,' Longtree said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. 'But you see, this is a strange situation, a very strange one indeed. I'm of a mind that these deaths are connected with the lynching of that Blackfoot last year. You saw it, didn't you?'
Rikers swallowed. 'I saw it, all right. But there was nothing I could've done for that boy except gotten myself killed, if that's what your insinuating.'
'No, you did right, Mr. Rikers. No sense in tangling with outlaws like that.'
'I don't know who they were-they wore masks.'
'No, that's not what I'm interested in either. I want to ask you about the murder that led to all that.'
Rikers features went slack. 'The Carpenter girl?'
'Yes. What do you remember of her?'
Rikers sat down, licking his lips. 'She was a pretty girl, Marshal. That and a very nice one. She was liked by everyone. Just a nice kid who never did any wrong by anyone.'
'Did she have suitors that you recall?'
Rikers laughed. 'She had too many, Marshal. Men crawled out of the woodwork when they got a look at her.'
'You remember any in particular?'
'Hell, Marshal, ' Rikers said, 'it was some time ago. There were ranch hands, some of the miners, even Liberty, the dentist.'
'A real popular girl, eh?'
'Yes, but a moral one, you understand. She never so much as dated a single man that I remember.' Rikers laughed again. 'She really did have her choice, though, even married men took a shine to her. I recall Sheriff Lauters was pretty sweet on her.'
'Lauters?'
'Yeah, Big Bill was in love, I think.'
10
Jimmy Lauters, aged twelve, collapsed in the snow outside his house. His head was spinning with dizziness, his eyesight blurred. As he lay there in the snow, trembling with shock, dry heaves wracking his body, he thought only of death.
In his mind, he saw only slaughter.
He tried to will himself to crawl the last few feet to the door, but movement, any movement seemed a chore. He heard the barn door swing open and slam against the wall. It made a great hammering noise as if it had been reduced to kindling. And no wind, Jimmy knew, had the strength to do that. He could hear heavy footfalls behind him and knew that the beast was coming.
He could feel its hot breath on his back.
Let it think I'm dead, he decided with iron nerve. Let it think that.
The beast sniffed a line down his spine and withdrew, just standing above him, tasting the air.
Jimmy launched himself to his feet with a cry, already running by this time. The beast howled and Jimmy felt the tips of its claws rip gashes into the back of his neck. Then he was at the door. A split-second later, through it. He threw the bolt and snatched the shotgun from above the hearth. He broke it open and fed shells into it with numbed fingers.
'What are you doing, boy?' his mother asked, crossing the room quickly.
He said: 'The monster.' Nothing more.
Abigail Lauters, her steel gray hair pulled back in a tight bun, wasn't impressed with this foolishness. 'I told you to fetch your brother,' she snapped. 'It's bath night…'
He looked at her with crazed, dreaming eyes and the words died on her lips. His face was colorless, vomit smeared down the front of his shirt. His throat was bleeding.
'Dead,' he muttered, 'Chauncey's dead.'
Abigail said nothing for a moment, the impact of those two words weighing in slowly, heavily. She could hear her cousin Virginia upstairs, singing a song as she bathed Jo Jo, the youngest. Dead? Chauncey couldn't be dead, why that was sheer nonsense-
'The monster got the horses,' Jimmy sobbed. 'It tore them apart…and Chauncey…it was eating him…'
His mother snatched the shotgun from his hands. There was a thud against the door.
Another.
Then another.
'Get upstairs,' she said calmly, but with iron behind her words.
Jimmy had never heard her use that tone before. Mechanically, he backed to the stairway, tears running from his eyes. The door was hit again and again. The plank that held it secure splintered, then split in two. The door seemed to bulge in its frame and then it exploded inward.
The beast stood there, breathing with a low, bestial grunting.
Abigail looked on it and decided it was a demon from hell. It could be nothing else. It had to stoop low to come through the door, a horror knitted with tufts of matted fur and scaly skin, stinking of slaughterhouses, dusted with snow. Its huge tail swung back and forth, casting aside tables and chairs. It came forward hunched and bent, but still its skull brushed the ceiling rafters. Ribbons of drool hung from its mouth.
Abigail shot it twice and it reeled with the impact, but never stopped. It came at her like a freight train, the gun slapped from her hands. As Jimmy watched, cowering on the third stair, the beast tore his mother apart. She looked, if anything, like a burst feather pillow stuffed with red. Bits of her rained in the air, sprayed and exploded in every conceivable direction..
Jimmy scrambled up the stairs.
His Aunt Virginia was standing up on the landing, little Jo Jo in her arms. She stared, shocked into stillness. Jimmy looked back and saw the beast, its armored torso red with his mother's blood.
'Jesus in Heaven,' she whispered.
'Run!' Jimmy yelled. 'Run for godsake!'
Virginia scampered down the hall, slamming and locking the door of the children's room behind her.
Jimmy dashed into his father's room and returned with a knife.
The beast came to him, vaulting up the stairs, its massive weight collapsing individual steps as if they were fashioned from balsa. Its obscene, hideous face was hooked in a crooked grin. Its nostrils flared at the boy's smell. It saw the knife and was unimpressed, two gaping bleeding holes already open in its chest.
Jimmy lifted the knife to strike.
The beast's lips drew back slickly from its dripping gums, rows of razored and serrated teeth gnashing together. Saliva spilled down its jutting chin, blood and bits of viscera were dropping from its mouth.
Jimmy threw himself at it, sinking the knife in its throat. Then it had him. The blade still buried in its neck, it brought its jaws together on Jimmy's head, his skull going with a muted wet pop. It ate him this way, feeding him between those rows of teeth until there were only bones, hair, and stringy tendrils of meat to show for twelve years of struggle.
Virginia held no illusions that she was safe in the bedroom. She was next and there were no two ways about this. The door shattered to brushwood and the beast stepped in, squeezing its bulk through and taking most of the doorframe with it. Virginia read from her Bible in a high, shivery voice.
'Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night,' she read, 'nor the arrow that flieth by day; nor the pestilence that walketh in darkness-'
Skullhead stood there, drunk with blood, listening to these words and disliking them for reasons he wasn't
