even sure of. In two steps, he was on her. He pulled her head free, examined it, turning up his nose at the perfume in her hair, and tossed it away through the door. It bounced down the steps like a meaty ball. He had no use for this one.
It was the child he wanted.
Under the bed, he heard it crying. Such sad sounds that were music to Skullhead, a choir of angels. He flipped the bed over and snatched the child up in his arms, crushing it against him.
In silence, he ate, pulling its juicy limbs free like a butterfly's wings.
11
Reverend Claussen heard the doors to the church slam open with a crash.
One was nearly torn off, snow and wind blowing in, but they did nothing to disguise the figure which stood there. Claussen was laying at the foot of the altar, bruised and hurting and filthy with his own urine and excrement. His mind had gone to mush now and he did not doubt what his eyes showed him.
The beast.
It came forward slowly with a raw and vile smell of death lingering about it. Its eyes found and held the reverend and in those eyes, dear Christ, was… deliverance. In those red and glistening orbs was a promise of purity. For, Claussen saw, it was no beast, it was a god. Not some storybook deity who couldn't be bothered to put in an appearance, let alone speak to and instruct his flock. This was a god in the flesh. Huge and pulsing and jutting and stinking and anxious to claim the faithful as his own.
It occurred to Claussen as his mind raged with religious awe, that this was one of the creatures mentioned in the book on Indian folklore. But unlike the phantoms and fairies of Christianity, it was real. It lived and breathed and lusted.
Its stink was like sacred incense to Claussen even though it put his stomach in his throat and made his bowels ache to be voided. It came forward and towered above him. He was on his knees before it, trembling, sickened by the noxious bouquet of its stench. It filled him, roiling his guts, and turning his thoughts to mud.
'Take me, oh Lord,' he said in a screeching voice, 'take me as sacrifice.'
It reached down and grasped him by the neck with one immense hand, hoisting him skyward so his face was in its own. Its breath smelled of decay and vomit and blackness, hot and appalling. Claussen gazed into those unblinking red eyes and jolts of electricity thrummed through him, boiling his blood and filling his skull with white light. He saw-
He saw the world before man. He saw the civilizations that had risen and fallen. He saw things unknown and unguessed. He saw the Skullheads and their kingdom. He saw the world change and the red man come and the great, fierce Lords of the High Wood sicken and die. Their herds thinned as they could no longer bear children. Until there were only a few left that were worshipped, then entombed by the Indians. Where they waited and waited in solemn, suffocating darkness until they were called forth.
Yes, the knowledge had been passed.
Claussen was to become its priest.
To prove this, it bit off his left hand at the wrist and swallowed the meat and bone without chewing. The agony was beautiful. It dropped the reverend and mounted the altar. Its lashing tail shattered and tumbled the effigies of Christ and Mary. It pulled down the cross and urinated over holy relics and missives.
It claimed the church as its own.
Claussen, at last, had found meaning to his existence.
12
Early the next morning, just before light, Dr. Perry was up and about. His back wasn't too bad today, a bit sensitive. His cells were content, having been fed their ritual breakfast of morphine. Perry made rounds in his wagon, treating two cases of frostbite and mending a shattered leg up at one of the mining camps. When day broke, the sun came out, parting the clouds. There was every indication that today-though cool-would be a lovely day, Perry decided.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
On a whim, he stopped by the church.
He didn't like to think that Lauters had killed the reverend. It was the last thing he wanted to believe, but, as Marshal Longtree had pointed out a few days before, the sheriff was entirely out of control. And Reverend Claussen was missing.
In the church, much to the doctor's surprise, he found Claussen at the altar, reveling in something. He soon saw what. The altar had been destroyed. It was smeared with excrement and worse things. Everything was destroyed and defiled.
'Good Christ,' Perry said. The church smelled like an abbatoir.
Claussen turned. 'Do not profane in this house, sir,' he said.
Perry was speechless. The reverend's face was bruised and swollen.
'What happened to you, man?' he demanded.
'Baptismal under fire,' the reverend laughed.
Perry went to him, but the reverend pulled away. 'I don't need your help, sir.'
'Tell me who did this.'
Claussen grinned. 'Oh, I think you know.'
Perry sat down on the first step of the altar. Claussen was right, of course: Perry did know. Lauters. The sheriff hadn't been lying to Perry the night before when he'd said he hadn't killed the reverend. He hadn't committed murder, he'd merely assaulted the man. Perry had always known Lauters to be a bit heavy-handed and particularly in the past few years-there'd been more than one feisty prisoner he'd had to stitch up and set-but never nothing to this degree. A beating of such magnitude could never be blamed on mere self-defense except in a lunatic's brain- this was a crime and the man who had committed it, a criminal.
'When did this happen?' the doctor inquired. 'Did he do this, too?' He indicated the altar, the jackstraw tumble of pews, the shredded tapestries, the ravaged statues.
'Hardly.'
'When?'
'In the dim past.'
The doctor took a deep, pained breath. 'You'll have to press charges, of course.'
'Nonsense.'
Perry just stared at him. He wanted nothing more than an injection right now; nothing else could hope to sort this mess out.
'Lauters will face punishment, yes, but not by the law,' Claussen said with abnormal calm, 'but by His hand.'
'God?' Perry said without knowing he had.
Claussen smiled again: It was awful, like a cadaver's grin. 'God? Yes, perhaps, but not the one you mean, not the one I've thrown my life away on.'
Perry stroked his mustache. 'Easy, Reverend.' He had a nasty feeling Claussen had lost his mind. 'I'd like you to come back to my home with me,' he said, picking his words carefully. 'You've been through a shock, you need rest. I can see that you get it. I'll have Deputy Bowes and Marshal Longtree come by.'
'For what possible purpose?'
'To arrest the man who did this.'
Claussen laughed softly. 'I don't need them, Doctor. None of us do. You see, there's only one law now- his law.'
'Who are you speaking of?'
