Tim Curran - Skull Moon

He shook it clear from his head.

A monster of Indian myth given life, hunting enemies of the tribe. That was insane.

And the night went silent, even Longtree's horse dared not breathe. An eerie abnormal hush had taken the world now, enclosing it in folds of midnight satin. A heavy breathing stillness.

Then the howling began again.

Sheriff Lauters was on his way back to his office when he heard the screams.

He had half a bottle of rye in his desk drawer and the thought of it warming his belly and lulling him into an easy sleep was all he cared about. He didn't pay any attention to the miners he saw fighting in the streets outside the saloons and gambling halls. He didn't pay no mind to the lewd behavior exhibited by a few ranch hands outside the parlor houses.

He saw nothing but the bottle and the sweet release it offered.

Then he heard the screams.

They stopped him dead.

He'd heard men cry out after being shot, knifed, and even scalped. But this was like none of those. This was a bloodcurdling screech that went right up his spine like spiders. And gave him about the same sense of aversion. It sounded again. Weaker now. It was coming from behind the smithy's shop.

A few others were running in that direction now, guns drawn.

Lauters raced by younger men and elbowed aside men and women alike. There was no time for courtesy here. When he rounded the shop and made it to the alley out back, people were already turning away in disgust. Rikers, the blacksmith, had a lantern going and what it revealed was a horror.

Lauters knew it was Dewey Mayhew.

Somehow, in the back of his mind, he'd suspected it.

Mayhew was lying in the hard-packed snow, blood sprayed out in every possible direction. He was curled up, fingers trying to press his internals back in through the ragged incision in his belly. He was open in half a dozen places and blood ran from all of them. The left side of his face was stripped clear down to the meat. His legs were broken and twisted out at odd angles, bone pushing through the tears in his pants. The left side of his neck was ripped open, a great chunk of flesh missing. He bled from nose, mouth, ears-too many places to count.

But he wasn't quite dead yet.

He was trying to talk.

Lauters kneeled next to him, trying to hear what he said. Blood gurgled from his mouth, his lips shuddering, his remaining eye staring off into space.

"What?" Lauters said softly. "Tell me."

Mayhew kept trying to talk. Lauters put his ear to the man's bloody, torn lips.

"…those eyes…" Mayhew sputtered. "…those red eyes…"

His body shook with spasms for a moment and went still.

"All right, goddammit," Lauters said, climbing to his feet. "The man's dead. All of you clear out of here. Now."

Slowly, the onlookers vacated the scene, leaving only Rikers and Lauters. Lauters went up to the man who, despite his powerful physique and girth, was trembling, the color gone from his usually ruddy face.

"You find him?" the sheriff asked.

"Yeah," Rikers said slowly. "I…I heard the screaming…lit the lantern and came out… Jesus, oh sweet Jesus…"

Lauters turned him away from the body. "What did you see?"

"Something…something running…I don't know…"

"Think man, dammit," Lauters commanded. "This is important."

Rikers swallowed. "It happened so fast…I'm not sure…"

"What? Tell me." He was shaking the man now.

With a look of anguish, Rikers broke free. "A shape…a shadow… gigantic…Christ, I don't know…something moving away fast, down the alley."

"What did it look like?"

Rikers' eyes were glassy, staring. "The Devil."

The body was taken over to Wynona at the undertaking parlor in the back of a farm wagon. Wynona was her usual cadaverous self, not disappointed in the least that a new customer had arrived despite the hour.

Always room for one more, she was fond of saying.

"I seem to be seeing a lot of you, Sheriff," she said. "I never really thought I would until-"

"Shut up, Wynona," Lauters snapped.

"Ah, well," the undertaker said, pulling the tarp back from the ruin of Dewey Mayhew, "life goes on. Unfortunately." She smiled at her morbid joke as was her habit and gave the body a cursory examination. "And whatever did you get into?" she asked the cold, staring face. "Don't worry, I'll fix you up."

"You give me the willies, Wynona."

Wynona lifted one eyebrow. "Simply because they're dead doesn't mean they're not people, Sheriff. I'm sure they enjoy my chit-chat in their own way. People treat them like bags of meat, sides of beef. I treat them like people. I offer them the same social graces I would in life. Isn't it what you would want?"

"Just get on with it, you damn ghoul."

Wynona inspected the corpse with more attention now. Checking each wound and abrasion. She shrugged. "There's nothing I can tell that you don't already know, Sheriff."

"Which is?"

"This man has died from massive loss of blood. He appears to have been attacked by some sort of animal."

Wynona looked up as someone came in. The corners of her thin lips twisted up a bit in a smile. "Reverend Claussen," she said, expecting trouble and relishing the idea.

"In the flesh," Claussen said.

Lauters rubbed his eyes. He looked disgusted. "Evening, Reverend."

"But what sort of evening, Sheriff?" Claussen asked. He'd brought a crucifix and prayer book along with him. "An evening of murder and mayhem, I would think. An evening not fit for decent folk to walk the streets without fear for their lives-"

"That'll do, Reverend."

Wynona was still smiling, enjoying this exchange to no end. Carefully, she snipped the bloody garments away from the body.

Claussen held his prayer book over his heart. "Oh, dear Lord," he said, "an evil is amongst us. A savage and unholy beast. We pray for your guidance, for your deliverance from-"

"Oh shut the hell up," Lauters snapped.

Claussen looked as if he'd been slapped. "You, sir, are a heretic."

"No, I'm just dead tired and don't want hear any of that Jesus-crap right now."

"How dare you, sir!"

Wynona stopped snipping.

"You know where I'll be if you need me, Wynona," Lauters said, stomping off. "I better get out of here before I make the dear reverend here into another customer for you."

"At the jailhouse?" Wynona asked.

"No doubt the nearest tavern," Claussen said bitterly.

Lauters clenched his teeth. "Shut your goddamn mouth."

"Your words, sir, again fall on deaf ears. The Lord will protect me from violent men with weak minds."

But Lauters was already gone. Weak mind or not, there was a lot on it.

The moon was up now.

It was a fat, yellow orb that painted Wolf Creek up in a grim, pale illumination that reflected off snow and ice and hard earth. Wynona Spence stared out the window at the town from her rooms above the undertaking parlor. She was thinking of Joe Longtree and what he had said, wondering, wondering.

Could any of that be possible?

A beast with the mind of a man?

Unthinkable.

Wynona turned from the window. Candles were lit, spread out almost strategically. They cast a sickly orange light and fed shadows into flesh. As she moved, they danced and swayed and stalked. She had a bottle of whiskey set out. Good whiskey, too, all the way from Baton Rouge, imported via Ireland. Label was even written up in Gaelic. Not the cheap swill they served up in Wolf Creek. Fermented goat piss is all that was. Good enough for the ranch hands and hardrock miners who only wanted to get drunk, fight, and fuck, but hardly satisfying to the discerning palate.

A love of good whiskey, like mortuary science, was something Wynona had inherited from her father. The dead did not frighten her. They were old friends and childhood playmates. She grew up with their staring, gray faces and empty eyes. Spent hours at her father's side while he stitched and sewed, gummed and glued, snapped and twisted bodies back into something vaguely human that could be cried over at a funeral. In a town like Wolf Creek, there were always plenty of dead bodies. Plenty of shootings and knifings and beatings and the occasional hanging. Then there were the mines, the inevitable quarrels between rival ranching combines. None of that even took into account death by natural causes. Yes, in the end, all roads led to the mortuary.