Tim Curran - Skull Moon

By then, Longtree was on his feet, a shovel in his fist. When he heard Bowes gun click again and again on an empty chamber, he launched himself at the monster, swinging the shovel like a club. The blade bit into the ghoul's throat and cleaved its head free with the sound of roots being yanked from the ground. The ruined head spun back into the grave. For a few moments, the headless monstrosity stood there, its knotted fingers clawing at the air. Then it went still and fell straight as a plank to the ground, striking with a cloud of dust. It was nothing more than a heap of brittle, broken bones and filthy rags now. There was no life nor semblance of the same.

It was some time before Longtree moved and when he did, it was slowly. He turned from the moldering wreck and went to Bowes. Bowes wasn't moving, just staring with unblinking eyes. Longtree put a hand on his shoulder and Bowes slapped it away.

"Don't touch me, by God," he snapped. "Don't you dare."

"Easy, Depu-"

"Don't touch me, dammit!"

Gently, Longtree said, "Let's bury that thing and get out of here."

Bowes shook his head. "I can't…I can't move."

"Then stay here and I'll do it."

It took Longtree some time to fill in the grave and pile the stones. When it was done, he helped Bowes to his feet.

"What was that?" the deputy inquired.

Longtree looked away towards the mountain. "It's the patron saint of the Skull Society. The same kind of thing that's killing people in your town."

It was nearly two in the morning by the time Longtree made it back to his little camp in the sheltered arroyo. Bowes and he had made it out of Blackfeet country without any trouble. Even the shots fired had brought no attention. They both ate and had baths drawn for them at Bowes' house. If nothing else, this unknotted Longtree's muscles-none of which were feeling too good after hours spent digging in the frozen graveyard. And to add insult to injury, all the exertion made the bullet wound on his ribs ache all the more. Afterwards, Longtree rode back to his camp and found Laughing Moonwind waiting for him. He knew someone was there long before he got there-a fire was blazing and he saw the smoke from a long way out. He was glad not to find Gantz or Lauters waiting in ambush for him. But had they been, it was unlikely a fire would be lit.

"Have you been here long?" he asked her.

"Yes. I was waiting for you."

Longtree sat next to the fire and warmed himself. She had made coffee and he helped himself to a cup.

"Word has reached me," Moonwind said, "that you have made dangerous enemies."

"You don't miss much, do you?"

She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. "It's not my way."

Longtree rolled a cigarette and lit it with an ember from the fire. "I seem to make enemies wherever I go."

"I think that is our way"

Longtree laughed dryly. "You could say that. No one seems to like the law and I doubt they ever will."

"Sheriff Lauters is a dangerous man to cross, Joseph Longtree," Moonwind said, showing little concern. She was simply stating a fact. "I heard you were shot today."

"Just grazed."

"Soon, you will have worse enemies than Lauters."

He scratched his unshaven chin. "How so?"

"The Skull Society knows of you and what you're doing."

"I'm no threat to them."

"But you are. You are here to stop the killings and you might have to stop them in order to do it."

He smiled grimly. "You still hanging on to that Skullhead business?"

She just looked at him with all the knowledge in the world. "I think you know better."

Longtree kissed her on the mouth and told her where he'd been and what he'd done and what he'd seen. She didn't seem surprised by any of it, merely unhappy with him for going to the burial ground in the first place.

"You visited sacred ground," she said in a low voice. "You desecrated my brother's grave. I should kill you. If I was good Blackfoot, I probably would."

"But you won't."

She shrugged. "But how do you know I won't tell others of what you've done? That you won't be killed as an act of revenge for this sacrilege?"

Longtree took a slow drag off his cigarette. "Because you won't say a thing. If you do, I'll be killed. And if I'm killed I'll never sort out what really happened to your brother…and I'm probably the only man who can."

Moonwind allowed herself a thin smile, her dark eyes sparkled in the firelight. "You're right. My brother's honor is more important than any burial ground. Regardless, you committed a blasphemy in doing what you did."

Longtree glared at her. "That thing would have killed me."

"That thing was a god."

Longtree smoked in silence now. God or not, that horror from the grave was nothing remotely human. It was a demon. No more, no less. The dead didn't walk. This was an established fact…or had been until tonight. He doubted there would ever be anything too far-fetched for him to believe again.

"You believe everything I've said," Longtree said sourly. "Why? If anybody told me a tale like that, I'd laugh in their face."

Moonwind frowned. "That's the trouble with you whites-you think you know everything, that nothing exists or can exist that you have not seen or experienced. Well, now you know different. There are many things in this world outside your limited experience."

"Like dead things that walk?"

"It was a god as I have said. And it was not dead…merely waiting."

He sighed. "Bowes told me some stories about Ghost Hand."

"Ghost Hand was my grandfather, a great medicine man, a legend among our people," she explained. "I heard once that he brought a drowned man back to life, that a baby frozen two days lived again when he breathed life into it."

"What did you know about your grandfather?" Longtree asked.

"I knew he was a kind and gentle old man, little else. He died before I was born. He was a medicine man and a Skull Society member."

"And a shapeshifter?"

"Possibly."

"I think we can dispense with that. Skullhead is no man, shapeshifted or not."

"No, he is a god. But you weren't sure, were you?"

Longtree shrugged. "No, I wasn't. I had to be sure. I had to know what I was hunting. The truth, not double-talk. Red Elk was just a dead man when I examined him. He was no beast."

Longtree had been thinking long and hard about what he'd seen in that burial ground. He still didn't buy any of that business about Blood-Medicine, but that mummy had risen from the grave and it had been more beast than man. There was no getting around that; the impossible had happened. But whatever else he might believe, he would never accept that the creature he'd seen was even remotely human. Not even a medicine man could look like that.

"These are interesting tales we're swapping here, girl," he finally said. "Very interesting stuff about the Skull Society, Blood-Medicine, and your grandfather. But they're just tales, aren't they?"

"The Skull Society exists," she said angrily.

"Course they do. But do you really expect me to believe these men are changing themselves into monsters? What I saw was no human being. Wanna tell me what it was?"

"It wasn't Blackfoot."

"I gathered that," Longtree smiled. "No family resemblance…thank God."

She fixed him with a steely glare. "This isn't something to joke about."

"Tell me."

She swallowed. "What you saw, Joseph Longtree, was something my people once worshipped. Something from the beginning of time. They were called the Lords of the High Wood. They were here before men."

"Before the Indians?"

"Before anyone." She pulled her robe tighter around herself. "You were digging in a sacred plot. The place where the last of the Lords were interred countless centuries ago."

"There was an empty grave-"