Skull Moon

by Tim Curran

  Who would it be this time?

  Lauters? Maybe someone he'd hired? Or maybe Blackfeet braves, out to stop him from nosing around.

  He rode up out of the valley and followed a thin, hard-packed snow trail into a stand of pines. Here, he paused. He didn't hear a thing now. He hadn't been able to tell from which direction the rider had been coming, just that he was riding fast.

  "Well, show yourself already," Longtree said under his breath.

  He lit a cigar and got the black to moving again. Its pace was slow, barely a trot, Longtree's ears attuned to every sound. He had a bad feeling suddenly, realizing that these trees and their shadowy depths were the perfect place to spring an ambush. He stopped.

  There was a hint of movement off to his left.

  Longtree threw himself off his horse just as shots were fired. The aim was poor, the bullets thudding into the branches overhead. The black trotted away up the trail, stopping a good distance away, as if knowing what was coming.

  Longtree peeked his head out from behind the pine that covered him and there was a crack and a bullet whistled past his ear. He drew back and then darted out again, firing a few quick shots at where he thought the gunman was.

  "You over there!" he called out. "I'm a United States Marshal! Throw down your weapon!"

  A few more bullets bit into the pine.

  I guess it's gotta be done the hard way then, Longtree thought.

  He tensed himself and dove to the cover of another tree. More bullets kicked up snow a few feet from him. He hadn't been able to tell from which direction the rider following him had been coming…but it wasn't from in front of him. Which meant there was another one out there, probably getting a bead on him right now. Longtree almost laughed to himself at how slow he'd gotten through the years. The rider following him had forced him into these trees where the gunman was waiting. It was a simple strategy and one that Longtree should've recognized.

  He heard sticks breaking on the rise above him. It could only be the rider.

  Longtree didn't shoot; he waited. Waited for the assassin to get within visual range. His partner across the trail probably figured this out for he began to pepper Longtree's location with gunfire, trying to make him shoot, warning his partner.

  Longtree smiled and waited.

  He saw a gray form moving through the trees, down the rise. He couldn't see the man's face: he wore a black hood. Across the trail, the other gunman crept silently from his hiding place.

  Longtree let him get close.

  Or tried to. The man coming down the rise began shooting and there was nothing to do but return fire. Longtree clipped off a few shots, one of which knocked the hat from the gunman's head, the other went clear as he dove for cover. More bullets from across the trail pounded into the pines around the marshal. Longtree waited until this volley was over and fired two more bullets at the man on the rise and then leaped out from behind his tree, shooting at the other one. This guy wore a hood, too. He fired at Longtree and missed. Longtree shot back, hitting him in the arm. He let out a cry of pain and fell back, stumbling through the brush.

  The gunman on the rise pulled back, firing a few bullets as he ran. They screamed harmlessly through the air. As dark settled in, the man on the rise was gone. Longtree heard the other moaning and plowing through the trees. A few seconds later, he heard horses riding off.

  Longtree ran down the trail and caught sight of two riders galloping back in the direction of Wolf Creek. One of which was hunched over in his saddle. The marshal figured he could've picked one of them off, but didn't bother.

  There was no point.

  One of them was winged and it wouldn't be too hard to find a man with a bullet in his arm.

  Particularly when he was the sheriff.

  2

  An hour later, Mike Ryan was back at his ranch.

  They'd failed; Longtree was still very much alive. That was bad. And what made it worse was that Lauters had taken a bullet in his gun arm. He'd be of no real use for some time…if he ever was again.

  It was quiet at the ranch. Most of the men were over at the cookhouse eating or at the bunkhouses playing cards and snoozing. Ryan could hear a harmonica playing somewhere. It was a nice evening, not too cool.

  There were men out riding the perimeters of Ryan's lands, twice the usual number, a good idea Ryan thought under the circumstances. And there were men down in the valley with the herds and half a dozen more walking the grounds. Nothing would come in tonight that wasn't supposed to be there.

  Ryan had put together an army of over sixty men that would ride at first light against the Blackfeet camp. That problem would be solved, but as for Longtree…that was another matter entirely. He had to be killed and soon. There wasn't enough time to bring in a professional killer and most of those wouldn't care too much to go after a federal marshal, particularly one with Longtree's reputation for cunning.

  No, there was only one man for the job.

  Ryan himself.

  He considered himself a businessman, not a killer. He wasn't fast with a gun, but he was a good shot. Something he'd picked up in the sixties as a buffalo hunter. And he wouldn't need to be fast…he planned on shooting the marshal in the back. It was the way most professionals did it, he knew. Safe, sure. The accepted method.

  But it had to be done tonight.

  And doing it would mean leaving the security of the ranch.

  That was dangerous. But it was equally as dangerous letting Longtree live. He knew the truth of who the rustlers were and who lynched that injun. It was only a matter of time before he obtained the proper warrants. Ryan was a powerful man and he could probably block said warrants for a time, but not forever, not without looking damn guilty.

  He devised a plan.

  He found one of the men on watch. Cal Shannon. Shannon was a good man, but he liked the wild life and this is what Ryan needed.

  "Cal," he told him, "I need you to ride into Wolf Creek for me."

  Shannon's eyes lit up. He knew he could stop for a drink and maybe a round of quick fun at Madame Tillie's. "But the watch…"

  "I'll get another man."

  "What do you need, sir?"

  Ryan told him. He was to go see Wynona Spence, the undertaker, and check on the progress of the monument. Have Spence put in writing the progress she was making. Then he was to go to the Serenity Hotel and procure a case of their best champagne. After that, there were some dry goods needed. But before he did any of that, he was to track down Marshal Longtree and tell him to ride up to the ranch immediately. And after these things were done, he could spend the night as he chose. Ryan even slipped him some money.

  "No hurry to come back in the morning," Ryan said. "Have a good time. You need a day off, I think."

  Shannon hooked up a wagon immediately and rode off.

  Ryan took his guns and rode off a few minutes after Shannon was gone. He found a good spot on the trail to spring his ambush. Then he waited. The spot he'd selected was a shelf of rock rising a good twenty feet above the ground. Ryan could lay up here and shoot Longtree in the back as he rode by. There was no margin for error-if he didn't kill Longtree, Longtree would kill him. He had no doubt of that.

  But there would be no error here.

  Ryan had a Sharps 1875,. 50 caliber. The "Big Fifty" as it was called, a buffalo gun. It could drop a bull with ease. No man would live if hit. And Longtree wouldn't live. It was dark, but the moon was full. Plenty of light to shoot and die by.

  Ryan waited.

  He figured, at best, it would take a good thirty or forty minutes before Longtree would arrive. He only hoped Shannon could find him. If he couldn't, this entire plan was doomed to failure. It would mean that Ryan would have to go into town himself and shoot the marshal and such an idea was ripe with dangers. But the cold fact remained: Joseph Longtree had to die.

  There were no two ways about that.

  Ryan wetted his lips and waited for his victim, knowing when the time came, he'd better be dam
n sure it was Longtree he was shooting and not someone else. The idea of murder didn't sit well with Ryan and if some innocent was killed by accident…no, that was unthinkable.

  The wind began to pick up slightly. It had a warmth to it. A mere hint of heat to dispel the cold. It wasn't possible, he knew, but there it was blowing on him, driving the chill from his bones and starting a fire of madness in his brain.

  It can't be, he told himself repeatedly, just can't be.

  But it was. A warmth that seemed to burn hotter by the moment, an almost feverish heat. A trickle of sweat rolled down Ryan's temple, his shirt clung to his back, an obnoxious gassy smell filled his nose.

  By God, what is this?

  Then a shadow fell over him: huge, nameless.

  3

  Skullhead stood over Ryan, his skin crusted with sores, scant irregular patches of coarse gray fur blowing in the wind. A sickening warmth oozed from his skin in sheets. He'd slipped up the back of the rock outcropping Ryan laid on with a preternatural silence and now he stood at his full height, staring down at the former vigilante with bleeding eyes, his huge skeletal tail whipping like a serpent.

  A suffocating stench issued from the beast's hide and it was this, more than anything, that often froze its victims in fear. Skullhead drew in sharp gasps of breath, his head reeling with savage appetite. His stomach growled. His tongue trembled fatly in his mouth.

  His lips parted, a guttural bark ripping forth.

  He shook his head, momentarily attempting to dislodge the hunger that burned in him like a fever dream. He clawed out for the intelligence to communicate, but it was denied him. Eat, his brain said, kill.

  His huge misshapen skull was an architecture of bone knitted with poorly-fitting gray and pink skin, rubbed raw and infested with beetles and worms. He flinched each time one of these parasites worked at a strand of nerve.

  Ryan moved then, as Skullhead knew he would. He brought up his weapon and pointed the long barrel at Skullhead's huge plated chest. Blinking his eyes, he pulled the trigger. The chamber explosion was deafening, noise beyond noise, but Skullhead had little time to be angered at this as a. 50 caliber slug ripped through his chest and exploded out his back. Skullhead was thrown from the rocks, an agony that was at once sweet and numbing threading through his chest.

  But more than pain, there was rage.

  Skullhead scrambled back up the rocks with impossible speed. Ryan brought up his weapon and the beast knocked it from his hands with a single lethal blow. Ryan cowered: crying, whimpering.

  Skullhead stood over him. Black blood and bile ran from the hole in his breast. His face was twisted up in a ragged sneer, yellow teeth protruding from the gums like knife blades. He was larger than any man, a giant, his arms longer, his skeletal fingers sharpened stakes. He pressed his face in that of Ryan, enjoying the terror that it produced in the man-making his bladder and bowels void, his eyes roll madly in their sockets. Skullhead licked his cowering face with a spiny tongue, the taste of fear making his loins ache. He drew back his great, bobbing head, lips peeling back inches from slavering jaws that jutted like a steel bear trap.

  One fleshless hand gripped Ryan, pulling him up. Skullhead towered over him by more than two feet. With a flick of his wrist, he sent Ryan tumbling through the air. No hurry in eating, a bit of play first.

  4

  Ryan was dazed when he pulled himself up, his right wrist bent in agony. Skullhead stood before him, bathing him in the acrid heat of his shadow. Ryan made to run and the beast snared him by the head with one immense hand, the fingers of which covered his face. Skullhead drew the spindly, rawboned fingers back, taking Ryan's scalp with them.

  Ryan fell to his knees, his scalp hanging by a thread of meat, great furrows dug in his skull. Blood washed down into his eyes and he pushed it angrily away with shaking fingers. He knew he was going to die. There was no question of this; it was only a matter of when. His stomach convulsed at the commingled hot grave odor of the beast and his own rich, flowing blood. He tried to stand, bile squirting into his mouth, and the beast pulled him forward, so he could stare into the merciless face of death one more time.

  Skullhead knew it had to be this way. Kill, but take time to savor the fear, to sip it like wine.

  Skullhead's face was huge in the grainy moonlight, the color of fresh cream, a tapestry of abraided flesh pitted with sores. And the eyes…crimson, slitted orbs sunk in bony, angular depressions.

  Ryan studied this nightmare in detail. It gave him something other to think about than pain or death. He viewed the face like a map. Here were craters, there valleys, and there occasional matted growths of fur that grew in and out of the skin. The snout was pressed in, only vaguely vulpine, the nostrils flattened and wet, the teeth hooked like sickles.

  Skullhead growled with a blast of hot, fetid breath and pulled Ryan's arms free with wet, rending snaps. He dropped the limbs and studied the horror on the man's face. It wasn't enough. He buried his claws in Ryan's groin and slit him up to the throat, marveling at the bounty of glistening jewels that bulged out. Ryan slumped and Skullhead caught him. He chewed his face free from the muscled housing of his skull and broke the dying man on the rocks, slamming him against them with titan force until Ryan came apart like a drenched and running rag doll.

  Then and only then, did he dine.

  5

  Longtree lit a cigarette and exhaled in the wind. "Did he say what he wanted?"

  "No, sir," Cal Shannon told him, "he just said how he wanted to see you right away. That it was important."

  "I see."

  "If you ask me, Marshal, something strange is going on up there. Mr. Ryan's got men walking guard, twice the number of riders with the herds…peculiar, if you ask me. Don't tell him how I said so, though."

  "Course not."

  "His race horses got slaughtered last night. Boys are saying how maybe it's that beast folks are talking about."

  "Could be."

  Shannon shrugged. "Anyway, he said to ride up there right away."

  Longtree nodded. "I will. Thanks, Shannon."

  Shannon jumped up on his wagon and rode off, leaving Longtree outside the livery barn alone. He never made it up to the Blackfeet camp. After the masked gunmen had attacked him and rode off, Longtree found his horse nearly a mile up the trail and returned to town. He'd been planning on searching out Lauters, but that could wait…the sheriff's wound wouldn't heal for some time.

  6

  By ten that night, the blizzard hit.

  It had been threatening for days, finally arriving with screaming winds and blowing snow. About the time the first snowflakes fell, Skullhead was miles away from the scene of his crime, lurking around the outskirts of town. There was only one left now, he knew, and after that…well he decided, for reasons even unknown to himself, he would keep on killing. It was such good sport.

  Longtree didn't let the snow deter him from his appointment with Ryan. He'd plowed through many a blizzard and now was hardly the time to cower behind doors. He rode and rode hard.

  Sheriff Lauters was at Dr. Perry's getting a bullet dug out of his arm. Despite Perry's repeated questioning, he would say little save that someone had taken a shot at him. But Perry didn't believe a word of this. Not for a minute.

  Deputy Bowes stood in the doorway of the jailhouse watching the good and not-so good citizens of Wolf Creek go about their lives despite the wind-driven snow that blanketed the streets. He had a bad feeling in his gut and had for days.

  And at the Congregational Church, a battered and bruised version of Reverend Claussen crouched on the altar, praying. He prayed to Jesus, he prayed to Mary, he prayed to any gods that would listen. Things had to be put right in this town, he knew, and couldn't be until Sheriff Lauters was resting in peace in the cemetery outside town. But how to accomplish this? There lie the question. Claussen couldn't do it himself and he refused to hire some sinful gunslinger. Yet, it had to be done. Prayer seemed the only viable answer. Claussen had been prayi
ng for hours, his knees aching, his back knotted with pain. But suffering was part of the process, only true discomfort could bring results. So Claussen prayed to any gods that would give him audience. More so, he prayed for his guardian angel to be sent to him.

  But there were other things going on in Wolf Creek, other secrets tended in dark gardens of the soul. Many of which were closely-guarded and coveted like sin.

  One of them was that Wynona Spence, that shrewd businesswoman with the morbid tongue, kept the body of her lesbian lover embalmed in her rooms above the mortuary. She had died two years before, but Wynona would not let her go. She chatted with her, fixed her hair and make up, read her poetry and took her meals with her. And at night, she slept beside her happy as only the true necrophile could be.

  Another was that Dr. Perry had a serious morphine habit which grew worse week by week. It helped with his back pain but often plunged his usually meticulous and analytical brain into a fog of hallucination and dream. And lately, those dreams were becoming nightmares where he was once again a Union battlefield surgeon during the War Between the States. He was in a misty valley during the Shiloh campaign, in a barn which was being used as a field hospital. The injured and dying and mutilated were piling up around him as he performed amputation after amputation, limbs heaped like cordwood. It was a nightmare, yes, but he'd witnessed such a thing firsthand and although a man could close his eyes, some things would never go away.

  Then there was the Skull Society.

  No white man (and precious few Indians, for that matter) knew how exactly it had happened, how it was to call a primal monster from its grave. They didn't know that for three weeks before Skullhead's first appearance, the Skull Society-all twelve members-had prayed and fasted in the sacred grove, denying themselves any and all comforts until they were purified to a point where they could literally see one another's thoughts. Until their brains functioned as a single unit. For the last week, not a word was spoken. It didn't need to be-the extracts of certain sacred herbs and roots had amplified their latent telepathic abilities. As a single brain they were able to call up the beast from its grave, resurrect him to full potential via the Blood-Medicine-a heady brew of their own blood, reptile toxins, plant saps, and the juices of a deadly mushroom found only deep within the mountain caves. Through this, Skullhead was restored to fleshy vitality and not the mummy Longtree and Bowes had seen. In the sweat lodge each night, they would concentrate on the image of the next victim and transmit it to the Lord of the High Wood. The only drawback being, that if Skullhead could not find said victim, his bloodlust would be sated on anything and anyone he could find. And when the enemies of the tribe were gone, Skullhead would continue murdering, destroying, and devouring until he himself was destroyed.