Part 38 (2/2)

”Yeah?”

Vicki's words darkened. ”Well, supposedly, a long time ago, one of their rituals succeeded.”

Phil's gaze saw little past the winds.h.i.+eld. Am I supposed to believe this? She's telling me that the Creekers incarnated a demon...

”Their goal, for all that time, was to add the demon to their bloodline. They considered this to be the ultimate blessing. According to the story, Onn mated with the least defected Creeker girl in their clan.”

”And then gave birth?” Phil guessed.

”Yes.”

”But to what?”

”To Ona, the female inbred of the demon and the Creekers.” Vicki paused. ”That thing you saw when you were ten.”

Phil fell silent again, driving without direction. So many queer ideas were wafting through his head, he didn't know what to think. ”But they also call it 'skeet-inner'-”

”That's its nickname,” Vicki said. ”Most of the Creekers can't talk right-it's called dyslalia-like dyslexia, only with words. When they say skeet-inner, they're really saying-”

”Skin-eater,” Phil deduced, and with the deduction came a crus.h.i.+ng weight of contemplation. Rhodes, those other cowboys on the death reports, and Dawnie, he remembered. They were all skinned. ”So the murders weren't really murders. They were sacrifices.”

”To Ona,” Vicki affirmed. ”It's symbolic. Consuming the appearance-the skin-of the unflawed. The Creekers consider themselves cursed by their inbreeding, so they pay homage with sacrifice victims. It's the Creekers' gift to Onn, by providing uncursed flesh to Onn's inbred daughter. And the Creekers have been reproducing with it for generations.”

Phil thought about it, gripping the wheel. It was just too crazy. ”I don't believe it, Vicki.”

”How can you not believe it? You've seen the Creekers, you've seen how deformed they are. You ever seen any other hillfolk as defected as the Creekers?”

”Well, no,” Phil admitted.

”Most of them don't even look human, and that's because part of their bloodline isn't human.”

Then Phil thought back to the books he'd read. She was right, at least in part. The worst-case examples in the photographs of typical inbreds weren't nearly as genetically defected as most of the Creekers he'd seen. The consideration chopped through his head. Creekers. Inbred. With a demon...

By now he didn't know what to believe. The only thing he was sure of was this: Natter and his Creekers have Susan, and they're going to torture her to death unless I can find them.

”Okay, so you're telling me that Ona is real, fine. Then the House must be real, too.”

Vicki nodded.

”Tell me how to get there,” Phil said.

Thirty.

”So many years,so many ages,” he whispered.

Eternity, he thought.

Years were grains of sand sifting through his fingers.

Mult.i.tudes had gladly given their blood, their lives.

Onn, he thought. And blessed Ona.

”Unto you we bow forever...”

Redeemer. Sanctifier. Holy father, holy daughter.

The visions sang to him; they always did. Entrails routed briskly from the bellies of the unfaithful. Blood squeezed from the heads of the unsaved. Screaming faces clawed at till they were screaming plops of pulp. Soon, yes, the cursed would become the blessed, the d.a.m.ned would rise to the dark heights of the absolved.

Soon they would go on, shed of their curse, enlightened instead of deprived, one with their master.

Forward into the new nights of a new age, perfect instead of corrupted, no longer in turmoil but in bliss...

Natter, the Reverend, opened his eyes upon the hot, starry night. His old, blotched skin felt new and young now. His ancient mind felt aglow. His savior whispered blessings to him.

The moon s.h.i.+ned on the crags and furrows of his disfigured face. His triple-jointed hands opened to the sky.

”So many years, so many ages.”

Time was no longer short.

Instead, the time was upon them.

Thirty-One.

”They're also telepathic,” she said.

”What?”

Vicki s.h.i.+fted in the pa.s.senger seat, her red hair flowing about in the warm breeze from the window. ”Ona,” she said. ”And Cody too, and some of the stronger Creekers. You can hear them in your head.”

Phil scowled. ”That's a load of-” But then he stopped. Wasn't that what Gut had told him? That Natter talked to him at night, in his head? And showed him visions? Even Phil himself had to acknowledge it. Twenty-five years ago, at the House, and just the other night when he and Eagle had been ambushed. He'd heard words, hadn't he?

In my head.

”Just tell me how to get to the House,” he insisted.

”You don't believe it, do you?”

I don't know what I believe, he told himself. ”Look, I don't want to hear anymore about demons, all right? I got enough to worry about.” That much was true. Like, how was he going to get Susan out? If she's not dead already, he added. And since Natter was expecting him, and antic.i.p.ating his motives, the House would surely be a fortress of armed Creekers. And all I've got to fight back with is a shotgun, three pistols, and a drug-addicted prost.i.tute...

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