As they barreled toward the scene of the crime, Mark noticed the vehicle was having problems climbing the hill. It must've been a pinhole leak in the radiator hose: a little steam was coming from under the hood. Each drop of rain was doing its part to keep them reaching Ray Macpherson. Mark looked down at the creek-- it was still right there, on the edge of flooding. Still running brown and smooth over the rocks.

"There," Mark said, breaking an extended silence, "it looks like someone was living down there." He pointed to what appeared to have been a bulldozed-over cabin.

"Where?"

He saw the dirt road that led to the ruined cabin then steered onto it and followed it down until the precipice, weather and the car's fragile condition combined made him too nervous to continue with the car.

"Why are you stopping? It's pouring."

"I'm worried that our only means of escape might get stuck or the creek flooding. We should've walked the whole way down. They got out of the car and walked down the muddy hill. They were soaked by the time they got to the jeff cabin.

The property line was posted with signs: NO TRESPASSING. Some cat named Tommy Binder, Esq. signed them all.

They both checked the place out. It was bulldozed over all right-- the rain was falling into the ruts left by the machine. A number of trees were knocked over too-- no doubt to create an attempt to create a blind that would prevent people from seeing and exploring what was at the bottom of the hill for awhile. Monsters had been here at the bottom of the hill.

There was a shed still standing, its green fiberglass roof blowing in the wet wind. They saw one of the cabin's walls was still standing, sort of. They saw the cabin had once had a small cellar that was now flooded.

"What a fucking mess-- I guess we ought to look around," Mark said.

Dennis immediately went for the flooded basement area, stopping on the stairs-- after going ankle deep in the murky pool; "Hey, man," Mark began, "those stairs probably aren't real strong......"

The stairs must've given out because Dennis fell through, disappearing for a moment before coming back up-- gasping and gagging up brown water.

And then the dead began to dance in the dusk that was just beginning to settle over Kurtzville.

A very dead and very gray hand rose behind Dennis's head. What with the full moon and all that had just poked its way over Smithville Peak, it was positively surreal. Flesh hung downward and loose from the hand that was floating and bobbing just behind Dennis, just out of his vision until he felt something bump against his leg and he turned to see what it was. Dennis saw the corpse and panicked-- frantically swimming to the broken stairs which broke again as he tried climbing up.

Mark recognized that it was a good idea to get Dennis out of that pit before he drowned; he braced himself against the ledge and put out a helping hand which Dennis grabbed as soon as he could. He felt the pain coming as soon as Dennis grabbed his hand; electric fucking pain shot through his body (he should've paid more attention to that twinge!) as soon as Dennis tried pulling himself out using Mark as his brace. A nervous system shortout. Mark involuntarily dropped Dennis who then fell back in, causing the newly discovered body to bob in a more animated fashion. Mark rebraced himself and used his better arm. Dennis climbed out, soaked with what could be diseased water. Mark looked down at his own shoulder which was now hanging loosely by his side.

"Maybe we should both go to the hospital, sorry about that drop, it's an old softball injury, Mark said. "No kidding," Dennis replied disinterestedly while he stared at the headless corpse which was floating in a circle on the surface. Someone must've tied it down-- because someone tied a rope around the headless body's now bloated gut.

The water must have been cold: Dennis was beginning to shiver from the chill and quake from that final realization that the hunt was over and the results were what he expected but certainly not hoped for. He just stared into that pool, watching the body spin slowly in a slo mo circle. He was losing coherence.

"That's him, Jesus fucking Christ that's my dead brother." Dennis walked to one of the number of huge decaying oaks that lay around the property and sat down. He was sobbing like a just beaten up kid.

Mark looked around the area for something he could use to pull the body out of the water. "Dennis, could you do me a favor and pull yourself together-- just long enough to help me find something we can pull him out with, a big stick or something? Something like those body hooks lifeguards use. "

They each sat in contemplative silence for about five minutes before the search for the "rescue" device equivalent began. Mark broke the silence: "Dennis, how you doing buddy?"

"I'm all right, time to get the show on the road, eh?"

"Yeah, I found a tarp in the shed; I was thinking we pull the body to the edge, get the tarp under him and then both of us pull upward. That oughta work.

"This is your kind of business my man ... I pound nails-- don't know a thing about first responder work."

Mark stared into the murky pool (that batch of dead people from Front Street returns for a second in the form of a psychic flash).

"I know you ain't one of them," Dennis continued, "but, man, this was the only relative I had. The only friend I ever had. There might be a point where you are going to have to back off-- you know? Don't worry, if Maureen is involved in this I won't hurt her. I couldn't kill a chick. Just couldn't do it. But the rest of those muthafuckers are fair game the way I see it."

"As long as you don't hurt Maureen I could care less what you do and I'm gonna forget you even made that statement. I don't want to be testifying against you down the road."

"Just wanted you to know what's going on. "

Mark moved on to another subject. "One of us is going to have to go into the water so we can get the tarp around the body and push from underneath. That cool with you?"

"Yep."

He climbed into the water after dropping the tarp into the pool. "I'm going to have to go under for a second. When I come up the body should bob a little. Pull hard, use your legs. If the body starts falling apart, I'm bailing out. I don't want its bones piercing my skin, you can catch some awfully nasty shit from the broken bones of a rotting corpse.

Dennis nodded. Taking a deep breath, Mark went under.

Dennis pulled and they were able to lift the putrid corpse to the good step easily enough. Dennis pulled it out completely with a heave and a wail.

Mark got out of the fetid pool as quickly as he could.

They both stared at the corpse-- some kinds of strange looking water insects were burrowing their way through the gray flesh of the headless body. Mark noticed there was some kind of weird looking maggot on his leg and he shook it off spasmodically, again experiencing the pain in his shoulder. It was now close to dark.

Dennis wrapped the body more carefully for transport and Mark rummaged through the Goat's trunk, finding some towels and grabbing some beers.

Back at the ruined cabin they both began shivering.

"About the same height as your brother?"

"It's him."

"Something tore his head off. That's not a sword or axe. Whoever did this..."

"Whoever in your family, in that church you're mixed up with," Dennis interrupted- reminding Mark how tightly the ties that bind tie.

Darkness and madness were closing in around them. Mark had heard enough and he exploded.

"Shut the fuck up! What do you want me to do go back to Philly and tell somebody that there are murders going on up here?

"Now do you want to help me get this guy-- your brother-- into the trunk? I say we get him back to the Improper and we plan our next move. I think it's best we keep this whole thing close to the vest and deep, deep underground. How bout you?"

"Yeah, that's the right idea; after we get Ray's body into the car we should dig around the trees, Ray used to deal a little grass on the side and he usually kept his stashes outside of the house somewhere. He was as good as people get when it came to hiding things from the man."

They hauled the body up the muddy hill and put it in the open and waiting trunk. Then they returned to the cabin site and began the search; it didn't take long for Dennis to find a plastic case, wrapped in duct tape. Dennis cut through the tape and they discovered that it contained cassette tapes.

It was time to return to the Improper.

"I guess it's time to kick back, drink a few beers and listen to how Doctor Ray Macpherson spent his last days in search of your family's jealously kept... and insane secrets," Dennis said before trailing off to sip on his beer.

The car had problems with the cooling system but Mark took it easy and the cooling temperatures helped. He nonetheless kept a careful eye on the temperature gauge.

"Is it alright?" Dennis asked.

"Yeah it should be okay as long as I take it easy."

********************

Inside the Improper's smaller dining room they strung some bare workbulbs in order to set up the autopsy "lab." Dennis carried a steel worktable up from the basement.

"Does the tape player on your box work?" Mark asked, pointing to Dennis's radio/cassette combo.

"Barely-- the tape player's all fucked up-- it runs real slow but if it's just info on the tape we're looking for we'll get the substance of what's going on."

Mark plugged the music box into one of the wall outlets and it was at that moment that the bolt of lightning appeared (with thunder rapidly following in about half a second!) to crash into Dunkel's Hill which towered just behind The Improper. A few seconds later the power came back on briefly and then went out again. More lightning and more loud thunder followed and the power appeared as if it was staying off. They stood there in stunned silence until Dennis broke it.

"Looks like somebody upstairs is trying to hold us back from the truth, eh?"

"Agreed."

"You ready for another beer?" Dennis asked while fumbling around for his flashlight. He found it, turned it on and went to the cooler and grabbed two ice colds.

They went outside to the patio, staring into the now completely darkened small town. After about five minutes the power was restored. The electric company repair person had obviously done their job; they watched a power company truck in the distance, its domelight cutting across the barren cornfields.

"You wanna go back in and listen?"

"And ruin this kind of blissfully ignorant peace?" Dennis asked rhetorically as he got up from the ground and walked into the bar.

They ran the tape.

The tape recorder was running real slow: "...as best as I can tell, many of the people of this region live under the delusion that there is a female demigod that controls the day to day operation of their lives in a direct manner and provides them guidance. This being, named Tessie, reads minds. Tessie, according to church belief, is responsible for the magnificent crop growth this region is noted for.

"I have arrived at a time when the crops have been steadily failing-- the fields are laying barren-- and filled with rats. And flies. Yet the people I have talked to around here cling to a belief that Tessie will again be well and again able to provide.

"I've been snooping around a little bit, I am finding that there may be a living physical thing that these people think is their god. It is obviously hidden and not a part of their services, which they have let me sit in on. I suspect what they think is a god is more like some sort of deformed child, kind of like we think the Jersey Devil was." (Pause) (pause) (pause) (pause).... then Ray had become more frantic and started to sound like maintaining his sanity was becoming a problem.

Then the tone of the tape changes.

"How have people lived on the eastern coast for three hundred years and not have done something about these people! How have they been able to hide this horrifying religion? My god they sacrifice the infants of the poor! They slaughter babies in the name of Lucifer!" (pause) (pause) (pause) .... it started again: "Christ Almighty, they found my hidden camera. Now they know what I am really up to. I told them I was an agriculturalist, not an anthropologist and that I was interested in their non machinery farming methods. Whoever hears this, please, I don't care if it's the year 2030, these things must be dealt with. The devil is truly on earth. They show no regard for humans and they slaughter them like sheep....

(pause... static... roll)

"Tonight I forced my way into the tower and watched those lunatics tend to the beast. The creature truly exists and she is horrible. Or (pause) am I now suffering from the same sort of mass hypnotism or psychosis that these people are experiencing?

"My life my sanity ended the moment I stepped into Kurtzville. Is she human? Or is she a worm or is she a walrus, I can't tell.

"The old man, Grenden has spotted me and he is definitely on to me. I'm trying to keep to myself, tend to chores around the cabin but I know they are watching me, daring me to try to escape with the news I have discovered. The way I see it I have two bad choices: I try to run away or I run straight into the Historical Society and destroy the creature! I'm afraid I've lost what little sanity I had left after the breakdown ... (pause, roll of static)

"I think I did it," the tape went on, "last night I forced my way inside and got the jump on Binder. I gagged him and tied him up but Tessie began sending out those mind messages of hers-- I knew I didn't have a lot time. I ran to the tower. A voice got into my head. The voice tried convincing me to spare Tessie. I drove a spear into her. And again and again. And again. The townspeople's trucks approached. I managed to get out of the building but it's only a matter of time before they find me. I have no chance in the woods, the infected devildogs are everywhere. The roads are of course being watched. I shall make one more assault-- how did I become the avenger Willy?-- tonight I shall try to burn their vile Historical Society to the ground. Someone please find this. Oh sweet Jesus tell me before I die, who am I?

"Shoggoth--oootooth--behemoth! "

Roll of static. Click. End of tape.

."I'm going to go talk to Maureen tomorrow. I hope I can contain my rage long enough to learn the truth.

About 4 a.m. he staggered to his car and drove to the motel. As soon as he neared the lot he saw that someone was waiting for him in his motel room-- the lamp was on.

*******************************

Mark knocked on the door, ready to start shooting. Maureen answered the door and he immediately saw that Maureen had a pretty good shiner going over and under her left eye.

"Lloyd?"

"Yep, I think he's a little jealous of our closeness. He didn't like hearing that you were my first love too much. You'd think a country boy'd be more tolerant of the whole teenage kissing cousin thing."

Mark shook his head, indicating that Maureen's announcement was probably a bad idea.

They made love without saying another word to each other; by the time they were done the sun was pretty near up but the sky remained dark because of a batch of grey storm clouds that remained hovering over Kurtzville's barren fields. They laid there for awhile-- listening to the birds chirp.

"Let's go to the Farmer's Market and grab some grub. We can cook it over at the Improper."

"Sounds good."

Mark made a quick jerry rig repair on the radiator hose's pinhole leak by wrapping it with duct tape; he also added a little water to the car's relatively huge radiator.

They drove to the Farmers' Market, bought the breakfast material and then went to the inn.

***************************

"Dennis?" Mark called out. He and Maureen stood in the parking lot before walking forward. No answer.

They walked into the barroom; Mark hurriedly walked to the small dining room where Dennis's brother's body lay, poked his head inside, half expecting to see Dennis next to the body but he was not there. He closed the door behind him, remembering to keep Maureen from opening the dining room door.

"Hello?" Dennis called out from The Improper's upstairs as he walked down to meet his visitors.

Hi Maureen," he said with a tone of measured friendliness as he entered the barroom.

"Sorry folks but beds and breakfasts are at least six or seven months away. Still got to put a roof on, " Dennis said, pointing to the hole in the ceiling.

"Cat's out of the bag," Mark said, "Lloyd beat the crap out of Maureen after she told him about the teenage crushes we had on each other."

"Terrific," Dennis said in response, "I can see the headline now: two brothers killed in a bumfukburg named Kurtzville (brief pause) separate incidents by the same gang. American fucking Dream. You think that asshole is coming over here?"

"Don't worry; if he is, I'm ready to take care of him-- you can be sure of that," Mark said, removing his .25 and checking to make sure it was ready to go. "Yeah and keep Maureen out of the dining room, I don't want her seeing the body."

Maureen was already making the breakfast with a grill, a cast iron pan and the open flame she was carefully controlling.

"You find out if your lady's on the level?"

"I'll talk to her about what really went on that made Lloyd smack her around. But I'm gonna do that when you are over in Reading getting some supplies that we are going to need if we are ever going to get this bar up and running. Here's a hundred bucks; I want you to get a pair of good sledgehammers. We are going through that wall when you get back.

"While you are a over in Reading, get a five gallon can of gasoline-- I want to try to get that generator up and running. And a couple boxes of wooden matches. Have a few beers at a local tavern somewhere-- but stick with beer, I want you brave not incoherent. You got that?"

"Yeah, I got that."

Mark watched Dennis and Maureen exchange greetings and partings in the Improper's lot before Dennis got into the Malibu and drove off slowly. He went outside, stood by Maureen and they both stared into the fire. Breakfast was done and they ate.

"You want to hike to the peak?"

"How high is it?"

"Three thousand."

His body was doing one better than tingling when they made love halfway up the mountain. They were finished and walked another five hundred feet before coming across an old moss covered stone altar.

"You know anything about this? " he asked her, looking at the ancient stone altar that he'd never seen before though he'd hiked this mountain dozens of times when he was as a teenager.

"It's an old Lenapi Indian thing, it's been here for a thousand years. You sure me and you never came across this thing when we were back here hiking?"

"I'm sure."

The temperature was hovering somewhere in the mid 50s; autumn is beautiful in Appalachia. He told himself that he was going to be spending a lot of time up here. Up on Hawk Mountain the air was a bit thinner.

They stayed on top of the peak for two hours before heading down.

"Let's go back to the bar and sit by that fire baby.

**************************************

They built a fire inside the main barroom. It was a nice fire for autumn-- not too much in the heat department. Mark stared into the fireplace, deliberating. He had to know if Maureen had played a part in Dennis's brother's death. He had to know.

"What would you think if I told you Ray Macpherson was still here?"

"I don't know, is he?" she asked as a matter of factly. "You mean here?"

"Yeah, come say hi."

He opened the door and she saw the headless corpse on ice.

"Dear Lord."

"Do you want to leave Kurtzville now?"

"Oh please hold me," she said, pleading with outstretched arms. "They swore to me that they just ran him out of town."

He went to her and they embraced; he was completely softening up emotionally when she stuck him in the ass with something sharp. She removed the hypodermic needle from his butt, showing it to him briefly before tossing it into the fireplace. He smacked her before he staggered and hit the floor.

"Dream on lover," she said to him before leaving the barroom. "They swore to me that they were just going to run him out of town. I'll come clean and tell you all about it now, lover. You're here for a reason, you know that and you knew that all along.

"I need the important part of you, Mark. My womb needs repairing; I got pregnant last year but it wasn't by Lloyd and it wasn't a church member. Lloyd and my father and Binder and old Grenden dragged me to that old veterinarian who was so drunk when he cut into me that he wrecked my womb, maybe he wrecked our religion.... maybe we can start our own religion, Mark...."

**********************************

Whatever she injected him with, the dreams were lucid. This time he is wandering around the Historical Society's upstairs lobby.

He sees himself in a number of the pictures that hang on the Historical Society's walls. Everybody's drunk and it looks like it's the mid 1920s. A tiny wave of water has slowly come out from behind a closed and is now covering the entire floor. Mark is ankle deep in the murky water. The water is coming from his sister Tessie's room, where she waits for him. Waits for a fuck. In the distance he hears a shriek; he reaches for his gun but it's not there.

Mark looks outside into the Kurtz family graveyard that sits just next to the Historical Society. A fat headless guy, dressed like a priest, is clumsily trying to escape from the graveyard but he keeps bumping into tombstones. The headless body falls and breathes heavily- trying to suck in oxygen through its gushing stump. The head's been torn and chewed, never cleanly severed. Not enough violence in a razor cut: the fiends must feel pain. There is a wet living moss growing all over his body. The greenish substance is closing the stump. Tessie called.

Blood begins spilling outward from Tessie's room.

Lenny comes out from Tessie's chamber: her face is half shredded but she's still alive.

"Mark? How could you do this to me? You're not human, I was going to marry the beast?"

She runs out of the lobby, out the front door which stays open and across the field, away from Kurtzville.

He enters Tessie's chamber and watches Tessie's pulsating skin. It looks like the grayish skin of The Toad. After hundreds of years he comes face to face with the Devil's Daughter. His sister. Her hideous warts breathe and each has a face. He makes love to her and her tentacles wrap around his throat. Then he's making love to Maureen and then Lenny (with an entire face!) But then it splits in two again. (Tessie's tentacles must be creating these hallucinations, he thinks to himself in his dream). The tentacles lift him from the ground and he hears the loud clinking sounds of medical tools being used. He explodes in orgasm, screaming.

He goes inside her again, looking over Lloyd and Grenden watching with approval. In the back of the primitive chamber of worship are a small group of corpses watching from the shadows. They are clapping a beat in unison. They stand and scream and fly out the chamber windows on brooms, screaming all the way.

The scene shifts and now he's riding down the furiously rushing Saucony-- he's riding one of Eugene's bootlegging barrels when he smashes into a rock. ALWAYS GETTING YOURSELF KILLED, Maureen's voice calls out to him. NOT THIS TIME, LOVER. And it all goes black to the sound of a fading heartbeat.

More sounds of medical tools are heard as he lays there drugged and semiconscious. Someone was operating on him but he was so heavily sedated there was nothing he could do! He hears the sounds of his skin tearing but he doesn't feel it. He tries to wake. Please. I want to wake up. "Don't be afraid lover," Maureen's echoing and angelic voice said, "it's all natural. It's all natural." And the beat goes on: the rumbling of a machine brings Mark out of his groggy sleep.

***************

He woke up and looked around. "Maureen?" But he knew she was not there. She had gotten what she wanted. He had been out for some time: the shadows shifted, dusk was near. Blood was all over the sheet he was wrapped in. She left the evidence-- surgical tools lay strewn about the room. Now he knew what was in the gym bag she'd brought along, emptied of its tools and left there. Since his penis was part of his body where there was numbness instead of pain, he figured that's where she cut and he was right-- one of his testicles had been removed.

He looked out the window-- Dennis was checking out the steaming engine after opening the Malibu's hood.

"But it was all just a myth, right?" Mark muttered to himself as he walked to the barroom from The Improper's second floor. He met Dennis at the front door.

"Hooo, brother, you reek of beer. Got any? I need a fucking beer," Mark asked.

"Yeah, there's two cases in the trunk. Hey man," Dennis asked, looking at Mark, "are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Mark replied curtly, but he knew he was actually far from fine. He should have told Dennis to run; he should have told Dennis to get the fuck out of Kurtzville. But he didn't.

"I got the sledgehammers," Dennis said.

Mark watched-- no he fixated on-- the steam escaping from his vehicle's cooling system.

"Hey, man, you sure you're alright? You look real pale, man."

"I'm fine, let me see that fucking car." It was all clear now and his role here was becoming apparent to him. Now he knew why he loved the shadows and not the light. Nothing but struggles between a bunch of struggling gods who've walked the earth for millions of years.

He had a psychic flash of one of his former selves executing a Neanderthal, crushing the caveman's skull with a large rock.

"Sorry about the car."

"Don't worry about it. I should have fixed it before I left Philly. It'll have to do, I got to talk with Maureen. "

"You guys have a fight?"

"Nope. When I get back we are going through the wall but wait until I get back."

"You are the bossman and I'm not sure I want to know."

"I got to talk to that fucking bitch."

"Are you sure you're okay?"

*********************************

Yeah, he thought to himself, this car can sure take a beating. "Yeah baby it was a good ride, you can sure take a beating." Mark tore off the road and into one of the plowed cornfields, driving like a madman. He saw the old abandoned and half standing church about a half mile away, the scene of the boy's murder. That was just as good as any place to die, he thought to himself-- pushing the pedal to the floor a little harder. He had it going at a buck-ten when he saw a better place to die-- the oak tree that stood about a hundred yards in front of him. Sixty yards ... twenty yards ... IMPACT!"

Just before flying through the window he heard his uncle's voice: It's too late to die, Mark. It's already begun.

As he flew through a Kurtzville field, Uncle Eugene Kurtz gave Mark a tour through Hell, The Kingdom that was soon to be his. A lot of red, a lot people seemed to be enjoying themselves. "See Mark it's a good place to rule. Join us." Uncle Eugene sat on a moss-covered throne that itself was made from some kind of alien-like bones. Eugene was decomposing hardcore yet still retained some human flesh (though it was putrescent) Mark landed in the field and lay there, broken but regenerating courtesy of his uncle. He lay there listening to his bones creaking and repairing themselves.

A crow hovered and waited for him to die, the crow was hungry for some eyes.

He stood up and watched the sun setting over Kurtzville. The crow (which had by then landed) took off as Mark stood. He pointed his revolver at the crow and pulled the trigger, transforming the crow into a scattered spray of its red blood and black feathers.

"Still got that Academy aim."

He limped toward Maureen's house; he was curious to see if she still wanted him. After all, she'd gotten what she needed.

***************************

When he arrived at Maureen's he thought it a good idea to sneak in through the backyard. Best to surprise her; he had a lot of questions to ask the bitch, all of them to be asked in quick detective-like fashion.

Someone had wheeled one of those car engine lift cranes out and set it up next to the roaring leaf incinerator. Someone was inside the incinerator-- still alive, their fingers grasped weakly at the edge of the incinerator. Mark watched Lloyd trying to feebly make his way out of the incinerator and then crashing downward, sending embers everywhere. A lot of crackling.

A few more yards toward the house, he saw Deputy Wyandt hanging by the neck from a tree.

A couple crows sat on his shoulders, pecking out his eyes. The crows created an imbalance that kept Wyandt's body revolving and swinging a bit among the setting sun. He stayed hidden; Maureen came out of the house, wearing a robe. She carried a pair of hooks which she dug into Lloyd's chest as soon as she stood above him. Then she connected the hooks to the chain on the engine winch.

She cranked the engine lift's winch, bringing the near death Lloyd out of the incinerator. His eyes were wide, filling up with terror. He groaned but could not scream like he wanted to. She cranked the squeaky lift some more, causing more pain.

Smoke rose upward.

She ran her nails across his scorched chest. Lloyd tried screaming again. Raspy nothings. Maureen pulled a very curved and very sacrificial looking knife from under her robe. As she carved his heart from his chest, Lloyd flailed weakly at the air. The heart was still beating as he licked a little blood from it. She placed the still beating heart onto the firepit's grill and started to cook it.

She walked over to the box that sat on the picnic table and removed some more medical supplies. Rubber tubes and lancelets. She stuck the lancelets into Lloyd and and began draining his blood. She smeared the blood on her now naked body and began to dance. After about two minutes, she let Mark know he was there.

"Come out lover."

His tired body carried him to her, they embraced and collapsed in her arms. He basically recovered and they danced a waltz amongst the trees and the bodies and the early evening twilight. Bats flew above them. All went black after she sedated him with a magic kiss.

He awoke a half hour later. "Maureen?" Nope, she was gone and now it was just him and the crows and the dead bodies of the sheriff and his deputy. He started walking back toward The Improper, it was difficult because his regenerating bones weren't healed yet. He listened; a car was coming his way; it was a car with a big engine. When the car pulled up, Mark saw that it contained the kid from the gas station-- only now he had a gaping bullet wound in his forehead.

"Hey, man, you want a lift?"

"Yeah," Mark said as he got into the car. Once he was in the kid floored it down the road. "Yeah this county's great for speed, eh?"

"So, what happened to you?"

"I was talking to you the other night and it all became clear; if you want to drive in Kurtzville, you got to learn to walk amongst the dead. Gotta learn to be the dead, man."

The drive to The Improper took about two minutes at the insanely high speed the kid drove. He hit the brakes and they screeched to a halt at the bottom of the Improper's hill.

Mark got out of the car and started to thank the kid, already beginning to decompose a bit-- as his cheek had fallen off when hit the brakes and big flies were drinking the thick blood that was splattered all over the kid's flannel.

"No problem," the dead kid said, "just how about doing me a favor? Consider making me one of the drivers in your army? Eh, eh?"

"I'll consider it, kid."

"Well I'll be driving around these wonderful roads until I fall apart. Take it easy!"

The kid floored it and sped off around the curve, tires squealing all the way.

He walked up the hill; the place had that empty feel to it-- no one had come to the front door to meet him.

"Dennis?"

"Maureen? I'm not going to shoot you, you can come out; I understand now. It's okay, I'm with you now."

He looked around the Improper; nope, nobody there but Ray's headless corpse. He went to the basement. Dennis had broken through the wall and obviously into the tunnel. But he left the gas can at the tunnel's entrance.

Mark grabbed a flashlight, the gas and the matches; he climbed through the newly created hole and into the tunnel. As he walked through, he recalled how similar the stone construction was to what he saw in his dreams-- plenty of headroom, plenty of torchholders.

During his walk through the tunnel, he stopped once, thinking that maybe there was someone (or something!) following him through the tunnel. He stopped and got real quiet and he listened-- just couldn't tell; he continued on. This subterranean passageway sure contained a lot of shadows.

It took a few minutes to get to the Historical Society's basement; there must have been a brick wall there. Dennis had broken through; there were bricks everywhere. He climbed out of the tunnel and into the Historical Society's basement.

He took an appreciative whiff of the gasoline. Out of the shadows came a baseball bat wielding foaming at the mouth Tommy Binder. Like some sort of crazed assassin, Binder smashed Mark across the back with the bat-- sending Mark and the gas and the flashlight flying.

"You fucking people! I talked to your uncle the other night! Yeah, rabies nothing to be afraid of, it's a new beginning is all-- the disease will sharpen my senses!..... He began speaking in alien, wholly unfamiliar tongues. Binder swung again and missed, thereby exposing his back-- Mark shot him in the back twice.

"I am the guy now! I'm the big guy! You got that?" He fired into Binder's back again. Binder was clumsily trying to scramble back into the darkness, bumping into the tunnel's entrance and slumping to the ground-- blood and foam spilling from his mouth.

*****************

Mark climbed the stairs to the tower; he reached the rotting wooden door that separated him from his past. He went in and saw old man Grenden sitting by one of the three stained glass windows that allowed the room illumination. Grenden was gnawing on what was left of Dennis's head; a lot of blood and a lot of veins seemed to be all over the place.

"She hypnotized your friend and sent him to me. He kissed my ring right before I killed him. He said he loved Tessie. Say hello to your sister, Mark. Surely you remember your sister? Think back, think back to 1981. Think back to your baptism at your uncle's hands.

The psychic flashes continued-- this time they are memory flashes of when the congregation baptized him while they drank bourbon and orgied the nights away. A teenaged Maureen is blowing him as he rests against the old altar he and Maureen found the other day. There's a decapitated goat's head on the altar during this psychic flash however. It is raining blood on everyone.

Mark stared at the mummified creature; the dried out creature which sat still as death once had great jaws.

"She's as dead as dead but she's making a comeback!" Grenden exclaimed happily. Mark had never seen the ancient miserable exsheriff smile before.

The creature, his sister if Grenden was to be believed, looked a little like a walrus or a manatee. She was big and all her teeth were jagged or broken.

"Alcohol does terrible things to your memory, doesn't it Mark? Fucking blackouts. Do you accept Molech as your father and all the glory that comes with sitting at his left hand? Yes?"

"No," Mark replied, pointing his pistol at Grenden, sweat dripping from his brow. His soul quaked.

"Yeah every lifetime you get awfully shaken up when you find out why you are here on earth. This hot rodding suicide thing's been holding your father's kingdom back, Janus," Grenden said in a much deeper, much more Satan-like growl.

"What do you think of my art?" Grenden asked, tossing seven or eight 8x10 black and white photos Mark's way.

Mark looked at them. They were pictures of the house where Mark had found the old lady only days ago. It's Grenden, hanging out with the now dead old lady and all those dead street urchins that Mark found upstairs in Sophie's room.

"Yeah that kind of stuff really shakes the Christian minister types up all right," Grenden said, chuckling. "But that is the job your father created for me."

"Pretty elaborate setup, eh? I don't remember."

"You don't need to remember, you just need to accept and you've accepted. The minute you fucked your sister was the minute you accepted. You fucked her a thousand years ago and you fucked her this morning. I can hear Tessie singing again. Music to my ears."

But he remembered that the last time his soul quaked like this was back on the ancient European plains where the congregation huddled, ate and fucked in dark caves.

Grenden took another bite of Dennis's skull.

"Stop it, " Mark commanded, "or I shoot!"

"I'll be back, you know that as well as anyone does. Yeah, your sister stopped eating 20 years ago; she took after you, thought that she wasn't part of your father's church any longer. This here boy's brother finished her off. Been lots of infighting inside the congregation since Tessie died. Well, the good Reverend Eugene Kurtz will make his way back to Kurtzville eventually. I can picture him now so comfortable in some nice wealthy family's nursery, so cute, so pure; such a clever little one for his age I'm sure his parents are saying now ... someone had to send your father his sacrifice, no?" He took another bite of Dennis's head.

The headless corpse that had formerly been Dr. Ray Macpherson had by this time crawled to the scene of the crime and was making its way toward Grenden.

"Come on Mark, you know it's better to rule than to serve."

Grenden took another bite of Dennis's head. "Stop!"Mark cried out, his voice bordering on frenzy.

Grenden kept on eating and Mark shot. The gun's explosion was muffled considerably by the stone and moss. A trickle of blood came out of Grenden's forehead as he fell backward and was still. His last piss made its way across the dirt floor.

He limped back to the basement where Binder lay dead; he grabbed the gas can and made sure he had matches. Mark listened and heard the echoing and satisfied laugh of a woman; the laugh came from the recesses of his mind. He ran back up the stairs to the tower as fast as his broken body would carry him. Back upstairs for a little purification action.

Once he was back inside his newly discovered sister's room he doused all the corpses with some gas, even Ray's which was still writhing for some reason or another. He doused Tessie's mummified form, making sure he filled those empty eye sockets with gas. He dropped one of the wooden matches into one of her eyesockets and the flames spread so quickly that he was lucky to make it out before the room became engulfed in orange heat. He limped downstairs and outside through the Society's ground floor. Once outside, he stopped for a couple seconds-- to appreciate and to listen to the Society's beams collapsing and thundering to the ground.

As he limped across the field the Society burned to the ground.

********************

He walked into The Improper's barroom; Maureen was sitting naked at the bar having a drink. There was a 400 or so pound pig chained on a leash to the bar rail, pacing back and forth, grunting and squealing.

"Well, I am sure glad you're still with us," he said with a smile. She patted bloated stomach, something very alive churned inside. Already. "The transformation' complete lover; come here let me see your hurt shoulder, let me massage it. "

She massaged his shoulder; it felt much better. Obviously she had the healing touch. Then she walked over to the pig and sliced open its stomach. A normal looking human baby spilled out and into Maureen's hands; she immediately wrapped the child in a blanket. The pig fell over dead with a thump.

"I knew those bastards couldn't destroy the church no matter how hard they tried. We're parents, Mark. Parents of a healthy baby girl. As much human and as much beast as you and I are. I knew I could master the magicians' methods."

"Well what now?"

"You want to head north, find some place remote-- away from civilization?"

"Yeah, let's go."

The small and happy family walked out of The Improper, got into Maureen's Bronco and headed north.

FIN