"Mighty, oh mighty!" cried the crowd, and someone began beating upon a drum.
"Now will we call him to life again…"
The crowd cheered.
"To life again!"
"To life again."
"To life again!"
"Hail!"
"Hail!"
"Sharp white teeth…"
"Sharp white teeth!"
"White, white skin…"
"White, white skin!"
"Hands which break…"
"Hands which break!"
"Mouth which drinks…"
"Mouth which drinks!"
"The blood of life!"
"The blood of life!
"Great is our tribe!"
"Great is our tribe!"
"Great is the Dead Man!"
"Great is the Dead Man!"
"Great is the Dead Man!"
"GREAT IS THE DEAD MAN!"
They bellowed it, at the last. Throats human, half-human, and inhuman heaved the brief litany like a tidal wave across the field. Our guards, too, were screaming it. Myshtigo was blocking his sensitive ears and there was an expression of agony on his face. My head was ringing too. Dos Santos crossed himself and one of the guards shook his head at him and raised his blade meaningfully. Don shrugged and turned his head back toward the field.
Moreby walked up to the shack and struck three times upon the sliding door with his wand.
One of the guards pushed it open for him.
An immense black catafalque, surrounded by the skulls of men and animals, was set within. It supported an enormous casket made of dark wood and decorated with bright, twisting lines.
At Moreby's directions, the guards raised the lid.
For the next twenty minutes he gave hypodermic injections to something within the casket. He kept his movements slow and ritualistic. One of the guards put aside his blade and assisted him. The drummers kept up a steady, slow cadence. The crowd was very silent, very still.
Then Moreby turned.
"Now the Dead Man rises," he announced.
"Rises," responded the crowd.
"Now he comes forth to accept the sacrifice."
"Now he comes forth…"
"Come forth, Dead Man," he called, turning back to the catafalque.
And he did.
At great length.
For he was big.
Huge, obese.
Great indeed was the Dead Man.
Maybe 350 pounds ' worth.
He sat up in his casket and he looked all about him. He rubbed his chest, his armpits, his neck, his groin. He climbed out of the big box and stood beside the catafalque, dwarfing Moreby.
He was wearing only a loincloth and large, goatskin sandals.
His skin was white, dead white, fishbelly white, moon white… dead white.
"An albino," said George, and his voice carried the length of the field because it was the only sound in the night.
Moreby glanced in our direction and smiled. He took the Dead Man's stubby-fingered hand and led him out of the shack and onto the field. The Dead Man shied away from the torchlight. As he advanced, I studied the expression on his face.
"There is no intelligence in that face," said Red Wig.
"Can you see his eyes?" asked George, squinting. His glasses had been broken in he fray.
"Yes; they're pinkish."
"Does he have epicanthial folds?"
"Mm… Yeah."
"Uh-huh. He's a Mongoloid-an idiot, I'll wager-which is why it was so easy for Moreby to do what he's done with him. And look at his teeth! They look filed."
I did. He was grinning, because he'd seen the colorful top of Red Wig's head. Lots of nice, sharp teeth were exposed.
"His albinism is the reason behind the nocturnal habits Moreby has imposed. Look! He even flinches at the torchlight! He's ultrasensitive to any sort of actinics."
"What about his dietary habits?"
"Acquired, through imposition. Lots of primitive people bled their cattle. The Kazakhs did it until the twentieth century, and the Todas. You saw the sores on those horses as we passed by the paddock. Blood is nourishing, you know, if you can learn to keep it down-and I'm sure Moreby has regulated the idiot's diet since he was a child. So of course he's a vampire-he was brought up that way."
"The Dead Man is risen," said Moreby.
"The Dead Man is risen," agreed the crowd.
"Great is the Dead Man!"
"Great is the Dead Man!"
He dropped the dead-white hand th en and wal ked toward us, leaving the only genuine vampire we knew of grinning in the middle of the field.
"Great is the Dead Man," he said, grinning himself as he approached us. "Rather magnificent, isn't he?"
"What have you done to that poor creature?" asked Red Wig.
"Very little," replied Moreby. "He was born pretty well-equipped."
"What were those injections you gave him?" inquired George.
"Oh, I shoot his pain centers full of Novocain before encounters such as this one. His lack of pain responses adds to the image of his invincibility. Also, I've given him a hormone shot. He's been putting on weight recently, and he's grown a bit sluggish. This compensates for it."
"You talk of him and treat him as though he's a mechanical toy," said Diane.
"He is. An invincible toy. An invaluable one, also.-You there, Hasan. Are you ready?" he asked.
"I am," Hasan answered, removing his cloak and his burnoose and handing them to Ellen.
The big muscles in his shoulders bulged, his fingers flexed lightly, and he moved forward and out of the circle of blades. There was a welt on his left shoulder, several others on his back. The torchlight caught his beard and turned it to blood, and I could not help but remember that night back at the hounfor when he had enacted a strangling, and Mama Julie had said, "Your friend is possessed of Angelsou," and "Angelsou is a deathgod and he only visits with his own."
"Great is the Warrior, Hasan," announced Moreby, turning away from us.
"Great is the warrior, Hasan," replied the crowd.
"His strength is that of many."
"His strength is that of many," the crowd responded.
"Greater still is the Dead Man."
"Greater still is the Dead Man."
"He breaks his bones and casts him about this place of feasting."
"He breaks his bones…"
"He eats his liver."
"He eats his liver."
"He drinks the blood from his throat."
"He drinks the blood from his throat."
"Mighty is his power."
"Mighty is his power."
"Great is the Dead Man!"
"Great is the Dead Man!"
"Tonight," said Hasan quietly, "he becomes the Dead Man indeed."
"Dead Man!" cried Moreby, as Hasan moved forward and stood before him, "I give you this man Hasan in sacrifice!"
Then Moreby got out of the way and motioned the guards to move us to the far sideline.
The idiot grinned an even wider grin and reached out slowly toward Hasan.
"Bismallah," said Hasan, making as if to turn away from him, and bending downward and to the side.
He picked it off the ground and brought it up and around fast and hard, like a whiplash-a great heel-of-the-hand blow which landed on the left side of the Dead Man's jaw.
The white, white head moved maybe five inches.
And he kept on grinning…
Then both of his short bulky arms came out and caught Hasan beneath the armpits. Hasan seized his shoulders, tracing fine red furrows up his sides as he went, and he drew red beads from the places where his fingers dug into snowcapped muscle.
The crowd screamed at the sight of the Dead Man's blood. Perhaps the smell of it excited the idiot himself. That, or the screaming.
Because he raised Hasan two feet off the ground and ran forward with him.
The big tree got in the way, and Hasan's head sagged as he struck.
Then the Dead Man crashed into him, stepped back slowly, shook himself, and began to hit him.
It was a real beating. He flailed at him with his almost grotesquely brief, thick arms.
Hasan got his hands up in front of his face and he kept his elbows in the pit of his stomach.
Still, the Dead Man kept striking him on his sides and head. His arms just kept rising and falling.
And he never stopped grinning.
Finally, Hasan's hands fell and he clutched them before his stomach.