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Within the piling dust I imagined the thing that held me
in its sight, driving me onward. I conjured images of the
Shepherd with the red crook, standing tall and solemn upon
cresting, frothing waves of hungry wolves. I fantasized the
thing in service to a secreted queen of murder, deep in her
hive far below the earth. She wore a bloodied crown and
held an ornate rusted knife in each of her many crimson-
dripping hands. She was surrounded by her retinue of
worker-killers, orchestrating the red business of murder. I
smiled when I thought of her looking like my mother. But
beyond my imaginings, I couldn’t help but feel shameful—I
had brought an untimely end to a wonderful dreamer, who
had waged as fierce a war against the Mother of the Dead
as myself. Still, as before, I could feel purpose behind my
actions—a grand scheme that moved within and without
me, gathering strength beyond death, preparing. Whatever
the reason behind my new calling, it grew all the more
forceful and terrible when I found a familiar list of names
in the pockets of both the Crucifier and the hunter he had
slain. Most important and perplexing of all—my own name
appeared on one of the lists. Something familiar drifted down
beside me, put its lips almost upon my ear and whispered,
“The wolves are coming, son.”
Before I left the church to the slinking death of its dying
city, I nailed the Crucifier to one of his own crosses, merging
artist with art, preserving his legacy. I hoped he would be
taken for one of his own victims, and while his lethal dream
would cease, he would remain an unnamed monster, forever.
As for the new kill lists I discovered, I transferred the names
that hadn’t been crossed off to my own list—all save my
own, of course. I noticed that the Crucifier’s list included
names from the murdered hunter’s list, none of which
were crossed off on the latter. I assumed I’d unconsciously
followed some kind of unspoken protocol.
I wasn’t one to devolve mystery into fact, but the game
I was engaged in threatened my life in ways I’d never
32 | Mark Anzalone