"Son, let's talk a moment," said Father Cavanaugh. He took another two steps toward the shadows, stopping perhaps five feet from the silent figure.

"Father," Mike whispered urgently.

Father Cavanaugh glanced over his shoulder and smiled. "Whatever game's being played, Michael, I think we can ..."

The Soldier did not so much leap as seem to be catapulted out of the ring of trees. It made a sound that reminded Mike of the mad dog that Memo had fought off years ago.

Father C. was a foot taller than the Soldier, but the khaki-clad figure hit him high, arms and legs scrabbling like a big cat on loose shale, and the two of them went down in a heap, rolling, the priest too surprised to make any sound but a grunt, the Soldier's growling coming from deep in its chest. They rolled across the close-cut grass until they slammed up against an ancient headstone, the Soldier straddling Father C, its long fingers around the priest's throat.

Father Cavanaugh's eyes were wide, his mouth wider as he finally tried to cry out. Nothing but a gargling sound emerged. The Soldier's hat was still on, but the brim had been shoved back on his head now and Mike could see the smooth-wax face and eyes like white marbles. The Soldier's mouth opened-no, not opened, it grew round like a hole being carved in clay-and Mike could see teeth in there, too many teeth, an entire ring of short, white teeth surrounding the inside of the round, lipless ring of a mouth.

"Michael!" gasped Father C. He was obviously straining with all of his considerable strength just to keep the Soldier's incredibly long fingers from choking him into unconsciousness. Father C. writhed and wriggled, but the smaller figure stayed planted across his midsection, khaki-clad knees seeming to grip the grass. "Michael!"

Mike unfroze, ran across the ten feet separating him from the struggling pair, and began pounding on the Soldier's narrow back. It was not like striking flesh, more like touching a bag of writhing eels. The thing's back twisted and squirmed under the shirt fabric. Mike swung at the Soldier's head, knocking the hat flying behind a tombstone. The top of the Soldier's skull was hairless, pink-white. He hit the thing on the head again.

The Soldier freed a hand from Father C.'s throat, slashed backward. Mike's t-shirt ripped and he found himself flung six feet into the darkness under the juniper trees.

He rolled, got to his knees, and ripped a heavy branch from the nearest trunk.

The Soldier was lowering its face toward Father C.'s neck and chest. The Soldier's cheeks seemed to bulge, as if a wad of chewing tobacco were forcing its way forward, the mouth itself elongating as if a set of dentures were wedged in front of its gums.

Father Cavanaugh had his left hand free now and his large fist struck at the Soldier's face and chest. Mike could see marks appear in the thing's cheeks and brow, a sculptor's angry fist making indentations in clay. The marks filled in within seconds. The Soldier's face flowed and reshaped itself, the white-marble eyes moving in flesh, fixing on the priest with no hint of blindness.

The thing's mouth rippled, grew longer, became a sort of flesh-rimmed funnel extending even as Mike stared and Father Cavanaugh screamed. The obscene proboscis was five inches long now-eight-as it lowered toward Father C.'s throat.

Mike ran forward, planted his feet as if he were stepping to the plate, and swung the heavy branch in a roundhouse swing, catching the Soldier above and behind the ear. The sound echoed across the cemetery and into the tree.

For an instant, Mike thought that he had literally knocked the creature's head off. The Soldier's skull and jaw flew sideways at an impossible angle, hanging from an elongated strand of neck, resting on the thing's right shoulder. No spine could have withstood that angle.

White eyes slid through flesh still writhing like flesh-colored liquid mud and focused on Mike. The Soldier's left arm shot up, quicker than a snake, grasped the branch, and wrested it from Mike's grasp. It crumpled the three-inch-thick bough like someone snapping a matchstick.

The Soldier's head righted itself, re-formed, the lamprey snout grew longer, lowered toward Father Cavanaugh's struggling form.

"My God!" cried Father C. The sound was choked off as the Soldier vomited on him. Mike stepped back, eyes widening in horror, as he saw that the torrent dropping from the elongated jaws was a brown and writhing mass of maggots.

The slugs fell on Father C.'s face, neck, and chest. They pattered against the priest's closed eyelids and tumbled into the open collar of his shirt. A few fell into his open mouth.

Father Cavanaugh spluttered and whimpered, trying to spit the live maggots onto the grass, trying to pull his head to one side. But the Soldier leaned closer, face still lengthening, and held the priest's face in impossibly long fingers, like a lover steadying his loved one for a long-awaited kiss. Maggots continued to stream from his full cheeks and open funnel of a mouth.

Mike stepped forward and stopped, heart freezing with a new level of horror as he saw some of those brown maggots wriggling on Father C.'s chest and then burrowing under flesh. Disappearing into Father Cavanaugh. Others burrowed into the priest's cheek and straining neck.

Mike screamed, reached for the broken branch, and then remembered the plastic bottle in his pocket.

He grabbed the bunched fabric of the Soldier's collar, felt the rough wool and the malleable substance beneath, and emptied the bottle down the length of the thing's back, expecting no more result than there had been when the grave had been blessed.

There was more of a reaction.

The holy water made a sound like acid burning through meat. A line of holes appeared in the khaki fabric, stitching across the back of the Soldier's uniform like machine-gun bullets. The Soldier made a sound like a large animal dropped in scalding water, more hiss and gurgle than scream, and it arched backward, bending impossibly far, the back of its waxy head almost touching the heels of its combat boots. Boneless arms twisted and flailed like tentacles, the fingers ten inches long and bladed now.

Mike jumped back and flung the last of the contents of the bottle onto the thing's front.

There was the stench of sulfur, the front of the Soldier's tunic burst into green flame, and the creature rolled away at an impossible speed, writhing in postures impossible for a human skeleton to assume. Father Cavanaugh rolled free and lay retching against a headstone.

Mike stepped forward, realized that he had used the last of his holy water, and stopped five feet from the circle of junipers as the Soldier scrabbled into the darkness there, laid its face and forearms against the bare soil, and burrowed-sliding into the black dirt and dead needles there as easily as the maggots had burrowed into Father C.'s flesh.

The Soldier was gone, out of sight in twenty seconds. Mike stepped closer, saw the raw-ridged tunnel there, smelled the sewage and decayed meat stench, and blinked as the tunnel folded in on itself and collapsed, becoming merely another depression of fresh-turned soil. He turned back to Father C.

The priest had reached his knees but was bent across the headstone, head down, vomiting repeatedly until there was nothing left to vomit. There was no sign of the slugs except for red marks on the priest's cheeks and chest-he had evidently ripped open his own shirt to find them. Between dry retches and gasps for air, the priest was whispering, "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." It was a litany.

Mike took a breath, stepped closer, and put his arm around the man.

Father Cavanaugh was weeping now. He allowed Mike to help him to his feet; he leaned on Mike as they staggered toward the gate of the cemetery.

It was quite dark now. The Popemobile was a dark shape beyond the black iron. Every breeze rustled leaves and the corn across the way and made Mike think of the sound of things sliding across the grass behind him, tunneling under the soil they walked on. He tried to get Father C. to hurry.