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wallpaper in his nimble fingers and examined it as though it were a precious antiquity. He mumbled a few words to himself and extracted a bit of something that was wedged between the wallpaper and baseboard.
    "But no man leaves this behind," he said, holding out what he found.
    The sheriff took it, rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. It was a mat of gray coarse fur. "Some dog maybe," he muttered to himself.
    "Think so?"
    Lauters scowled. "I don't know what to think. I've got five dead men on my hands and what looks like possibly a sixth...what the hell am I supposed to say? What the hell do you want from me?"
    "Easy, Sheriff."
    Lauters dropped the fur and stalked back into the living area. Cursing, with one hand pressed to the small of his back, Perry stooped and picked it up, sticking it in his pocket. Groaning he stood back up.
    "Look here, Doc."
    Lauters was squatting down, next to a collapsed end table. There was a shotgun beneath it. It had been snapped nearly in half, the barrels bent into a U. Lauters sniffed them and checked the chambers. "Segaris got off two shots with this before it got him. And what," he asked pointedly, "walks away from a shotgun blast?"
    "Whatever made this track does," Perry interjected.
    Lauters was by his side now. There was a track in the flour, slightly obscured, but definitely the huge spoor of some unknown beast. "What in Christ has a foot like that?" he wondered aloud.
    Perry just shook his head. "Not a man. We know that much."
    The print was over three feet in length, maybe eight inches in diameter. Long, almost streamlined, whatever left it had three long toes or claws in front and a shorter, thicker spur at the rear.
    "Like the track of a rooster almost," Lauters said helplessly.
    "No bird left this," Perry was quick to point out.
    "Jesus, Doc," Lauters said wearily. "The print of a giant."
    Perry moaned and stooped down.
    "Ought to see someone about that back, Doc," the sheriff joked out of habit, but there was no humor in his voice.
    Perry ignored him. He was digging through the mess. His fingers found an iron loop. "Root cellar."
    With Lauter's help, he pulled it up and threw it aside. The root cellar was a five-foot hole with walls of earth that had been squared off. Lying on the frozen mud of the floor was what remained of Nate Segaris.
    "Shit," Lauters said quietly.
    Segaris was a mess. His guts had been cleaved open, the organs torn free, the body cavity hollow as a drum. His arms were broken in several places. Smashed and bitten. The fingers of his left hand were missing, save for the grisly nub of a thumb. His right leg was hacked off beneath the knee, leaving a knob of white ligament to mourn its passing.
    Lauters swore beneath his breath and lowered himself down there. He thanked God it was November. Had it been the warm months...well, he didn't want to think about the stink and the flies.
    "It must've killed him and threw him down there," Perry suggested.
    "No shit, Doc."
    The sheriff wasn't in the mood for Perry's bullshit speculation. He wasn't in the mood for anything these days. He searched around and could find no sign of the man's missing appendages.
    Above him, Perry stared down at the ruin of Segaris' face.
    His left eye was gone, as was most of the flesh around it. But his other eye was wide and staring with an accusatory glare. His mouth was frozen in a scream. The top of his head bitten clean open--even from five feet above, Perry could see the teeth marks sunk into the skull. The brains had been scooped out and, it would seem, the gray splatter in the corner was what remained of them.
    Lauters looked up at the doc with pleading eyes. "God help us," he uttered.
    "I hope God can help us, Sheriff, I really do," Perry said stoically. "But if he can't, then we'd better start thinking about helping ourselves."
    Grumbling, Lauters pulled himself up out of the root cellar, ignoring Perry's outstretched hand. He stood and brushed himself off.
    "It would be interesting