—and the roof peeled back a little farther, seeming to follow his retreating steps—

—and then the moon, so cold and gray, dropped from its place in the storm-shrouded sky and landed right outside.

The suddenness with which the thing appeared, coupled with its size, caused Tim to stumble but not fall. Christ on the cross but it looked like those old storybook drawings of the Man in the Moon, only in those drawings he was smiling and friendly, his face so kind and gentle, not like this—this looked more like a skull unearthed from a concentration camp graveyard than any storybook illustration; cold, deep, dark sockets that might have been eyes but the blackness was too total to tell, and its mouth was twisted into a grimace, not a grin, and it was covered in dirt and rot and dead leaves and wriggling worms and now it was reaching—

—a section of wall splintered outward, pulled down as easily and quickly as you might knock down a house of cards; a moment later, when the dust had been drowned by the rain or scattered by the fierce winds, Timothy Beals saw the thing in its totality.

He was aware neither of wetting himself nor of dropping to his knees like a celebrant before the image of a divine god; he was conscious only of the rain, the coldness, and the Impossible Thing that towered over him.

This is it, pal, right out of that damned nightmare you used to have in prison, here it is, found you at last, your punishment, Retribution in the flesh.

He stared up at the thing in wonder and awe.

There was no fear in his heart; fear was for someone who actually had a chance of survival, and Timothy Beals knew he had none.

So, drenched in freezing rain and his own fluids, Timothy spread his arms apart in awe, throwing back his head and crying out.

He might have screamed, “I’m sorry,” but he couldn’t hear himself.

The thing reached down for him with one of its huge hands and wrapped his torso within its quadruple-jointed fingers, slowly crushing him.

The pain brought with it a sad form of glee in Timothy’s heart, for of all the punishments he’d imagined for himself, of all the tortures and degradations and countless cruelties of which he felt he was so deserving, none could compare with the exquisite agony of what gripped him now. With every stab of pain there was, in his mind, a choir of angels singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah; with the snarling, power-drill sensation of every breaking rib puncturing a new organ there were celebratory candles lighted as children approached for their First Communion; and with the first trickles of blood that spluttered from his mouth, soon to become a fountain, there was the priest, covered in colorful robes, lifting the chalice skyward and intoning, “Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the cup of my blood that was shed for you and all men so that you might live...”