Tormel played his flashlight across shelves of old farm equipment, half full cans of oil and engine parts. A couple of now empty stalls threw the smell of animal feces into the air their occupants now roving elsewhere in the dark around the farm. But there was something else in the air. Tormel wrinkled his nose, “Smells like copper.” He shone the flashlight back over the other end of the chain and started following it up.

But Deputy Winston beat him to the finish line.

“Jesus CHRIST! Is that what I think it is?”

Tormel looked where Winston’s flashlight was pointing - twenty five feet in the air a man swung upside down a chain wrapped around his legs.

“Jesus Christ! Jamie! Hold on. Winston! Don’t just gawk get him down from there!”

Holstering his pistol, Winston unraveled the other end of the chain from where it had been tied off but the weight of the swinging ranch hand proved to be too much. The slippery end of chain slid right through his hands and James Sullivan crashed to the ground in a heap, enunciating his fall with the snaps and cracks of bones shattering.

Tormel rushed to where Jamie had fallen, “Hold tight, man. We’ll get you an Ambu-” The sheriff trailed off as he realized the body of the man was cold as the night.

Winston was staring at his hands.
“ I killed him! I fucking killed him. Oh god. I killed him… oh god… oh god…What have I done!”

“Hush up! He was dead already. His body’s ice cold.” Tormel rolled the body over.

The sight of the ranch hand’s face was too much for the freshly christened and new to the force Deputy Winston who finally popped, christening the floor of the barn with spit, bile and the remaining contents of his stomach. Tormel was having a hard time holding his own dinner down.

The skin of the face had been ripped, peeled back and was now hanging off the end of the chin, the ball of the eye, popped clean of the socket and lolled lazily about. The other eye, missing completely was survived only by a frayed cord of nerves. Gashes and punctures adorned the exposed grey muscles of the jaw, cheek and forehead, thousands upon thousands of little fibers shredded and pulled apart

“Well…” Tormel swallowed hard against the rising contents of his own stomach, “that’s something you don’t see every day.”

“Bryauuuughhhhhh…Bruahhyaggghhh” Winston was hunched over in the corner, bent over with his hand on the wall for support. There were more sounds of thick splashing. And then spitting immediately followed by even more spitting. Tormel did his best to tune it out and went through the pockets for identification.

“There’s no way this can be James Sullivan he’s way too pa-”

“ugh- The fuck was that!” Winston stopped mid-heave and pulled his revolver pointing it around in the air.