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of all he had left behind.
    Silas Greene had a life. At least, the man who had been Silas Greene had one. There was a small store at the fork of the mountain paths leading down the far side. One path wound up to Friendly, California and the other down toward San Valencez and the ocean beyond. Above the door of that store hung a sign proclaiming it to be "Greene's General Store."   Folks went there for things they were too lazy, or in too much of a hurry to fetch from 'outside.' You could buy foodstuff, books, paper and pens, canning supplies. Silas kept "a little of everything and a lot of nothing," as he was fond of proclaiming.
    No one had seen that door open since Silas had filed into the wood, along with the rest of them almost a week before. No one had seen a light in his house, or smoke rising from his chimney.   In point of fact, no one had seen Silas Greene at all since that night—not since he'd lowered his head and swept those great black shadow antlers through them, scattering them like leaves in the wind. Most folks had a vague notion that it had been Silas, but they couldn't quite credit it in their daytime minds.    They knew Silas.
    They knew nothing. Silas knew them, though, and he had an idea that this would make all the difference.   He found, in fact, as he stepped closer to the stagnant pool that had once washed away the sins of the "true believers" and girded them in the white-light armor of their Lord, that he knew more of them than he had before. He knew their names, their faces, their lives and loves. He knew each one he had touched, and by peripheral contact all of those who had, in turn, been touched.
    He felt them, heard their thoughts as if whispered just out of reach. He had made his mark on that girl, and she had spread it like a virus, infecting their minds with the touch of his mind.   They clung to the marks he had given them selfishly, hid them in shame by the light of day and caressed them alone in the darkness.
    They had dreams. All men have dreams. Those dreams were awakened by his presence and promised in the great sweep of darkness that hovered above and just beyond him. Silas could bring them their dreams. Silas would bring them their dreams. All they had to do was to follow him. All they had to do was throw themselves at his feet and grovel. All they had to do was to turn off the light of their personal choice and set that choice on the altar, and he would take them in.
    But Silas wasn't ready.   It wasn't yet time.   There was a great deal of work to be done, and he was going to need a few of them to assist him in beginning that work. The temptation was strong to call them all to him at once and attack the old church in a frenzied flurry of rebirth and power, but that temptation was born of Silas Greene, and not of the thing that had inhabited his mind and soul. He still walked and talked with Greene's voice, but he was more—and less—than he had once been, and while Silas himself was greedy and without patience, the other was not.
    Nor was she who watched him, bound as she was to the roots and stone of the mountain, part and parcel to the church building and all it had stood for—and would again. She had waited and watched over the barren pews and the broken windows. She had sung her quiet songs to the creatures that slithered through the depths of the baptismal pool and watched the sunsets drip red down the walls through a lens of stained glass. She had seen the horned one arise, and fall, the only power to rival and mesh with her own within her range. Now he had risen again, and she would watch and blend with him—strengthen him—and then? Well, first things first.
    Silas stood with his hands planted on the edge of the old baptismal pool and gazed into its depths. They were as he remembered—as the man Silas Greene remembered. Sinuous bodies rolled over and around one another and formed arcane patterns. Their triangular heads and flitting tongues darted this way and