and what happens later that night might be a judgment from god , or a jest of those older gods that men worshipped from the safety of stone circles on moonlit nights - oh , it 's funny , all right , pretty funny , because lowe has gone all the way to portland to become the beast , and the man he ends up ripping open on that snowy november night is milt sturmfuller , a lifelong resident of tarker 's mills ... and perhaps god is just after all , because if there is a first-class grade-a shit in tarker 's mills , it is milt sturmfuller .