He soon learns Athlone is a very small town. A sign claims a population of 2,300, but somebody's crossed out the last zero, leaving a population of 230.

Moreover, O'Connor doesn't seem too keen on "Craig Wilson" nosing around town, but chalks up his wariness to an unwillingness to scare the locals with an escaped mass murderer.

That evening, Cade visits a bar called the Bear and Oak, which he finds a bit short on welcoming cheer. Ordering a lager, he gets into a bantering discussion with bartender Glynis MacDougal about the mistletoe above the bar.

When shown a picture of Harris, Glynis says she doesn't recognize him, seeming more interested in finding out whether Cade is a cop. When he tells her he's a bounty hunter -- and willing to share the substantial reward for Harris-- local lout Kieran interrupts their chat.

Kieran grabs another man, Fergus, and jokingly presents him to Cade for the reward. Fergus is not amused, but they are quickly separated by Glynis' uncle, Ryan, who seems friendly in a "get out of town" kind of way.

Ryan says Harris has probably gone down to Tacoma, backing up what the sheriff told Cade earlier.

Cade tells Ryan he plans to stay awhile, significantly mentioning that he's staying at Holly's Inn. As he gets up to leave, Kieran offers to buy him a drink. He's very insistent, as are the other five or ten people who buy him drinks afterwards.

Meanwhile, in the bar, Ryan, Kieran and the sheriff meet to discuss the problem the stranger poses. Kieran is selected to administer a nice discouraging beating for tomorrow, while the sheriff checks the stranger's fingerprints.

Back at the Holly Inn, a knock at the door interrupts Cade's stupor. It's Fergus, interested in the reward for Harris, whom he says he saw at the general store buying camping gear two weeks ago.

Cade finds this hard to believe, given that he's already talked to the people at the general store. After grabbing Fergus and intimidating him, Fergus tells him to follow a trail into the woods, where he'll find an idol at the trailhead.

After finding the idol -- along with a ring of standing stones and the remains of a charred wicker man -- Cade also finds a skull.

The next morning, Cade is hung over but finally able to talk to Eddie, who thinks the clues point to a druidic cult practicing human sacrifice. There's still something missing though, so Cade goes to the town's only major business, the lumber mill, to see if it will yield any clues.

At the mill, four or five men in masks jump him. After getting his attention with a sound beating, they warn him to get out of town. On the way back to his hotel room, Cade staggers past the sheriff, but doesn't bother filing a complaint.

He does have one friend in town, though. Glynis comes to visit, but won't talk about what's going on, even when Cade presses her. When she returns to the bar, she tells her uncle that Cade knows the truth about Harris.

They're worried he might go to the state police. More deeply, Ryan worries that Harris's sacrifice hasn't done any good and that they'll have to try something else -- perhaps sacrifice an innocent, one of their own people.

That night, Cade investigates the closed bar and spots two people sneaking into the woods. He follows them to the trailhead, finding a crowd wearing masks.

A man with a bear mask tells the crowd they need a greater sacrifice to win the gods' forgiveness. He calls the chaste among them to come forward, and passes out hunks of bread. Glynis gets the burned piece, marking her as the sacrifice.

Ryan takes Glynis back to the bar and tries to reassure her with tales of family sacrifice going back to the 14^th Century. She seems resigned, lighting candles on a Christmas tree as he leaves.

Cade, who's been hiding in the shadows outside the bar, comes in to talk to her. Perhaps significantly (or perhaps not), he considers candles on a tree to be a much nicer tradition than human sacrifice.

Glynis finally tells him what what's going on. It has been raining in Athlone for two years. Only the oldest and most determined families have been willing to stay in the constant deluge, and the sense of tradition that keeps them there has led them back to the old druidic ways. Thinking the gods are punishing them, the townsfolk will sacrifice Glynis to appease the gods tomorrow night, but Cade smells another alien experiment.

Consulting with Eddie, Cade learns that there are no rain patterns in the area. It's likely the rain in the town is caused by the aliens, but how?

Eddie suggests is that somebody is constantly pouring a chemical agent into the air, and as it happens, there's one place in town that's constantly pouring out smoke -- the lumber mill. The next morning, Cade grabs Fergus on the way to the mill and asks him if he's seen any oddities. Obligingly, Fergus says he has -- 6 months ago he saw someone in a wolf mask dumping chemicals into the mill's furnace. He knows it's not Ryan -- who wears a bear mask -- but is otherwise in the dark.

Slipping up to the employee locker rooms, Cade picks the lock of Kieran's locker, finding the wolf mask and a bottle of liquid. While he's looking at them, Kieran sneaks up behind him and clobbers him.

Kieran's itching for a fight, and Cade provides it. A shouting audience of workers soon arrives, and Ryan again breaks it up, this time grabbing Cade and calling for the sheriff. Soon, the sheriff is putting the cuffs on Cade, arresting him for the murder of his wife. That fingerprint check has come back and now Sheriff O'Connor knows exactly who "Craig Wilson" is.

After Cade's been locked up, Glynis visits him again. She has heard about Cade's accusation of Kieran, but doesn't believe it -- after all, she grew up with Kieran, and Cade is just an outsider.

Cade isn't impressed -- granted, she grew up with these people, but they're planning to kill her tonight. When she says it's ancestral tradition, Cade tells her, "Your ancestors are wrong. If you love someone you don't sacrifice them, you sacrifice everything for them."

Ryan interrupts, telling Glynis to get away from the murderer. Nearly in tears, she asks him, "Isn't that what we are?" and storms out.

"You'll pay for this," Ryan tells Cade. "Tonight."

That night, O'Connor and Ryan arrange Cade's fate. As they did with Harris, they'll leave the door open, let him escape, then capture and sacrifice him. Glynis wants to know if they've even considered looking in Kieran's locker to see if the chemicals are there. They haven't and they won't.

In his cell, Cade puts his thief skills to work yet again, fashioning a lockpick from the little wire in the middle of a toilet roll holder. He picks the lock just before the sheriff comes to check on him, and when O'Connor walks into the cell to look around, Cade shuts and locks the door on him. The sheriff fires several shots after Cade, alerting the townspeople.

At the mill, Cade finds bags of recharges for chemical fire extinguishers. He loads them on the conveyor belt to the furnace, but a masked horde is approaching from the town. They catch up to him just before the bags drop into the furnace, grabbing him and stopping the conveyor belt.

Kieran suggests throwing Cade into the fire, and Ryan, wearing the bear mask, agrees because he considers the furnace the town's sacred and eternal flame.

Meanwhile, Glynis has snuck off to break into Kieran's locker. She finds the chemicals and makes her way back to the furnace to stop the others. When she confronts Kieran, he admits he added the chemicals, but says Fergus told him to do it. Kieran thought he was helping the fire burn cleaner, keeping environmental agencies from shutting down the mill.

As the crowd turns on Fergus, he runs. Cade grabs him, and Fergus's face shifts, revealing him as an alien! He tosses Cade aside, but the other townsfolk grab him and throw him on the fire. With a scream, he explodes in typical Gua fashion, and the people of Athlone begin extinguishing the fire, hoping the rain will stop.

The rain does stop, and Cade and Glynis sit in the bar the next morning enjoying the sunlight. She tells Cade that the others have already found their own explanation for what happened: they believe Fergus was a magician. Glynis doesn't particularly want to choose between aliens and magic. She and Cade part, exchanging the first two lines of an old Irish blessing, and then she goes to take down the mistletoe from above the bar.