Edward Lee - Ghouls

Kurt drove away to his call, duped by what he’d just seen. This was the second time he’d caught a glimpse of the girl, and the second time Glen had failed to acknowledge her. He wondered what it was Glen didn’t want him to know.

Back on 154, he slowed to a crawl, driving on the shoulder and craning his neck to read the addresses on the postboxes. Finally he found it, 2819 stenciled across the body of a very large mailbox corroded by rust. He turned and drove at least fifty yards into the woods, along a typical tree-walled dirt road, until he came to the house. What else could I expect? he thought. The house was not a house, but a long, white trailer set up on a foundation of cinderblocks—the crudest of dwellings, yet so familiar to him. Like many of the secret homes off the Route, this was surrounded by heaps of refuse and at least eight ancient automobiles, all in varying states of dilapidation. A fat-bellied cat chased famished chickens across the front yard, and faded articles of laundry flapped at him from a makeshift clothesline, like a string of lunatic signal flags. He heard dogs barking nearby as he got out, hand on his mace, but there were no dogs that he could see, just the chickens clucking and tracking circles around the yard in sheer terror. When he was halfway to what he presumed to be the front door, a voice carried out from the side, “Hey there.”

A man had just turned the corner of the trailer and was approaching in strange, quick strides.

“You reported a missing person?” Kurt asked.

“That’s right. Name’s Harley Fitzwater, an’ my daughta, Donna…she been kidnapped.”

He’d heard this before. A second look at Fitzwater showed a man who was probably not old—he just looked that way, weathered, taut, with skin like canvas. He wore a T-shirt and overalls, and looked starved in them. His eyes were squinting slits; his face reminded Kurt of the bottom of a deformed foot. Like lots of the poor in this part of Maryland, Fitzwater was one who lived off the land and water, who made cash selling skins and meat, who shivered in the winter and dripped sweat in the summer. A survivor.

“Kidnapped, you say?”

“That’s right. When I came back from the lake, she was gone.”

“Does your wife—”

“Ain’t got no wife, she been dead years. Jus me an’ Donna.”

Parents, no matter how destitute, could never be reasoned with about such things. “Perhaps it’s hasty to suspect kidnapping at this point, Mr. Fitzwater. How old is Donna?”

Fitzwater’s face seemed to pucker as he thought. “Twunee-two, I think… That’s right, twunee-two.”

“Have you talked to any of her friends, a boyfriend, maybe?”

“Donna ain’t got no friends. Sure’s hell got no boyfriend.”

“Well, isn’t it likely that she just went off for a walk someplace?”

“No,” Fitzwater said. His answer was icy, unhesitant. His eyes looked more like an animal’s than a man’s. “No,” he said again.

“How can you be sure?”

“’Cos Donna’s got no feelin’ from the waist down. Can’t walk, been that way since she was little.”

Kurt tensed. He felt like he’d just been hit in the head with a box of nails.

“Her chair’s still inside. Right ‘side the bed. Somebody took her outa her bed while I was gone.”

“Where were you?” Kurt asked, grateful Fitzwater had cut in again.

“I went out to the lake ‘bout an hour ‘fore sunup, stringin’ fer white perch and cat. I got back a little while ago an’ Donna was gone.”

Kurt took out a missing person card, the first he’d ever used, and began to fill it out with data provided by Fitzwater. Later, the information would be transferred to Maryland State Police Form MPD A-1A. Fitzwater answered the series of questions sharply and with primitive reserve. There was no display of grief here, nothing chipped away by emotions. Very clearly Kurt sensed the focus in Fitzwater’s existential reaction; he wanted something done now, with as little time wasted as possible.

“You find my Donna,” Fitzwater said.

“We’ll do everything we can, sir. I’ll forward this report to the county and state police right away. Do you have a photograph of Donna, preferably a recent one?”

“No,” Fitzwater said. “None.”

“We’ll need your phone number so we can contact you.”

“Ain’t got no phone. I hitchhiked to the Liquor Mart and back, used the pay phone there to call y’awl. Got no need for a phone.”

Kurt clapped his metal report book shut. “I’ll come back when things start to develop.”

It was almost scary the way Fitzwater looked at him then— a deserted, definitive gaze, like being evaluated by a statue. “I don’t care,” Fitzwater said. “You just find my Donna.”

««—»»

Four a.m. crept up with the stealth of a snake. His first twelve-hour shift in years, yet it seemed to have passed in a handful of hours. Earlier he’d processed the missing persons report through the county and state, glad that the unusual aspects of Donna Fitzwater’s disappearance would expedite the 85. The remainder of his shift had elapsed in a black lament; his mind forced thoughts of Cody Drucker, of Swaggert, of the paralyzed girl. The Fitzwater case pushed Drucker to a back burner; it was abduction, Kurt knew, not kidnapping. No one would kidnap the daughter of a man who had no money to forfeit for ransom. Kurt suspected darker motives here, motives that made him sick; the possibility was heinously typical—Donna Fitzwater would probably turn up in a few days, murdered, sexually mauled. Cheap tabloid headlines stretched across his mind: CRIPPLED GIRL FOUND DEAD IN CULVERT, or something hackishly similar. TORTURED WITH COAT HANGERS AND RAPED FOR DAYS. And of course Swaggert, more than likely lying dead somewhere in the dripping woods. Kurt couldn’t escape the sinister hint; whatever had happened to Swaggert could just as easily happen to him.

His headlights swept across the house. He pulled up and parked the Ford, expecting to find the house dark; but then he saw the familiar dull orange light filling one of the downstairs windows. So far his attempts to break Melissa of television addiction had failed utterly. He knew she was up right now, no doubt transfixed by the all-night horror movies on cable.

He used his flashlight to show him the way up the porch steps. Melissa must’ve heard him park; she opened the door and let him in before he even had his keys out. The TV muttered from the family room, throwing slants of ghostly, shifting color onto the walls.

Melissa locked the door at once. She seemed distracted by some complex worry; her face had lost the mischievous smirk he was so used to. Her long ink-black hair shivered as she turned, her thin body moving wraithlike under a dreary white nightgown. The flickering light from the other room lit points in her eyes like sparks.

“What are you doing up?” Kurt demanded, trying to sound harsh. He felt obligated to scold her with her father away. His only chance to play big brother.

Her face looked tiny in the half-light, her hair more like black silk draped over her head. “I think I figured it out,” she said, lips barely moving as though she spoke through a mask.

“Figured out what?”

“Vampires.”

Kurt stared a moment, then wearily rubbed his eyes. “Damn it, Melissa. You’ve been into your father’s liquor cabinet again, haven’t you?”

“I’m serious, Kurt. That’s how come Swaggert disappeared. Vampires got him.”

“Sure, vampires. I suppose they dug up Cody Drucker’s body, too, right? Just what every vampire needs.”

“Dummy,” she said. “They didn’t want his body; they wanted his coffin. Vampires sleep in coffins—everybody knows that. If I were you, I’d get some protection fast.” From under the top of her nightgown she slipped out a small, chained crucifix and let it swing from her fingers. “See? I got nothing to worry about, ’cause vampires can’t face the sign of the cross.”