Edward Lee - Ghouls

“Jesus.”

There was an odor, faint but awful. His hand was wet. “What the hell is this?” he said, for the second time that night.

He found the flashlight, and pointed it, and—

— | — | —

PART TWO

In your love is my death;

feel my dead heart beat stronger.

This goes on forever,

but I can wait longer.

It kills me when he touches you,

every whisper, every kiss.

But your years are my seconds,

and your misery — my bliss.

—from “Three” by RODERICK BYERS

You’ll never know where,

and you’ll never know when.

“Murder,” it whispers.

“The mirror. “ Again.

You’ll never know how,

and you’ll never know who.

It’s coming, though, and it’s coming for you.

—from “Double” by L. EDWARD S.

they are neither man nor woman,

they are neither brute nor human;

they are ghouls.

—E. A. POE

— | — | —

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

Kurt looked up and frowned. He was reading in the den, the floorlamp glowing softly behind his chair. In his lap he held a book entitled The Red Confession, but its pages were all blank.

At once the house fell silent again, though he was certain he’d heard a heavy, loud thunking sound only a moment ago. Perhaps he had imagined it.

He looked around the room, on edge, as if suspicious of something. A thin but very icy draft nagged at the back of his neck; when he turned, it seemed to follow him. And what was wrong with the furniture? It all seemed slightly out of place, as though someone had moved each piece an inch or two. The curtains hung open to reveal a window full of blackness. When he looked down, he noticed thick black-red carpet on the floor, but he could’ve sworn it had always been brown. Next, he put away The Red Confession, only to be left to gaze speechlessly at the bookshelves. His books were gone, replaced by titles he’d never seen. The King in Yellow, The Lair of the White Worm, The Book of Dead Names. Just what kind of books were these? There weren’t even authors listed on the spines, except for one on the end, / Have Seen the Inside, by the Duke of Clarence, whoever he was. Someone had taken the old books out, and switched them with these.

He sensed it was very late. Soon he became aware of a soft, rapid ticking sound. The clock? he thought. But it was much too fast and erratic to be a clock of any kind. Likewise, the corner which had always been occupied by Uncle Roy’s grandfather clock was now curiously vacant. Someone had taken the clock also. He would have to ask Melissa what had happened to the books and the clock and the carpet.

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

There it was again; he hadn’t imagined it after all.

Someone was at the door.

He walked across the room with alarming effort. He felt sluggish, dragged, as if all his pockets had been filled with lead shot. Then he realized he was dressed in his police uniform, and about the same time he knew something was wrong. Too much strangeness had piled up at once. He couldn’t figure it. The books, the carpet, the clock, and now himself in uniform at some wan hour when only the other day he’d been suspended from work.

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

But the strangest part was that he felt extremely averse to answering the door. He couldn’t explain it. He just didn’t want to do it.

He stuck his head into the foyer, refusing to even look at the front door. What did he sense waiting for him behind it? “Melissa, be a sport and get the door for me, will you? I’m…busy.”

He waited, but she made no reply.

And again—

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

It was much louder this time, driven by insistence; Kurt actually felt the frame of the house vibrate. He pictured Conan pounding on the door with a giant wooden mallet.

“Melissa!” He paused, waited. “Melissa! Get the door!”

“Get it yourself!” her small, pointed voice shot back. Hostility gave a crack to the words.

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

“Come on, Melissa,” he pleaded. “Someone’s at the door, and I don’t feel like getting it.”

From deep in the house, Melissa’s voice unwound as an enraged squeal: “Go fuck yourself! Lazy do-nothing son of a bitch! FUCK yourself!”

Kurt’s face darkened. Melissa had been brought up liberally, he knew and understood, but now her precocity had slipped too far. It was fine for him to swear, he was an adult. He would not, however, tolerate language like that from a twelve-year-old.

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

“No one’s home!” he spat at the door. To hell with whoever was knocking. Kurt crossed the foyer, the TV room, then marched purposefully into the long hall. It was hot, a dense wet ensliming sensation; the darkness seemed to bleed out of the walls and drip. He breathed the dark, he could feel it fill his chest. But he paid no attention to the incompatibilities he’d observed since finding himself in the den.

He pushed open Melissa’s bedroom door.

Moonlight flooded the room; it was dark, yet he could see everything in the cool, phosphoric glow. The room had been emptied out, save for a bed which he noticed only through the corner of his eye. The floor and walls were stripped. Dust lay stoutly, in clumps, along the baseboards. Opposite him, a single bare window framed the moon.

Kurt’s eyelids felt sewn open.

Melissa sat cross-legged on the floor, in a limp, white nightdress. An ashtray clogged with butts rested beside her knee. She seemed very thin. A cigarette tilted out of her mouth, its tip glowing orange like a fox’s eye. She hadn’t even noticed that he’d entered, but instead seemed fixed on something across the room.

“Melissa, what’s going on?” He stood off balance in the doorway, paralyzed. “What happened to your things? Where’s your furniture? How come your posters aren’t on the wall?”

“Get out!” she shouted, but it sounded more like an animal’s bark. She still had not bothered to look his way. “Little goodie-two-shoes runt. Faggot. Pussy… Get out. Go find a clam hole to fuck.”

Kurt reeled in his own furor, blood thumping at his temples. “How’d you like to chow down on a box of Tide? Sounds to me like your mouth needs a good cleaning.”

She laughed, cackled at him. “Put your cock in a rat trap, faggot. And trip it with your balls, if you got any.”

“That’s telling him, baby,” a third voice oozed. “Ask him to take it out. Let’s see how big it is.”

Kurt’s senses sank—he recognized the third voice at once. Of its own volition, his head turned slowly toward the other side of the room.

“Not you,” he heard his own voice rattle. “Anyone but you.”

Joanne Sulley was sitting on the edge of a coverless bed. All she wore was a moth-eaten black satin blouse open down the front. It revealed nearly all of her. Like Melissa, she seemed much thinner than usual, as though she’d not eaten in weeks. Her hipbones jutted, and he could see the slats of her ribs. Shadows pooled in her body’s hollows. She looked like a whore from the death camp joy divisions.

He tried to sound infuriated, but the sight of her like this made his voice quaver. “What the goddamned hell are you doing? What are you doing in my house?”

Joanne leaned her upper body back on her arms. “Melissa invited me,” she said, and parted her legs obscenely wide. “She’s my friend. We both like each other a lot. Isn’t that right, baby?”