Edward Lee - Ghouls

The lips funneled to a salivating O shape over her eye socket, and—

POP

—sucked the left eyeball out of her skull.

The eyeball was swallowed whole, and then the other eye was removed much in the same way.

Her pants were ripped open and torn off. She was raped by a long, twisting forearm that routed her insides amid that same wet, plunging sound. The arm thrust in and out like a piston rod, quickly extracting organs through the vaginal pass.

When the abdominal cavity had been sufficiently emptied, the arm withdrew. Lisa twitched jerkily on the ground, as if lying in electrified water. She died gargling blood.

The hand clasped her ankle. From atop a sixty-foot mocker-nut tree, two grackles watched as she was dragged away into the woods.

— | — | —

CHAPTER TWENTY

“A what?” Kurt said. But he’d been paying little attention anyway. The gentleness of the morning air distracted him. He stood at the rim of the back patio and looked out over the trees, hopeful that it wouldn’t rain.

“A werewolf,” Melissa repeated. She was scattering her breakfast’s leftover bread crusts into the backyard. “You know, like Lon Chaney.”

“Damn. Why didn’t I think of that? Now all I have to do is go down to Schiller’s Gun Shop and order a box of silver wad-cutters for my .357.”

“I’m not joking,” she warned, flicking a last crust. “It was a full moon the night Harley Fitzwater disappeared.”

Had it been? So what. Somehow she’d found out about Fitzwater’s disappearance, and the skeleton, too. At times he thought that the Tylersville grapevine must be as intricate as an NSA telenet. “You should eat your bread crusts,” he said. “Grows hair on your chest.”

“If you’re not careful, you’re gonna be the one growing hair, and I mean lots of hair. And teeth, and claws. And don’t always change the subject.”

“Okay. I thought you said it was vampires.”

“Well, even I make a mistake every now and then,” she said with her usual cockiness. “Just look at the facts. Vampires only drink blood; they’d never eat a body down to the bones… But werewolves would.”

“Are you sure you’re not smoking grass with those oddball friends of yours? I know I wasn’t as screwy as you when I was your age.”

“Go ahead and laugh,” she said. “They laughed at Brahe, too, you know.”

Who’s Brahe? he thought. He would not admit ignorance. “Sure, Melissa, and if I tell Chief Bard that werewolves ate Swaggert and Fitzwater, he’ll laugh me right off the force.”

“All it takes is one bite, remember that, kiddo. I don’t want to have to be chaining you up in the basement every full moon.”

Sometimes Melissa’s imagination worried him. Did she really believe these things? Probably. He left her to watch sparrows pick at the bread.

For some reason, he felt anxious. He went upstairs and looked in on Vicky, who was still sleeping peacefully, in his room, in his bed. It was something he’d insisted on. He’d consigned himself to the couch in the den, which wasn’t bad once he learned where the hard spots were. He just wanted Vicky to be as comfortable as possible.

She turned once under the sheet, as if resisting a dream, and then fell still again. Probably the first decent night’s sleep she’s had in two years, he thought bitterly. He’d never seen her so at peace before, so at ease, even with the bandage on her head, and the cast.

He stayed a moment more to gaze at her in her sleep. He felt like a voyeur, secure to watch in secret. He wondered if he would ever sleep with her, reproved himself for the thought, then closed the door.

His suspension was moving along. Not much longer now, he thought, leaving the house and starting the Ford. He hated not working; he hadn’t taken a vacation since Carter was in office, because anything more than two days off per week interrupted the routine he needed. Being forced not to work was now close to driving him to claw at the paneling.

Before he had time to back out of the drive, six or eight county cruisers flew by one after another, followed by a big, flat-white bus that roared unmercifully. Kurt turned after them and saw that he’d guessed right when all the county vehicles parked at the roadside near the lane which led to Fitzwater’s trailer. There were at least a half dozen more county cars there already. Kurt parked behind the last one, close to disbelief at what he saw beyond his windshield. Fitzwater’s cul-de-sac was crawling with police, and when the bus released several dozen more patrolmen, the scene became pandemonic. They must’ve called in a fifth of their day shift.

In the rearview, Kurt saw Bard’s T-bird pull up behind him and stop. Kurt got out and waited at the shoulder as Bard lumbered up, precariously balancing a pack of Hostess Ho Ho’s on a cup of take-out coffee.

“What’s this, the county clambake?” Kurt asked.

“You got your wish,” Bard said. “Choate shit his county trousers when he got word about yesterday. Ordered all available men out here for a class-A inside-out, and he emptied the county training academy for a full day. They’ll search here till noon, then spend the rest of the day on Belleau Wood.”

“Should’ve been done days ago. And they should have state out here, too.”

“Don’t look a gift headqueen in the mouth. A freebie’s a freebie, so what more do you want? The national fucking guard? And who needs the state? They’re too busy painting their cruisers the color of my dick; you think they got money to lend us some troopers for something as trivial as a murder investigation? Bugger them.” Bard pressed both of the Ho Ho’s together and ate them as one, in a single bite. “Besides, if these muzzleheads can’t find anything with this kind of manpower, there’s probably nothing to find.”

They cut into the woods until stopped by a familiar yellow ribbon. POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS. Past the cordon, several sergeants were lining up rows and rows of patrolmen for what seemed the most massive grid search in the history of law enforcement. The men appeared fidgety; the forest bubbled with nervous chatter. Lieutenant Choate and a pair of TSD technicians looked on immobilely from a stand of trees beside the trailer. At their feet were things that resembled small black suitcases.

Kurt glanced closer at the trailer. The door no longer lay where it had yesterday; it and parts of the trailer body itself had been removed to the county criminalistics lab. Footprints had been photographed and cast, leaving fringes of plaster in the yard. A tech plugged a portable UV set into a powerbox; the element glowed like neon. Another tech fumed siding with uranyl phosphate, which left stains that reminded Kurt of washed-out blood.

“What about the blood?”

Bard sipped the coffee as if it might bite him in the face. “Forestville grouped it down to AB-duffy-positive, which matched the blood in the scalp. According to some dog tags they found inside, Fitzwater was AB, so they’re satisfied it’s all his. And no word on prints yet, just that they’re punting them all to state, like last time.”

One county sergeant, with an irate, cherry-pink face, stepped before the rows of men. His voice crackled like splitting wood. “Shut up,” he ordered. “No talking, no jokes, no cocking around. Anyone lights a cigarette, I shove my thermos up his ass. And I don’t want to see any of you guys putting any of that chewing tobacco shit in your mouths. This is a crime scene—don’t fuck it up. I want it nice and slow, hear? If you see something, don’t touch it, just shout it out.” He scowled one last time and then moved his hands forward, toward himself, as if ground-guiding a tractor. The line of men crouched and began to advance evenly along the forest ground. “That’s it, greendicks. Nice and slow.”