Edward Lee - Ghouls

He spread a heavy, brand-new plastic drop cloth over the table, then lifted her up and laid her on it. He removed her rings, a bracelet, and a silver necklace, and dropped them into a bag. With scissors, he cut off her dress, bra, and panties, pulling each piece out from under her, and then he pulled off her shoes. South River here we come, he thought. It all went into the bag.

She quivered on the table, still alive. Her feet twitched nervously. The flat of her abdomen continued to suck in and out from the vomitive, her empty stomach still pumping away.

He put packaged S, K, & F tourniquets on her wrists and ankles. Then he buzzed off her hands and feet with a 7 1/4-inch circular saw. It was much more difficult than he had imagined, and the racket was revolting.

He extracted her teeth with pliers.

He fizzled her face away with potassium hydroxide.

Now the tricky part. He fixed a 16-gauge biopsy needle to a 100-cc syringe. Then from a previously prepared solution of TTX, citric acid, and water—a concentration many times stronger than the lemonade—he took to the task of filling the syringe and displacing its roughly three-ounce contents into various areas of her body. Two shots into the pericardial sac, four into each lung, ten into the peritoneal cavity. A bead of very dark blood filled each needle hole, and reminded him of carnelian studs he’d seen on cheap jewelry.

The needle made a crunching sound when he punched it through her brain stem. He emptied the syringe forcefully into the middle of her brain.

Oh, dear, he thought. The sphincter was beginning to dilate. Hastily, he stuffed a large rag into it with the snapped-off end of a broomstick. Then he jammed another rag similarly into her mouth, trying to shove it as far down her throat with the stick as possible.

At last. Finished.

He wrapped her up quite carefully in the plastic.

The rest would have to wait till dark.

— | — | —

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Squidd McGuffy’s stank oddly of a zoo or a stable; he would have thought they had animals on the premises, from the smell. The dank place was a pit, literally; it had been built several feet below the street. Inside, two leather-jacketed bikers played darts at the corner, while two more shot-gunned beers to see who could belch more creatively. But the establishment as a whole was devoted to six Brunswick billiards tables, around which congregated a mess of local “skel”—dropouts, punks, rednecks, and not-very-petite high school girls who must be below drinking age. Foul language was not scarce here, and there seemed no great abundance of intellectual discourse. Pretty, blue-jeaned girls wearing pewter skull rings watched in awe as tattooed boyfriends calmly dropped impossible two- and three-ball shots.

Kurt stepped down the short stairs, wondering if he’d ever get back out in one piece. What a dive, he thought. I’ll bet they shoot sex loops in the back room. He thanked God he’d brought his off-duty gun, for all the good it would do against these behemoths. Up front, a tall man with slicked-back hair and a pencil-line mustache leaned against the bar—he glanced quickly and suspiciously to the door, as if expecting a raid. The man had “the eye”; he’d made Kurt as police with one look. Another man disappeared into the back with a tray of sandwiches.

This was ridiculous. A goddamned pool hall. Why had Nancy Willard insisted they meet in this forsaken hole in the ground? Anonymity, of course, a place where they wouldn’t likely be seen by someone they knew. But why? Why the secrecy? Perhaps she was going to make a play for him. Yeah, sure, he thought. Next joke. It all went back to the phone call. I’d like to talk to you about something, she’d said. You may be quite interested.

A breary figure at the bar turned and waved.

Glen Rodz.

What the… but Kurt didn’t waste time finishing the thought. He pulled up the stool next to Glen.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Glen asked.

Kurt wasn’t sure how to respond. Had Nancy Willard intended for Glen to be here, too? Or was it just coincidence? “The Anvil’s beginning to give me Freudian nightmares; every time I look at a bottle of beer, I’m forced to think of tits. Thought I’d try a new place for a change. And to think I’ve been missing out on this all these years.”

“Yeah. Class joint.”

They both turned at a strange sound. Behind them, two bikers appeared to be urinating into empty beer cans.

“And a discerning clientele,” Kurt added. “I’m surprised they let me in without my tie.” Then he noticed the circlet of empty bottles arranged before Glen. “You always get a load on before work?”

“Willard gave me the night off,” Glen revealed. “With pay. Couldn’t tell you why, though. With all the shit that’s been going on, you’d think he’d want me working round the clock.”

Glen didn’t have to say much to let on that he was in the bag, or at least getting there. His eyes were dark and very bloodshot, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

“You gonna tell me what’s bothering you?” Kurt said.

Glen frowned. He began slowly, so as not to let his words smear. “There’s this girl I know,” he said. “This girl I’ve been seeing for a while. And—”

The barkeep set two beers down, and at the same time a brief commotion rose from what must’ve been the back room. Men were shouting, then came a loud thud, a quick clang of metal, and a sound like pots hitting the floor. Glen and Kurt seemed to be the only ones who’d noticed.

“Sounds like they got a gorilla back there,” Glen said.

Kurt began to think he might be dreaming again. This place was getting weirder by the minute. “You were saying something about a girl?”

Glen paused, staring into the bottom of his beer. “It’s, uh…it’s not the sort of thing I’d want getting around.”

“Jesus Christ, Glen. We’ve been friends for twenty goddamned years. You ought to trust me enough by now to know I’m not going to run off and tell your business to the CIA.”

Glen smiled. The contrast with his eyes was not pleasant. “I know, sorry. I’m just a little off the ball right now. Too much drinking, too much thinking.”

“So tell me about the girl.”

Glen was staring ahead into the mirror on the bar wall. He didn’t seem pleased by what he saw. “I love her,” he said.

“You love her, that’s good. So why are you sitting here depressed as shit and drinking yourself into the outer limits?”

“Fuck. It’s…awkward. She’s a little older than me, and a lot smarter, but that’s never seemed to make any difference. All that matters is that I know her real well. And, and—”

“Oh, I get it,” Kurt said. “She dumped you. Well, let me tell you something. No girl’s worth hitting the skids for, I don’t care who she is.”

Glen smiled again, brittlely. “I’m not on the skids yet,” he said. “And, no, she didn’t dump me. I know she will soon—I’d bet money on it—but that’s not the point. Shit, I’ve been dumped before, plenty of times. Things are gray for a little while, a little low, but you always pull out of it eventually, you always ride it out. Sometimes I think men were put on earth just to be shit on by women. It goes with the territory. Women, goddamn women, they’re all devils on the inside, but you love them just the same.

“Your enthusiasm is illuminating,” Kurt said. But that was unfair. The beer was obviously swaying Glen way off the post. “If she didn’t dump you,” Kurt said, “then what’s wrong?”

“I’m in a bind. I don’t know what to do.”