Edward Lee - Ghouls

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

Only a dream, Kurt thought in the dream, though he felt little assurance in the thought. On the second page was a picture of a vat of stew. In the third picture the same old man was serving the stew to a group of children seated around a table, but the little girl from the first picture wasn’t there.

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

“God damn! ” Kurt shouted. “Go away! I’m not gonna go through this shit again!” He stood and slammed the book shut, half noticing that in the last photograph the old man was strapped to a wooden electric chair, and on his face was a malignant grin.

Kurt was furious. He wished he could wake up and not have to answer the door. Impulsively, he started to call out for Melissa, but decided not to bother when he recalled the last time he’d done that.

He stepped broadly into the foyer. The pounding continued, like a roofer driving nails.

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

Kurt flung the door open wide.

Fog swirled in the doorway, misting over the figure of a man who stood tilted at an angle, as though one leg were too short The visitor’s outline seemed to vibrate as it stood.

Kurt stepped back, stunned by a rushing stench. This was too real for a dream, details too concise. He detected a jagged twitter— breathing? —and a sharp, steady drip.

The figure remained still, its features hidden in the mist. It stood bowed slightly forward, neck crooked and shoulders hunched, as if hung from a meat hook. Something metallic flashed on its chest.

“Well?” Kurt said. “I know you’re not the paper boy, so let’s get this over with. Goddamned dreams.”

The figure shifted once, but did not come forward. Fog began to spill in through the doorway, minutely darkening the foyer. Kurt could feel the temperature drop.

“Come on, fucker,” he said. “You’re pissing me off. Who are you?”

From the fog came a wet chuckling sound.

And the figure stepped inside, into the light.

Doug Swaggert was barely recognizable as anything more than an upright corpse; decomposition sculpted him down to bones and slabs of green, perforated flesh. His uniform hung in strips, and he looked back at Kurt through a face held together by rot. One eye showed only white, the other was an empty socket. It raised its right arm, which was without a hand, and Kurt realized then that Swaggert had been knocking on the door with his stump.

“Jesus,” Kurt mouthed. “Jesus God.”

The door slid shut, as if the fog had sucked it closed. Swaggert smiled liplessly. A bubble of black fluid formed in his ear, then broke. He moved toward Kurt quickly then, but jerkily, like some hideous marionette. Through his progress crackled a sound akin to trudging through mud.

Kurt’s stomach roiled. He back-stepped a third of the way up the stairs. Disgust and horror made him forget this was a dream, and he hit his thumb-snap and withdrew his revolver. “Get out of my house, you grosser,” he said. “I’ll blow your rotten head right off your shoulders.”

Swaggert began to grovel up the staircase, teetering on each step like a palsied man.

“Oh, shit,” Kurt said. In a secure, two-handed grip, he aimed his pistol, cocking it. He took a deep breath, let half of it out, and when Swaggert’s moldering face appeared in the sight-line, he let the hammer fall—

click.

“Son of a bitch!”

Kurt flipped open the cylinder—there were no bullets in the chambers. The dump pouch for his speed-strips was empty.

He threw the gun as hard as he could. It smacked solidly into Swaggert’s head, denting the skull, then clunked down the stairs. Swaggert stopped, paused for a senseless moment, then continued to mount the steps.

Kurt spun and raced up the steps himself—only to collide with a scalped, bilge-faced Harley Fitzwater on the landing.

Kurt was trapped on the stairs.

A fat, squishy hand plopped on his head. It slid wetly down his hair, grabbed his ear, and pulled.

“Where’s my Donna?” came Fitzwater’s ruined, liquid voice. The grip tightened. Kurt’s ear was twisted half off.

“Hey, you walking shithouse! That’s my ear!”

“Where’s my Donna?” Fitzwater gurgled again, spewing dark slime. “You find my Donna.”

Swaggert converged, twitching and dripping muck. Kurt could feel the blood pulsing out of his ear. Fitzwater held him by pinned elbows, lifting him up. Swaggert prodded him with his stump, jabbed him, and clubbed him with it. He pawed Kurt’s face with a gnawed hand, smearing his chin with some vile-smelling ooze. When Kurt parted his lips to yell, Swaggert’s rotting fingers popped into his mouth and wriggled.

Life’s a bitch, Kurt thought. He wedged his foot against Swaggert’s chest, as if on a leg press. Then he shoved. The corpse thunked noisily down the steps, where it broke apart and collapsed to a pile of rot.

Next, Kurt socked a hard elbow jab behind him, and felt bones give way beneath the blow. He jerked himself free and turned, then slammed his fist into Fitzwater’s lopsided head. Something crunched, as apples might when stepped on. One of Fitzwater’s eyes burst like a blister.

“I’m kicking your ass, you dead piece of shit,” Kurt said. He beat the thing to the floor with his fists, then kicked viciously until the gas-bloated body split open and spilled a slew of maggots and putrefactive slop onto the carpet.

Kurt leaned back, exhausted. He watched Fitzwater’s body deflate where it lay. It percolated, head lolling, arms and legs draining flat. Soon it had sunken completely in on itself, like a punctured blow-up doll.

His face long with loathing, Kurt descended the stairs. He held his breath as he stepped over Swaggert’s heaped remains. He could actually see the stink wafting up from the pile, like heat waves on hot asphalt.

Only a dream, he thought in the dream. He laughed and went into the den. Blood was streaked all down his shirt, his ear barked with pain, and he could still smell the charnel stench. But he’d won, he’d beaten the things. At least until the next nightmare.

The den’s soft light comforted him, made him feel at home. He opened a window and leaned out. Fresh air at last—he breathed in deeply, gratefully. The sinister fog was gone, of course, and so was the wisteria. Quiet and sanity returned to the house. He looked out into a calm, commodious black, which didn’t seem right after all he’d been through. The obtuseness of dreams never failed to confound him. He smiled and thought of pleasant things.

The window slammed down on him, like a guillotine.

His shoulders and head were trapped outside; he was pinned to the sill. Fog rose in seconds—the window bit down harder on his back. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t free himself.

And he couldn’t escape the sight of Donna Fitzwater’s flesh-specked skeleton as it limped hastily toward him, out of the fog.

Her skeleton arm shot out. Fingers of bone hooked into his eyes, and his scream spiraled away up into the dense, windless night.

««—»»

Kurt woke on the shatter of vertigo. The couch seemed as cramped as a casket. Had all his nerves dissolved? The dream had sapped him, left him to feel as though his head had been shoveled out.

He needed light. He turned on the lamp, the same lamp in the den of his dream, and then the room was draped with unnerving shadows. His makeshift bed was a wreck, pillow squashed, sheets routed; no doubt he’d tossed and turned during the nightmare, like a blind man being flogged.

He lit a cigarette and walked about the room, hair tousled. He tugged his briefs up, as though someone might be spying on him, then he slipped on his robe. When he noticed the window standing open, he rushed to it and slammed it shut.