Ghouls (49 page)

“Of course not.”

Willard appeared to be looking into space now, though his features were still blacked out. He lit a cigarette and watched the tail of smoke rise toward the ceiling. Behind him, the sunlight which bled into the kitchen grew suddenly less clear, as though a cloud had just slipped in front of the sun.

Glen sensed something urgent about the silence now. He could actually hear Willard draw on the cigarette.

“And how much did you repeat to our good constable Morris?” Willard asked.

“None.”

“No?”

“No.”

“And why not?”

“Because he’s my friend,” Glen said, lips pulled to a cutting smirk. “And I don’t want my friends to think I’m an idiot.”

Willard’s silhouette nodded, puffed. “So the gibberish Nancy told you about the things in the woods—you’ve repeated it to no one?”

“That’s right.”

“Excellent… And I’m sure you realize that Nancy is suffering from some psychological abnormality. I doubt that it’s too serious, though.”

Glen felt the muscles in his face sharpen. “Then…she’s all right?”

“Oh, yes. She called about an hour ago.”

“From where?”

“Crownsville. Ward
Romig
One, one of the low-precaution wards.”

Glen felt a hot flash, but he didn’t know if it was shock or relief. Crownsville was a state mental hospital located on the outskirts of Annapolis.

“I was about to report her missing,” Willard went on. “Thank God, anyway. I knew nothing about it; she admitted herself under her own volition, which at least indicates that her delusions can’t be terribly severe. The doctors would like her to stay for seventy-two hours of observation. Then they’ll be able to decide what to do, probably medication, therapy, and rest.”

Now Glen’s heart
surged
with relief; he wanted to shout. Embarrassed, he propped the shotgun against the stairs and offered Willard a downcast look of apology. “I’m really sorry about all this. Guess I went off my rocker a little.”

“Yes, a little,” Willard agreed. “Never mind that now; we’ll talk about it later. The important thing is she’s all right.” He hitched up his sleeve to view his watch. “If we leave now, we should make it before visiting hours end. Do you know the way?”

“Sure, it’s on the corner of 178 and Crownsville Road. A fifteen-minute drive if we step on it.”

Willard came out of the kitchen entry. “Let me get my keys.”

“I’ll drive,” Glen said. “My car’s right out front,” and he turned and strode for the front door. Willard, a step behind him, snatched up the shotgun without faltering and then butt-stroked Glen neatly in the back of the skull. The sound of the blow was frightfully insignificant. But then Glen toppled face-first onto the foyer slate, unconscious.

Willard stepped over Glen’s legs to peek out the window, and he frowned. He leaned the shotgun against the wall, and with a labored breath began to drag Glen into the study, toward the basement.

— | — | —

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Lenny Stokes paused at the post of the access gate. He was struck clean by the night’s impossible stillness. Even with his Chevelle rumbling intrusively behind him, he couldn’t help but stop and feel the moment. Was it beauty he sensed? His eyes opened for the first time in his life to a wonder of nature? It seemed wrong for him to feel such things.

The night was alive. Swarms of fireflies drifted
shiftingly
through the woods like luminous smoke, a legion of green flecks of light. A possum crossing the lane looked up at him against the headlamps, then waddled clumsily into the brush. A night thrush lifted off in the air, silent and serene and silhouetted by a moon so bright and heavy with light he thought it might detach itself from its hold in the sky and fall to earth.

“Hurry up, Lenny,” Joanne called out from the car. “Let’s get going. Or are you gonna stand there all fuckin’ night?”

Lenny frowned. The sensation cracked and slipped away, but he’d never understood it to begin with.

He wedged the cutter over a random link, feeling for bite.
Soft,
he thought.
Like pewter.
He gripped the long HKP No. 3 bolt cutters as if they were a pair of handlebars on a motorcycle. His muscles tightened, arms shaking but under control, and there was a quick snap of metal. The chain fell away like a severed tightrope.

He got back into the car and pushed in the headlight knob. Darkness seemed to scoop them up. Joanne popped open two cans of beer, spraying the windshield, giggling.

Lenny stared ahead.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Lenny sipped his beer—it tasted like water. “Feel a little funny,” he confessed. Something sour coated his stomach, and his eyes hurt. Fatigue bogged him down like heavy winter clothes. He considered calling it off, trying again another time when he felt better. “Guess I’m just run down
er
somethin
’.”

Joanne arched her head back and emptied half her beer down her throat.

Lenny let off the parking brake; the car rolled forward into the access road. Branches scraped along the fenders, like nails against slate; the tires popped gravel. Lenny was breaking out into a light sweat.

“Maybe we should go back,” Joanne slurred. “You look like you’re about to heave-ho.”

Feel like it, too.
“
Musta
drank too much,
shoulda
ate first. No point
comin
’ out here
fer
nothin
. ’Sides, I need the bread.”

Half a mile into the woods they came to the first clearing, Lenny’s favorite. He turned off the engine, and they embarked. Joanne carried the remains of the six-pack by one of the plastic rings, like a little girl with a doll. She started to say something, but Lenny silenced her with a quick “
Shhh
!” and led the way into the rise, his spotlight gripped limply in one hand. He had a .22 target pistol stuck in his belt. It was ideal for poaching, so long as you hit them in the neck or head, and it made about as much noise as a loud clap.

They sat up on the bank, facing the clearing.

“What now?” Joanne asked.

“We wait. And keep
yer
voice down. Bucks got ears, too,
ya
know.”

“Maybe that security
guy’ll
come.”

“Fuck him. Anyway, we won’t be here long. Best
deerspot
in the county, rat here at Belleau Wood. All I need is one good shot, an’ we’ll be on our way.” He placed the pistol and light on either side. The truth was they might be here for hours before a decent-sized buck came along. Over the past week or so it seemed the flourish of deer had all but vanished.

Joanne pulled another beer off the six-pack. Her stomach was making noises like an aquarium, from so much beer. She drank a lot for a girl, an awful lot, but she never got fat. She didn’t seem to have any fat on her at all.
Dances it off,
he thought.
And fucks it off. She’ll
neva
go ta fat. Neva.

Joanne leaned back lazily and wiggled her toes. “Do you miss your wife?”

“What
kinda
question is that?”

“I don’t know, I just wondered.”

“Why the hell would Ah miss that frigid mousy bitch? Ah need her
lak
a hole in the head. Jus’ as soon as the divorce papers come—” but Lenny stopped. Something wasn’t right. He sat up, concentrating without direction. “Listen,” he whispered.

Joanne burped. “I don’t hear anything.”

“
Tha’s
jus’ it. Ah don’t hear
anythin
’ neither. Not even a cricket.”

The clearing looked sleeted in the moonlight, frozen for eons. There was no sound at all.

“Must’ve been the sound of the engine when we came in,” Joanne suggested. Her beer can dripped condensation onto her thigh, darkening her jeans. “We might as well go.”

“Jus’ sit tight an’ be quite.” He looked at his watch but saw that it had stopped a few minutes short of midnight. “We’ll give it an hour.”

Fine against the night, Belleau Wood mansion sat sentient at the top of the highest hill, throwing a cold, crisp shadow down the vast inclination of land. Its windows were alight.

As they waited, Lenny’s self-awareness began to dissolve around the edges; soon, he caught himself dozing off. An intoxicating exhaustion seeped into him, slowing his heart and brain—it dragged him down as if into a pit. He lay back and watched Joanne through sleep-dulled eyes. Shifting in and out of focus, she began to move in cool, grainy slow-motion, like a fever dream. The moonlight seemed crystalline now; it traced her in sharp, mercurial lines. She drew her top off over her head, soundless, then leaned back and offered her breasts to the moon. Her eyes were glinting slits, her face slyly wanton and radiating warped desire. It was a familiar look.

Hell with the deer.

Flushed, intent, Joanne saw his hands float up like rough, disembodied things homing on the heat of her heart. His hands—they were more than hands, they were transmitters of a strange chemical energy, catalytic prods which ignited in her all the
unallayed
lust she’d ever known; she concentrated on his hands. They induced her to move closer; she loved to be felt, she loved his hands on her. His touch was potent, primitive. His touch made her shiver with knifelike flashes of heat.

“Right here under the moon,” she whispered.

“Rat here
unda
the moon,” he said.

He stripped off her jeans, and she straddled him.

“Not yet,” she said, a famished pant. “Not…yet.” Her skin glowed, her nipples rose from the sudden charge of blood. His fingertips kneaded a lovely pleasant ache into her breasts. She took his big wrists and pushed, hissing, sliding his touch over her tingling belly and down, and her nerves disgorged a flood of restless, quivering pleasure. She felt suddenly very wet inside, and slick with heat. She held his hand there for a long time, as if to push it into her completely. The wet heat trickled upward. She felt her blood turn to glitter, and her mind swam away with the moon.

“Turn me inside out with it,” she whispered. Her small hands fumbled with his belt. “I want you to fuck me till I can’t see straight. Fuck me right into the ground.”

A pair of tall, lean shadows arched over them, like trees.

Lenny’s wonderful rough hands cupped her buttocks. He positioned her over him, then pushed down. Joanne whined once very sharply at the thrill of being pierced.

There was a rustling of motion, insanely fast. The shadows converged. Joanne opened her mouth to scream but was gagged by a squirming hand; some of her teeth cracked when she bit down on the invading fingers. Lenny was lifted up and thrown a considerable distance—he collided head-long into a stout tree trunk, then thudded to the ground. The impact sent a tremor through his bones; he fought to keep conscious, fought to breathe. The pistol was out of reach, lost in the grass and tangling shadows. His gashed scalp poured blood into his eyes. Floundering, his face dulled by the white of shock, he looked out across the clearing.

Joanne was being dragged nude through the field, hauled along by a hand hooked into the roof of her mouth; her body flip-flopped like a weasel with its head in a snare. In her struggle, she made no details of her attackers—they were just two lurching shapes dragging her along. The second figure wrestled with her, grappling for her feet as she kicked and bucked her arms and legs in a mad, futile dance. Intolerant, the first figure finally let go of her, and she fell. Her scream wheeled out into the dark like flying glass. On her back, she scrambled to get away, but at once a cold, thin foot plopped onto her chest and slammed her down again, pinning her shoulders to the ground. She squealed in little bursts when the figure took her wrist and held her arm out straight. The drawing pressure increased; her shoulder lifted. A
grisled
popping sound crackled in her ears, and her squeal climbed to the sharpness of a razor as she felt her arm being twisted cleanly out of its socket. Her other arm was
jerked
out, much more quickly.