Ghoul

'Go ahead,' Timmy challenged. 'Hit me.'

'Timmy,' Barry said, 'Shut up. Don't'

Clark lunged. Timmy tried to dodge him, but the angered man was quicker. He seized Timmy' s Tshirt with both fists and lifted him off the ground, slamming him into the wall of the shed. Timmy 's feet dangled off the ground. The boy was too terrified to speak. Timmy's anger vanished, replaced with fear.

'Dad,' Barry pleaded, 'put him down.'

'Pplease,' Doug said, 'please Mr. Smeltzer, don't'

'Barry, I told you to shut your fucking mouth. You too, fat boy.' He turned back to Timmy, his leering face only inches away. Despite his terror, Timmy winced at the man's foul breatha miasma of cigarette smoke, coffee, booze, rotting teeth, and bleeding gums.

I won't cry, Timmy thought. I won't cry, I won't cry, I won't. And then he did.

'Now, Graco,' Clark snarled, 'you listen up and you listen good. If I see you or your tubby friend in this cemetery again, I will tan both your goddamned hides so bloody that your mommas won 't recognize either one of you. And you know what? I'll get away with it, too. You're trespassing, and that's against the law. It ain't like I didn't warn you before.' As if to emphasize, he slammed Timmy against the wall, hard enough that his teeth clacked together. Then he let him drop.

'There's a new lock on this shed, and I'm the only one that can open it. It's all boarded up nice and tight. Anybody else gets in, I'll know about it. Don' t let me catch you here again. And as for you,' he turned to Barry, 'you ain 't to hang out with these two no more. They're trouble. Up to no good. You think they' re your friends now? Just you wait. Get a few years older, they 'll want nothing to do with you anymore. They'll think they're better than you. Their kind always does. Just like Graco's daddy. Ol' Randy thinks he' s better than me cuz '

he's got that highpaying union job down at the mill and all I do is dig graves and mow grass.' Timmy stirred. 'That's not true.'

'Shut your face. Now you mind me, Barry. You see these two riding down the street, you go the other way. They come to the house, you don' t answer the door. I catch you playing with them again, you know what will happen.'

'Yes, sir…'

While Mr. Smeltzer was distracted, Timmy crawled over to Doug's side. The two boys squeezed each other's hands. Timmy thought he might throw up.

'No more,' Clark said. 'Am I understood?' Tears filled Barry's blue eyes. 'But Dad'

'No 'buts' about it.'

'But they're my best friends. I don't have anybody else.' Clark lashed out, slapping him across the face with the back of his hand. Timmy and Doug gasped. Barry's cheek turned red.

'Go ahead,' Clark said, his hand still raised. 'You go ahead and back talk me again, you little punk. I dare you.'

Weeping, Barry stared at the ground. Clark turned back to the others.

'Wipe your noses and run home to your mothers. I don't want to see you here again.'

'Barry?' Timmy reached for their friend.

'I said go!' Clark kicked out. His heavy, steeltoed work boot slammed into Timmy's tailbone. 'Get the fuck out of here.'

The boys' last bit of resolve shattered. Both Timmy and Doug fled. They couldn't go in the direction of Timmy' s house, because the utility shed and Mr. Smeltzer both blocked their way. He stood there, hands on his hips, the look on his face just daring them to pass. So instead, they ran in the other direction, toward the cornfield at the far end of the graveyard.

A rock bounced off Doug's shoulder blade. He cried out, but didn't look back.

'That's right,' Clark Smeltzer shouted, 'Just keep on running. If I see you here again, it'll be both your asses!'

His laughter hounded them as they reached the edge of the cemetery and stumbled into the cornfield, heedless of the damage their pounding feet were doing to Luke Jones 's crop. Halfway through the field, Doug paused, gasping for breath.

'Let's stop a minute,' Timmy suggested, wiping the remaining tears from his eyes. Sweat poured down his forehead.

Doug nodded, unable to speak. He sank to his knees and closed his eyes.

'That… jerk…' He gulped air. He can't… do that. Barry's our friend. He can't …' Timmy stripped off his Tshirt and mopped his brow. 'Save your breath. He just did. And we let him.'

'We could have stopped him. We could have fought back.'

'No we couldn't have. Come on, Doug, who are we kidding? We' re two kids, man. When it came down to it, and he literally had us backed up against the wall, we did everything but piss our pants, we were so scared.'

Doug's face, already purple from a combination of crying and running, now turned violet. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. 'Too late.'

'Oh no. Please tell me you didn't.'

'I did. Just a little bit. When I fell. Some squirted out.' Timmy snickered, then chuckled, then turned his face to the sky and howled. He pointed at his friend, tried to speak, and only laughed harder. He stretched out on his back and giggled.

'It's not funny,' Doug said, but he was smiling, and a second later, he started laughing as well. 'Look at us,' he said. 'We almost get beat up by our best friend' s dad, and then, just a little while later, we 're sitting in a cornfield laughing because I peed myself.' Timmy sat up. 'It's a defense mechanism. Like SpiderMan. Ever notice when he's fighting Doc Ock or Hobgoblin, how he cracks jokes all the time? That' s because he 's scared. It's how he deals with being afraid. It helps him face the monsters.'

'Too bad we couldn't do the same back at the shed.'

'Yeah.' Timmy took off his Converses and shook dirt and pebbles from them.

'I mean, why did we have to be so chicken?' Doug shook his head in shame. 'We weren't afraid of Catcher. Well, maybe a little. But that didn' t stop us from standing up to him.'

Timmy slid his shoes back on. 'And look at what happened when we did.'

'That wasn't really our fault, though. Barry was the one who snapped.'

'I read this issue of The Defenders once. Nighthawk, Gargoyle, Dr. Strange, and Son of Satan had to travel to this other dimension to rescue Valkyrie and Hellcat. There was a line in it that said, 'When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.' I didn' t understand what it meant, so I asked my grandpa. He told me it was from some philosopher.

I can 't remember the guy's name. Nacho or something. He was German, I think.'

'Nacho doesn't sound very German.'

'It doesn' t matter. Anyway, Grandpa explained it to me and then told me a few other things this guy had said. I always remembered the one, because I thought it sounded cool.'

'What was it?'

'When you battle monsters, you have to be careful or else you'll turn into a monster yourself.'

Doug mouthed the words, silently repeating them to himself. Then he frowned. 'I don't get it. What's it mean?'

'Think about it. We fought Catcher and what happened? For a few seconds, Barry acted just like his father. And me, earlier. What I said about Ronny and those guys. You 're rightit was a stupid thing to say. The kind of thing you'd expect them to say, rather than one of us. Maybe it's better that we don' t fight our own monsters. Maybe we 're better than them.'

'Maybe,' Doug agreed. 'I don't know. I still wish we'd have done something. Poor Barry. I'm worried about what's gonna happen to him now.'

'We'll still see him. Dude, he's our friend. I don't care what his old man says. He can't stop the three of us from hanging out together. We'll sneak out tonight and then all three of us can hang out in the Dugoutor look for another way into the cave, since we can't get into the shed.'

Doug looked frightened again. 'No way. After what just happened? I'm not setting foot in that cemetery anymore. And besides, that's not what I mean.'

'Well, what do you mean, then?'