Ghoul

'I'm worried about what his dad is going to do to him after all that.'

'Yeah.' Timmy sighed. 'Me too, man. Me too.'

'Mr. Smeltzer was always kind of weird, but he' s really starting to lose it. Who knows what he could do? And did you notice something else? When we were at the shed, he said,

'I figured it was you two that was sneaking in here, as well. Couldn't just be them other boys.' Who do you think he was talking about?'

'I don't know,' Timmy said. 'I can't even think about that right now. I still feel like I'm going to throw up.'

'What if it was Ronny, Jason, and Steve? What if Mr. Smeltzer knows what happened to them?'

'Barry's dad is a serial killer?'

'Well, noprobably not. But you saw what he did to us today. How he acted. Sure, he' s hollered before, but he never laid a finger on us. Not like this. Today was different, and the way Barry 's mother talked, he was like this last night, too. Maybe he caught them trying to sneak in the shed and… lost control?'

'You think he killed them?'

Doug didn't reply.

'He wouldn't have done that,' Timmy said. 'He's crazy, but killing them? That seems a little farfetched. He' s just an abusive jerk, not some psycho. Much as I hate the guy, and as much as I think my dad 's wrong, and that there really is a serial killer running around, I don't think it's Barry's old man.'

'Yeah,' Doug said, nodding. 'I guess you're right. I hope you are, anyway. So what do you want to do now? We can't go back to the cemetery and we can' t go anywhere else, either. We can 't even get our stuff out of the Dugout.'

'Let's finish catching our breath first. My stomach and my head still hurt.'

'Did he hurt you when he slammed you against the shed?' Timmy shook his head. 'No. Not really. I think it's more nerves than anything else.' Timmy lay back on the ground, careful not to squash the budding corn stalks. Clouds drifted slowly by above them, and he wished that he could hop on one and ride away. He 'd always been mystified by clouds. They looked like solid thingsislands floating above the earth. Meanwhile, Doug reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic egg of Silly Putty. He began playing with it, rolling it in his hands and then flattening it out, while Timmy watched the sky and tried to figure out what they could do. The sun felt good on his face. He wished they could just stay there in the field for the rest of the day. He turned to his friend.

Doug found an anthill and began picking up the scurrying insects with his wad of Silly Putty, pretending it was the Blob and that the ants were frightened townspeople. He'd always been able to entertain himself like that. One summer, he'd enlisted Timmy and Barry' s help in collecting empty locust shells from the trees and shrubs. They ' d spent an entire day gathering the bugeyed, creepy looking husks. Then, overnight, Doug had set them all up on top of a train table in his basement. He 'd placed his green plastic army men in the diorama as well. The next day, the boys had reenacted a fantastic battle between the U.S. Army and some alien bugs from outer space. Watching him now, as Doug transformed his Silly Putty into yet another alien menace, Timmy grinned. Then the memory of Clark Smeltzer's voiceand the look on Barry's facemade his grin vanish as quickly as it had appeared.

Timmy stood up and brushed the dirt off his pants. 'Let's walk over to the woods. Maybe we can find a hornet's nest or something cool.'

'But we're not supposed to. Your parents said.'

'Yeah, but they didn't know that Mr. Smeltzer was going to chase us out of the boundaries anyway. I mean, we' re already beyond where my mom and dad said we could be. Might as well make the best of it. It 's not like we'll get caught or anything.' Doug put his ball of Silly Putty, now embedded with ants, back in the plastic egg and slipped it into his pocket. Timmy gave him a hand and helped him to his feet. Then the two of them set off for the tree line. As they neared the edge of the forest, they noticed four turkey buzzards circling in the sky. The carrion birds were hovering over a specific spot in the woods.

'Something must have died in there,' Timmy said, nodding toward the birds. 'Maybe a deer or a pheasant. We should check it out.'

'What do you want to see an old dead deer for? That's gross.'

'I don't think so,' Timmy said. 'Sometimes, it's kind of cool.' They pushed through the thick tangle of thorns and branches growing around the edges of the forest, and stepped beneath the leafy canopy.

The temperature was cooler in the woods, and rainwater from the previous night's storm still dripped off the limbs overhead. It was darker under the trees. The woods were alive with sound, birds and insects, squirrels barking at one another, dead leaves and pinecones crunching under their feet. Flowers burst from the dark soil, lining the trail with different colors and fragrances. A chipmunk sat on a mossy stump and watched them go by. A plane passed overhead, invisible beyond the treetops. Timmy glanced upward, but he could no longer see the circling buzzards.

They didn't often come to this section of forest and hadn't fully explored it, and despite that morning' s terror, their spirits lifted slightly at the opportunity to do so now. They ' d only gone a few yards in, and were still standing in an area where the undergrowth was sparse and the trees were spaced far apart, when Doug spied the raspberry bushes.

'Awesome!'

He ran over to the thick stand of bushes and began picking raspberries, greedily popping them into his mouth and relishing the taste. Juice dripped from his lips. Timmy heard the unmistakable squawk of a turkey buzzard overhead, but the leaves still hid them from sight. He sniffed the air, but didn't smell anything dead. Doug groaned with delight. 'My mom never buys these at the grocery store. Says they're too expensive.'

'My mom says the same thing. I was surprised she actually had blueberries on hand this morning for the pancakes.'

'Try some.' Doug held out a handful of berries. Timmy strolled over, but before he could join in, something behind the bushes caught his eye. The sun shined down through a break in the trees, and the sunlight glinted off of something bright and metallic.

He tapped Doug's shoulder. 'What's that?'

Doug looked up. His face and fingers were stained red from berry juice. 'What?'

'There,' Timmy said, pointing. 'On the other side of the bushes. The sun is reflecting off something. See it?'

'Metal…'

'Sure looks like it.'

'What do you think it is?'

'Could be anything,' Timmy said. 'A tree stand left behind by a hunter, or someone else's fort, or an old junked refrigerator or something.' Or a crashed UFO, he thought, or maybe the hatch to a secret underground government base. Or what those birds are looking for…

He glanced down at the forest floor, found a long, straight stick, and picked it up.

'Let's find out.'

Swinging the stick like a scythe, Timmy slashed at the clinging berry branches, cutting a path through the thicket. Doug followed along behind him, still picking raspberries and stuffing them into his mouth. They waded through the undergrowth and reached the object. Standing in front of it, the boys saw obvious signs that someone had gone through an awful lot of trouble to conceal it. Tree branches had been cut and laid over it, and dead leaves had been heaped on top of those, all in an effort to camouflage the mysterious object.

Doug's nose wrinkled. 'Smells like something died around here all right. Those turkey buzzards must be right overhead.'

Timmy had noticed the stench as well. It wasn't like what he' d smelled coming from beneath the graveyard. This was sharper. Muskier. Fresher, the way a dead groundhog smelled after lying in the middle of the road for several days. This was the aroma of death and decay.

Ignoring the foul odor, Doug grabbed another handful of berries. He stepped to the left, spotted a patch of poison ivy, and quickly jumped behind Timmy again. Timmy grasped a pine branch. Sap still leaked from the end of it, and the bark stuck to his hand. He pulled the limb away, revealing a glimpse of what lay beneath.

'Is that…?'

Doug nodded, his berries forgotten. 'Yeah. I think it is.' Without another word, both boys stepped forward and began clearing away the debris. Beneath it lay Pat Kemp' s black Chevy Nova. Enamored of Pat as they were, the