love running around inside the multiple plastic tubes and paths, but the hamster had seemed terrified of them. Now, he understood how Milo had felt.
Soon, the purpose of the branching passageways and multiple crossroads became clear.
Each new path led upward to a grave. The further he went, the more of them he encountered.
The tunnel was littered with empty coffins, smashed into kindling and tossed aside, along with scraps of clothing and other unwanted items that had held no value to either the ghoul or his human assistant teeth, toupees, and something that Timmy realized with dread was a pacemaker. In some areas, the main tunnel was so clogged with discarded coffins that he had to crawl over the wreckage. At one point, teetering on the edge of a silklined casket, he dropped both the flashlight and the pocketknife. The beam went out and the flashlight rolled away, plunging Timmy into total darkness. Frantically, he dropped from the coffin and felt around for them. Tears welled up in his eyes. His breathing came in short, quick gasps. Then his fingers closed over the flashlight. Mouthing a prayer, he turned it on. It still worked. After a few moments, he recovered the pocketknife as well, and then continued on his way.
'Thank you,' he whispered. 'Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Now just let Doug be all right and let us get out of here and let Barry get the backhoe and everything will be okay.' Timmy stopped in the middle of the passage. He suddenly felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over him. He remembered Clark Smeltzer, standing over him behind the utility shed, bragging.
'There's a new lock on this shed, and I'm the only one that can open it.' Both Timmy and Barry had heard him say that. How could they have been so stupid?
How was Barry supposed to get inside the shed if he didn' t know the combination? His father 's keys were useless.
So, he thought, Barry will just have to bust the window in or something. He won't let us down.
Eventually, after a long, descending walk, the tunnel evened out again. At the same time, it grew wider and taller. He noticed that the surface was more smoothed and rounded, as if extra care had been taken in finishing this part. The sidetunnels became nonexistent. Timmy wondered why at first, and then figured it out. He must be getting close to the older portion of the cemetery. There was an area between the two sections, right along the hill separating them, where there were no graves ancient or modern. He must be beneath that now. Just today he'd been there with Katie, walking hand in hand, when they' d seen the big depression in the earth. He closed his eyes, remembering the way she ' d smelled. It already seemed like a million years ago, and he wanted very badly to see her again at that moment. He felt that if he could hold her hand again, everything would be okay.
He paused and listened, but heard nothing. If his suspicions were correct, and he was nearing the older part of the graveyard, then he must be very close to where the ghoul had originally been imprisoned. The smell was at its strongest now. He ' d grown used to it during his journey, been almost able to ignore it, but now he noticed it again. His fears, which he ' d managed to set aside, came creeping back now. Every bit of him wanted to turn around and flee, but the thought of Doug, trapped in this impenetrable darkness, rooted his feet to the ground.
As if in response to his mounting terror, something grunted in the darkness. An animalistic sound, like a boar or a bear would make. Timmy let out a frightened yelp and spun around. It was impossible to tell for sure where the sound had come from, how near or far, but he thought it might have been behind him. He shined the light back the way he' d come, terrified of what it might reveal, but the tunnel was empty. He waited for the noise to be repeated, but the silence returned.
'Oh, Jesus…'
He resisted the urge to run, and hurried ahead instead. From its hidden nook in a side tunnel, the ghoul listened to the boy go by. The child was heading deeper into its warren, nearing the main lair, which was exactly what it wanted. Once there, the intruder would be cut off. The boy would have to come back through this same tunnel to exit the burrows, and the ghoul could catch him unawares. Its initial urge had been to kill the boy as soon as it had caught his scent and then heard him coming. But it had waited, intrigued that such a young human could display a courage and determination not found in many of his elders (at least, from the ghoul ' s experience with humans). It had let the child pass simply because he might provide good sport. As an afterthought, it had let out one short grunt, simply to spur the child onward and intensify his fear.
Meat was much sweeter when it had been marinnated in fear. And besides, it was still consuming the first one.
Grinning, the ghoul returned to its meal. The stillwarm flesh felt solidrealbetween its teethnot disintegrating or turning to mush the way decaying flesh did. The ghoul relished every bite. It sighed with delight as its incisors sank into a thigh. The blood was sweet and thick, and it eagerly lapped it up. The boy had been blessed with an extra layer of fat, and the ghoul greedily dug into the yellow curds with both hands. It cracked open a bone and sucked out the marrow, and wondered if this new child intruder had been a friend of its current meal. The new boy' s scent was familiar, possibly from the children ' s clubhouse it had ransacked earlier. What was it that Smeltzer had said? The Keiser child, who currently lay spread out and open before it, had played with the gravedigger 's son, and one other. The ghoul searched its memory for the name. Draco? Mako?
Graco.
The ghoul raised its hands to its face. Its long, black tongue flicked, licking bits of flesh from its goreencrusted talons. It burrowed its snout into the boy' s stomach, and even as it did, the creature 's stomach growled at the promise of more to come. And it didn' t even have to move or hunt. It could wait here, finish this appetizer, and then trap the main course before the boy escaped.
Barry found his father beneath a marble monumenta tall, monolithic spire nearly eight feet high. His father sat propped up against it, eyes shut, reeking of booze. Shattered glass lay nearby, the remains of a Wild Turkey bottle. At first, Barry thought he might be dead. He was covered in blood and his face and neck were sliced open pretty bad. He didn't stir when Barry prodded him with one foot. Hands trembling, Barry brought out the BB pistol and fired one round at his father' s unmoving body. The projectile bounced off his shirt. Still he didn 't move.
'Shit.'
Barry wasn't sure what he was supposed to feel. He was no stranger to grief. He saw it all the time, whenever there was a funeral at the church. He' d seen every reaction imaginable, from sadness to dark gallows humor. He guessed perhaps he should feel sad, although that seemed stupid, considering all his father had put him through. The only emotion Barry felt was an overwhelming surge of relief. It quickly turned to angerand fearwhen his father opened one eye and stared at him in surprise.
'BBarry? Wha…'
That was all. He closed his eye. Barry stepped backward, making sure he was out of reach, and then he shot him again. This time, his father' s hand twitched feebly. Barry sat the flashlight on a tombstone and approached him cautiously, ready to run if the old man showed any sign of moving more than he had.
He didn' t. His chest rose and fell very slightly, but that was all. Barry shoved the barrel of the BB pistol in his face, just inches from his eye. He knelt in the grass, careful to avoid the shards of broken glass. Slowly, he reached into his father ' s pocket with his free hand and retrieved the keys. They jingled. His father groaned, but lay still. Barry stood up and hurried away. He grabbed the flashlight and headed for the utility shed. The faint glow on the horizon was spreading.
Barry reached the shed doors and fumbled for the right key. He held it up to the lock and then cursed out loud. In their panic, in their hurry to rescue Doug, both he and Timmy had forgotten about the new lock.
He threw the keys at the shed. They bounced off the wall and landed in the grass. Barry ran back over to his father and knelt beside him. He grabbed his father' s face in his hands, careful not to touch the wounds, and shook him.
'Dad, what's the combination to the shed?'
His father didn't reply. His eyes twitched, but he made no sound.
'Dad! Wake up. What's the combination?'
Clark mumbled, 'S''nother bottle inshide.'
'Goddamn it!'
Barry stood up, stalked back over to the shed, and surveyed his father' s repair job. The old window had been boarded up, and the plywood sheeting looked thick and strong. He glanced around for something to pry it with, but the ground was barren. His eyes settied on a metal plate stuck into the ground at the foot of a grave. The plate informed him that the man who was buried there, Mick Wagner, had died in service to his country in Korea.
Barry ripped the plate from the ground.
