Ghouls

colors of the forest dulled in the spoiled light. Kurt waved to a couple of old men holding bagged bottles in front of the Liquor Mart, but they only gaped at him with stubbled, wizened faces, stickmen in tattered clothes.

Afternoon pressed on, the light graying in increments. He wasn’t aware of the time, he wasn’t aware of anything more complex than the scenes which faced him through the windshield. He thought about Vicky, but only for a moment, as if his sudden detachment forbade warm thoughts. Mentally he struggled to regain some sense of purpose, but his observations only made him more disgruntled. He remembered what the animal control man had told him, and he scanned both sides of the Route, hoping to see that he was mistaken. Come on, road pizza, he thought, flexing his vision. Come on let’s see some of that possum pie. But the road was clean.

His brain felt like a blob of lead, fighting to drag him down into the seat. The radio spat something that nicked at his failing attention. Had he received a call and missed it? He listened again. The dispatcher’s voice sounded irritated.

“Two-zero-seven, are you 10-8?”

“Ten-four,” he said into the hand mike. “Forgot to call in. Sorry.” Apologizing to a radio. What a day.

“Signal 5 with watchman at Belleau Wood entrance number 2.”

“Ten-four.” He put up the mike and glanced at the dash clock. It was just past eight now. He wondered what Glen would be doing at Belleau Wood two hours before his shift began.

Nighttime settled ponderously on the road. The power steering shimmied as he pulled a quick, clumsy U-turn, the new car handling like a barge. He evened out and accelerated north.

Belleau Wood entrance number 2, he recited in his mind, and when he was there, he couldn’t remember passing the first entrance. The chain was still up, he saw, and the security truck was idling on the other side of the line. Kurt grabbed his flashlight—unconscious reflex—and got out, cutting the engine and leaving on the hazard flashers. A stitch in his pants crotch popped when he stepped over the chain to approach the truck.

Glen was in the driver’s seat, evidently unaware that Kurt had arrived. Staring into the access road, he clenched the outside rearview with his fingers, strangely, as if testing the strength of the chrome.

“How goes it?” Kurt said, and slapped his friend’s shoulder. Glen flinched, taken by surprise. Relief ran back into his face when he looked up. “Ah, Kurt. I phoned in the 82 with the dispatcher. Hope you don’t mind the interruption.”

“Well, today I’m not exactly the busiest guy in the world.”

“I’ve got something to show you. Get in.”

Kurt walked around and slid into the passenger seat. “Say, how come you’re out here so early? Thought you didn’t start work till nine or so.”

Glen seemed distracted. He didn’t answer at first. “Huh? Oh, yeah. Willard asked me to come in a few hours early for a while. He didn’t tell me why, I guess he’s worried about poachers.”

Kurt expected him to put the truck in gear and go. Instead, Glen just sat there, one hand on the wheel, the other still diddling with the outside mirror. He seemed preoccupied, barely conscious of Kurt at all.

“Hey,” Kurt said. “You blitzed or something? You don’t look too good.”

Glen slowly turned his head. His face was paler than usual, drawn. His hand shook perceptibly when he let it come off the wheel. Very flatly he said: “I found Cody Drucker.”

The significance of those words hit Kurt like a sudden kick to the face. His stomach flip-flopped. “Let’s go” was all he could think to say; questions now would be useless.

The truck lurched when Glen let up the clutch. Ahead, deep ruts gouged the road. Glen gripped the wheel high and steered on edge to keep the bottom out of the gullies. Kurt braced himself against the dash.

“I don’t usually drive this road,” Glen said, glancing at Kurt intermittently, “’cause it’s in such bad shape. But tonight I decided to have a look, and… Jesus. You just gotta see it for yourself.”

The woods absorbed their sounds—the truck seemed to be moving with the engine off. Behind them the last of the sun shown metallic red light through the trees, like a distant city flame. Kurt felt a tremor trace his bones.

The truck began to decelerate. As if steeling himself, Glen sat up rigid behind the wheel, veins standing out on his hands like thin, blue worms. His eyes sought something up ahead.

“It should be… There—” Glen said. “There.”

The truck stopped.

“What?”

“There.” Glen pointed off to the right.

Kurt squinted through the glass; he shook his head. Then he leaned out the window.

What he saw could’ve made him laugh—a bizarre arrangement of dark, polished wood, which he momentarily realized was a demolished coffin. He saw, too, a dark slender heap lying in front of some trees.

They both came out of the truck as if summoned. Kurt’s mouth froze open in macabre astonishment; he neared the scene the way dared children might approach a sinister house. The coffin looked exploded; it lay in large pieces, collapsed. Kurt envisioned something huge slamming it against the trees to break it apart.

“I don’t believe this,” he heard himself say, but the words sounded as though someone else had said them. The other thing—the dark, slender heap—was the embalmed corpse of Cody Judson Drucker. Looking at it, Kurt thought of a dressed dummy with broken limbs. The corpse’s face seemed stretched and very white, and though the eyes were still closed, the mouth had somehow come open to reveal a mysterious wad of cotton. Kurt found he could no longer think of this as a person. What lay before him was simply an it. Its left hand sagged flaccidly from the cuff, as though the bones had been removed. He noted stubble on its chin, and lastly that it lacked shoes, just white socks over stiff feet. It was a travesty.

Glen was standing at a distance now, “Look at the arm,” he said. “Look at the right arm.”

Kurt looked. There was no right arm. Kurt studied the perplexing empty sleeve and wondered with undue detachment where the arm could be. Where’s the arm? People just don’t steal arms. They steal wallets and hubcaps and color television sets. Not arms. So where’s the goddamned guy’s arm?’

As if telepathic, Glen said, “It’s next to the mushrooms.”

Kurt spied a small sassafras tree a few feet off the road, and at its base a cluster of fat, pale mushrooms. Amongst them lay the arm. It was bent at the elbow, and torn off at the shoulder. Where the old man’s withered bicep had been was now a dry, ragged indentation.

Kurt’s eyes were held to it. “You know what I think this is?”

“It’s a bite-mark,” Glen said behind him. “I’d bet money.”

From a low branch, sassafras leaves hung over the arm like groping mittens. What bothered Kurt most was that the color of the arm and the color of the mushrooms were exactly the same. “This is a joke,” he said, a concluding verdict. Confusion overflowed in his head, and disgust. “I’ve never seen anything so fucked up in my entire life.”

“There’s one more thing,” Glen said. “Over here.” He took Kurt to the other side of the road. Glen pointed. At their feet was something small and black.

“A glove,” Glen said. “It’s the last thing I noticed.” Kurt stared down, as if into a pit. Recognition of the object rocked him. “It’s more than a glove. It’s a knuckle sap.”

“You mean one of those mitts with sand in the knuckles?”

“Yeah, you don’t see them around much anymore. Like wearing a blackjack on your fist… Good Christ, this beats all.”

“You sound like it’s important.”

“Damn right it is.”

“Why?”

“Swaggert’s the only guy I know who owned a pair.”

Kurt bent down and with a clean handkerchief picked the sap up by an edge. And in nearly the same instant a blade of nausea twirled in his belly and rose to his head. His face turned white. He dropped the sap and stepped back.

“What’s wrong?” Glen asked.