Ghouls

pointed his finger like a gun. “Don’t blame me, boss. You told me to pick up the evidence report, so that’s what I did.”

“This isn’t an evidence report.” Bard wagged the sheaf of papers vigorously in the air. “This is science fiction; it’s worse than the one from the county. I can’t do anything with this except wrap fish. These people were supposed to give us a set of professional, scientific conclusions, from which we can take proper investigative action. Instead they give us shit.”

“I wouldn’t call it shit,” Kurt dared to say. “Her conclusions are pretty clear under the circumstances, with a great lead. We shouldn’t have a whole lot of trouble finding a guy with acromegaly.”

Bard’s face creased, an image of slits in clay. “What the fuck is that?”

“Some kind of pituitary disease. Makes you grow more than you’re supposed to. Real tall, real long bones, big face. Like that guy Lurch on the Addams Family.”

Bard rubbed his face and let out a pained chuckle. “Jesus, I knew I should’ve stayed in the pool-cleaning business. I got a dug-up coffin, a missing officer, an abducted crippled girl, and if that’s not enough, now I got a guy who looks like fucking Lurch on the Addams Family.”

Kurt stood up quickly, struggling to remove his car keys. He sensed the approach of one of Bard’s outbursts; he didn’t want to be around when it happened. “Time for me to book, Chief. I might as well earn my pay, even though I’m not getting any.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Start looking for Lurch. What else?”

««—»»

Kurt drove north on 154. He didn’t put much stock in the “Lurch” angle, but any lead was better than none; giants with three fingers on each hand weren’t easily forgotten, though in this town who could tell? It was something to ask around about, and he decided he’d start asking at the first logical place.

All but one of Belleau Wood’s chain gates was open. Kurt entered cautiously, puzzled that a millionaire couldn’t provide a smoother access to his own house. This particular road led straight into the forest. Bloodroot blossoms and Queen Anne’s lace bowed aside from the brush. As he passed, animals watched from safe distances, then meandered away, uninterested. The woods seemed to compress as he went on. It made him feel strange, it made him feel alone (but he knew he was alone) and still there was something threatening and utterly present about the forest’s depth. The dark day, perhaps, or the silence. If something happened to him (Something. What?) it might be hours or even days before he’d be found. (Found? Found. Like Drucker. Like Swaggert. “Chief Bard? Yeah, this is Glen. I just found Kurt.”) His hands tightened on the wheel. Against his will he glanced inadvertently into the rearview. Ahead of him he swore he could see shapes peering back from between the trees, configurations suspiciously human, and when he strained to focus his eyes they were gone. It was easy now to perceive the forest as something more than that. It was a maze of shadows and brooding light and paths which twisted away into nowhere. This was not a forest, but an interstice where men were not wanted, a hunting ground for ghosts.

He sighed at his own self-conscious reflections. His grip loosened on the wheel, and he relaxed. Daylight broke on his face. While he’d been busy speculating the woods and the horrors of the mind’s eye, the road had led him out.

He saw now how nature had made a fortress of Belleau Wood. Hills broke within the dense, surrounding forest, and through the center a cramped, almost perfectly square clearing sloped unevenly to the east. The property past the tree belt glowed in the light as a spread of thickets and waist-tall rye. At the summit of the fattest hill, the mansion could be seen.

A gravel-scratch road wound up the rise. Crookedly, a single row of telephone poles led to the mansion, each looming like a crucifix as he passed. He saw birds perched high and still on the power lines, like sentinels on a rampart. When he’d finally gained the hill, he felt let down. The house looked awkward to him, and rather small now that he was so close. It seemed built as two separate layers. The upper story rose bare in the stealing, gray light, yet the lower level spanned fat and dark under the overhang of shadow cast by the eaved wraparound porch. Kurt parked by the four-car garage, next to Willard’s glinting black Chrysler and the black Porsche. He felt a doubtless, straining urge to hesitate as he got out of the Ford, an invitation, he considered, to turn around and go home. In the yard a congregation of squirrels disbanded into opposite directions. A herring gull floated overhead, its wings completely still. Mounting the steps, the porch shadow overwhelmed him, and he felt an odd tingle at the back of his neck, as though a beetle crawled there.

He held off knocking. He heard voices from somewhere, but his attention was drawn first to the door knocker—an arcane, pallid face of stained metal. The face seemed to be masked, for only the eyes were visible, and they looked back at him in sheer, abyssal blankness. What an ugly piece of shit to hang on a door, he thought.

He looked left and noticed an intercom by the doorframe, and a tubular keyplate for a burglar alarm. The manufacturer of the alarm was one of the better companies. Further along the wall was an open window. The voices persisted, begged him to listen in:

“—an’t believe you could be that stupid, Charles. Do you have any idea what kind —” It was a woman’s voice, clearly infuriated. “—idiot. How could you be such an idiot?”

Now a man’s voice. Willard’s. “What else could I expect from you? Something goes wrong and you pass the buck, that’s just what I need. I’m standing in the middle of a crisis, and all you do is sit upstairs with those ridiculous dumbbells and exercise your breasts. Excellent. Superb. We have to do something about this, and the longer we wait, the worse it will get.”

Kurt leaned sideways, and froze to pick up more bits of conversation. At the same instant, though, a stiff wind gusted up the hill through the porch, reducing most of the next few sentences to gibberish.

“Owlong ‘ve oo in itting…iss?”

“Outtaeek, I pose.”

“Oopid ick! An oo dit ‘av…ucking ense oooell ee oudit ill ow?”

Kurt strained against the wall, trying to decipher the words. If only Dad could see me now, he thought.

“—ifference does it ake?” Willard muttered. “I ought I ould andle it i-self without larming you.”

The voices seemed to slide closer to the window. The wind died.

“You sure you didn’t lose your brains the last time you blew your goddamn nose? All this time I thought you knew what you were doing… Jesus, Charles, what are we going to do?”

Willard’s voice drifted in and out. Kurt ground his teeth at the words he missed.

“—nation, maybe. Laying it out would be easy.”

“Yes, but will it work?”

“It should. I hate to take the loss, though.”

The woman’s voice grew inflamed. “Fuck the loss, Charles. My God, I can’t believe you. We can take the loss…” Then, softer: “What are we going to use?”

“Something reputable. I was thinking of tee tee exx.”

Now the woman’s voice smoothed out. “Good idea. And I still know some people in Bethesda.”

“Yes, you’ve told me all about them, remember? The cucumber-and-Crisco contests, oral-sex poker, and the one young fellow whose nickname was ‘Hang Ten.’ A fine bunch.”

The woman was laughing. “I meant I still have contacts. People in the trade.”

“You’ll have to be careful. You can’t just walk in there and ask for it.”

Wearily now: “I know, Charles. I’m not stupid.”

Tee tee exx? Kurt thought. What was going on? He jotted the letters TTX on a piece of paper and stuck it in his jacket. Next, the woman’s voice was going on: “—about the meantime? There’s got to be something we can tell the—”

“And you call me an idiot.”

“We have to at least tell Glen. Something, anyway.”

“He’s a bright boy, and always very careful. We’ll tell him nothing.”