Ghouls

“I love you,” Lisa stopped long enough to say.

“I love you,” Cathy panted back.

Lisa’s mouth worked furiously but with special precision. She knew exactly how to make her lover come good. Every muscle in Cathy’s body seemed to tighten. She let herself go, hissing, and gave in to the steady, deep jolt of orgasm.

The moment passed in a great sigh. The backup of excited tension went out of her like a fleeing demon, and Cathy was swept by a fluid wave of laziness. Every nerve, every muscle, every cubic inch of her flesh felt at peace.

Lisa sat up, shiny around the mouth. She ran her hands up and down Cathy’s thighs and listened to her purr.

“I love you,” Lisa said.

“I love you,” Cathy said.

The end came with maniacal speed.

Cathy’s eyes bulged open. Consternation drained her face. She pointed past Lisa. She began to sit up, began to shout, There’s someone outsi—”

Then Cathy was gone.

She’d been pulled out of the car, as easily as smoke sucked through a vent-slat.

Confusion and panic burst in Lisa’s brain. She didn’t know what had happened. She didn’t know what to do. She only knew she was alone in the car, when just a second before she’d been with Cathy.

She looked at the empty seat, the open window, the blackness outside, and all at once a long, grinding scream shot out through the night. Lisa could not imagine a scream so piercing, so real and full of terror. It made static tremors race up her spine, and lanced her ears like ice picks.

Then the scream wound down to a rasping sputter and was followed by a series of short, spasmodic shrieks, and finally an awful wet plunging sound, like someone pulling apart watermelons bare-handed.

Then silence, utter silence.

Lisa broke out of the grip of her fear. She reached for the ignition …

The driver’s window thumped once, twice, then exploded inward, showering her with tiny chunks of glass.

She tried to scramble out the other window, but too late. A hand shot in out of the dark, a long clawlike hand with only three fingers. It snatched onto her hair and abruptly yanked her out of the car.

Lisa fought to get off the ground, she fought to get up. She flailed her arms, kicking, clawing leaves, but was regardless dragged to the middle of the road. Humid breath gusted against her face, a mouth like a suction cup brushing up her cheek toward her eye.

The hand hooked under her jaw, like a pincer. She was lifted up. The other hand touched between her legs. The scream that then erupted from Lisa’s lungs bore an uncanny resemblance to the sound of screeching tires.

The lips funneled to a salivating O shape over her eye socket, and—

POP

—sucked the left eyeball out of her skull.

The eyeball was swallowed whole, and then the other eye was removed much in the same way.

Her pants were ripped open and torn off. She was raped by a long, twisting forearm that routed her insides amid that same wet, plunging sound. The arm thrust in and out like a piston rod, quickly extracting organs through the vaginal pass.

When the abdominal cavity had been sufficiently emptied, the arm withdrew. Lisa twitched jerkily on the ground, as if lying in electrified water. She died gargling blood.

The hand clasped her ankle. From atop a sixty-foot mocker-nut tree, two grackles watched as she was dragged away into the woods.

— | — | —

CHAPTER TWENTY

“A what?” Kurt said. But he’d been paying little attention anyway. The gentleness of the morning air distracted him. He stood at the rim of the back patio and looked out over the trees, hopeful that it wouldn’t rain.

“A werewolf,” Melissa repeated. She was scattering her breakfast’s leftover bread crusts into the backyard. “You know, like Lon Chaney.”

“Damn. Why didn’t I think of that? Now all I have to do is go down to Schiller’s Gun Shop and order a box of silver wad-cutters for my .357.”

“I’m not joking,” she warned, flicking a last crust. “It was a full moon the night Harley Fitzwater disappeared.”

Had it been? So what. Somehow she’d found out about Fitzwater’s disappearance, and the skeleton, too. At times he thought that the Tylersville grapevine must be as intricate as an NSA telenet. “You should eat your bread crusts,” he said. “Grows hair on your chest.”

“If you’re not careful, you’re gonna be the one growing hair, and I mean lots of hair. And teeth, and claws. And don’t always change the subject.”

“Okay. I thought you said it was vampires.”

“Well, even I make a mistake every now and then,” she said with her usual cockiness. “Just look at the facts. Vampires only drink blood; they’d never eat a body down to the bones… But werewolves would.”

“Are you sure you’re not smoking grass with those oddball friends of yours? I know I wasn’t as screwy as you when I was your age.”

“Go ahead and laugh,” she said. “They laughed at Brahe, too, you know.”

Who’s Brahe? he thought. He would not admit ignorance. “Sure, Melissa, and if I tell Chief Bard that werewolves ate Swaggert and Fitzwater, he’ll laugh me right off the force.”

“All it takes is one bite, remember that, kiddo. I don’t want to have to be chaining you up in the basement every full moon.”

Sometimes Melissa’s imagination worried him. Did she really believe these things? Probably. He left her to watch sparrows pick at the bread.

For some reason, he felt anxious. He went upstairs and looked in on Vicky, who was still sleeping peacefully, in his room, in his bed. It was something he’d insisted on. He’d consigned himself to the couch in the den, which wasn’t bad once he learned where the hard spots were. He just wanted Vicky to be as comfortable as possible.

She turned once under the sheet, as if resisting a dream, and then fell still again. Probably the first decent night’s sleep she’s had in two years, he thought bitterly. He’d never seen her so at peace before, so at ease, even with the bandage on her head, and the cast.

He stayed a moment more to gaze at her in her sleep. He felt like a voyeur, secure to watch in secret. He wondered if he would ever sleep with her, reproved himself for the thought, then closed the door.

His suspension was moving along. Not much longer now, he thought, leaving the house and starting the Ford. He hated not working; he hadn’t taken a vacation since Carter was in office, because anything more than two days off per week interrupted the routine he needed. Being forced not to work was now close to driving him to claw at the paneling.

Before he had time to back out of the drive, six or eight county cruisers flew by one after another, followed by a big, flat-white bus that roared unmercifully. Kurt turned after them and saw that he’d guessed right when all the county vehicles parked at the roadside near the lane which led to Fitzwater’s trailer. There were at least a half dozen more county cars there already. Kurt parked behind the last one, close to disbelief at what he saw beyond his windshield. Fitzwater’s cul-de-sac was crawling with police, and when the bus released several dozen more