Ghouls

didn’t carry would be the day they’d knock over Bank of America with him in it.

Outside waited Kurt’s version of man’s best friend (he hated dogs; they made him sneeze and left odd things in the yard for him to step in). It was a blue-white ’64 Fairlane two-door. The Ford was the one possession he treated with respect, always tuned and well maintained, always shining. It had long since achieved bonafide antique status; he got offers for it all the time, some preposterously high, but the thought of selling it seemed obscene, like selling part of himself. It hummed, glittering, as he sped down 154. First thing’s first, he thought. He pulled into the local Jiffy-Stop, favoring it over the town High’s and 7-Eleven because the Jiffy offered free coffee to police officers. (Judging by the taste, however, sometimes even this price was no bargain.) Immediately he bought two packs of Marlboro Box and breakfast, a microwaved burrito. He frowned lighting up, even as the nicotine rushed happily to his brain. If he had three wishes, one would be to quit. Hypnosis was a farce, sixty bucks per session to wonder how long he could contain laughter. Once he’d tried those smoking suppressant tablets, but they only helped because it was impossible to smoke and throw up at the same time. He’d also gone through every brand of water filter; they hadn’t helped him quit smoking, but they sure came in handy when he was low on golf tees. He’d tried virtually everything, every fad, every gimmick, and after so many years now and two packs a day, he could admit the reality of his addiction. He could no more quit smoking than quit pissing. He’d worry about payback when the time came.

As Kurt headed back to the Ford, Glen Rodz’s blue-and-mud Pinto wheeled in to the other end of the parking lot. Glen was a human stick, blackish-brown hair always too long, permanent dark circles under his eyes, and so thin as to almost be alarming. Five or six years of nightshifts as Belleau Wood’s security guard had rewarded Glen with a starved physique and the skin tone of a peeled potato. He and Glen had been close friends for about twenty years.

Kurt waved him over to the Ford.

“Hey, Kurt,” Glen greeted, fine hair falling into his eyes. “How’s my favorite town clown?”

“Great, but I’m still trying to figure out who swiped my rubber nose… Say, I didn’t get a chance to talk to you last night at work, but I guess you’re wondering who chopped your chain.”

“Damn right. Willard went on the rampage when I told him about it; he goes nuts whenever someone’s been trespassing. Do you know who did it?”

“I’m positive it was Stokes. I caught him on your property late yesterday afternoon.”

Glen swore. “It figures. He’s always coming out there at night to poach deer, goddamn redneck buttocks. What did he need so bad that he had to go and cut my chain?”

Kurt chuckled. “He and a lady friend decided to check out one of those old talc mines. A little henry job with a new twist.”

“Must’ve found a new wood pile. Who’s he running around with this week?”

“What’s-her-tits, that girl from the Anvil. Joanne Sulley.”

“Oh,” Glen said, pulling the acknowledgment. “Now I understand. What else can you expect from a girl whose only goal in life is to suck tennis balls through a garden hose. I’d like to give her a sewer pipe to suck on, the fickle shit. She blows every guy in this town but me.”

“And me,” Kurt added, “though I think I’d sooner put my junk in a Le Chef… Come on, let’s go shoot some pool at Hillside.”

Glen fidgeted, as if off guard. “Like to, but I gotta go home and get some sleep. You forget, I’ve been working all night.”

Past his friend’s shoulder, Kurt noticed someone sitting in the passenger side of Glen’s Pinto. He didn’t recognize the figure, couldn’t even make out any details; he was only sure that the person was female. This needled Kurt’s curiosity; Glen didn’t exactly have girls chasing him down the street, and when he did manage to find a date, Kurt was always the first to know. “Hey,” Kurt said, “you keeping secrets? Who’s the chick?”

Glen’s expression hardened. “Oh, her? Just someone I picked up, no big thing… If you got time before the end of your shift tonight, stop by Belleau Wood.”

“Yeah, I will.”

Kurt watched Glen hurry into the store, then glanced again to the Pinto. Eventually he shrugged and got back into the Ford. Now that was odd. Why doesn’t he want me to know who the girl is? he thought. Is he embarrassed? Maybe that’s it, maybe she’s got a face like the backside of a baboon, and he doesn’t want to be seen with her.

Kurt let it go; Glen’s romantic pursuits were his own concern, but Kurt still somehow felt cheated. The Jiffy- Stop behind him, he headed north up the Route, letting the fresh air pour over his face. But scarcely out of the bend, he made out a second, less pleasant, reminder of spring, a field day for slaughter. He couldn’t help but notice all the dead animals in the road. It happened this way every spring; animals lay heaped and crushed along the shoulder and at the yellow line, heads flattened, spines snapped, bodies squashed to almost comedic misshape. Squirrels, rabbits, dogs, but mostly possums, which Kurt thought of as not only the ugliest creatures on earth, but also the least intelligent. The fat-bodied things would waddle into the road as they pleased, oblivious to any oncoming car. At night they would just stand there staring into the headlights, too stupid to even consider getting out of the way. Then, thud, crunch, and splat, another candidate for possum heaven. Kurt had seen so many mangled, rotting possums that he now harbored a deep, psychological aversion to the things. He would have to call animal disposal at first opportunity. Now there’s a good job, he thought.

Annapolis seemed as good a place as any to kill time, but just as he began to open up on 154, the Stokes house appeared at the height of the next bend. Lenny’s big ’66 Chevelle wasn’t there. Aw, why not? he thought. He hadn’t seen Vicky in weeks. And since Lenny wasn’t here… He parked in the driveway and got out.

Stokes’s house always seemed odd to him, something about the design and the way the trees kept it out of the sun. It was a small house, but so narrow that it appeared taller than it should, as if it had once been a normal house compressed at both sides. Slim, clean, white shutters and trim made the overall dull green paint seem duller and the small, queer windows darker. The word lonely came to mind—the house was lonely, sitting there tall and strange on its own little lot, dwarfed by the Nordman firs and scrub pines of the forest wall beyond.

He mounted the front porch, paused a second, then knocked on the door. A dangling, uncomfortable moment passed, a feeling that he shouldn’t be here, but then a slice of Vicky’s face appeared when she opened the door a crack. “Kurt,” she said.

“Hi. Haven’t seen you in awhile, so I thought I’d stop by.”

She looked at him with one eye through the gap; then her lips turned to a half smile. She took off the chain and showed him into the living room, which was dark in the shaded daylight and very quiet. “Lenny’d have a fit if he knew you were here,” she said. “You and him never did see eye to eye, I guess.”

“That’s putting it mildly. Had a bit of a run-in with him yesterday, as a matter of fact.”

Vicky closed the door behind her, the light smile turning higher. “You know, last night he actually suspected that you and I were having an affair.”

Baby, don’t I wish. He sat down lazily on the sofa. She wasn’t stupid; she must’ve known that Lenny was seeing other women, but he decided it best not to relate to her the details of yesterday’s fanfare at the mine. Instead, he began with an original, deeply introspective question. “So how have you been?”

“Okay… Brutus died, though.”

Then it hit him why the place was so quiet and still. The dog was gone, and he hated to think of the blow it must’ve been to her. For most of the years he had known her, Vicky and the big, droopy collie had been inseparable. The dog’s death came as a true shock. “Jesus, Vicky. I’m sorry.”

“Brutus was old,” she said. “You know that. I’m lucky to have had him this long. No dog lives forever.” She squinted at the wall, lightly teething her lower lip. “I buried him in the backyard.” He knew how terrible she must feel; she was just trying not to show it. “Let me get us something to drink,” she said, scooting away.

He took a few seconds then to think back, unfocused memories began to shift. As with Glen, he and Vicky had been friends since elementary school, best friends for a considerable segment of that time. But Kurt, more than anything else in the world, had always wanted it, and still wanted it, to be more than that, not friends but lovers. It never happened, though, and it obviously never would as long as she was married to Stokes. His fondness for her was more than just rampant fascination, more than a particularly insistent crush. To this day he would go out with other girls and it was never any good because in every case he wished, even