Ghouls

pretended, that the other girl was Vicky. A quirk of repression perhaps, or a defect on his part, but somehow the friendship thing had obstructed the truth—that for all these years and even now he loved her, but had never known how to tell her. In their friendship, they’d come no closer than dancers.

After high school, the friendship began to fog. Kurt went on to college for an Associates degree in law enforcement, while Vicky lapsed slowly but certainly into the wrong crowd, the hard-knocking, hard-drinking T-ville crowd. Stokes’s crowd. A year and a half ago she’d become Stokes’s wife, and Kurt was lost to all the things he’d never said.

His eyes were bright and as she came back from the kitchen with two bottles of beer, he could’ve melted. She was the sweetest, cutest, prettiest girl he’d ever known. That was the word. Not sultry, and not beautiful, but pretty. Even dressed as she was now, in old jeans and a dingy white blouse, he could feel that prettiness she projected to him so completely. She was slender and compact. Trim, long legs. Sleek curves of her hips and waist subtle yet striking. Satin blond hair shined clean and mysteriously, perfectly female. When she looked at him with her big, luminous gray eyes, he felt helpless.

“I know it’s a little early for alcohol, but what’s the harm? Besides, it’s all I’ve got at the moment.”

He wondered at the marvel of her breasts, her body, and her soul, the feminine mystery spanning further, touching him like a ray of sun.

“Hey, Morris, remember me?” She waved her hand across his eyes, smile turning crooked. “Or have I lost you to the twilight zone?”

“Huh?”

“You look spaced.”

“Oh, yeah. I was just thinking.”

Now the smile grew blatant. She handed him the beer, then sat down and reached for her cigarettes without taking her eyes off him. “Thinking about what?”

About how much I love you and what I wouldn’t do for you and all that and, Jesus Christ, Vicky, why did you have to ruin everything by marrying that grimy, ass-faced son of a bitch? “Just things. Like the time when we were real little and we went on a field trip to Hershey Park. Remember that? I made you get on the roller coaster with me and you screamed and held onto me for dear life, and then threw up all over the both of us.”

“Me!” she nearly shouted. “What a liar! You’re the one who screamed and cried and upchucked!”

Kurt sat back in the cushions and laughed. “I know. I just wanted to see if you remembered.”

“How could I forget that? It’s the only time in my life I’ve had to wear somebody’s breakfast. And, remember? Glen was laughing so much you punched him in the nose.”

“Well, I didn’t see anything funny about it,” he said, the recollection sharpening. “Speaking of Glen, I just saw him a few minutes ago. Want to hear something strange? He was with a girl, and he didn’t want to tell me who she was.”

“Now that is strange. I don’t think I’ve seen him with a girl more than two or three times in my whole life.”

“Yeah, Glen never was much of a ladies’ man. I’m beginning to wonder how much he had to pay her.”

“I don’t think he’s that hard up, a little weird maybe, but that’s all. I’m sure the right girl will come along for him one day. Glen’s all right, I just think that maybe all that night work has bent him a bit. Sometimes he comes into the Anvil for a beer looking like the walking dead. A normal job with normal hours would work wonders for him.”

“That’s what I keep telling him,” Kurt said. He guzzled down a third of his beer, belly shriveling. Nothing like a cold tall one first thing in the morning. “Chief Bard offered him the morning shift on the police department a couple of times. Told me he just didn’t want to be a cop. I guess that Willard guy pays him well.”

“Who?”

“Charles Willard, the guy who owns Belleau Wood. Glen tells me he’s really touchy about trespassers on his land. Why I don’t know. There’s nothing out there but woods and hills and a couple of wasted mines. Must be pretty boring for Glen to drive around there all night long.”

“Pretty spooky, too.”

They both lit cigarettes, partners in habituation. Kurt swigged more of his beer, ashamed to be drinking this early. Next I’ll be carrying a flask, he thought. Vicky’s eyes seemed to lose some of their shine. “To get on to more interesting things,” she said, “who was Lenny with?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you saw him yesterday. He told me he was hunting all day, but you and I both know he only hunts beaver before dark, if you get my meaning. I don’t even have to wonder if he’s cheating on me; the problem is guessing who. So, out with it. Who?”

“Joanne Sulley,” he confessed, because there was no way around it except to lie.

Vicky seemed nauseated at the name. “Of all the whores and tramps at the Anvil, she’s positively the worst. Some of the stuff I’ve heard about her—”

“I’m sure I’ve gotten all the same stories.”

“And it figures Lenny would go for her. The kinkier the better.”

Kurt could see that the conversation was turning rapidly sour. It would be better just to leave. He cringed for a polite way to suggest the most obvious solution to her marital problems—to divorce Stokes, or to just pack up and walk out. He couldn’t guess why she hadn’t done it months ago, and he didn’t dare bring up the other matter—the beatings. All he could hope for was that one day she would leave him.

“I better take off,” he said, and stood up. “Got some errands to run.”

She led him to the front door, looked at him in a way that might have been forlorn. “Thanks for stopping by, Kurt. Come by the Anvil some time for a beer.”

“Sure will,” and just as he had opened the door, Vicky’s face seemed to go flat with dread. Kurt turned. Lenny Stokes came through the doorway, looking Kurt straight in the eye.

“What the fuck are you doin’ here?” Stokes said.

“Just saying hello to your wife.”

“Yeah, well now you can say good-bye to my wife, ’cause I don’t want you in my house, I don’t want you near my house.” Stokes turned his poison glare to Vicky. “If I evah catch you lettin’ this puss in here again, I’ll—”

“I’m going, Stokes,” Kurt said. “You don’t have to make a federal case out of it.”

“No, I don’t guess I do, so get in your fuckin’ jalopy and get the fuck out. Hell of a thing to come home and find Porky Pig parked in my driveway.”

“Lenny!” Vicky snapped.

“Shut up,” Stokes said back to her. Then, to Kurt, “Instead of sittin’ here makin’ time with my wife and drinkin’ my beer, how come you ain’t up at Beall Cemetery with the rest of the pigs?”

“What’s going on at Beall?”

“Bunch of cops up there right now, your bunk buddy Higgins, and that fat no-balls walking feedbag Bard, county fuzz, too. So get your police ass out of here and go earn your pay.”

Kurt stepped out to the porch and turned to say good-bye to Vicky, but the door had already slammed shut. He got in the Ford and backed out, annoyed with himself for coming here in the first place, causing a scene. Hillbilly scroat, he thought. One hand on the wheel, he opened the already cold burrito and took a bite, which he promptly spat out. He let the burrito fall out the window and was delighted when he glanced in the rearview and saw the car behind him run over it. But what had Stokes been babbling about? He hadn’t heard of any other deaths in the area, and he couldn’t imagine what the county police would be doing at Beall.

Another mile north on the Route, and he saw what Stokes had meant. Parked on the left-hand shoulder, all in a line, were five police cruisers, four of them P.G. County cars, and the mud-sprayed town cruiser. There was another car there too, Chief Bard’s mahogany-brown Thunderbird. A cluster of uniforms stood round the spiked, black-iron fence which encompassed the small cemetery. Kurt parked the Ford behind the town squad car and got out just in time to see the four county officers part. Chief Bard and Mark Higgins, the morning-shift cop, stood facing each other at the gate. As the departing county men made their way back to their cruisers, Kurt was able to pick up random bits of talk. “What in blue blazes would anyone—” ”—weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.” “No tire tracks,