The Ghouls

by Fred Crawley

  He might have called the police if he hadn’t begun again to wonder why there was no one else in the house. Come to that, why none of the neighbours had called the police themselves. He hadn’t seen the ghouls again since that night. In fact, the last three days had been entirely free of delusions. He didn’t want to put too much pressure on his new relationship with Gwen, but he was pretty sure that she was the reason why. But what if there wasn’t really anyone at his front door? What if this was all in his head? What if he opened the door and one of those things was standing there.

  He didn’t think they could talk and they certainly hadn’t known his name. But just thinking that was a sign of how close he was to the edge of madness because ‘they’ had been all in his head. Everything he knew they would know. There was no way to think logically about creatures that he had invented.

  Nathan walked to the door. It was unlocked. As he approached the banging stopped because whoever was out there could see him through the glass as clearly as he could see them. He opened the door and was relieved to see Gwen’s brother, Lewis, standing at the top of the steps.

  The relief was short lived.

  “What have you done with her?” Lewis said. He didn’t wait to be invited in. He grabbed hold of Nathan by the scruff of his hoody and pushed him back along the hallway.

  Nathan tried to push him away but he was caught off guard and he wasn’t as strong as Lewis. He staggered backwards trying to ask what he was talking about.

  “Where is she? Have you got her here?”

  Nathan managed to find his tongue as he fell backwards through the door and landed on the kitchen floor. Lewis stood above him. “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “Gwen,” Lewis said. He jerked Nathan off the floor and didn’t let go of his top. “Where is she Nathan? I’m not messing around here.”

  It was obvious that he wasn’t, but Nathan still didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about. He shook his head.

  “Do you know where she is?” Lewis asked.

  Nathan stepped back and Lewis’ hands fell away from his hoody. He brushed himself down and the words that he had been hearing suddenly made sense. He looked at Lewis and felt as if the floor was falling away from him. “Has something happened to Gwen?” he said.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Nathan,” Lewis said. He was clearly still angry, but some of the fury had been replaced with frustration. “You know where she is, don’t you?”

  Nathan shook his head. “She’s gone?”

  Nathan hated the relief he felt that there was a reason she hadn’t called him.

  Lewis nodded. The anger was quickly draining out of him, but it was still there. Nathan could see it in the tendons sticking out from his neck and the way he flinched when the radiators started making a noise as the central heating kicked in.

  “What do you mean she’s gone?” Nathan said. “When? What happened?”

  Lewis looked at him like a man trying to make up his mind. Nathan wondered what sort of impression he was making.

  “You’re telling me you don’t know where she is?” Lewis said.

  Nathan shook his head. “I haven’t seen her since...” he wondered what day it was now. “I haven’t seen her in three days.”

  “And what happened then?” Lewis said, the anger returning to his eyes. “What did you do to her Nathan?”

  He waited to feel the man’s strong hands on him again, but it didn’t happen. “Nothing,” he said. “We just...”

  “What?”

  Nathan didn’t want to tell Lewis what had happened. But nothing had happened. “We talked,” he said. “You know she broke up with Marcus?”

  Lewis shook his head, but he didn’t say anything. The kitchen tap was dripping and Nathan wanted to go and turn it off, but he didn’t dare move. Lewis could have snapped him like a twig if he wanted to.

  “When did she...” Nathan said.

  “She didn’t go to work on Thursday,” Lewis said.

  It was Saturday today, Nathan realised. That was why there was no one else around. They had all gone out for Libby’s birthday the night before. He’d been invited, but he’d made an excuse not to go. They weren’t all out, they were all sleeping. He wondered if he was the last person to see Gwen.

  “Did she... did anyone go to see her?” Nathan said.

  Lewis nodded. “The headmistress,” he said.

  “And? Did Gwen say anything?”

  “She’s gone Nathan,” Lewis said. His angry eyes were filling with tears. Nathan wanted to look away, but he didn’t dare. Lewis sniffed and seemed to make an effort to pull himself together. When he spoke again, it was practically a growl and Nathan could see the conflict in him between wanting to talk to someone about his sister’s disappearance and still not believing that Nathan was innocent.

  “I haven’t done anything,” Nathan said. But in his head he wondered if that was true. It was an unwelcome thought that he pushed away. He knew that he wouldn’t do anything to hurt Gwen.

  “Who else could it have been?” Lewis said. He puffed up his chest and Nathan sunk back.

  “I don’t... was there a break in?”

  Lewis shook his head. “Nothing. None of her stuff is missing. It’s like she just disappeared.”

  Something suddenly occurred to Nathan. Lewis was lying to him. It was the only thing that made sense. Gwen hadn’t gone anywhere, but she’d told Lewis she was getting back together with Nathan and her brother hadn’t liked it. He and Lewis had never gotten on particularly well. He was warning Nathan away.

  “What’s so funny?” Lewis said. There was no trace of sadness now. He was in full angry brother mode.

  Nathan hadn’t even noticed he was smiling. “Nothing,” he said. He tried to stop smiling, but he couldn’t.

  “You know where she is, don’t you?”

  Nathan thought that he probably did. She was at her house where she had always been and where Lewis had told her to stay. It upset him to think that she would let Lewis separate them like this. He wondered how hard she had fought to stop her brother coming to see him.

  “Don’t lie to me Nathan. You tell me where she is right now.”

  “I don’t know,” Nathan said. While half of him believed the protective brother act the other half didn’t. The truth was that he didn’t know what had happened, but he wasn’t willing to take Lewis’ word for it.

  “This is no laughing matter,” Lewis said.

  Nathan couldn’t have agreed more. He tried to move away from Lewis because he couldn’t think properly with his hot breath in his face. His back rested against the wall behind him.

  “I don’t know where she is,” Nathan said. He slid sideways along the wall. He expected Lewis grab hold of him at any moment, but he didn’t. He ducked under a meaty arm and then, as casually as he could manage, he walked to the kitchen sink and turned off the dripping tap. The only sound in the house now was the water running through the pipes.

  Nathan turned back to face Lewis, who turned slowly to face him. “I don’t know where she is Lewis,” he said.

  The man’s body sagged under his full weight. The anger had run out of him and only sadness remained. “What happened to her then?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Nathan said.

  They stood in silence for a moment: facing each other across the kitchen.

  “Have you spoken to the police?” Nathan said.

  Lewis nodded. “There’s no evidence that anything happened to her,” he said. “I don’t know how seriously they’re taking it.”

  “It’s only been a few days,” Nathan said. He tried to sound upbeat and positive, but even he was aware that it was mostly just denial - denial of the idea that anything could have happened to Gwen. “Do you want a drink?” he said. He walked to the kettle and switched it on.

  “I should go back,” Lewis said.

  “Have you tried phoning her?” Nathan said.

  Lewis glared at him and Nathan saw that a fragment
of the old anger remained. “Of course I have,” he said. “Her phone’s switched off.”

  “Will you call me if you hear anything?” he said.

  Lewis hesitated but then nodded.

  Nathan led him to the door which was still hanging open. They didn’t say anything to each other. He watched Lewis walk down the stairs and stop at the bottom. He turned and looked back up at him.

  “If I find out you’re lying to me...” Lewis said.

  Nathan nodded. “I’m not.”

  Lewis looked at him for a moment longer and then he turned away. Nathan watched him until he had disappeared down the street and out of sight around the corner.

  CHAPTER 10

  IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO STOP THINKING ABOUT GWEN. When Lewis had finally gone and he’d made himself a cup of tea, Nathan sat at the kitchen table and cried. Then he reminded himself that Lewis might have been lying. So he went upstairs and got his phone. He found her name in his phone book and called her. It went straight to voicemail without ringing. He didn’t leave a message.

  Nathan didn’t know what to do with himself. When he heard people moving around in their rooms above him, he got up and dumped his tea in the sink. He walked back up the stairs to his room and shut the door behind him. He didn’t want to see anybody. He lay down on his bed and found a photograph of him and Gwen together and he looked at it. He wanted to cry again, but the tears wouldn’t come.

  He managed not to see anybody all day. By the time night fell he felt numb but also very hungry. He didn’t want to be inside anymore.

  Nathan made it out of the house without seeing anybody. It was cold enough that he could see his breath. He hadn’t brought a thick jacket with him and he considered going back to get one, but he didn’t. He started walking in the direction Lewis had gone earlier, but he had no clear destination in mind.

  At the corner shop, he bought himself a cheese sandwich. It didn’t taste of anything and the Coke he bought to wash it down with was too fizzy. He dropped the sandwich box and most of the drink in the first bin he saw.

  There weren’t many people around. He saw a woman in black pushing a double buggy and an old man hobbling along with two walking sticks on the other side of the road. Three cars passed him, but he couldn’t tell what colour they were in the darkness.

  It was no surprise when he found himself outside Gwen’s house, although he had made no conscious decision to go there. He stood in the street outside. All of the houses had lights on except hers. He could hear people talking and televisions on behind closed doors.

  Gwen lived at number seventeen. It was also the day of their first date when he had taken her for dinner at a pizza restaurant and they had stayed up most of the night talking. He couldn’t remember a word of what they’d said to one another because as far as he was concerned the most important thing about the night was that she had let him kiss her and agreed to another date.

  The door of number twenty-one opened and he heard raised voices. He slunk back into the shadows of the alleyway that ran through the middle of the street. He watched an impossible number of people come out of the house. They were talking and laughing, obviously drunk. They seemed to have no idea that something terrible had happened just a few doors away from them.

  On their second date, he had taken her into town and they’d gotten drunk at a cocktail bar. She’d wanted to go dancing afterwards so they’d gone to a bar that played music. It had still been early and nobody else had been dancing, but that hadn’t mattered. They’d been the only two on the dance floor and, although he’d stumbled and tripped over his feet, she’d been impressed enough with his moves to invite him back to her house. By then though the cocktails had gone to her stomach and, rather than a night of drunken passion, he’d ended up sitting in the living room wondering if she was okay while trying not to hear her throwing up in the bathroom.

  The group of people made their way towards him. Nathan knew that they would see him if they came down the alleyway, but there was nowhere else he could go. They were talking in raised voices and when they were closer, he could see that they were young enough to be students. He started walking towards them as if he had been coming through the alley rather than hiding in it.

  It wasn’t until their fourth date that they had gone to bed together. It had been awkward, as it always was with a new partner, but he was glad they had waited until they were both sober. He’d spent the night even though they had work the next day and had to go to great efforts to arrive separately so that none of the other teachers suspected.

  He walked across the road at the same time as the students reached him. He stopped suddenly when he heard one of them say her name.

  They had kept their relationship secret for almost two months. They were both new to the school and Gwen hadn’t wanted people talking about her behind her back. There were work nights out when they spent the whole evening carefully avoiding one another and leaving separately, only to meet up in a previously agreed location so they could get a taxi together back to hers and spend the whole journey discussing whether they had done anything that might make the others suspect.

  He stood in the middle of the road and considered following the students to see if they would say anything about her again. They were walking away from him and if any of them noticed him suddenly change direction it would look very strange. It might have been worth it even so. But their voices echoed down the alleyway and he could tell that they were no longer talking about her – if they ever had been. It might have been another word that sounded like Gwen. There was no reason to think that they knew any more than him about what had happened to her.

  The other staff at Thornhill had begun to suspect there was something going on between them and Nathan couldn’t see any point in denying it. After three months, he was besotted with her and he wanted to tell the whole world, but Gwen was less keen. They argued about it. He told her that he loved her and she said that she loved him too, but she still didn’t want people gossiping about them.

  There didn’t seem to be any point in going back to stand outside number seventeen. He knew that Gwen wasn’t in there and that Lewis hadn’t been lying. Nathan continued walking in the direction he was facing, away from the students, with no idea where he was going once again.

  In the end, other people had guessed and the gossip that Gwen had feared was impossible to avoid. He had heard it before she did and had worried how she would react when she found out. She surprised him one evening as they were sitting down to have dinner together at her house. She asked him if he wanted to move in with her and he didn’t even need to think about it. His life had never been straight forward, but now everything seemed to have worked out.

  The street lights were off at the end of the alley. Nathan knew that it ended the next street along, but he could get to the main road by taking a right. There was a corner shop at the end and some larger terraces on the other side of the road. He kept walking, but he knew something wasn’t right: more street lights went off and by the time he got to the end of the road it was difficult for him to see more than a few metres in any direction.

  The following day they had arrived at school together. They went up to the staff room and she took his hand as he pushed open the door. No one was surprised, but they were pleased. They were admonished for keeping it a secret for so long. They were both well liked and the other members of staff had been happy but less interested in their relationship and deception than either of them had thought. The most interested group in the school had turned out to be their own pupils.

  Nathan saw the glowing yellow eyes before anything else. They seemed to stand out from the darkness and hover in mid-air. He realised that he should have reached the end of the road several minutes ago. The air smelled of uncooked meat. He was no longer cold.

  He wondered when the delusion had begun. It was impossible to tell. He felt aware of being in a day dream even though every element of it was as real as any other waking moment of his life. He didn’t
stop walking and ignored the shadowy figure moving towards him.

  There were more of them than there had been the first time he had seen them. No, he corrected himself, the first time he had imagined them. They walked after him with sloped backs and grinning mouths. He could hear them breathing.

  He watched them in his peripheral vision and almost walked into a post box. He counted four of them in all: three males and one female. Their footsteps didn’t echo.

  The main road that he knew was at the end of Gwen’s street didn’t appear. Instead, the street stretched out infinitely. Nathan started walking more quickly and tried not to think about what the ghouls were doing so close to her house. He didn’t want to think that they might have anything to do with her disappearance. It was impossible, he told himself, because they weren’t real. A figment of his imagination wasn’t capable of hurting anyone except him.

  It was possible that he was still in his bed at home, passed out from exhaustion and hunger. The ghouls might be his body starting to digest itself. Or maybe, and this was a happier thought, he was still asleep and Lewis had not come to visit him. He might have imagined Gwen’s disappearance completely.

  Nathan knew that the ghouls weren’t real, but he started walking more quickly as if they were. He pushed himself hard and seemed to break through the false reality that he had created for himself. To his relief, a car raced past a few metres ahead and he saw the main road. He didn’t stop or turn around until he reached it and when he did he saw that all of the lights had come back on and the street was as long as it had always been. Better still there was no sign of the ghoulish creatures that had been following him.

  Perhaps with enough perseverance he could outrun his own damaged mind, he thought. There might be no need to tell Dr. Romero about any of this.

  CHAPTER 11

  NATHAN STOOD AT THE END OF THE HALLWAY and looked at the front door. The dark blue of their uniforms was distorted by the glass, but he could tell they were police officers. They had knocked three times, but he hadn’t moved from the kitchen.