The Ghouls

by Fred Crawley

  They stopped knocking, but Nathan didn’t think that was a good thing. If he could see them through the door, then there was a good chance they could see him too. He waited, not daring to move.

  One of the shapes seemed to shrink. He wondered if they were walking away, but that seemed like delusional thinking. The letter box was pushed open from the outside. A woman’s voice spoke to him.

  “Nathan, come to the door,” she said.

  Nathan didn’t move. He didn’t know why he was so afraid of the police but he was. Maybe it was the authority that they represented. Maybe it was all the stuff that he’d seen on the news. Most likely it was because they dressed like the security guards who had been called to take him to Happy Trails after his breakdown.

  “We need to ask you some questions Nathan,” the police woman said.

  He still didn’t move. The letter box squeaked as she moved it up and down. It closed for a moment and then opened again.

  “Nathan we can see you in the kitchen,” she said. “If you don’t come to the door we’ll have to break it down.”

  Nathan wondered whether they would actually do that. He wasn’t sure, but it didn’t seem worth the risk. If the door got damaged his land lord would make him pay for it and he barely had enough money to buy food after rent as it was.

  He sighed and walked down the hallway. He unlocked the front door and pulled it open.

  A petite woman with light brown hair (possibly dyed) was standing there with a large man behind her.

  “Nathan Custer I am arresting you for the kidnapping of Gwyneth Houston. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?”

  Nathan looked at her and he wasn’t sure what had just happened. His mouth fell open, but no words came out.

  “Do you understand?” she said.

  He felt numb. It didn’t make any sense. Why were they arresting him? He wondered if Lewis had said something to them, but it had been two days since he’d shown up looking for his sister.

  “Nathan?” she said. Her voice pulled him back from the brink. He looked at her. “Do you understand what I’ve just told you?”

  Nathan nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I understand.”

  The woman turned and nodded to the man behind her. They didn’t handcuff him, but the big man held his arm and led him down the stairs to the car parked on the road.

  The room was barely bigger than the table and two chairs that it contained. Nathan was disappointed that there wasn’t a one-way mirror like he had seen on television, but there was a black camera in the corner so he supposed the team of experts could be watching him through that.

  The door opened and the woman who had arrested him came in. She had two plastic cups and Nathan could smell coffee. The door closed behind her and she sat down opposite him.

  “Coffee?” she said.

  Nathan nodded and she handed one of the cups to him. It was too hot to drink, but just the smell of it cleared his head a little.

  “My name’s Detective Flores,” she said. “You can call me Robyn.”

  Nathan nodded. There was no need to tell her who he was.

  She took an A4 sized folder out of the bag that he hadn’t even noticed she was carrying. She put it on the table and opened it up. She bent down to read.

  Nathan held the cup of coffee between his hands until it started to burn. Flores was reading handwritten notes, but the scrawl was too small and untidy for him to read upside down.

  She looked up. “You and Miss Houston were in a relationship?” she said.

  This was going to be difficult. Just hearing half of Gwen’s name made him want to cry. He managed to nod. “We separated a few months ago,” he said, his voice was a throaty croak.

  Flores nodded and made a note. Nathan thought that she had probably known that already. “Why did you break up?” she said.

  Nathan sighed. It was a question that he had asked himself many times over the last few months and he thought he had gotten close to the actual answer. “I was in an accident,” he said.

  “You were hit by a car?” Flores said.

  “That’s right. I was in a coma for two weeks.”

  While he spoke, Flores scribbled notes. Nothing Nathan said seemed to surprise her but if she’d done her job none of it should. These things weren’t a secret.

  “When I woke up, she was there but I think it was already over for her. The doctors didn’t know whether I was going to make it.”

  Nathan thought about how he was going to tell her what had happened next. It had been a confusing time for him and he still wasn’t sure what had really gone on, only the version that Gwen had given him and his own suspicions. Even if they were close to the truth, he was reluctant to talk about it with a stranger.

  Flores finished writing and glanced up at him. “Go on,” she said.

  “I think she’d started seeing one of the doctors while I was unconscious,” he said. “Or at least he was sniffing around her.”

  “That’s Marcus Springer?” Flores said.

  Nathan nodded. “When I woke up... I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t too late but... she was still there for me and she didn’t say anything.” It felt beyond awkward to tell a stranger these things, but he had gotten over it once with Dr. Romero and it was easier to do a second time. “The recovery process was intense. I had physiotherapy every day and operations on my legs and back.”

  Detective Flores nodded and continued to write.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Gwen was there for me the whole time. Every day after school...”

  “Miss Houston was a teacher, right?” Detective Flores said.

  Nathan nodded.

  She turned a page in her notes and ran her finger down the page. “At Thornhill Primary School?”

  “That’s right,” Nathan said.

  “And you taught there as well?”

  Nathan nodded. Detective Flores made some more notes.

  “Carry on,” she said.

  He’d gotten to the difficult part of the story. He considered how he was going to tell it. He and Dr. Romero had been over it so many times that it had taken on the quality of a fairy tale. He could tell it as being his fault and he could tell it as being Gwen’s fault. He could tell it with neither of them being to blame. He could even tell it as being Marcus’s fault.

  “I was very frustrated,” Nathan said. “I was in a lot of pain and none of it was my fault. I needed someone to blame.”

  “So you chose Gwen?” Detective Flores said.

  He wished now that he had chosen Marcus or one of the other doctors to shout at, but he couldn’t change the past. He nodded and Detective Flores made another note. “She put up with it for a while. She’s very understanding. I guess...”

  Detective Flores looked up. Her pen hovered above the page waiting for him to tell the rest of the story. “You guess what Nathan?”

  “Gwen wanted to start a family. She was desperate to have children.” He shook his head and wondered how different both of their lives might be now if the man in the blue car hadn’t had a stroke. They might already be expecting their first child. “I suppose she didn’t want to wait for me to get better to start having them.”

  It was a truncated version of the story that left out plenty of speculation about what had been going on while he’d been suffering through a brutal physiotherapy routine. None of which was any more substantial than his delusions.

  “Miss Houston was older than you, is that right?” Detective Flores said.

  Nathan nodded. “By seventeen months.”

  Detective Flores kept writing in the folder. Nathan wondered if they had found some evidence that linked him to her disappearance. Now that he was in the police station he was less worried than he had been. If they had found evidence of anything, it would be that he had spent the night with her and he was sure that when he’d explained t
hat they would let him go.

  Detective Flores finished writing and looked up at him. “Tell me about your breakdown,” she said.

  “It was nothing,” Nathan said.

  “Humour me Mr. Custer,” Detective Flores said.

  Nathan picked up the cup of coffee. It was cool enough to drink now and he needed something to wet his suddenly dry mouth. He put the cup down and pulled himself together before starting.

  “Like I said, the recovery process was terrible. I was in a lot of pain and looking for someone to blame. It was no one’s fault really, I know that now.”

  “What happened?” Detective Flores said.

  “I was under a lot of stress. Dr. Romero says that the mind can do strange things when it’s under that kind of pressure for extended periods.”

  “Nathan,” Detective Flores said. “Tell me what happened.”

  He sighed. There was no way to avoid it. “I started seeing things.”

  “What sort of things,” she said, as if this was something she heard all the time. In her line of work, perhaps was.

  “Things that weren’t there. I thought there were people who were trying to hurt me. They were pretending to be doctors and nurses, but they were really monsters.”

  “Monsters?”

  Nathan nodded.

  “What happened then?” Detective Flores said.

  Nathan knew she was talking about the night they had taken him away, the night when he became a risk to himself and to the people who were trying to care for him. The records of it would have been available to her, he was sure she would have checked them. The only reason to ask was that she wanted to hear it in his own words.

  “I thought they came to get me,” he said.

  Detective Flores nodded.

  “It was at night. The hospital was quiet. I was laying in my bed and I couldn’t sleep. Then I heard them coming.”

  “What were they?” Detective Flores said. Her voice was soft as if she was afraid to ask.

  Nathan shook his head. “I don’t know exactly, but they were dressed like nurses. But it was like they were wearing costumes. They were like Halloween costumes and they had all these big needles and tools with them. They crept along between the beds and I thought...”

  “What did you think Nathan?”

  “I thought they were coming to kill me.”

  The room was quiet for a moment. Nathan thought he could hear the electronic whir of the camera in the corner zooming in or out.

  “What happened next?” Detective Flores said.

  “At first I tried to run away,” he said. “But they followed me. I was still... I couldn’t move very quickly and there were so many of them. Every time I turned a corner, there were more of them.”

  They had been platinum blond nurses that looked more like porn stars. The uniforms they were wearing were too small and they had no intention of making him feel better. All he could focus on was the big needles they were carrying and what they were going to do with them.

  “Someone must have left a door unlocked. I managed to get into a storage room. It was full of equipment and I could barely squeeze in. I closed the door and hoped the nurses wouldn’t find me.”

  “But they did?” Detective Flores said.

  Nathan shook his head. “They weren’t really there,” he said.

  “You know that now,” Detective Flores said.

  Nathan shrugged.

  “What happened?”

  What happened was that he’d crouched between the spare monitors and cages and nearly pissed himself. He’d listened to them moving around outside, calling his name like ghosts. He’d been convinced that they were going to find him and when the door opened, he only had one advantage and that was surprise.

  “You tried to fight them?”

  Attack, was the word that had been used to describe it to him, but he nodded anyway.

  “Who was it really?” Detective Flores said.

  “One of the night staff. A nurse called Julie.”

  Detective Flores turned a page in her book and read through her notes. “You broke her nose and when she fell she got a concussion?” she read.

  Nathan nodded. “I tried to explain about the nurses, but it already didn’t seem real. The other nurse called security.”

  “And you were taken to Happy Trails?” Detective Flores said.

  Nathan nodded. He was relieved that he’d told the story and that they could move on. He could only hope that Detective Flores wouldn’t ask him any more questions about it. But this wasn’t a psychiatric evaluation; she knew the basics and that should be enough. Dr. Romero could give her any more information she needed.

  “I’ve just got one more question about that,” Detective Flores said.

  Nathan nodded as if he needed to give her permission to ask him.

  “Have you seen the nurses again since you were released from the hospital?”

  Nathan considered taking the question in the spirit it was intended, but he hadn’t told anyone about the monsters that he had seen since being released. Only Dr. Romero knew that he was sometimes unsure what was real and what wasn’t. He could have told Detective Flores about the ghoul’s, but he was sure that was a mistake.

  Nathan shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen the nurses since.”

  Detective Flores smiled at him and made a note of what he had said.

  She asked him some more questions about his relationship with Gwen following their breakup and he answered them as honestly as he could. Yes, they had seen each other since he’d come out of Happy Trails, yes, she had continued dating Marcus.

  As Nathan suspected they had found evidence that he had been in her house shortly before her disappearance and they suspected that meant he was responsible for it. He tried to explain what had happened that night but, without revealing what he had seen (or rather, what he couldn’t possibly have seen) it was difficult.

  Detective Flores finished the interview and told him that he would be held for the next twenty-four hours unless further evidence came to light. If he was released, then he would need to stay in the area pending further questioning.

  Nathan followed her back to the little cell that he had been put into when he’d first arrived. It was cold and dirty but by the time she’d finished questioning him it was late and he was exhausted. It seemed as if he hadn’t slept for days. The door closed behind him and he lay down with no other thought except sleep.

  CHAPTER 12

  NO FURTHER EVIDENCE CAME TO LIGHT AND THE police were forced to release him. A few hairs and some skin cells were not enough to convict him of kidnapping Gwen. Nathan was accompanied through the police station and then signed out in full view of everyone in the reception. Despite his exhaustion he hadn’t been able to sleep well and he was now another full day behind.

  Outside the day was bright but cold. There were lots of people on the street, but they seemed distant and even less real than usual. Nathan walked along beside people that seemed to have about as much substance as a dream. He was floating through the crowds with too much on his mind to settle on any single thought.

  Somehow he made it home and all the way to his front door without seeing the dark shape lurking at the top of the stairs.

  “Hello Nathan,” Dr. Romero said.

  Nathan was too exhausted to be surprised. He turned slowly towards the doctor and contorted his face into a smile. “Dr. Romero,” he said. His voice sounded slow. “What are you doing here?”

  “Perhaps we can go inside,” Dr. Romero said. “I would like to have a chat with you.”

  Nathan nodded and unlocked the front door. He could hear other people moving around in the house, but they were distant and unimportant. He had hoped to make it up to his room and collapse onto his bed, but that seemed to be out of the question for now.

  “Do you want something to drink?” Nathan said. He led Dr. Romero along the hallway into the kitchen. If he was going to get through another round of questioning, then he needed
to get some caffeine into him quickly.

  “A cup tea if you’re making one,” Dr. Romero said.

  Nathan forced a smile and then realised that he was facing away from the doctor and didn’t need to pretend. He went to the kettle and filled it at the sink while Dr. Romero took a seat at the table.

  “The police called me,” Dr. Romero said.

  Nathan nodded, but he didn’t say anything. He’d known that they would have done, to make sure he wasn’t dangerous if nothing else. He certainly didn’t see why it had required a house call.

  “How are you feeling?” Dr. Romero asked.

  Nathan shrugged. “Tired. Upset.”

  “Angry?”

  “A little, I guess.”

  Dr. Romero nodded but didn’t reply. Nathan finished making tea and carried two cup over to the table. He sat down opposite Dr. Romero and wondered if he thought he had done something to Gwen as well.

  “As your doctor I have to ask,” Dr. Romero said. “Did you do it?”

  Nathan looked at him with surprise. He hadn’t expected him to be so blunt about it. “In confidence?” he said.

  “Nathan, I’m a doctor, not a priest. If you tell me, you’ve hurt someone I can’t keep that to myself. That being said, I’m on your side. If there’s something you want to tell me I’ll do everything I can to help.”

  Nathan nodded and wondered what would happen if he told Dr. Romero that he had kidnapped Gwen. He wondered what his reaction would be and what would happen. He had a feeling that the police weren’t going to give up on him as a suspect and it might save a lot of trouble if he just confessed.

  “No,” Nathan said. “I didn’t do it.”

  Dr. Romero looked at him for a moment as if trying to work out whether he was telling the truth. Eventually, he nodded and produced one of his not quite real smiles. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. He picked up his tea and sipped loudly. He put the cup back down on the table. “This must be very difficult for you?”