I fell. My head cleared sufficiently to grasp that I was about to die, that I had fallen into the abyss, but the fall soon ended with a hard jolt on a brick floor. I rose and cracked my head on a wooden beam. Despite the blinding pain, I was elated. I doubted a tomb would have wooden beams. I was in the cellar of a common house, though it seemed less common when I tripped over a chair made of human bones, and of some neither human nor animal.
I groped my way forward and collided with a dangling bundle. Only when it swung back and nearly toppled me did I now it for a corpse, hung by the heels. There were several such, most of them in advanced stages of decay.
“Help,” a thin voice cried. “Please, help me!"
A man kept in a lightless dungeon for twenty years could have been no more thrilled by that voice than I. I had lost all certainty that the world existed, that other creatures than myself existed, that I was not a mad worm in a demon's bowels. “Where? Where?” I demanded, blundering among the hanging corpses.
I staggered against the shockingly warm body of a woman. Forming those few words had exhausted her stock of speech, but she whimpered. I made to untie her, assuming she was held by a rope, but she was suspended by a hook through her ankles. She screamed when I lifted her to relieve the cruel pressure, but it was a very faint cry indeed. By the time I had extracted the hook and laid her body on the floor she was quite dead.
I touched her dead face. Perhaps the admission does me no credit, but I was relieved to know that my illogical fear was unfounded, that she wasn't my niece. She was emaciated, and her hair was longer and finer than Susan's thick curls.
There was one similarity, however: the smallest finger of her left hand had been amputated.
I crept up an ominously swaying and creaking stair to a door that opened on painful sunlight. This place, the brightest and most beautiful I had ever seen, soon faded to its true form as a derelict brothel. It had been so long abandoned that the rats scurrying on their errands spared me no more than occasional glances of annoyance.
I was starved for light, color, distraction, and I found these in the stained murals. The antique hairstyles and unfashionable voluptuousness of the doll-faced wantons were like a peephole on my grandfather's youthful daydreams. Even the graffiti had charm; but among the specimens of wit that was old-fashioned when I was a boy, the names of lechers whose fires no longer burned and praises of fair ones long past fueling them, my eye fell on one inscription that unnerved me. It may have been a joke or scurrility or even a religious message whose meaning had died with its author, but I doubted it: “Blessed are they that eat and are consumed not."
A vision of Mrs. Kilpatrick, ghoulishly gnawing while retaining her human form and even her beauty, assaulted me as clearly as if it were displayed among the sprawling whores. I ran from the house. I believed that the street outside was one of a multiplicious tangle jammed between Mt. Tabor and the Miskatonic, but this one's only distinction was emptiness. I heard sounds of life, but I fancied that they issued from beneath the cobblestones. From the midst of a house-high heap of refuse in an alley, a pale, hairless face seemed to leer at me, but before I could say whether it was a most unlikely dog or something quite different, it vanished. I hurried on.
It struck me belatedly me that I should retrace my steps and mark the house of corpses with its entrance to the ghoul-tunnel, but I had wandered too far and inattentively to find my way back. I memorized the names of a few streets, but I was later unable to find them on any map. I must have been in a fugue, as psychologists call it, for I have no clear idea of how I got home. I'm sure no cabby would have allowed me to ride in his car.
“Ay-ay-ay!” Ramon cried when, at long last, he opened the door to me. “The tiger, she really get loose?"
“No, the lady,” I grumbled, and I told him to go flog himself with his questions about my fine topcoat and jacket and sword, then took to my bed for three days and nights.
I was feeling much better, though guilty, when I presented myself for breakfast at my sister's home. Susan had not succumbed to shock, as I had feared on my way to visit her so belatedly, but she was said to remain dull and listless.
“Let her sleep for now,” Sarah advised, and went on to quiz and tease me about the exhibition I had not seen.
“Mrs. Kilpatrick's disappeared, you know,” my brother-in-law said, rescuing me from further questions about Niobe. “I went there in the hope of tracing those scoundrels—I wouldn't be surprised if they'd followed you from her place, friends of hers, the vile bitch—and her servants seem to think she's finally got what's coming to her. She hasn't seen seen since the night Susan was attacked. Doesn't that suggest—"
He broke off as Susan swept into the room, and he looked even more surprised than I felt. She radiated health and happiness. I had never seen her so lovely. He objected to her being up, but she silenced him with a kiss. She was going out, she said, she felt wonderful. She embraced her mother and then me.
Her kiss was indecorous, to say the least. I wondered if she had gone mad as I recoiled from her snaking tongue. I turned to her father to deny any blame for her behavior, but he stared at me in horror.
“What do you have for me, dear Uncle?” she laughed, poking and tickling and thrusting her hands into my clothing. “Another whistle, perhaps, that I can blow?"
When she groped inside my trousers I seized her wrist. Staring at her hand, I couldn't believe what I saw. She wrenched it away with nightmarish strength. I kicked my chair over and rose to my feet.
“Who are you?” I cried, gripping her by the shoulders. “What have you done with Susan?"
“No, Uncle!” She slapped me. The blow, from a girl not half my size, sent me sprawling to upset the table. “You'll never stick your sword in my ass again!"
“No!” Sarah shrieked. “Felix, what does she mean?"
“It's not she!" I cried, wallowing in broken crockery as I struggled to rise. “Stop the fiend!"
Hazard knew what his daughter's words meant, or thought he did, and he knocked me down as soon as I managed to get up. I shoved him aside when I rose a second time and ran after the thing masquerading as Susan. It had already fled to the street, but that street was empty by the time I reached it.
When I turned, Hazard bore down on me, his red face working, his fists clenched. Sarah clung to his right arm, but the look she gave me was not one of unqualified support.
“Kill me if I'm wrong,” I said, “but severed fingers don't grow back."
“Oh, no!” Sarah screamed. “He's right! I saw it. How can it be?"
We trudged up to Susan's room, her father and I. Refusing to wait below with Sarah, he cursed me for a fool and told me to get on with it, damned, fat lecher that I was with my wild tales of fingers growing back. It gave me no consolation that he fell down in a faint when I opened the door on the red, reeking chamber.
I have seen victims of violence. I have dissected many corpses. I had never before seen the victim of a violent dissection. No surgeon would rip a body open in the shortest possible time, strewing limbs and organs about the room, and surely no surgeon would do it while the patient still lived and the heart could spray blood over the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. I nearly collapsed beside the poor child's father.
As soon as I could master myself I tiptoed into the room. A huge, old oak stood beyond the window, and the window was open. That explained everything, except the boldness and cunning of a ghoul that would cross half the bustling town, from Mt. Tabor Cemetery to Zaman's Hill, to seize a living victim.
The legends I had collected and half-playfully written down had told the truth. Susan's heart had been torn from her chest, her brain from her crushed skull. The ghoul had devoured them and mimicked her form. One thing he had not eaten, perhaps purposefully, was her left hand. It lay neatly on the human wrack, unmarked except for the stump of her little finger.
“He liked it,” I muttered to myself, “and came back for more."
“What?” Hazard groaned. “
What?"
I left the room and closed the door on it as I helped him to his feet, but I never repeated the words I had spoken.
I later went to look for the tunnel into the hill. It had been sealed solidly by a massive collapse. My cashmere topcoat and dinner jacket were gone, perhaps to adorn either a homeless person or a ghoul.
Climbing to the top of the hill in a blustery wind that already hinted of winter, I stood and surveyed the city I had loved so much since childhood. The white spires of its old Yankee churches and the Gothic fantasies of its university were dwarfed now by the spindly skeletons of communications towers on every hill; streams of bright, tinny autos disturbed the reverie of its ancient homes on every twisted alley; neon signs and mercury-vapor streetlamps would soon blaze to life, turning the dark and quiet nights I recalled from childhood into a gaudy hell.
Raising my eyes to Zaman's Hill on the horizon, I suddenly understood how a monster like Roger Kilpatrick could have crossed the city without drawing notice. I had to grip a gravestone for support as I was struck by a horrifying vision of the network of tunnels that must extend from this graveyard. Modern light and clutter and overpopulation would be no impediment to Roger and his colleagues, who could crawl from one end of the city to the other in tunnels whose courses had probably been laid out four centuries ago.
I searched the necropolis for a tomb with a hole in the roof, but there are many such. If I found the one where I had last seen Mrs. Kilpatrick, I didn't recognize it. No trace of her has yet been found, and I suspect none ever will be. Nothing could induce me to visit Mt. Tabor Cemetery now, and I take roundabout routes to avoid it even in broad daylight, but I am often dragged into its black tunnels in my nightmares: where the vile witch, as hideously transformed as her son, shrieks and gibbers at orgiastic feasts.
Unlike the victim of a random wave or a whirlwind, I knew why I—or why Susan Hazard, I should say—had been struck down, but knowing the reason gave no comfort. Everyone who has ever written of ghouls has noted their delight in grisly pranks, their love of laughter, but I had been singled out for their malice because the dull vermin hadn't been able to get a joke.
From what I had overheard Mrs. Kilpatrick say to her son, they took that “Ghoulmaster” nonsense seriously, and they resented it.
* * *
A Donation to the Homeless
I was dashing for the convenience store when a homeless man stopped me. I wouldn't normally stop, but I knew him.
“You. You're...."
“And you're Bert Miller. You covered the case."
The case: that gave me a clue, but....
“Aldous Loudun,” he said. Loudun had been a fidgety geek. You could see him molesting kids, but not without his hornrimmed glasses and clip-on bowtie. With his prophet's hair and beard and butane eyes, he now looked capable even of the murders and witchcraft that were only rumored.
“You finally got out, huh?"
“You're never interested in covering that part of a story, are you?"
I thought I was used to press-bashing, but my face burned. He had a point. The case had made headlines for a couple years. When it unraveled on appeal, people paid less notice as each defendant was separately freed. His life had been stolen, and no two inches on an inside page could ever restore it.
“Look, maybe I could do a feature story on you—"
“Forget it. I'd settle for an umbrella."
“Sure, but it's freezing out here—"
“You're telling me?” He was wearing only jeans and a t-shirt, one of those heavy metal goat-and-pentagram things, probably meant as bitter irony.
“Come on, let's go in the store."
“The clerk won't let me in."
I could invite him into my car, but charity has limits. He was dirty. He probably had lice.
Before I could have second thoughts, I pulled off my coat. I had a heated car and a warm home to drive to. He had nothing at all, and maybe that was partly my fault.
“Your very own coat,” he said when he slipped it on, as if this especially pleased him. “A personal possession."
“If there's anything else,” I said, backing toward the store, “I'm still at the paper."
“Don't feel so bad, Bert,” he said. “Those kids were telling the truth."
When he laughed, I said, “You had me going there for a minute."
I slipped into the store fast, then drew a blank when I tried to remember what Jenny needed. Milk, that was always a safe bet with our little girls—
“You are buying something, my friend?"
The Indian clerk spoke again, even more sharply, before I realized he meant me. “Yeah, right. This is a store?"
“We do not need your kind in here. Buy what you want and go, if you have money."
My kind? I couldn't think of a single politically correct comeback, so I reached for my wallet to show him cash.
“Oh, shit,” I said, and dashed out to the parking lot.
Aldous Loudun was gone, of course, with my coat. With my wallet. But I should have been able to overtake him.
If I'd had a car.
I burst back into the store. “Call the police. I gave my coat to a bum and it had my car keys—"
“I don't need any police!” He shocked me by pulling a billy-club from under the counter and slamming it down hard. “You unwelcome persons should know by now that I can take care of myself."
What was wrong with this guy? I was wet, yes, and I was wearing old clothes, but I looked like any suburban householder on a weekend. I would have argued, but he was coming out from behind the counter with that club.
It was easier to jog home than wait at a cold pay phone for the cops. Preoccupied, I jogged into the apartment complex beyond my house.
I backtracked to Karen Smith's house, but that made no sense. My home stood between hers and the apartments. Now it didn't, with not even a vacant lot in its place. Could it be the wrong street?
But Karen answered my knock.
“This is a stupid question, but where's my house?"
“Go away! My husband's inside with a gun."
“Karen, he's in Mexico with his boyfriend—"
She'd told me that, but she looked dumfounded for the time it took her to slam the door in my face. To hell with her, she must have been drinking again.
I blundered around in the weeds by the fence where my house should be while more and more lights came on, looking—for what? My home just wasn't there.
At least the back of the police car was dry and warm.
“How can somebody just walk up steal your life?” I asked the cop.
He was a humorist. “Don't worry, pal, they got pills to give you a new one."
* * *
Impatience
Why, I wonder, why does every little thing have to be such a complicated, time-wasting pain in the ass?
“Close your door, Mom,” I said.
“Wait until I buckle my seat belt."
Wait until Christmas!
No. I remembered the mantra I recited whenever I left the house: Don't lose your temper, obey all traffic laws.
“You're not smoking, are you?"
“I never smoke when you're in the car.” Now I wanted a cigarette. “Your seat belt is buckled, please close the door."
“Don't nag your mother!” She added, “Prattle prattle...."
“...prattle,” she continued as I guided her up to the desk of the doctor's office.
“I'll go get the groceries,” I said.
“No, wait for me!” she wailed, but I was gone.
I tried to hurry through the store, but it was holding a Senior Simpletons’ convention. Some brats had come along, too, to screech in my ear while I waited for Grandma Dumbchick to finish her prattle with Grandma Dimbitch while their carts blocked the aisle.
Don't lose your temper don't lose your temper....
I found some of that glue that bonds skin instantly. I'd have to try it out. Had to get lye, too, and duct tape.
<
br /> At the checkout, I got behind a freeloader whose food stamp transaction crashed the system. The clerk called the manager. The manager called Gladys, their expert on idiotic minutiae, who couldn't figure it out. It hinged on twenty five cents.
“Here,” I said, tossing a quarter on the belt.
The clerk and the manager and Gladys were merely annoyed, but the freeloader was outraged. “I don't want none yo fo-syllable money! I pay taxes like fo-syllable prattle prattle...."
Don't lose your temper don't....
I spent more than an hour in the store. I expected Mom to be fretting about having to wait when she could have been snoring in front of the daytime hen-porn on television, but she wasn't out yet. The convention had adjourned from the supermarket to the doctor's office to prattle while I suffered through three issues of Reader's Digest.
“You shouldn't smoke in the car when I'm going to ride in it."
The car windows were open. It was summertime, when girls wore swimsuits and dresses you could see through when the light was right. I thought about that.
A car tailgated me because I was observing the speed limit. Obey all traffic laws. Don't lose your temper. I pulled over to let him pass. He pulled over behind me.
Oh, God, a cop.
“Take your license and registration out of the wallet, please."
“Was he speeding again, officer?"
Don't lose your temper.
“Your failed inspection sticker is two months overdue."
He was right. A fat, red sticker glared right in front of me whenever I drove, and I'd overlooked it. Too busy telling myself to obey all traffic laws. Suppose a cop had noticed it last night?
Despite Mom's complaints that he was a Gestapo agent for harrassing her son, who hadn't actually been convicted of anything since he was a juvenile, he only gave me a ticket and escorted me home.
Even More Nasty Stories Page 10
