Ghouls (39 page)

It was the game they played—a complex, imperative game rooted in a bizarre and very special fondness. Their hearts fluttered for each other, and their eyes sparkled. It was always the same. It was always perfect.

Lisa had to do before she could be done to. She continued to dot Cathy with little kisses. Cathy continued to ignore her. The tiny slit of heat between Lisa’s legs began to pulsate; she pressed a finger there, against her pants, and felt a welling, shivery sensation. She nuzzled Cathy’s cheek, still touching herself, and let a small, pleading whine leak out from her throat.

Eventually, Cathy put her beer down and gave in. They grinned at each other in the tinseled dark. They embraced.

The air inside grew warm, and was full of the sounds of crickets. Time was fragile now; rushing would lay rents in their passion. They kissed as if sipping from cups, barely moving, holding time back to examine the proximity of each kiss. Their mouths became the cynosures of their souls—they were attached to each other by their mouths, were joined as one like pretty Siamese twins in a transport of exhilaration and dark delight.

At that moment Lisa thought she would die to be kissed. A gentle delirium took them over, made them sway; they drew close, as if held together by slowly shrinking bonds. Their kisses grew more insistent, more precise. It was a system of
subverbal
demands, teeth clicking, tongues plunging. Cathy kissed with particular verve; she seemed intent on sucking Lisa’s tongue right out of her mouth. But Lisa liked it when she did that. She liked the suction.

Cathy began to slither down until she was prone on the bench seat. She relaxed cozily. Eyes locked, Lisa started to unbutton her lover’s shirt, revealing the soft, flawless skin one notch at a time. When the shirt came open fully, she traced Cathy’s breasts with her fingers, nervously at first, then more steadily, and harder. The feeling made Cathy close her eyes and sigh.

Lisa loved Cathy’s breasts. They were large and beautiful in the etching light. She longed for a way to tell her this, and many other things too, but she didn’t know how without sounding stupid.
Oh, Cathy, I love your tits?
No. She would just show her.

Holding her hair to one side, Lisa lowered her head and delicately planted kisses on each of Cathy’s breasts. They seemed to swell as she kissed them. The dark, pink nipples began to distend like little cones of flesh. Lisa kissed them and sucked them out until she knew they must be deliciously sore.

Next, she pulled her T-shirt up over her own breasts and lay down on Cathy, nipple to nipple. She could feel Cathy’s heat reaching up, and was delighted by the way her lover squirmed, trapped. She began to slide down then, licking a wet line from Cathy’s throat to her beltline. Cathy continued to fidget, her breasts and stomach glittering under a light sweat.

Lisa lingered down there; she hugged Cathy’s hips, cupped her bottom, nagged at the belt with her teeth. She pressed her mouth against Cathy’s crotch and breathed forcefully through the denim.

Cathy moaned.

With her teeth, Lisa unfastened Cathy’s belt; she popped the
rivetlike
button out of its eyelet, and tugged down the zipper. The jeans came off in a heartbeat. Cathy grinned again, eyes barely open, and she stretched luxuriously, placing one bare foot behind the driver’s headrest, and the other on the steering column, and she just lay there all soft and hot and waiting.

Lisa was on her knees, between her lover’s parted legs. She felt light-headed looking down, gazing at Cathy’s taut stomach, cool white thighs, and pale, quivering breasts.
I
love you,
Lisa thought euphorically. She felt hot, heavy rushes of love. Her blood pulsed with love. Her eyes were damp and teary with love. Invidiously, her mind flashed desperate, horrid images. She pictured Cathy here with another girl. Or worse, with a guy. Yes, the vision of Cathy lying like this with some hairy, sweating male made Lisa want to clench her fists and howl. She would cry for a month if that happened. It must
never
happen. Cathy wasn’t like the other girls. Cathy was precious.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Lisa said. “Nothing,” and she crouched down on her elbows and knees, as if about to push a peanut with her nose. She nuzzled and kissed and licked. She went down on Cathy for a long time.

They didn’t know they were being watched.

Whimpers and little noises of delight began to slip from Cathy’s throat. She couldn’t control it. Her legs stiffened with the mounting pleasure. She curled her toes in the air and held Lisa’s head.

Outside, a figure leaned over the car on the driver’s side, and in the upper left corner of the windshield, a small circle of fog formed. Another figure stood on the passenger side, leaning over, peering in.

Cathy squeezed her lower lip between her teeth, moaning, whipping her head back and forth. She breathed in short, rapid pants. Legs straining, breasts and tummy now aglow with sweat, she flexed her ass and sucked in her stomach and pressed the back of Lisa’s head to make her do it harder.

“I love you,” Lisa stopped long enough to say.

“I love you,” Cathy panted back.

Lisa’s mouth worked furiously but with special precision. She knew exactly how to make her lover come good. Every muscle in Cathy’s body seemed to tighten. She let herself go, hissing, and gave in to the steady, deep jolt of orgasm.

The moment passed in a great sigh. The backup of excited tension went out of her like a fleeing demon, and Cathy was swept by a fluid wave of laziness. Every nerve, every muscle, every cubic inch of her flesh felt at peace.

Lisa sat up, shiny around the mouth. She ran her hands up and down Cathy’s thighs and listened to her purr.

“I love you,” Lisa said.

“I love you,” Cathy said.

The end came with maniacal speed.

Cathy’s eyes bulged open. Consternation drained her face. She pointed past Lisa. She began to sit up, began to shout,
There’s someone
outsi
—”

Then Cathy was gone.

She’d been pulled out of the car, as easily as smoke sucked through a vent-slat.

Confusion and panic burst in Lisa’s brain. She didn’t know what had happened. She didn’t know what to do. She only knew she was alone in the car, when just a second before she’d been with Cathy.

She looked at the empty seat, the open window, the blackness outside, and all at once a long, grinding scream shot out through the night. Lisa could not imagine a scream so piercing, so real and full of terror. It made static tremors race up her spine, and lanced her ears like ice picks.

Then the scream wound down to a rasping sputter and was followed by a series of short, spasmodic shrieks, and finally an awful wet plunging sound, like someone pulling apart watermelons bare-handed.

Then silence, utter silence.

Lisa broke out of the grip of her fear. She reached for the ignition …

The driver’s window thumped once, twice, then exploded inward, showering her with tiny chunks of glass.

She tried to scramble out the other window, but too late. A hand shot in out of the dark, a long
clawlike
hand with only three fingers. It snatched onto her hair and abruptly yanked her out of the car.

Lisa fought to get off the ground, she fought to get up. She flailed her arms, kicking, clawing leaves, but was regardless dragged to the middle of the road. Humid breath gusted against her face, a mouth like a suction cup brushing up her cheek toward her eye.

The hand hooked under her jaw, like a pincer. She was lifted up. The other hand touched between her legs. The scream that
then erupted from Lisa’s lungs bore an uncanny resemblance to the sound of screeching tires.

The lips funneled to a salivating O shape over her eye socket, and—

POP

—sucked the left eyeball out of her skull.

The eyeball was swallowed whole, and then the other eye was removed much in the same way.

Her pants were ripped open and torn off. She was raped by a long, twisting forearm that routed her insides amid that same wet, plunging sound. The arm thrust in and out like a piston rod, quickly extracting organs through the vaginal pass.

When the abdominal cavity had been sufficiently emptied, the arm withdrew. Lisa twitched jerkily on the ground, as if lying in electrified water. She died gargling blood.

The hand clasped her ankle. From atop a sixty-foot mocker-nut tree, two grackles watched as she was dragged away into the woods.

— | — | —

CHAPTER TWENTY

“A
what?”
Kurt said. But he’d been paying little attention anyway. The gentleness of the morning air distracted him. He stood at the rim of the back patio and looked out over the trees, hopeful that it wouldn’t rain.

“A werewolf,” Melissa repeated. She was scattering her breakfast’s leftover bread crusts into the backyard. “You know, like Lon Chaney.”

“Damn. Why didn’t I think of that? Now all I have to do is go down to Schiller’s Gun Shop and order a box of silver wad-cutters for my .357.”

“I’m not joking,” she warned, flicking a last crust. “It was a full moon the night Harley Fitzwater disappeared.”

Had it been? So what. Somehow she’d found out about Fitzwater’s disappearance, and the skeleton, too. At times he thought that the Tylersville grapevine must be as intricate as an NSA
telenet
. “You should eat your bread crusts,” he said. “Grows hair on your chest.”

“If you’re not careful, you’re gonna be the one growing hair, and I mean lots of hair. And teeth, and claws. And don’t always change the subject.”

“Okay. I thought you said it was vampires.”

“Well, even I make a mistake every now and then,” she said with her usual cockiness. “Just look at the facts. Vampires only drink blood; they’d never eat a body down to the bones… But werewolves would.”

“Are you sure you’re not smoking grass with those oddball friends of yours? I know I wasn’t as screwy as you when I was your age.”

“Go ahead and laugh,” she said. “They laughed at Brahe, too, you know.”

Who’s
Brahe?
he thought. He would not admit ignorance. “Sure, Melissa, and if I tell Chief Bard that
werewolves
ate Swaggert and Fitzwater, he’ll laugh
me
right off the force.”

“All it takes is one bite, remember that, kiddo. I don’t want to have to be chaining you up in the basement every full moon.”

Sometimes Melissa’s imagination worried him. Did she really believe these things? Probably. He left her to watch sparrows pick at the bread.

For some reason, he felt anxious. He went upstairs and looked in on Vicky, who was still sleeping peacefully, in his room, in his bed. It was something he’d insisted on. He’d consigned himself to the couch in the den, which wasn’t bad once he learned where the hard spots were. He just wanted Vicky to be as comfortable as possible.

She turned once under the sheet, as if resisting a dream, and then fell still again.
Probably the first decent night’s sleep she’s had in two years,
he thought bitterly. He’d never seen her so at peace before, so at ease, even with the bandage on her head, and the cast.

He stayed a moment more to gaze at her in her sleep. He felt like a voyeur, secure to watch in secret. He wondered if he would ever sleep with her, reproved himself for the thought, then closed the door.

His suspension was moving along.
Not much longer now,
he thought, leaving the house and starting the Ford. He hated not working; he hadn’t taken a vacation since Carter was in office, because anything more than two days off per week interrupted the routine he needed. Being forced
not
to work was now close to driving him to claw at the paneling.