Ghouls (4 page)

Stokes grimaced in the fierce, white beam. “Goddamn
candyass
. Get that fuckin’ light out of my eyes.”

Kurt did not comply with the request. “I ought to haul your tail in for chopping that chain.”

“You ain’t
haulin
’ shit, chump, ’cause that chain was down. Somebody else cut it.”

“Sure, Stokes, and water runs uphill, too, right? One of these days I’ll catch you with those
boltcutters
of yours and wrap them around your thieving hillbilly neck.”

Rage
pinkened
Stokes’s face. “
Them’s
some pretty rough words from a pussy. Just ’cause you got a gun and a badge, that don’t mean you can go fucking people around all you please. I ain’t scared of you, Morris, and one day I’m gonna kick your ass so bad you’ll think you died and come back as a soccer ball.”

“Talk is cheap, Stokes, and I can tell you talk a lot. Why don’t you just kick my ass right now?”

“No, not now,
pussyman
. When the time is right.”

Joanne was still groveling on the ground, her voice a shrill echo. “Oh, Lenny, I can’t find my shirt. Help me find my shirt.”

“Ditz,” Stokes replied. “It’s in the car. You took it off ’fore we came in.”

“I didn’t think you owned a shirt,” Kurt said to her. (Joanne was one of the more popular topless dancers at the Anvil, and commonly spent more time without a shirt than with one.) “Why bother owning things you never use?”

Blushing hot red, she stood up, but before she could cover her breasts, Kurt’s light scanned her upper body, purely by accident, of course. In the gritty glow, her flesh gleamed fish-belly white, starkly diverse against large, pink nipples. She quickly crisscrossed her arms and shouted, “You’re
doin
’ that on purpose! Stop shining that light on me, you pervert!”

Kurt laughed out loud. “Here you are half nude and going down on a guy in a
mine shaft,
and you call
me
a pervert. That’s the best joke I’ve heard all week. Don’t worry about it, Joanne. I’ve seen your tits before. Everyone has.”

Joanne held her arms tighter to her chest, radiating anger and embarrassment. Stokes said, “Why don’t you lay off, jack? We weren’t hurting no one.”

“You’re trespassing, which is against the law, for your information, and I know damn well you cut that chain. And did it ever enter that cement-filled head of yours that coming in here could get you killed? This place was due for a cave-in about fifty years ago… Get out of here, both of you. Find someplace else to make whoopee. I’ve got more important things to do than waste time arresting you two airheads.”

Stokes leered in the brittle light. “You’re just a fuckin’ pig, that’s all you are.”

“Yeah, and let this pig give you some sound advice. The next time I catch you in here, you’ll be in the county jail faster than you can say sodomy”—he turned to the girl—“and that goes for you too, Miss Nude America. See what kind of tips you get doing your striptease in the dyke tank.”

“You can’t talk to me like that!” she shrieked at him. “Lenny, he can’t talk to me like that!”

“Don’t worry, babe,” Stokes said, and turned to leave. “He’ll get his. Come on.”

“Oh, Lenny?” Kurt said. “I haven’t seen your wife lately. Did you beat her into a coma again, or did she finally walk out on you?”

“Vicky knows better than to walk out on me. But then that’s none of your goddamned business, is it?”

“Sure it is, Stokes. And get this—the next time I hear of you beating up on that girl, I’ll personally shove this flashlight so far up your ass you’ll be able to flick the switch with your tongue.”

“We’ll see about that, pig. Oink, oink.”

In the narrow light, Kurt watched Stokes and the girl stumble away toward the mine opening until he could no longer see them.

He remained in the manway for some time, standing detached and odd. He thought about Stokes and Joanne Sulley, tasting the acrid secret guilt of being pleased that Stokes was still openly cheating on his wife. How much longer could Vicky last with him? She must know of his adultery. That aside, Kurt’s behavior had been inexcusable. Police officers were to treat all people with professional objectivity, but by now he would not even bother lying to himself, or trying to rationalize his unacceptable conduct. When it came to Lenny Stokes, Kurt was simply not a respectable police officer. He knew this now; he’d known it for years. Stokes was more than just a typical town rowdy; it was a personal thing. Kurt
hated
Lenny Stokes. Hated his guts.

More thoughts then, ugly, hurting thoughts of Vicky Stokes, and the things Lenny did to her, and must do to her, the beatings, the puffed eyes, bruises turning sallow-black, and the time at the Anvil when Stokes had hit her so hard that blood came out of her ear. It all made him sick, sick at the moving parts of this world, sick at himself. Too many times the daydream spilled round his brain like some rancid, luminous liquid, the vision of his own revolver pressed hard against Stokes’s temple. The hammer dropping…

He closed his eyes, shook his head till the craze of edging thoughts and scenes had spun away. He continued to stand there, inexplicably, in this absurd mine. Darkness smoked over him from the right, the left, and behind. It chilled a hollow, lonely place in his heart, the silence thickening. He turned the flashlight on and off several times in rapid succession, eyes acclimating indecisively from the
strobic
exposures of white to black, white to black, and he dared himself, in the childish way, to leave the flashlight off and just stand there, but didn’t for the equally childish fear that something black, half seen, and hideous would reach out, snatch the light away, and crackle laughter.

Still more thoughts came, weird, disconnected, impossible thoughts.

The flash back on, he pointed its piercing beam ahead into the mine. From somewhere beyond, water dripped ticking clocklike; dust floated finely across the light. The shaft passage descended deeper and deeper, an endless bore into the earth. Abruptly he turned and began to walk out, the walk becoming a trot, and by the time he’d made it back outside, he actually had been running, because during that last second before breaking away, a final thought had come—the macabre notion that something within the depths of the shaft had been watching him the whole time.

— | — | —

CHAPTER TWO

The corpse lay at her feet.

Vicky Stokes was leaning forward on the couch, knees touching, her head in her hands. She had been crying for an hour.

It was only a dog, a pet, yet in secret she confessed that this current sense of loss affected her harder than any she had known. She remembered the grief she’d felt, several years back, when learning that her parents’ house had burned down with them in it—nothing compared to this. They’d never cared about her, they’d thrown her out of the house at eighteen; still they were her parents, but she mourned the loss of her dog more.

You know you’re a loser when the only friend you have left is a dog.

And she was beginning to realize now that that’s what she was—a loser, who waitressed at a carnal, seedy tavern in a nowhere town with a degenerate tyrant for a husband.

She’d been married to Stokes for a year and a half. The biggest mistake of her life, but she couldn’t blame herself completely because she’d learned of Lenny’s true character only after they’d been married. It was a hard consolation to swallow, though, and she would always hate a small part of herself for ever having gotten involved with him. It might be different if he loved her, as she’d once thought, but Lenny Stokes was not capable of anything close to love. Vicky had learned this the hard way, the painful way. As far as Lenny was concerned, a wife was a commodity, someone to cook his food, clean his house, and earn money. All Lenny had was this house his father had left him; he didn’t have a real job, though he did make a lot of money selling pot and PCP to all the hippie kids in Bowie, and burglarizing homes in Crofton and some of the other wealthier area communities. The weekly check Vicky brought home from the Anvil was used for groceries and bills.

So this was her lot, the rewards of wedlock—to cook, to clean, and to work forty hours a week.

And one other thing, too. The worst part of all. The sex.

She knew Lenny had been cheating on her since their first week as husband and wife, but there was nothing she could do about it, and by now their relationship had corroded to the point that she no longer cared. She was grateful for Lenny’s extramarital affairs. It was that much easier on her when Lenny came home spent; otherwise, he would vent his sexual quirks on Vicky that much more. To Lenny, the ultimate sexual experience had to revolve around pain; that was the turn-on for him, the pain, the hurting, the force. She could get sick just thinking about some of the thing’s he’d done to her. And Lenny did not limit his brutality to the bedroom. Sometimes he would slap her around for no reason at all. Other times it was more than just slapping around—it was beating. She could more easily measure the last eighteen months in bruises and the metal taste of blood in her mouth. Twice he had sent her to the hospital with concussions. She remembered the time last summer when Lenny and his friends had barreled into the Anvil, drunker than usual, and stoned. It had been a Wednesday night, amateur night. Lenny had ordered her to get up on the stage and remove her shirt. “My buddies all
wanna
see your tits,” he’d said. “I told them what a fine set you had. So get up there, girl. Off with it. Let’s see ’
em
.” Of course, Vicky had refused, and not in the lexicon of kings. Being a waitress at the Anvil was humiliating enough; one thing she would never do was exhibit her body like the dancers. Lenny had beaten the daylights out of her in the parking lot later. “Don’t you
evah
make a fool of me in front of my friends, girl!” he’d raged, popping her in the head and abdomen with his hard,
knuckly
fist. “Don’t you
evah
! When I tell you to do
somethin
’, you do it!” He’d left her lying broken on the gravel, bruised ribs, a few loose teeth. Kurt Morris had driven her to South County General, where she’d had to have X-rays, an EEG, and a spinal tap. She could still hear that mammoth silver needle slipping between two vertebrae. Kurt had pleaded with her, begged her to press charges, but she didn’t dare. Instead she’d told the doctors that she’d stumbled and hit her head.

She couldn’t divorce Lenny, not now. She was convinced of the logic of her reasons.

The house was very quiet now. All she could hear was the steady tick of the glass and gold carriage clock on the mantelpiece.
Nine o’clock and all’s well. At least until my dearest hubby gets home.
Just then it dawned on her that she was sitting in the dark. Night had bloomed fully without her ever realizing it. It was nice like that, dark and quiet and nice, and she hoped to God that Lenny didn’t come home all boned up and drunk, and destroy it all for her.

Just as the tears were beginning to dry, she inched her foot forward and touched something furry with her toe.

Brutus. Oh, Brutus, why can’t you just be sleeping?

She stood up, stepped over the dead animal, and felt her way across the room to the kitchen. She flinched at the sudden, disrupting whiteness when she opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of soda. She went back to the couch and sat staring. The still carcass on the floor reminded her that she’d soon have to take care of things. She supposed there was some county office she could call, but she couldn’t bear the thought. They would probably incinerate the collie and use him for bone meal or something. No, she would tend to it herself.

Her whole body jerked when the kitchen door to the garage opened. The lights flicked on, an intruding block of glare. Lenny set his big Eveready spotlight down on the counter, and didn’t even notice Vicky sitting there until he was three steps into the living room. He stopped, squinting, and said, “How come you ain’t at work?”

“It’s my day off.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s right, I forgot.” He fixed his eyes on her and threw his head back to get the hair off his brow. “You got something going with Morris?”