Ghouls by Edward Lee Read Free Book Online

wrong crowd, the hard-knocking, hard-drinking T- ville crowd. Stokes’s crowd. A year and a half ago she’d become Stokes’s wife, and Kurt was lost to all the things he’d never said.
    His eyes were bright and as she came back from the kitchen with two bottles of beer, he could’ve melted. She was the sweetest, cutest, prettiest girl he’d ever known. That was the word. Not sultry, and not beautiful, but pretty. Even dressed as she was now, in old jeans and a dingy white blouse, he could feel that prettiness she projected to him so completely. She was slender and compact. Trim, long legs. Sleek curves of her hips and waist subtle yet striking. Satin blond hair shined clean and mysteriously, perfectly female. When she looked at him with her big, luminous gray eyes, he felt helpless.
    “I know it’s a little early for alcohol, but what’s the harm? Besides, it’s all I’ve got at the moment.”
    He wondered at the marvel of her breasts, her body, and her soul, the feminine mystery spanning further, touching him like a ray of sun.
    “Hey, Morris, remember me?” She waved her hand across his eyes, smile turning crooked. “Or have I lost you to the twilight zone?”
    “Huh?”
    “You look spaced.”
    “Oh, yeah. I was just thinking.”
    Now the smile grew blatant. She handed him the beer, then sat down and reached for her cigarettes without taking her eyes off him. “Thinking about what?”
    About how much I love you and what I wouldn’t do for you and all that and, Jesus Christ, Vicky, why did you have to ruin everything by marrying that grimy, ass-faced son of a bitch? “Just things. Like the time when we were real little and we went on a field trip to Hershey Park. Remember that? I made you get on the roller coaster with me and you screamed and held onto me for dear life, and then threw up all over the both of us.”
    “Me!” she nearly shouted. “What a liar! You’re the one who screamed and cried and upchucked!”
    Kurt sat back in the cushions and laughed. “I know. I just wanted to see if you remembered.”
    “How could I forget that? It’s the only time in my life I’ve had to wear somebody’s breakfast. And, remember? Glen was laughing so much you punched him in the nose.”
    “Well, I didn’t see anything funny about it,” he said, the recollection sharpening. “Speaking of Glen, I just saw him a few minutes ago. Want to hear something strange? He was with a girl, and he didn’t want to tell me who she was.”
    “Now that is strange. I don’t think I’ve seen him with a girl more than two or three times in my whole life.”
    “Yeah, Glen never was much of a ladies’ man. I’m beginning to wonder how much he had to pay her.”
    “I don’t think he’s that hard up, a little weird maybe, but that’s all. I’m sure the right girl will come along for him one day. Glen’s all right, I just think that maybe all that night work has bent him a bit. Sometimes he comes into the Anvil for a beer looking like the walking dead. A normal job with normal hours would work wonders for him.”
    “That’s what I keep telling him,” Kurt said. He guzzled down a third of his beer, belly shriveling. Nothing like a cold tall one first thing in the morning. “Chief Bard offered him the morning shift on the police department a couple of times. Told me he just didn’t want to be a cop. I guess that Willard guy pays him well.”
    “Who?”
    “Charles Willard, the guy who owns Belleau Wood. Glen tells me he’s really touchy about trespassers on his land. Why I don’t know. There’s nothing out there but woods and hills and a couple of wasted mines. Must be pretty boring for Glen to drive around there all night long.”
    “Pretty spooky, too.”
    They both lit cigarettes, partners in habituation. Kurt swigged more of his beer, ashamed to be drinking this early. Next I’ll be carrying a flask, he thought. Vicky’s eyes seemed to lose some of their shine. “To get on to more interesting