Ghouls by Edward Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

”—weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.” “No tire tracks, though, Frank, so without a vehicle, how—” ”—the hell do you expect out here in the goddamned boonies?” The car doors slammed in a barrage, engines started, and the four cruisers pulled off the shoulder one at a time and drove away.
    Kurt didn’t bother trying to figure it out; he couldn’t even imagine. Chief Bard and Mark Higgins turned their heads quickly when Kurt’s own car door slammed. Their faces seemed pinched together, like calculative rodents, yet their eyes were wide and dull. Was it just fatigue? Or shock? Kurt had never seen the two men look so strange.
    “So this is where you meet the county to pay them off,” Kurt said.
    Bard didn’t laugh. Instead he hitched his belt up over a belly that made Kurt think unhesitatingly of beach balls. Sweat glistened on the chief’s balding head; his mustache twitched. “What do you know about Cody Drucker?” he spat out to Kurt.
    “Not much besides the common fact that he was a cantankerous old prick.”
    “You know anyone who didn’t like him?”
    “Yeah, about half the town. What happened? Did someone take a dump on his stone?”
    Bard looked abruptly back to Higgins. “But how the fucking damn… Where the fuck would they—”
    “Hey, Chief,” Kurt interrupted. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or am I supposed to guess?”
    “Show him,” Bard said.
    Higgins led Kurt through the cemetery gate. There was no path, just a foot-trodden trail showing exposed roots. From grave vases rotting flowers drooped forward like heads before the blade.
    Unease itched up Kurt’s back. What was wrong with Higgins? It was more than just the place. Higgins was thought of by most as simply the coolest guy in the world, easygoing, laid-back, quick to joke even on the worst days. He was the kind of guy who’d turn the dullest shifts into a breeze, just by being himself, just by being Higgins. He carried an aura of good humor and high spirits anywhere he went, and never a trace of the trade nihilism that eventually got to most cops. Today, though—now—he seemed as pallid as the air, robbed of his attractive vitality by some worldly grimness, his spirit crushed. He walked ahead like a man betrayed—by insight or self-concept, by faith in his fellow man? It scarcely mattered. He merely led on, saying nothing.
    And for the first time then, Kurt felt afraid.
    The cemetery lay back, sinking slightly: an odd divide amongst trees which stood deformed and immense. Nets of pale, sickly weeds grew riotous up through the rungs of the surrounding rusted fence. Gray, dead light shifted overhead through laden branches and boughs. Many of the tombstones stood tilted; some had fallen flat. Farther back a number of the inscriptions were too old to be read.
    “Hey, Mark. What gives?”
    “I wish I knew,” Higgins said. “Or at least I think I do. Sometimes…sometimes you just don’t want to know. It makes you wonder about people. It makes you stop and think. Know what I mean?”
    “I’m not quite reading you.”
    Higgins looked straight ahead as he guided on, his trimmed mustache a morose line. “All I can say is someone in this town has a lame sense of humor.”
    Underfoot, the ground between the graves crackled and sank; Kurt wondered how many faces he was walking on. Beyond, the interior woods grayed further, to the point of appearing unreal.
    Then Higgins stopped. He pointed to the plot. Kurt didn’t need an explanation.
    The new granite stone reflected like a mirror, spelling DRUCKER in fine, crisp chiselwork . Before it stretched an oblong hole. Loose soil and clumps of sod lay scattered in a wide curve.
    Kurt stared into the open grave. The liner was wrenched off, its top cracked, and the coffin, planted there only yesterday, was gone. It had been unearthed and carried away.
     
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CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    “Go on,” Glen said. “You’re shitting me.”
    “No