Ghouls

CHAPTER EIGHT

“I don’t know, Chad. I mean, I appreciate the offer and everything…”

“But it’s pourin’ down rain,” the bartender insisted, reeking. “You can’t walk home in this, you’ll catch yer death of cold.”

Vicky felt cornered. He was right, but she’d rather take her chances. “All right, Chad,” she said. “You can drive me home. I’ll finish spotting the floor, and you finish the stock. Then we’ll go.”

Delight lit the bartender’s swollen, shiny face. She could see that he’d stuffed his pants with something. My God, she thought. Where do we get them from? His clothes smelled of sweat and old beer.

Vicky hurried for the mop room, appalled by the bartender’s obscene, black grin. The lies came off her tongue these days too easily; it depressed her, but she had no choice. She found she was soothed by the sharp pine scents of the mop room.

Most of the Anvil lay dark now; the last customer had stumbled out an hour before. Outside, the storm raged. Steady drumming sheets of rain pounded the roof and leaked in through window cracks like a discarnate entity trying to get in.

Vicky peered around, waiting for the optimum moment; the hulk shape of the bartender disappeared into the stock room. Quickly she snapped herself into a bright yellow raincoat and pulled up the hood. April showers, she thought. Shit. The storm wailed. She sneaked out the side door and ran.

The rain seemed to sense her presence; it fell on her in focused blasts, as if to beat her into the parking lot. Seconds later there was no reason to run—she was drenched to the skin, but she ran anyway. Rain blew through the oval of her hood and crept down her chest and across her back. It slithered up her cuffs like worms. She shot home in a senseless dash, and only when she was safely in the house did she realize she’d been running not so much from the rain but from the neurotic image of something unspeakable chasing her along the road.

Inside, a breath lodged in her throat when she flicked on the light switch. Glasses and crushed beer cans littered the floor. Cupboards hung open. A pile of smeared dishes sat insolently in the kitchen sink. It all meant that Lenny was home, for the first time in days. She crossed the kitchen, hoping that maybe he’d gone back out, but the sight of his Chevelle in the garage made her wilt. The roar of the storm rose to a mocking laugh; she felt herself snap. She kicked her shoes off and let them thud against the hamper. She tore off the stiff, dripping coat. She peeled off her waterlogged jeans and sent them flying. It happened this way sometimes, a mental moment out of control, when she was caught off guard by the truth. The truth was she’d gotten on the wrong boat and was sinking in it. Each morning she would look in the mirror and glimpse a vision of hell. She’d be lying to blame Lenny; she could only blame herself. She’d consigned herself to slavery, to a life which was disintegrating rapidly toward the center. Getting mad wouldn’t fix any of it—she’d have to find her own way out.

She closed her eyes, held herself still for a moment until she was calm again.

Lenny must be upstairs, drained into a deep sleep from drugs and sex. She frowned within the wreck of the kitchen; cleaning it up would have to wait till morning. Hunger squeezed her stomach like a shrinking band. She opened the refrigerator but found only a six-pack of beer, two bottles of relish, and some wine.

Moments later she was sitting on the couch. The kitchen was black, and she’d turned off all the lights in the living room but one. Her fingers gripped a glass of wine laxly, as if daring it to spill. She let the wine slide down her throat; the first glass went down smoothly and all at once. The second glass fizzed in her head. She knew it was stupid to pour wine on an empty stomach, but by the third glass she didn’t care.

She would not go up to bed. The couch would do, she decided. Better that than accidentally stirring Lenny awake.

Soon the alcohol was making her glow; she became finely aware of the room’s details. The stench of pot smoke lingered in the air, and in the center of the coffee table rested a small square of glass dusted with low-grade cocaine. A white cotton bra dangled from the corner of the table. This was no surprise; Joanne Sulley had been off tonight, and it figured she’d come here to screw around with Lenny, while Vicky hustled tables at the Anvil. Vicky remembered Joanne’s comments about her dog’s death, and then she thought of what had happened to the animal’s grave. The idea burned her. In her mind she could see the hole in the backyard filling with rain like a sump. Something foolish yet very agreeable suggested that Joanne was behind it, but Vicky couldn’t quite picture Joanne digging up a dead animal just to spite her. Foolish, yes, yet the idea nagged on.

The wine made the room tilt. Darkness seemed to siphon around the single yellow-glowing lamp. The walls began to warp and shadows growing like stains. Suddenly the house was haunted, not by ghosts, but by memories. Past dialogues echoed in her head, fragments of a marriage turned to wreckage.

— “Cunt.” —

— “Don’t call me that.” —

— “I’ll call you what I please, cunt. You seem ta forget who’s boss around here.” —

— “Fuck off.” —

— Slap. —

— “You’re my wife. You’ll do as I say. And when you get too big fer your boots, I’ll knock you out of ’em.” —

Swirling servile images, by the dozen, all legal variations of perversion and rape.

— “No. Don’t touch me.” —

— “Aw, you love it, you juss don’t want ta admit it. My little rube piece of tush. You’re beggin’ fer it, I can tell.” —

— “Damn it! Stop! I’m having my period.”—

— “That’s okay. You don’t bleed out of your mouth.”—

And threats, droves of them. And violence.

— “See what happens when you get smart. Fuckin’ little jerk water girls never learn. Ain’t that right?” —

— “Asshole I’m calling the cops” —

— “Go ahead. And while they’re takin’ me to jail, they’ll be takin’you to the hospital. I’ll be out before you will.” —

— “You could’ve broken my teeth, you prick.” —

— “That’s right, and next time I will. And maybe your arms and legs, too. Well, go on, ain’t you gonna call the cops?” —

— Silence. —

— “Guess you got some brains after all, huh? See, ol’ Lenny boy means business. Can’t be takin’ any more shit off you, girl. That’s juss the way things are around here. And get this in yer head, cunt. Don’t you evah run out on me, ’cos if you do…” —

— “If I do, what?” —

— “If you do… I’ll kill you.” —

Drunk now, she felt afloat in sickness. The wine exhumed memories she didn’t want; she slid the glass away. A headache flared from temple to temple, like a skewer through her brain. Gradually, the light was making her feel watched; she scanned the walls for holes, the window for faces. When the feeling became unbearable, she snapped off the lamp and let the darkness bury her.

She could hear the storm’s furor thrash the house. She sensed hostility in the rain, a destructive purpose. Again she thought of something formless trying to get in.

Wine and bile merged in her stomach, twisting it to a raw knot. She closed her eyes and saw green, throbbing heads, and when she opened them, the heads remained. Never again, she thought. Never another drop. But she’d made the promise before. Suddenly, the room felt airless; she got up and went to the window as if walking a line for a sobriety test. The ache in her head reared. She knelt before the window, and with a pained whine pushed it open. Raindrops sprayed her cheeks; others trickled down her bare legs like insects. Clean fresh wet air poured into the room.

She listened now, very closely, to the sound of the rain—a sharp, unwavering hiss, like loud static. Next, she looked, homed her eyes on the obscure mass that was the backyard. The rain swarmed. She was bewitched by this teeming darkness; she was drunk. She continued to stare, seduced, almost as if she expected to see something.

But then she did see something.

Two vaguely manlike figures were trudging through the yard, mere etches within the blur of rain; they were barely visible. One of the figures seemed to have something slung over its back.

Vicky slammed the window down and crawled back to the couch. The panic lasted just seconds. As her awareness failed, she convinced herself that she hadn’t really seen anything at all. The figures hadn’t been there, they couldn’t have been. They were simply tricks of vision; it was the wine that had made her see them. The wine, she told herself, it’s the wine. Her senses slipped away then, and she passed out.

Outside, the figures lumbered on.

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