Guilty Pleasures

5

The coffin lay on its side. A white scar of claw marks ran down the dark varnish. The pale blue lining, imitation silk, was sliced and gouged. One bloody handprint showed plainly; it could almost have been human. All that was left of the older corpse was a shredded brown suit, a finger bone gnawed clean and a scrap of scalp. The man had been blond.

A second body lay perhaps five feet away. The man's clothes were shredded. His chest had been ripped open, ribs cracked like eggshells. Most of his internal organs were gone, leaving his body cavity like a hollowed-out log. Only his face was untouched. Pale eyes stared impossibly wide up into the summer stars.

I was glad it was dark. My night vision is good, but darkness steals color. All the blood was black. The man's body was lost in the shadows of the trees. I didn't have to see him, unless I walked up to him. I had done that. I had measured the bite marks with my trusty tape measure. With my little plastic gloves I had searched the corpse over, looking for clues. There weren't any.

I could do anything I wanted to the scene of the crime. It had already been videotaped and snapped from every possible angle. I was always the last “expert” called in. The ambulance was waiting to take the bodies away, once I was finished.

I was about finished. I knew what had killed the man. Ghouls. I had narrowed the search down to a particular kind of undead. Bully for me. The coroner could have told them that.

I was beginning to sweat inside the coverall I had put on to protect my clothes. The coverall was originally for vampire stakings, but I had started using it at crime scenes. There were black stains at the knees and down the legs. There had been so much blood in the grass. Thank you, dear God, that I didn't have to see this in broad daylight.

I don't know why seeing something like this in daylight makes it worse, but I'm more likely to dream about a daylight scene. The blood is always so red and brown and thick.

Night softens it, makes it less real. I appreciated that.

I unzipped the front of my coverall, letting it gape open around my clothes. The wind blew against me, amazingly cool. The air smelled of rain. Another thunderstorm was moving this way.

The yellow police tape was wrapped around tree trunks, strung through bushes. One yellow loop went around the stone feet of an angel. The tape flapped and cracked in the growing wind. Sergeant Rudolf Storr lifted the tape and walked towards me.

He was six-eight and built like a wrestler. He had a brisk, striding walk. His close-cropped black hair left his ears bare. Dolph was the head of the newest task force, the spook squad. Officially, it was the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, R-P-I-T, pronounced rip it. It handled all supernatural-related crime. It wasn't exactly a step up for his career. Willie McCoy had been right; the task force was a half-hearted effort to placate the press and the liberals.

Dolph had pissed somebody off, or he wouldn't have been here. But Dolph, being Dolph, was determined to do the best job he could. He was like a force of nature. He didn't yell, he was just there, and things got done because of it.

“Well,” he said.

That's Dolph, a man of many words. “It was a ghoul attack.”

“And.”

I shrugged. “And there are no ghouls in this cemetery.”

He stared down at me, face carefully neutral. He was good at that, didn't like to influence his people. “You just said it was a ghoul attack.”

“Yes, but they came from somewhere outside the cemetery.”

“So?”

“I have never known of any ghouls to travel this far outside their own cemetery.” I stared at him, trying to see if he understood what I was saying.

“Tell me about ghouls, Anita.” He had his trusty little notebook out, pen poised and ready.

“This cemetery is still holy ground. Cemeteries that have ghoul infestations are usually very old or have satanic or certain voodoo rites performed in them. The evil sort of uses up the blessing, until the ground becomes unholy. Once that happens, ghouls either move in or rise from the graves. No one's sure exactly which.”

“Wait, what do you mean, that no one knows?”

“Basically.”

He shook his head, staring at the notes he'd made, frowning. “Explain.”

“Vampires are made by other vampires. Zombies are raised from the grave by an animator or voodoo priest. Ghouls, as far as we know, just crawl out of their graves on their own. There are theories that very evil people become ghouls. I don't buy that. There was a theory for a while that people bitten by a supernatural being, wereanimal, vampire, whatever, would become a ghoul. But I've seen whole cemeteries emptied, every corpse a ghoul. No way they were all attacked by supernatural forces while alive.”

“All right, we don't know where ghouls come from. What do we know?”

“Ghouls don't rot like zombies. They retain their form more like vampires. They are more than animal intelligent, but not by much. They are cowards and won't attack a person unless she is hurt or unconscious.”

“They sure as hell attacked the groundskeeper.”

“He could have been knocked unconscious somehow.”

“How?”

“Someone would have had to knock him out.”

“Is that likely?”

“No, ghouls don't work with humans, or any other undead. A zombie will obey orders, vampires have their own thoughts. Ghouls are like pack animals, wolves maybe, but a lot more dangerous. They wouldn't be able to understand working with someone. If you're not a ghoul, you're either meat or something to hide from.”

“Then what happened here?”

“Dolph, these ghouls traveled quite a distance to reach this cemetery. There isn't another one for miles. Ghouls don't travel like that. So maybe, just maybe, they attacked the caretaker when he came to scare them off. They should have run from him; maybe they didn't.”

“Could it be something, or someone, pretending to be ghouls?”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. Whoever it was, they ate that man. A human might do that, but a human couldn't tear the body apart like that. They just don't have the strength.”

“Vampire?”

“Vampires don't eat meat.”

“Zombies?”

“Maybe. There are rare cases where zombies go a little crazy and start attacking people. They seem to crave flesh. If they don't get it, they'll start to decay.”

“I thought zombies always decayed.”

“Flesh-eating zombies last a lot longer than normal. There's one case of a woman who is still human-looking after three years.”

“They let her go around eating people?”

I smiled. “They feed her raw meat. I believe the article said lamb was preferred.”

“Article?”

“Every career has its professional journal, Dolph.”

“What's it called?”

I shrugged. “The Animator, what else?”

He actually smiled. “Okay. How likely is it that it's zombies?”

“Not very. Zombies don't run in packs unless they're ordered to.”

“Even” — he checked his notes— “flesh-eating zombies?”

“There have only been three documented cases. All of them were solitary hunters.”

“So, flesh-eating zombies, or a new kind of ghoul. That sum it up?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay, thanks. Sorry to interrupt your night off.” He closed his notebook and looked at me. He was almost grinning. “The secretary said you were at a bachelorette party.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Hoochie coochie.”

“Don't give me a hard time; Dolph.”

“Wouldn't dream of it.”

“Riiight,” I said. “If you don't need me anymore, I'll be getting back.”

“We're finished, for now. Call me if you think of anything else.”

“Will do.” I walked back to my car. The bloody plastic gloves were shoved into a garbage sack in the trunk. I debated on the coveralls and finally folded them on top of the garbage sack. I might be able to wear them one more time.

Dolph called out, “You be careful tonight, Anita. Wouldn't want you picking up anything.”

I glared back at him. The rest of the men waved at me and called in unison, “We loove you.”

“Gimme a break.”

One called, “If I'd known you liked to see naked men, we could have worked something out.”

“The stuff you got, Zerbrowski, I don't want to see.”

Laughter, and someone grabbed him around the neck. “She got you, man … Give it up, she gets you every time.”

I got into my car to the sound of masculine laughter, and one offer to be my “luv” slave. It was probably Zerbrowski.