Ghoul (10 page)

Timmy shrugged. “Sure. He was certainly acting like we had. Guess I didn't think about that when I came up with this plan.”

He'd heard the expression, “Things can change on a dime” before. His grandfather had said it all the time, but until today, Timmy had never really understood it.

“Well,” Doug said, "we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves. Remember all those times he chased us? Remember in school, when we were studying mythology? That dog that guards the afterlife? Cerebus? He was a monster, and so was Catcher."

A monster, Timmy thought. Was he really?

He tossed another stone into the water and watched the ripples spread. The concentric rings lapped against the creek bank.

Is Catcher the real monster, or are we?

“Shit.” Barry stopped suddenly in the middle of the trail and threw his hands up in despair.

They'd been following a winding deer path through the middle of Bowman's Woods, taking the long way back home so nobody would see them. Timmy and Doug halted and turned. Barry was frantic, his expression one of sick fear.

“What's wrong?” Timmy asked.

“My watch...”

“You break it?”

“No. I think I lost it.”

Timmy felt a surge of panic. “Back at Sawyer's place? Oh man, if they find it ...”

“I know.” Barry finished his thought. "Then we're screwed. My name's engraved on the bottom. Mom got it for me for my birthday last year. God damn it, I don't believe this."

“We've got to go back and get it,” Timmy said. “We can't just leave it lying there.”

“Are you crazy?” Doug swatted a mosquito. “We can't go back there. Mr. Sawyer probably already called the cops.”

“Well, I can't go home without it,” Barry said. He sounded terrified. “My old man will have a cow if he finds out I lost that watch.”

“You took it off while we were working,” Doug told him.

“Are you sure?” Barry asked, sounding hopeful.

Doug shrugged. “Pretty sure. Kind of. Well, maybe ...”

Timmy thought for a moment. “You know, now that he mentioned it, I don't remember seeing it on your wrist after that. Did you take it off in the graveyard?”

“I don't know. I can't remember. Sometimes I do, because my arms get sweaty and the band slips off. So, maybe.”

“Well, if you did take it off, where would you have left it?”

Barry sounded very close to tears. “On one of the tombstones, or maybe inside the shed.”

Timmy turned to Doug. “How's your ankle?”

“It feels better. Burns a little, but I'm okay.”

“Good.” Timmy was surprised. The fact that Doug hadn't taken the opportunity to complain about his injury and make it out to be worse than it really was meant that he understood the gravity of the situation. "Okay, Barry, don't worry. We'll help you look for it. It's got to be around there somewhere."

“I hope so. Otherwise ...”

He trailed off, but they heard the fear in his voice.

Timmy thought again of Barry's outburst during their attack on Catcher. Despite the fact that Barry had a scar on his calf from when the dog had latched onto him almost two years ago, what had happened today hadn't been Barry's fault. It had been his father's. Barry's body had plenty of scars and bruises, and only one of them was from the dog. Sometimes in the afternoon, Timmy's mother watched talk shows (more often now that they 'd just installed the new cable television with nineteen channels); on the talk shows, they talked about abused kids and how they lashed out at others as a result. It was their way of dealing with it, of feeling powerful instead of helpless. Sometimes, they turned into school bullies. Other times, serial killers. Barry wasn 't either of those, but his actions that afternoon had definitely been a warning sign. They'd never discussed it, but Timmy and Doug both knew what Clark Smeltzer did behind closed doors. And what they didn't know, they could guess.

And Doug's mom--something was up with her, too. Timmy wasn't sure what, but he had his suspicions, and they turned his stomach. Certainly, it was more than just ignoring her son. Indeed, he was pretty sure that when she was drunk, Carol Keiser paid too much attention to her son, the kind only hinted at in the stack of Penthouse Forum's that lay hidden inside the Dugout. There was a word for it, and that word was incest. He'd seen that on the talk shows as well.

Monsters? They weren't monsters. And Catcher wasn't a monster, either. For all they knew, Mr. Sawyer beat the dog. Trained him to be mean, to attack. It wasn't like the dog's behavior was anything new. He'd been chasing them, chasing anyone who passed by the lane, for years, and Mr. Sawyer had been told about it repeatedly. He'd done nothing, refusing to tie the dog up or install a pen or fence. Was that Catcher's fault? No, Catcher wasn't a monster. Neither were they.

Adults were the real monsters. Maybe not his own parents, and maybe not Reverend Moore or some of the others, but still, there were a lot of them around. He saw them every time he watched the news (unlike most twelve-year-olds, Timmy 's mother had instilled in him an appreciation and interest in current events, and encouraged him to watch the evening news and read her weekly copies of Time magazine, which he did.) He saw them, too, in his comic books and Hardy Boys mysteries.

Saw them when he looked into his two best friend's haunted eyes.

“We better get going,” Doug said. “It's getting late.”

They continued along the narrow, winding trail, ducking under tree limbs and pushing past thorns and vines until they reached the edge of Bowman's Woods. Then they crossed Anson Road and made their way through the lower portion of the cemetery. Barry's father was nowhere in sight, but there were signs he'd been there. The gravestones had been returned to their upright positions and fresh earth had filled in the holes. A careless cigarette butt, one of Clark Smeltzer 's brand, lay nearby.

“Looks like my old man's done for the day,” Barry observed. “Hope he's not in the shed.”

Silently, Timmy and Doug both wished for the same thing.

The boys crossed the cemetery and cautiously approached the dilapidated yellow utility shed. It was deserted; there was no sign of Clark Smeltzer. The doors were shut, and Barry's father had the key to the padlock, so they went around to the back. There, half hidden by a pile of red clay leftover from the new graves (the same dirt Clark Smeltzer had used earlier to shore up the sinking tombstones) was a boarded up window.

Unbeknownst to Barry's father, two of the boards were loose, and had been further loosened by the three boys with the help of a claw hammer and crowbar.

In the woods beyond the shed, a twig snapped. Their heads swiveled toward the sound.

“Just a squirrel,” Timmy guessed.

Turning back to the window, Barry pulled the boards away. The rusty nails screeched as they parted the wood. He pulled himself through and crawled inside. Timmy followed right behind him. Then they pulled Doug, who couldn 't squeeze into the narrow space by himself, through the window as well. With a great effort, he clambered inside, gasping for breath and complaining about his injured foot. His friends disregarded it. Had his foot not been injured, Doug would have complained about his nonexistent asthma, or his back, or anything else that could be aggravated by the physical act of climbing.

There were no lights inside the shed, and the only illumination came from the paltry light filtering through the missing boards, cracks in the wall, and a second dirty window. The tin roof sagged in places, and water leaked down onto the rotten timbers when it rained. Clark Smeltzer had twice petitioned the church board for a new, sturdier, prefabricated shed, but they'd told him the funds weren't currently available. He'd grumbled about how maybe the congregation should start chipping in more when Sunday 's offering plates were passed around. Sure, it was God's money, but the church was God's house, and God's house needed a new shed. They'd smiled politely and moved on to other business.

The floor was hard-packed dirt, pocked here and there with groundhog and rat holes.

In the center of the floor lay a pile of lumber, mostly plywood and two-by-fours, and several lengths of rusted pipe. The shed was crammed full of equipment: the small backhoe, riding mower, wagon, two push mowers (one relatively new and the other one in even worse shape than the shed), a grass catcher, winch, various shovels, rakes, pickaxes, hoes, and some canvas tarps. Several dozen stone markers were stacked in the corner, and the other corners held plastic flowers and wreaths, cheap plastic vases, and little flags for Veteran's and Memorial Days.

A few sparse clumps of mold clung to some of the walls and scrap wood. Because of the dirt floor, it always smelled damp and musty inside the shed, but as they stood there, letting their eyes adjust to the gloom, Timmy smelled something different --the same stench he'd noticed earlier, coming from the hole Doug had slipped into.

“Whew.” Doug fanned his nose. “Which one of you farted?”

“You smell that, too?” Barry asked. “I thought maybe a possum had crawled up your ass and died.”

“Eat me.”

“Something did die in here, though.” Barry crept forward. “Smells horrible. Must be a rat or a groundhog or something. Probably lying underneath this wood.”

He stepped onto a piece of plywood that was covering the dirt floor and the board sagged under his weight. Barry jumped backward, clearly startled.

“What's wrong?” Timmy asked.

“The floor--it ain't there!”

Doug frowned. “Say what?”

Barry bent over and grabbed the edge of the plywood sheet. “Give me a hand with this.”

Physically stronger than either of them, Barry clearly didn't need their help. Timmy thought that perhaps the real reason was that he was scared. And that scared Timmy.

He gave his friend a hand while Doug hung back and watched.

“Watch out for snakes,” he cautioned.

Ignoring him, they slowly lifted the plywood, and then heaved it forward, sending it crashing onto the rest of the woodpile.

All three boys gasped at what was revealed.

There was a hole underneath, tunneling right through the center of the utility shed's floor. Judging from the way the soil was scattered, it looked as if it had been dug from beneath the ground, as if something had burrowed upward. But this was no mole or other rodent. The hole was far too big for that, much bigger than even the hole Doug's leg had slipped into earlier. The opening was large enough for a full-grown man to easily fall inside. The stench wafted up from the chasm.

“What the heck?” Timmy asked. “Did your dad do this?”

Barry shook his head, perplexed. “No way. My old man would be pissed as shit if he saw this. I don't know what this is.”

“It stinks,” Doug croaked, pinching his nose. “That's where the smell is coming from, all right. Just like that other hole earlier, out there in the graveyard.”

Timmy's eyes sparkled. "It's the caves you were talking about. Has to be! Another sinkhole opened up right here, and you and your dad didn't know about it because it was underneath the woodpile."

Barry looked doubtful. “You think?”

"Sure I do. No animal dug this, and like you said, your dad wouldn't have, either.

It's got to be a cave entrance."

“But they're made out of rock, not dirt.”

“Not always,” Timmy disagreed, even though he wasn't sure himself. He wasn't about to let science get in the way of what could be their coolest summer adventure ever. "We've got to explore it, guys. Claim it before anyone else finds out. We could be on TV, man!"

He searched the floor, found an old rusty nail, tossed it down into the hole, and listened.

“We can't explore it now,” Doug reminded him. “It's almost dinnertime. You know what your mom said.”

“Yeah,” Barry added, “and we still haven't found my watch.”

In his excitement, Timmy had forgotten about both. Disappointed, he reluctantly conceded that they were right.

“We'll come back tonight,” he said. "Sneak out after our folks are asleep. Doug, you're staying for dinner, anyway. Might as well spend the night. We'll wait till like one o'clock, and then meet up here. We'll have to remember to get the flashlights and lantern from the Dugout, and maybe the map, too."

“What do we need the map for?” Doug asked.

“So we can outline this tunnel on the back of it. If we've got the surface mapped out, we ought to do the same for below.”

“Then we'll need some clothespins, too.”

Timmy frowned. “For what?”

“To cover our noses with,” Doug replied. “I'm not breathing in whatever that is if we go down there.”

Chuckling, Timmy turned to Barry. “You gonna be able to get out tonight?”

“Yeah, I guess. If I don't get killed for losing my watch first.”

“Well, then let's find it before your father finds us.”

They covered the tunnel entrance back up, making sure the plywood concealed the entire opening, and then searched the rest of the shed for the missing watch. Doug's suspicions proved to be correct. They found the silver watch hanging from the riding mower's gearshift. Sighing with relief, Barry fastened it around his wrist.

“All's well that ends well.” He grinned.

“Sure is,” Doug agreed.

They noticed that Timmy hadn't responded, and when they turned, they found him staring down at the plywood.

Barry groaned. “Come on, man. Let it go for now. We'll see it tonight. And since you're so eager, you can go first.”

Timmy looked up at them, smiling. “Sounds like a plan.”

In truth, he'd have had it no other way. He was eager to be the first one to step inside the subterranean chamber.

“I still don't think it's a sinkhole,” Doug said. “It looks dug, not sunken. And that smell--God!”

They crawled back out the window and fastened the boards back into place, tapping the rusty nails into the rotten wood with a rock. Over the sounds of pounding, they didn't notice when another twig snapped in the nearby tree line.

“Okay,” Timmy said, “so we meet at the Dugout after our parents are asleep, and then we'll explore the underground. Lets say one o'clock in the morning.”

Doug and Barry agreed. Then they went their separate ways, Barry to his house and Timmy and Doug to the Graco home.

On the way back, Timmy wondered what they'd find inside the tunnel, deep below the earth.

After the boys had departed, a slender figure emerged from the shadows of the trees behind the shed. It had been watching them the entire time. Now that they were gone, it crept forward and investigated the loose boards around the window. Then it crawled inside the shed.

Rustling sounds drifted out of the building--wood sliding across wood. Then came a gasp of surprise.

Minutes later, the figure re-emerged into the sunlight. Blinking, it let its eyes adjust again. Then it ran across the cemetery as fast as it could. Its expression was one of satisfied determination.