Ghoulish

by Kat Bellamy

  Colt staggered back even though the source of his disgust was part of him. The mugger’s body was slumped against the wall, the man’s head lolling to one side in an unnatural position. All Colt’s horror turned back to hunger as he caught sight of the blood still seeping from the wounds his claws had left.

  It made no goddamn sense, but he wanted it. He wanted the blood, the flesh, the corpse more than he’d ever wanted anything. His mouth was watering for it and he moved closer, unable to hold himself back.

  Colt knelt down and his body seemed to be working on instincts that were foreign to him. The hunger took over all reason and revulsion alike, and as he leaned in, the only thing that kept him from giving in to it entirely was the pain. His gums ached like he had a whole other set of teeth all trying to come in at once. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth as sharp, needlelike teeth pierced through his gums and came down over his first set. He scarcely had time to process the ghastly transformation before his body lurched forward of its own accord and those monstrous fangs sank right into the mugger’s neck.

  The blood that flowed into Colt’s mouth was at once bitter and sweet like a fine wine, and he became drunk on it immediately. He wanted to savor it as much as he wanted to stop, but he had the chance to do neither. Instead, he thrashed his head as if some unseen force was controlling him like a marionette and he tore out the dead man’s throat. The flesh slid down his throat, raw and salty, and the part of him that was capable of feeling disgust was fading more with each second that passed. He tore in again and again, snarling as he dug his fangs into flesh, ripping and tearing and swallowing the pieces whole.

  The pain of his hunger dulled, but it wasn’t sated. Not entirely. Colt looked down and realized he’d eaten a good portion of the left side of the man’s neck and his shoulder. He paused, waiting for reason to kick in or to wake him up from the nightmare, but neither happened.

  There were footsteps. Police? Colt turned with a snarl, unable to stop himself even though the idea of hurting some innocent person was enough to return a sliver of consciousness to him. There were three strangers in the alleyway, but none of them looked like cops. There was a man in his mid-forties wearing rimless glasses and a respectable sweater standing next to a woman whose long brown hair was pulled into a tidy bun. She even wore a strand of pearls around her slender neck. A young man who couldn’t have been much older than eighteen was with them, wearing thick glasses and a shirt that was a good two sizes too small for his portly frame. They were all so put together--so normal--that their presence at the grisly scene seemed almost comical.

  Colt meant to laugh at the absurdity of it, but it came out as a growl even fiercer than the last. The clean-cut family didn’t even blink. The man--presumably the father--took a step toward Colt.

  The hunger had subsided enough to allow reason to take over, if only for an instant, and Colt seized on it before it could disappear again. “Don’t,” he snarled. He scarcely recognized his own voice. “Don’t come any closer. Just run!”

  They didn’t. The boy and the woman were watching Colt with their matching Cupid’s bows stretched into worried lines and soft brown eyes full of pity rather than the horror that should have been in them. The father took another step, reaching out his hand.

  Colt snarled and gnashed his teeth instinctively, but the man made no further move.

  “It’s alright,” the stranger said in a fatherly tone. His pulse was slow, steady. Colt could hear all of their heartbeats, including his own. The only erratic rhythm was that of his own heart, but the boy’s was a bit faster than his parents’. None of them smelled like the man Colt had killed. Did the demonic hunger that had taken over him only apply to corpses?

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” said the woman.

  This time, Colt did laugh. It came out stilted and gruff, but it was a laugh. That little woman, hurt him?

  “I think he’s a fledgling, Stan,” she whispered without taking her eyes off of Colt.

  “I think you’re right,” her husband replied calmly. “Son, where’s your family?”

  Colt realized the man was speaking to him, but he couldn’t make sense of the question. “My...family?”

  “Your parents,” Stan explained. “Surely they didn’t just send you out alone on your First Hunt?”

  “Hunt? I don’t…” Colt backed up until he hit the wall and jolted. Their words were all rattling around in his head, confusing him even more than before. A fresh rush of adrenaline seemed to surge through him every few seconds, making it impossible to calm down enough to think. “My parents live in Narragansett.”

  Stan and his wife exchanged a look. Stan asked, “What’s your name, son?”

  “Colt,” he choked out. Somehow, saying his name made it all feel real for the first time. Colt looked back at the partially eaten corpse and his stomach churned. He’d done that. He’d really fucking done that. “Colt Jager.”

  “Jager,” Stan murmured, frowning in concentration, like he was trying to recall the name. “There’s no family in New England that goes by that name, as far as I can remember.” He looked up suddenly, his eyes widening. “How old are you, Colt?”

  He hesitated. “Twenty-five.”

  “I see,” said Stan. “This may sound like an unusual question, but are you by chance adopted?”

  “Yeah. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Oh, boy,” Stan said, letting out a heavy sigh. It was the kind of sigh a mid-level manager might heave when he realized he’d left a stack of papers unfiled five minutes before getting off work, not the sigh of someone who’d just stumbled upon a crime scene with his wife and teenage son. “We’d better get him home, then.”

  “Home? I can’t go home like this.” Panic was beginning to set in. “I have to go to the police. Turn myself in…”

  “You can’t do a thing like that, dear,” the woman said gently. She was next to Colt all of a sudden, even though he hadn’t seen her move. She took his arm and he jolted.

  “You’d be dead before you had the chance to give your statement, for one thing,” the boy said, speaking up for the first time. He seemed a bit warier of Colt than his parents were. Evidently, he was the only one in the family with any common sense.

  “I just killed a man and...and ate him,” Colt said, barely managing to get the last out. The surreality of it all was setting in and he felt even less connected to his body than he had while he was devouring the mugger’s flesh.

  “Of course you did, dear. You’re a ghoul,” the woman said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “A ghoul?”

  “He’s adopted, Susan. I doubt that means anything to him,” said Stan.

  Stan and Susan. Perfectly normal names for the weirdest fucking people Colt had ever met. Their nonchalance was making it impossible for him to mount the full-blown panic he probably should have felt. Susan still had him by the arm and she led him further down the alley with her husband and son following close behind.

  “It’ll be alright, darling,” she coaxed, patting Colt’s hand as she led him toward the exit on the other side of the alleyway. “We’ll explain it all in due time, but I doubt we’re the only ones who heard that gunshot. The police will be here soon, and it’s better if we’re not around when they show up.”

  Colt nodded. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. Susan came to a stop at the curb and opened the door to a midsize SUV that was waiting for them. It was an expensive model with “I love my corgi” and “my child is a RIC honor student” bumper stickers on the back.

  “Hop in,” Susan said in a pleasant tone.

  Colt looked back at Stan, who nodded reassuringly. Colt reluctantly slipped into the passenger’s seat and Susan closed the door before climbing into the back with her son. Stan took the driver’s seat and leaned over to look at Colt. “Better buckle up, son.”

  At first, Colt thought he was joking. The blank if pleasant smile on the man’s face told him otherwise. With trembling hands, h
e managed to get his seatbelt fastened on the fourth try and Stan pulled away.

  Colt had no idea where the strangers were taking him, but it couldn’t be anywhere worse than a prison cell. Whatever fate that awaited him when they reached their destination, he knew he deserved it.

  Chapter 3

  As it turned out, whatever sinister plans the family of friendly psychopaths had in store for Colt lay behind the pristine veneer of their quaint suburban house. Bright flowers lined the stone walkway that led up to the three-story family home, and the smell of freshly baked bread filled Colt’s nostrils as soon as Stan led him inside.

  Colt wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but certainly not the set of an interior design magazine. From the cheery yellow paint to the whimsical collection of glass animals on the fireplace mantel, it was all so normal. In fact, it made the Jones family residence look downright quirky.

  “Welcome to the Brown family mansion,” Stan said with pitch-perfect dad joke delivery as he let the door fall shut. He shrugged out of his jacket and seemed about to take Colt’s when he looked at the bloodstained leather and thought better of it. “Ronnie, maybe you’d better find some clean clothes for Colt to change into. I’m sure he’ll want a shower soon.”

  The boy nodded and seemed relieved for the chance to disappear upstairs. Colt looked around the home, wondering if he’d died in the mugging and ended up in some kind of twisted version of the afterlife. It made as much sense as anything else that had happened to him over the last hour.

  “Let’s see if I can get the blood out of this,” Susan said, gently freeing Colt of his leather jacket. It wasn’t nearly as soaked as the rest of his outfit, but his jeans and shirt were a lost cause. Susan held the jacket up to the hall light and frowned, cocking her head to one side. “Is this machine washable?”

  “Who are you people?” Colt asked, finally gaining the presence of mind to voice the question that had plagued him ever since the alleyway.

  Susan smiled kindly and went to stand beside her husband. “How rude of us,” she said, draping the jacket over her arm like the fact that it was stained with a dead man’s blood didn’t bother her in the least. She raised a manicured finger to her lips and sucked the blood off her fingertip. “My name is Susan Brown and this is my husband, Stan. You’ve already met our son, Ronald.”

  Colt swallowed. “Let me rephrase that. What are you?”

  Susan looked at Stan and the middle-aged man smiled. “We’re the same thing you are, Colt. We’re ghouls.”

  “Ghouls?” Colt echoed in disbelief. “You were serious about that? Like the monsters in fairy tales?”

  “More or less,” Stan said. His smile widened until he was showing teeth. Colt leaned in for a closer look, but they were all perfectly normal. No sign of fangs. He reached to touch his own only to find that the sharp spindles had receded into his gums and his fingers had gone back to their normal color and length.

  “The transformation you experienced back there is temporary,” Stan said, answering the next question Colt was going to ask. “It’s called a shift, and it happens when we get worked up, usually during a hunt.”

  “A hunt?” Colt frowned. “What was that you said back there, about a First Hunt?”

  “It’s a rite of passage for ghouls who reach physical maturity,” Stan explained. “It always happens at the age of twenty-five, when the human brain finishes developing. Ghouls just go through a slightly different kind of maturation.”

  “A second puberty, if you will,” Susan said. “Only instead of acne, you get fangs and claws and your eyes turn black. Plus, the mood swings are a bit more intense,” she added with a wry smile.

  “But I’m not a ghoul,” Colt insisted. “I’m just a guy.”

  “If that were the case, you wouldn’t have eaten the man in that alley,” said Stan. His tone was clinical and without judgment, like he was simply discussing the weather and not the fact that a man was dead and the killer was standing in his living room.

  “He attacked me. He pulled a gun, I—I just snapped,” Colt said, looking down at his bloody hands. “I’ve never...this can’t be happening. This can’t be real.”

  “It’s a lot to take in in one night,” Susan said in a motherly tone, guiding Colt toward the stairs. “You’ll feel better once you get cleaned up and have a nice cup of tea. Go on, bathroom’s the first door on the left.”

  Colt climbed the stairs on autopilot. When he reached the top, he heard rock music blaring from behind a closed door further down the hall. The “KEEP OUT” sign on the door made it clear it was Ronnie’s room. Colt found the bathroom, and sure enough, there was a clean set of clothes waiting for him on the wide vanity sink. He closed the door and unbuttoned his shirt, gasping when he saw the piece of flesh stuck to his lapel. He brushed it off onto the floor and held his breath, grabbing a bunch of toilet paper to pick it up before flushing it.

  The appetite that had been so irresistible in the alleyway had vanished entirely. Now all Colt could do was try not to think about the flesh mingling with his steak dinner in the pit of his stomach. He had a feeling it would be so much worse on the way back up. He washed his hands in the sink until they were almost raw and then turned the shower on as hot as it would go without scalding him.

  Colt still didn’t feel anywhere close to clean once the water was running clear down the drain, but he didn’t want to overstay his welcome in someone else’s bathroom. He dried off and changed into the clothes Ronnie had laid out for him, uncertain of what to do with his own. He found a plastic bag and stuffed them inside, tied off the top and decided that would have to do for the moment.

  On his way out of the bathroom, Colt’s foot hit something hard and furry. He heard a fierce snarl and looked down to find a normal sized dog with gold-and-white markings and a notable lack of legs staring up at him. They were more like furry stumps with absurdly big feet stuck on at the bottom, and the dog’s tail was barely a nub. The creature bared its fangs and snapped at Colt before waddling down the hall toward Ronnie’s room. It reared up on its back stumps, clawed wildly at the door until it opened and then darted inside. The door shut hard.

  Human or not, it seemed all teenagers were the same.

  Colt headed downstairs and found Susan and Stan waiting for him on the sofa. Susan had a martini in her hand and Stan was laughing as if she’d just told a joke.

  “Ah, much better,” Stan said, standing to pour a glass of something that looked like gin. He offered it to Colt and ushered him into a high-backed chair across from the sofa. “Feeling a bit more human?”

  Colt stared at him.

  “Excuse my husband,” Susan said, shooting the man a halfhearted glare. “He’s under the mistaken impression that he’s funny.”

  “Just a little ghoul humor to lighten the mood,” Stan said, sitting back down next to his wife.

  “Guess I’m not really at the joking stage yet,” Colt admitted. Sure, he’d had his anger issues in the past, but nothing out of the ordinary according to his social workers. In light of what had just happened, Colt was seeing every playground fight, every temper tantrum in his past differently. Had he always been a monster? Could something so awful truly sit just beneath the surface of human skin, waiting for the right moment to eat away everything he’d ever thought he knew about himself?

  “You poor thing,” Susan murmured, clasping her drink in both hands.

  “In that case, we’d better start at the beginning,” Stan said, striking his knees with his palms after a moment of silent contemplation. “But first, Colt, you mentioned your adoptive parents earlier. They’ve never said anything about this before?”

  “Trust me, my parents would be as shocked by what happened as I am.” And horrified. How was he ever supposed to face them again? In the fourteen years he’d spent with the Jagers, Colt had only ever made Renee cry once and he had promised himself that heartbreaking sound was one he’d never hear again. The thought of disappointing her was the only thing keeping
him from going downtown to make a confession against the Browns’ advice. Then there was Jason…

  Colt felt ill at the thought of how he’d left things between them. In his newly sober state, he regretted nearly every word he’d said at that dinner table, but even if Jason could forgive him for lashing out--and it was almost worse that Colt knew he would--he could never know the truth.

  His life was over. The revelation came down like a blade at the guillotine and it was almost comforting. The finality of it.

  “Colt?” Susan said his name in a worried tone that made it clear it wasn’t the first time it had been called.

  Colt looked up. “Sorry. What?”

  “I was just saying that it’s highly unusual for a ghoul to live among humans,” said Stan. “Unheard of, really. Forgive me if it’s a sensitive subject, but do you know anything about your birth parents?”

  Colt shook his head slowly. “The police found me wandering when I was three. They tried to find my parents, but no one ever came forward with any information.”

  For what felt like minutes, neither of the Browns said a word. Colt couldn’t tell if they were horrified or simply unsure of how to respond.

  “How awful,” Susan finally said in a sympathetic tone that made the circumstances seem all the more bizarre to Colt. It was one thing to learn that he was a monster. Given what he’d just done, it was a fact he couldn’t deny, as extraordinary as it seemed, but the fact that the Brown family claimed to be of the same kind was unbelievable. It was hard for Colt to imagine that anyone so civilized and compassionate could be capable of the same violence he’d just partaken in.