Touched

by A. J. Aalto

  I hurried on. “For protection. If the ghoul comes while I'm…y'know. Would you just go, please!”

  Batten shrugged. “I could use some fresh air. You got the tires replaced on the Kawasaki, right? Mind if I drive?”

  The revenant looked horrified by the idea of another man piloting his bike, glancing at me with dismay. “Is there something in this for me?”

  Batten shrugged. “I'll tell the cashiers you're a wealthy bachelor looking for a new wife.”

  “Not entirely a falsehood.” Harry's eyes lit with humor. “The helmets are in the mudroom.”

  * * *

  I waited for them to put their boots on and trudge out the front door before collecting my materials and hustling them up the stairs. Chapel was upstairs, recovering from his steamed fight with Batten and his draining feed of two immortals. But for my shifting things around, the house was mausoleum-quiet. The back yard was as Leviathan's abyss, without the faintest scrap of starlight above, bringing to mind Hell's yawning black maw. Another winter storm rolled in slow on dead air, pushing heavily at the tops of the trees. I left the light on over the kitchen sink, and remembered my mother when I did so. She always said to leave a cheery circle of light to come back home to. Just doing so made me feel a touch warmer, and in a rush I missed the times before Harry, when my mother still wanted me around.

  Keeping one eye out for Chapel, I passed the office mirror and checked to make sure the reflection was just me. The black-watch spell had not encountered any new intrusions; the mirror showed only my own freshly-screwed but careworn self. I had to admit, sex had put a fetching glow in my cheeks. Sadly, I also had a nice set of pimples blooming on my chin, probably from me resting my chin in my bare hands too much out of exhaustion.

  I shrugged into my parka and hauled my materials out the back door, slogged through the snow, scanning for any other footprints. Ajax was sleeping with his new friend in the closest Aspen; they had reached some sort of tentative peace, the way two housecats will after fighting for dominance. Ajax didn't stir when I strolled past, and neither did Wesley's unnamed debt vulture. Under cold, crisp white stars, Shaw's Fist was dark and mysterious like Batten's deep blue eyes, with the same unknowable depths.

  Digging a hole in the dirt floor of the boathouse had sounded like a good idea in my head, but then a lot of things do: driving to rescue my mortal enemy, sleeping with a heartless jerk, scarfing a whole box of Oreos in less than ten minutes. Reality is usually far less feasible, full of unconsidered problems. The boathouse, for one, was unheated; it was no more than thirty-three degrees in there. The ground on the far side of Harry's covered sports car was hard as a rock, frozen stiff. I had to put my Keds on the shovel and jump my full weight onto it with each dig. I got about two feet deep before I ran out of space to put the excess dirt, and had to haul it down to the end of the boathouse where an old canoe with faded paint lay on its side.

  The smell of fresh-turned dirt blended with unused life jackets gone musty over time. A cockshut melody of pre-storm wind pressing bodily against the old building harmonized with the constant clunk-chink of my digging and the low electric hum of the chest freezer. My breath fogged in front of my face, and before long I was sweating under my clothes and aching everywhere. Under my gloves I felt blisters forming on the heels of my palms. Pretty soon I was on my knees, scraping and struggling to make the hole deep enough.

  Finally, shivering with the now bone-deep cold, I tossed the shovel aside and slid the BBQ grill and long butane lighter under the car in the darkest shadow behind the back driver's side wheel. I found a long-handled fishing net and a Timberline fishing knife in Carrie's tackle box, on the back bench.

  I turned off the car alarm, unlocked the gas cap and tucked the aquarium tubing into Harry's gas tank. Tentatively putting my lips to the clean end, prepared to suck, hoping I was right that Harry's obsessive need to keep things “as they should be” would extend to keeping his precious toy topped-full of fuel. I gave an inhale through my pursed lips to start the gasoline flowing up toward my mouth.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  My heart kicked. Choking on gas, I spat on the ground then tucked the running end of the hose in the cold pit. It sounded like someone piddling in the corner.

  Batten's shadow in the doorway was waiting for an answer, so I said, “Taking a whiz?”

  “Try again.”

  “Huffing gas fumes?”

  His faceless shadow crossed its arms.

  “You won't like the real answer, so why ask?” I stood, crossing my arms too. As he moved forward and the work light washed his face, something hard in his eyes made me cringe. I could tell by his all-brought-up-to-speed tone that he knew I'd gotten laid. Did he know it all? The shackles? The devil's footsteps? How could he? “Why are you still here? I thought you were leaving.”

  He came deeper into the yellow glow, his eyes tracing the car's shape under the tarp. He lifted one corner of the stretchy fabric cover and then, as though not believing what he was seeing, peeling the tarp back further and further, his excitement demanded that he strip the car, had to throw the whole thing back. The tarp rustled against itself as it fell aside. Batten's breath whistled out.

  “Holy fuck,” he whispered, adding white clouds next to mine. “Do you know what this is? This is a Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4 Sang Noir.”

  “Whatever. It's a car.” I discretely wiped my tongue clear of gas taste on the sleeve of my puffy pink parka.

  “Is this yours?”

  A sharp laugh shot out of my gut. “Yeah right. Like I need something like that.”

  “Something like… don't you know what this is?”

  “Yeah, it's Harry's baby. Whatever you do, don't—holy hell!” I yelped. “You're touching it.”

  I didn't think he could help himself, though. One muscular hand drifted in mid-air, landing softly. Mark stroked the car's super high-gloss piano black finish with reverence, a slow, almost affectionate caress, like he was applying oil to the length of a swimsuit model's taut belly. This went on for some time, while the trickling sound filled his stunned silence and the smell of gasoline swam in the boathouse's close quarters. Finally, he got to the Bugatti's windows, pressed his nose up against the glass, cupping his hands. A nervous, excited laugh escaped him. He sounded like a little boy in front of a candy store, except for the swearing.

  “Look at that fuckin’ interior. Fuck me, Jesus. He doesn't drive this?”

  “Not in the winter. Never in the winter.”

  “Why the hell are you driving that shit Buick if he can afford this?”

  “Hey, what's wrong with the Buick? I like the tank, don't disparage the tank.”

  I knelt on the clumps of churned frozen dirt and put the gas cap back on, wiped up spill down the side with the rag. Batten was still heavy-breathing on Harry's Bugatti like a sex addict at a strip joint. “Do you have any idea how much this thing costs?”

  “Nope, nor do I care. You were going now?”

  “Marnie, the tires alone for this car cost twenty-five grand.”

  “Oh, come on. What kind of maniac would pay twenty-five thousand dollars for…” The rest of that sentence was pointless: Harry would. Only the best for Harry. It was almost as much as he paid for the cabin.

  I studied Batten, wondering if he had wood. He certainly looked near-orgasmic. His bottom lip was quivering, caught under the straight white clutch of a hard bite. I had never considered Harry's fondness for expensive sports cars to be much more than a shiny hobby. Certainly I'd never become aroused by the sight of one. Batten's reaction was fascinating; I wondered what he'd say if I suggested…

  “You know, if you promised to feed Harry every day,” I breathed in my most devilish voice, “he'd buy you one of your very own.”

  Batten hand clutched his middle like he'd been shot in the stomach with the Surprise Cannon. He cut his eyes at me over the Bugatti's roof, noted my Cheshire smile, and visibly wilted. “Very funny.”

  “Sorry
. He's not even gonna let you ride in it. Don't ask him. Pretend you didn't see it.”

  “Why have it if you won't share?” he said, and again he reminded me of a young boy raging about the unfairness of life. I frowned, wondering if he just meant the car, my nose getting slightly out of joint.

  “It's not mine. I don't make the rules.”

  “You could make him share,” he wheedled.

  I laughed, amazed. One of his big hands went up to massage his temple, like the sight of the car was causing his brain to go on the fritz.

  “Zero to sixty in two point four seconds,” he told me, as though it mattered. “Top speed two hundred and fifty-three miles per hour.”

  “Kinda silly, since the speed limit around here's fifty-five. You wanna get a speeding ticket for eighteen thousand dollars?”

  “That's not the point,” he informed me so seriously I had to laugh a second time. He squinted into the interior again, and I tossed my rag at him.

  “Wipe off the saliva or he'll know you were out here. I don't drool on cars.”

  “Any possible bribe you can think of to get him to let me sit in it?”

  “Maybe if you lube up, bend over and grab your ankles?” I suggested, grinning from ear to ear. A confused grimace tore down his eyebrows only for a moment, then he wilted some more.

  “I'm serious, Marnie.”

  “I'm not. He ain't interested in your orifices. Hot blood and insane speeds are Harry's only weaknesses, and he doesn't trust you enough to let you get close to him or the car.”

  “What about…” I could see him racking his brain for anything he could possibly offer. When I shook my head mock-sadly, still grinning, he swore and buffed the breath-fog off the windows, shining the glass with the reverence usually reserved for altar boys preparing the Eucharist. “I don't think I can handle being this jealous of Harry. I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight knowing this monster is out here, just sitting here, waiting to roar.”

  I chortled. “It's a car.”

  “It's not a…” He reigned himself in, resigned to a life without Bugatti. “Fine. We're on our way out. What are the chances that you're going to accidentally blow yourself up in here?”

  “That's pretty insulting.” I thought about it. “Less than fifty percent.”

  “That good, hunh?” His eyes strayed back to the car's curves.

  “I'm not using magic, just my brains,” I assured him.

  He lowered his face and shook his head, refraining from the obvious comment. “You should move Harry's car outside.”

  “Gee, your concern for my welfare has me all choked up.” I flipped him a gloved bird.

  “It's a two million dollar car, for fuck's sake. They only made fifteen of these,” Batten stressed.

  “Yeah? Well there's only one Marnie Baranuik.”

  “Thank God,” Batten muttered. “Seriously, move the goddamned car if you're going to do anything stupid.”

  “Moving Harry's car would be doing something stupid. He'd rip me a new one.”

  I heard Harry's motorcycle rumble to life, and Mark's head turned. He hesitated. No, don't ask, don't bring it up, I thought frantically, Wes’ words rattling through my brain: “he has to hear it from you.” His eyes snuck sideways at the car again.

  “Need anything else at the store? Chocolate pudding? Pepsi? A flamethrower?”

  I turned away to put the tubing aside. “Don't make me like you.”

  “Can't help it,” he replied, and his boots crunched the snow as he retreated to join the revenant. I smiled with my back turned, smiled in relief, smiled privately in the dark, away from him. I placed the little kitchen fire extinguisher beside Harry's insanely expensive car.

  I considered the Bugatti, shrugged, and went to fetch Kristin's eyeball.

  FIFTY-ONE

  The shriveled scrap of eye looked ridiculously small in the fish net and as I walked around the back yard with it swinging before me, queasy and faint, positive the grand scheme I'd hatched wasn't going to work in the limited free time I had wheedled. With the handle clutched in my oven-mitted hands, I flounced about in the growing breeze, making sure to flutter the eye in the gusts, hoping this would summon the ghoul from thin air. The eye was barely a scrap of filament now, and there was a heavy dose of doubt thrumming through my veins; what if she didn't sense it? How would I lure her, if not with this? What else could possibly draw her out of hiding? Maybe she wasn't even nearby. The black-watch spell showed me only Ajax and Wes’ unnamed vulture in the yard.

  But the stench blowing across the lake left little doubt; somewhere, the remains of Kristin Davis were shambling, or swimming, or lurching around. I had maybe forty-five minutes before Harry and Batten cruised back to the cabin with a bag full of very unnecessary feminine hygiene products. The wind dropped, and a sound pulled my eyes to the dock.

  That's when I saw her, barely visible beneath the planks. How long had she been festering under there in the lake with her head half-caved in, poisoning my water and lurking until it was time to come at me again? It wasn't often a dream came true, especially not a drippy oozing undead nightmare like Kristin Davis’ stubborn ghoul. The thing that was once a pleasant, friendly twelve-year-old blind girl discovering a love for Beethoven was now a horror of epic proportions, a horror that had apparently made a new home under my dock.

  Corpse beetles had devoured most of her fleshy parts, gorged themselves, and would come back to finish the rest soon no doubt. She didn't seem to mind. Her bare ligaments creaked and stretched. Her mouth gaped stupidly, but there was an infernal intellect behind her empty sockets that made the space between my shoulder blades crawl. When she craned her head in the direction of the fish net, where her soggy, stringy eye was swinging, my stomach hit the floor.

  I pelted for the boathouse door, the ghoul a foul shade clambering at my back as I whipped around the back of the car and grabbed for the rear end of the Bugatti to slow my speed to make the turn. My Keds pounded frozen dirt as I jumped the open hole. The goopy fish net fell from my grip. I heard the ghoul scrambling close behind. For a second I thought she'd jumped the trap too, or saw it in time to shrink back, because her footsteps stopped.

  Then Dead Kristin made a bone-clattering thud into the pit, raining hard earth in an icy shower around her. I skidded to my knees, my brain screaming hurry hurry hurry, swiping the BBQ grill from under the car and slamming it down atop the hole.

  My breath left in an explosive rejoice, half-whoop half-coarse gasp.

  The ghoul's questing, claw-like finger bones scrambled at the rusty iron grate like hard little worms wriggling to find purchase. On one knee, I pounded one dusty Ked on the grill to hold it down, kicking more dirt down in her rotten face.

  “Sorry, babe,” I said, not really sorry for the ghoul at all, but wishing I could spare Kristin Davis this end.

  I threw off the oven mitts, fished under the car for the butane lighter, didn't find it. My mouth went dry as Dead Kristin's bony hands thumped and the metal bars clanged my death knell. Her old raisin of a face came up suddenly, all gnashing teeth and pale pink gums, rocking the grill, oblivious to pain now. I gave a little shriek and flung my hands away from her, keeping pressure on my foot as hard as I could. Craning, my bare hands fanned under the car, fingers questing desperately. Her mouth opened and her slimy black prune of a tongue lolled out along the sole of my shoe. Blerg!

  I brushed against the butane lighter's frost-covered plastic end. Finger-tipping it closer so I could grab it, leaving my foot on the grill. I backed my body away as far as my arm would go, aimed the lighter at the side of the pit, and flick-flick-kafoompf.

  The gasoline caught in a searing blast of flames.

  I jerked my sneaker away, but the grill clattered as she shoved it up, so I stomped it down again, wary of the licking fire consuming its target.

  Cooking ghoul smells a lot like burnt cheese. I'm adding that to my list of things I wish I didn't know. With an inhuman shriek, the ghoul curled into a ball,
acrid green smoke rising from its eye sockets, crumbled nose and mouth. I forced myself not to think about Kristin; I could hear her little preteen voice caught behind the ghoul's agony. When the monster she had become shrieked, I slammed my eyes shut and told myself this was for her own good. Something inside me went cold, hard and still, something that had always before been soft and warm. Part of me died, and I wondered if this was how murderers felt.

  When the blackened hands fell away, I removed my Ked and inspected the gooey melted bottom. The rubber was like singed cheese, smoking and hanging in strings. Probably I should shove it in the snow.

  I dusted my hands off on the oven mitts and thought, What do you know? I didn't fuck it up. I looked around to see if anyone was here to witness my triumph.

  Dead Danika Sherlock stood drooling in the boathouse doorway.

  FIFTY-TWO

  I heard Chapel slam out the back door with a shout as I threw myself backward, wind-milling rapidly behind the Bugatti, mindful of the BBQ grill to make sure Dead Kristin didn't fly out like the monster's second coming in a bad horror flick. The second ghoul smelled worse than the first, fresher, more like old cheese and dirty socks. She hadn't served as a smorgasbord for corpse beetles and she had both her eyes, which trained in on me, tracking my every move. What had brought her here? My intuition squealed something unfathomable, and I'm sure if I wasn't soggy-brained with terror, I might have made sense of it.

  Chapel was calling my name. Behind Danika's ghoul I could see him running while doing that two-handed gun-aiming pros do, which I'd always thought was a pretty cool trick. I'd never seen it done outside of an episode of Cops. He sighted on the back of the ghoul's head. Pointless, I thought, and he should know it. Instinct, I was guessing.

  “Marnie, get out of there!” He called over the snow, closing the distance between us. I whipped out the kitchen fire extinguisher and ran forward, feeling like a badass. The ghoul snarled, dropping a wet hunk of flesh off her decaying lip. I aimed for that spot with the butt of the fire extinguisher. The solid can made a resounding clang as it rocked her head back.