The Ghouls Read online

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Ghouls

  About the Author

  THE GHOULS

  BY

  FRED CRAWLEY

  The Ghouls

  Copyright © 2017 by Fred Crawley

  The rights of Thomas Hall to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are ficticious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  CHAPTER 1

  IN THE WEEKS AND MONTHS THAT WERE TO follow, Nathan Custer would often reflect on how strange it was that on the day his life was to change forever, he had absolutely no idea. The door of the newsagent beeped as he pulled it open and stepped down onto the street. He pulled it closed again behind him and set off with no thought in his head other than what he was going to do when he got home.

  It had been another busy week, but the Ofsted inspection was over now and he expected life to return to something approaching normal. Gwen was still at school, and would be for another couple of hours, in a meeting with the headmistress. He guessed that gave him enough time to jump in the shower before cracking open one of the beers he’d bought and starting on dinner.

  There was a man in rags standing on the corner. Nathan found himself swerving away from him towards the road. There was no one else around.

  “Excuse me?” the man said.

  Nathan did his best not to glance in the direction of the man who was clearly homeless and, no doubt, about to ask him for money.

  “Hey!” the man said. Even though there was no one else around, Nathan felt exposed and embarrassed about being shouted at. “You in the fancy shoes, I’m talking to you.”

  His shoes were not particularly fancy. A pair of brown moccasins from Clarks but he was the only one on the path and, compared to the man’s battered red Converse, Nathan supposed his shoes might be considered fancy. He turned to look at the man who was leaning against the corner of the building at the end of an alleyway. He put a hand to his chest.

  “Yes you,” the man said. He cocked his head and beckoned Nathan over.

  Nathan slowed and walked towards the man. Upon closer inspection, he realised that beneath all the dirt he was more like a boy, younger than himself. He didn’t say anything.

  “What’s up man?” the boy said. His eyes flitted from side to side as he spoke and he sniffed as if he had a cold.

  Nathan shook his head. “Nothing.”

  The boy nodded. “Listen, I need to catch a bus home to see my old woman.”

  Nathan nodded. He clutched the bunch of keys in his pocket and felt the warm metal digging into his palm.

  “You got a quid you can give me?”

  “I don’t have any cash,” Nathan said. It wasn’t a lie, but it felt like one.

  The boy’s expression didn’t change. “Sure, sure. Fifty pence then?”

  “Sorry,” Nathan said. He stood awkwardly on the street as if he was waiting for the boy to give him permission to leave.

  “Twenty?”

  “No change,” Nathan said. He shrugged and it felt like the most unnatural movement he’d ever performed. “Sorry.”

  “How about a beer then?” the boy said.

  “Excuse me?” Nathan said.

  “You bought some beers back there, didn’t you?”

  Nathan looked down at the thin blue plastic bag that was straining under the weight of his four cans. Gwen would tell him off for not taking one of the reusable canvas bags, but he always felt like a prick carrying one of them around. The black and white labels of the beer were clearly visible through the plastic.

  “Well can I have one or not?” the boy said.

  “Sure,” Nathan said. “Hold on a second.” He took out one of the cans and held it out to the man. “There you go.”

  The boy took the can and for a moment his fingers touched Nathan’s hand. The dirt and callouses brushed against his skin. “Thanks,” he said.

  “No problem,” Nathan said. He stepped back onto the path without looking where he was going and started walking a little more quickly.

  “See you around,” the boy said.

  Nathan half raised a hand in recognition, but he didn’t turn around. He wanted to get home as quickly as possible, the shower that he had hoped to have now seemed more essential than the beer.

  The bright blue Ford Fiesta fishtailed along the road as if it was made out of ice. There were not many people out on the street at quarter past four on that overcast afternoon, but those who were noticed it. In the next few days, some of them would go to the police of their own accord while others would wait to be contacted, but they all remembered what they had seen.

  Although the interior was dark, they could see the man behind the wheel, slumped back in his seat as if he was asleep. And while they couldn’t agree on whether he was leaning left or right, those who had seen inside confirmed that the way he was laying meant that he must have had trouble seeing the road.

  The engine was a high pitched whine as if his foot was pressed down on the accelerator, but it was still in first gear. The police experts, who would later examine the vehicle, would say how unlucky it was that the engine hadn’t burned itself out before anything could happen. The newspapers and television would say how fortunate it was that it hadn’t plowed through the group of school children who were looking forward to the long weekend almost as much as Nathan Custer.

  Although toxicology reports would later show that the driver of the blue Fiesta hadn’t been drinking, the vehicle lurched and swerved across the road as if he’d had a skin full. It seemed like a miracle that it managed to turn around the tight corners and not burry itself in the side of a building.

  The driver’s name was Simon Staunch and he was fifty-six years old. He stared out of the muddy windscreen and wondered why no one was doing anything to help him. The edges of his vision were fringed with spidery black webs and everything seemed sort of unreal. If he could have moved his foot off the accelerator he would have done, but his legs were frozen and it was becoming more than he was capable of to keep the car on the road.

  Simon tried to call for help, but he had an idea that no one would be able to hear him over the sound of the engine. Pure white smoke began to cloud around him. He thought that this was probably from the engine but, like the darkness that threatened to obscure his vision completely, it might have just been in his head.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw a group of school children and the car seemed to take an involuntary lurch towards them. He gritted his teeth and managed to force the steering wheel away. He didn’t know what was happening to him, but he was determined that he wasn’t going to kill a bunch of kids. He kept the car on the road and turned another corner onto a quieter street.

  It took as much strength as he had just to keep his eyes open. He could barely feel his arms and his legs might as well have belonged to someone else. There was a pain in his chest that he refused to acknowledge until he had managed to work out a way to bring the car to a stop somewhere safe where no one would be hurt.

  A single straight road led off into the distance, but he was no longer really sure that it was there at all. Perhaps there was no road and no car. Perhaps he had crashed as soon as he’d felt the numbness creeping down
his legs and all of this was a dying dream.

  Nathan soon forgot all about the boy, but he might have remembered when he got home and saw that he only had three beers left. He felt unusually happy and the grey sky seemed less oppressive than it had done earlier. He and Gwen had no plans for the weekend, but with the inspection over they could finally relax.

  They would wake up late and have breakfast in bed. Maybe watch a film or one of the dozens of television shows they had missed thanks to the long nights they’d both put in getting the school ready for the inspection. Maybe they wouldn’t get up until lunch time, take it in turns to shower and then go to the cafe around the corner for lunch. He smiled to himself.

  By the time Nathan heard the wine of the car engine, it was already too late. He didn’t think anything of it at the time and didn’t remember hearing it at all later. He turned to look behind him, but he couldn’t see anything other than the buildings and the young trees that lined the streets. One of them had been pulled out of the ground so that its roots were visible and the young moist trunk was broken. A piece sheared off like a bone.

  He carried on walking: unaware of the bright blue bullet with his name on it.

  Simon couldn’t keep his eyes open. He struggled and he fought, but he had already lost the battle. Perhaps, if he hadn’t fought so hard, the car would have spun on the road and crashed into one of the trees or a building. In the end, the only thing that his efforts achieved was to keep the car mostly on the straight and narrow where it could maintain its speed until the engine finally burned out or something else brought it to a sudden stop.

  He felt as if he was being pulled into a long needed sleep or going under anaesthetic. It was impossible to fight and, he was starting to believe, there was no need. The world around him had taken on the quality of a dream. He was beginning to believe that the road, the car, maybe even the passenger sitting silently beside him were all a figment of his imagination. Was he even real?

  Simon fought for as long as he could, but the pull of oblivion was irresistible. The black, that had only fringed his vision earlier, became the only thing that he could see. His arms became as numb and out of control as his legs. He slumped forwards onto the steering wheel and the horn sounded a long funeral dirge, but the car didn’t stop moving.

  Nathan stopped when he heard the car horn. The whining sound of the engine was louder now and, when he turned around, he saw the blue Fiesta hurtling along the road towards him. His first thought was that the driver was drunk.

  The car was moving less wildly now. The driver was slumped over the steering wheel, the horn blaring out a warning that only Nathan was there to hear.

  He turned away from the car, unsure what he should do. It seemed as if he had all the time in the world and his thoughts were slow and lazy. In reality, he’d had less than five seconds in which to make a decision from the time he had first heard the horn.

  Should he run? Should he try to wave down the driver? What if it hit him? What if it hit someone else? Nathan had plenty of questions but no answers.

  The car turned suddenly. There was a pothole in the road and the jolt from it spun the wheels. Nathan didn’t realise this, and for a long time he would be convinced that the vehicle had turned towards him on purpose; a long time for him to accept that it had been nothing but misfortune.

  Once the car had turned towards him, he had less than a second to do anything about it but Nathan didn’t move. He stared at the car. Its horn was still blaring. He looked at the driver and saw him slumped over the wheel. Nathan realised that he was going to be hit and no sooner had he realised it than it happened.

  The momentum of the car sent him flying backwards. His feet left the ground and the world spun. Nathan realised that something very bad had happened, but he couldn’t be sure what it was. Seconds became minutes, minutes became whole lifetimes as he flew weightlessly away from the ground. He forgot all about the car and about his plans for a lazy weekend with Gwen.

  Nathan was knocked unconscious the moment he struck the building behind him and slid to the ground, which was fortunate for him. It meant that he didn’t have to feel more than a dozen bones breaking in his body, nor the shockwave that went through his head (a shockwave which several doctors would later tell him, should have been enough to turn his brains into slush).

  The car had struck him at an angle. While he had been airborne, he had been pushed away from it like a pool table trick shot. This fact had saved his life because it meant that he hit the ground several feet away from the blue Ford Fiesta which, burying itself in the wall, had finally come to a stop.

  Sirens began almost immediately; perhaps they had already been sounding but hadn’t been heard over the sound of the car horn. Neither Nathan Custer nor Simon Staunch, heard them.

  CHAPTER 2

  HE WAS LUCKY TO BE ALIVE, THEY TOLD him, but he didn’t feel very lucky. Three weeks had passed since he’d woken. Three weeks of pain so terrible that sometimes he couldn’t see. Three weeks of tests and operations that might be able to save his legs, which might mean he was able to walk again.

  Nathan sat in the black wheelchair unable to support his own bodyweight. He was slumped over like a baby without the muscle tone to sit upright. He could feel the pins and pieces of metal in his legs and arms.

  There was no one else on the long corridor. He could hear muttered voices, but he didn’t have the strength to turn towards them even if he had the desire. There was an abandoned hospital bed in front of him. The low hum of flickering arc sodium lights above him. There were no windows. It felt as if he was underground.

  He had barely been conscious when they had brought him here. The drugs that they gave him for the pain made him feel comfortably disconnected from the reality of his recovery, but they were beginning to wear off now. He wondered how long they had been gone and how long it would be before someone came back for him. They hadn’t told him what he was doing there. He considered calling out but the thought of how his voice would sound, echoing in the empty corridor, stopped him.

  Shadows moved across the broken white walls. If he had been able to sit upright, he might have been able to see what was making them but he couldn’t. In the failing light, they seemed to jump and jerk inhumanly. One appeared to be moving on all fours. He watched them for a time, but they did not hold his interest. Nothing seemed worthwhile anymore.

  He wondered if he had been abandoned. The rest of the hospital was new and shiny, but this corridor looked like it belonged to a different age. The rooms that he had seen as they’d passed had contained piles of archaic equipment. There was nothing friendly or reassuring that he could see. How long had it been again? Minutes or hours? The place had the quality of abandonment.

  Fear began to rise up in his chest and finally he managed to cough out a plea for recognition. “Hello?” he said. His voice was as ruined as his limbs and he sounded like a seventy-year-old man with throat cancer. “Hello?”

  There was movement along the corridor, in one of the rooms. He felt a sinking sense of dread and wondered if he really wanted to draw attention to himself down here. It was all too easy to imagine some terrible thing coming out of one of the rooms.

  He shrank back into his chair which was about the only movement he was capable of making.

  A nurse appeared. She looked like a cartoon. Her white uniform was stained with bloody trails and revealed more of her red fishnet stockings than seemed appropriate. Her blond hair was showing black roots and was loosely tied up on top of her head. Her eyes were dark shadows and her lipstick bright red.

  “Can I help you Mr. Custer?” the nurse said.

  Nathan tried to shake his head. She walked towards him and he wanted to stop her reaching him, but he was stuck.

  “You called for me,” the nurse said. “There must be something you wanted.”

  Nathan saw that she was holding a fat syringe that was tipped with a blood crusted needle. He didn’t think that she had been carrying it when she had first com
e out of the room. She moved towards him with the lurching unsteadiness of a zombie, a red grin of her lipstick and a manic look in her eyes.

  “Now, now Mr. Custer,” she said. Nathan could see right down her top. Her cleavage was rotting black and oozing green puss. “We can’t have you wasting valuable time. Just settle back and relax. This won’t hurt at all.”

  She loomed over him with the needle and now he could smell her as well. The sweet perfume was turned bitter by her rotten flesh. He wanted to scream.

  Despite the disgust that overwhelmed him, Nathan felt himself growing stiff. He glanced down, but the nurse caught him before he could look away.

  “Is this the problem?” the nurse said.

  He felt her hand on his crotch. He made a sound that was somewhere between confirmation and distress.

  “Well this isn’t really my job,” she said. She began to move her hand up and down and he realised that she was inside his pyjama trousers.

  He felt distant and disconnected. Whatever the drug was that she had given him it was powerful. As the nurse continued to knead his dick like it was bread dough, he began to slip away into the comforting darkness of oblivion.

  Nathan awoke suddenly. His eyes opened wide and he stared at the dirty tiled ceiling above him. He tried to sit but he couldn’t. For a moment he thought that he was restrained. He could feel the straps around his legs and waist and a sense of panic ran through him.

  With great effort, he managed to raise his head and looked down the length of his body towards the end of the bed. There were no straps. He tried to move his arms and then his legs, but he couldn’t.

  He lay still and listened to the sound of other people breathing. The blue curtains around his bed had been pulled closed and the air was thick. It was dark, but there was still enough light for him to see by.