Supernatural Noir

“Beg pardon?”

“The old graveyard, behind the fence. The one they don’t use anymore. He was buried there. Fact is, he was hanged in the graveyard from a tree limb. About where the old sawmill is now.”

“There are graves there?” I asked.

“Well, there were. The flood washed up a bunch of them. Hogson was one of the ones buried there, in an unmarked grave. Here—it’s in one of the books about the growth of the city, written in 1940.”

She got up and pulled a dusty-looking book off one of her shelves. The walls were lined with them. These were her personal collection. She put the book on her desk, sat back down, and started thumbing through the volume, then paused.

“Oh, what the heck. I know it by heart.” She closed the book, sat back down in her chair, and said, “Cauldwell Hogson was a grave robber. He stole bodies.”

“To sell to science?”

“No. To have . . . well, you know.”

“No. I don’t know.”

“He had relations with the bodies.”

“That’s nasty,” I said.

“I’ll say. He would take them and put them in his house and pose them and sketch them. Young women. Old women. Just as long as they were women.”

“Why?”

“Before daybreak, he would put them back. It was a kind of ritual. But he got caught and he got hung, right there in the graveyard. Preacher cursed him. Later they found his notebooks in his house, and his drawings of the dead women. Mostly nudes.”

“But Mom, I think I saw him. Or someone like him.”

“It could be him,” she said.

“You really think so?”

“I do. You used to laugh at my knowledge, thought I was a fool. What do you think now?”

“I think I’m confused. How could he come out of his grave after all these many years and start doing the things he did before? Could it be someone else? Someone imitating him?”

“Unlikely.”

“But he’s dead.”

“What we’re talking about here, it’s a different kind of dead. He’s a ghoul. Not in the normal use of the term—he’s a real ghoul. Back when he was caught, and that would be during the Great Depression, no one questioned that sort of thing. This town was settled by people from the old lands. They knew about ghouls. Ghouls are mentioned as far back as The Thousand and One Nights. And that’s just their first known mention. They love the dead. They gain power from the dead.”

“How can you gain power from something that’s dead?”

“Some experts believe we die in stages, and that when we are dead to this world, the brain is still functioning on a plane somewhere between life and death. There’s a gradual release of the soul.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Books. Try them sometime. The brain dies slowly, and a ghoul takes that slow dying, that gradual release of soul, and feasts on it.”

“He eats their flesh?”

“There are different kinds of ghouls. Some eat flesh. Some only attack men, and some are like Hogson. The corpses of women are his prey.”

“But how did he become a ghoul?”

“Anyone who has an unholy interest in the dead—no matter what religion, no matter if they have no religion—if they are killed violently, they may well become a ghoul. Hogson was certainly a prime candidate. He stole women’s bodies and sketched them, and he did other things. We’re talking about, you know—”

“Sex?”

“If you can call it that, with dead bodies. By this method he thought he could gain their souls and their youth. Being an old man, he wanted to live forever. Course, there were some spells involved, and some horrible stuff he had to drink, made from herbs and body parts. Sex with the bodies causes the remains of their souls to rise to the surface, and he absorbs them through his own body. That’s why he keeps coming back to a body until it’s drained. It all came out when he was caught replacing the body of Mary Lawrence in her grave. I went to school with her, so I remember all this very well. Anyway, when they caught him, he told them everything, and then there were his notebooks and sketches. He was quite proud of what he had done.”

“But why put the bodies back? And Susan, she looked like she was just sleeping. She looked fresh.”

“He returned the bodies before morning because for the black magic to work, they must lie at night in the resting place made for them by their loved ones. Once a ghoul begins to take the soul from a body, it will stay fresh until he’s finished, as long as he returns it to its grave before morning. When he drains the last of its soul, the body decays. What he gets out of all this, besides immortality, are powers he didn’t have as a man.”

“Like being strong and able to jump a six-foot fence flat footed,” I said.

“Things like that, yes.”

“But they hung the old man,” I said. “How in hell could he be around now?”

“They did more than hang him. They buried him in a deep grave filled with wet cement and allowed it to dry. That was a mistake. They should have completely destroyed the body. Still, that would have held him, except the flood opened the graves, and a bulldozer was sent in to push the old bones away. In the process, it must have broken open the cement and let him out.”

“What’s to be done?” I said.

“You have to stop it.”

“Me?”

“I’m too old. The cops won’t believe this. So it’s up to you. You don’t stop him, another woman dies, he’ll take her body. It could be me. He doesn’t care I’m old.”

“How would I stop him?”

“That part might prove to be difficult. First, you’ll need an ax, and you’ll need some fire . . .”

——

With Cathy riding with me, we went by the hardware store and bought an ax and a file to sharpen it up good. I got a can of paint thi

“According to Mom, the ghoul doesn’t feel pain much. But they can be destroyed if you chop their head off, and then you got to burn the head. If you don’t, it either grows a new head, or a body out of the head, or some such thing. She was a little vague. All I know is she says it’s a way to kill mummys, ghouls, vampires, and assorted monsters.”

“My guess is she hasn’t tried any of this,” Cathy said.

“No, she hasn’t. But she’s well schooled in these matters. I always thought she was full of it, but turns out she isn’t. Who knew?”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“Look for my remains.”

“I’m going with you,” she said.

“No you’re not.”

“Do you really think you can stop me? It’s my sister. I hired you.”

“Then let me do my job.”

“I just have your word for all this.”

“There you are. I wouldn’t tromp around in the dark based on my word.”

“I’m going.”

“It could get ugly.”

“Once again, it’s my sister. You don’t get to choose for me.”

——

I parked my car across the road from the cemetery under a willow. As it grew dark, shadows would hide it reasonably well. This was where Cathy was to sit. I, on the other hand, would go around to the rear, where the ghoul would most likely come en route to Susan’s grave.

Sitting in my jalopy talking, the sun starting to drop, I said, “I’ll try and stop him before he gets to the grave. But if he comes from some other angle, another route, hit the horn and I’ll come ru

“There’s the problem of the six-foot fence,” Cathy said.

“I may have to run around the graveyard fence, but I’ll still come. You can keep honking the horn and turn on the lights and drive through the cemetery gate. But whatever you do, don’t get out of the car.”

I handed her my shotgun.

“Ever shot one of these?” I said.

“Daddy was a bird hunter. So, yes.”

“Good. Just in case it comes to it.”

“Will it kill him?”

“Mom says no, but it beats harsh language.”