Hemlock Bay

for the moment since it obviously upset her, when she burst out, “She wanted me, you know, but she weren’t no dyke and so she played with me only when she was dressed like Timmy, but never when she was Tammy.”
    For an instant, Savich was too startled to say a word. What a wild twist. He said finally, “Okay then, tell me what kind of shape Tammy is in right now.”
    That brought Marilyn up straight in her chair. “No thanks to you she’s going to be okay, at least she kept telling me that. But she hurts real bad and her shoulder looks all raw and swollen. She went to a pharmacy late one night, just when they was closing, and got the guy to give her some antibiotics and pain pills. He nearly puked when he saw her shoulder.”
    “I didn’t hear about any robbery in a pharmacy,” Savich said slowly. They’d been looking, but hadn’t gotten any news as yet.
    “That’s because Tammy whacked the guy after she got the medicine from him, tore the place up. She said that’d make the cops go after the local druggies.”
    “Where was this, Marilyn?”
    “In northern New Jersey somewhere. I don’t remember the name of that crummy little town.”
    Local law enforcement hadn’t connected the pharmacist’s murder to the Tammy Tuttle bulletin the FBI had circulated all over the eastern seaboard. Well, at least now they’d find out everything the local cops had on the murder. He said, “Where did Tammy go after you went off to Bar Harbor?”
    “She said she wanted some sun so’s it would heal her shoulder. She was going down to the Caribbean to get herself well. No, I don’t know where; she wouldn’t tell me. She said there were lots of islands down there and she’d just find the one that was best for her. Of course she didn’t have enough money, so she robbed this guy and his wife in a real fancy house in Connecticut. Got three thousand and change. That’s when she told me she’d be all right and I could take off.”
    “Naturally she’s going to call you, let you know how she’s doing?”
    Marilyn nodded.
    “Where will she call you?”
    “At my boyfriend’s, in Bar Harbor. But I’m not there anymore, am I? My boyfriend will tell her that the cops came around and I left.”
    That was true enough, Savich thought, no hope for it. He just hoped that Tammy wouldn’t call until they’d found out where she was in the Caribbean.
    Marilyn said, “I’ll bet she really wants to kill you bad because of what you done to her. She’ll come back when she’s really well, and she’ll take you down. Tammy’s the meanest female in the world. She beat the shit out of me every time I saw her when we was growin’ up. She’ll get you, Dillon Savich. You’re nuthin’ compared to Tammy.”
    “What are the Ghouls, Marilyn?”
    Marilyn Warluski seemed to grow smaller right in front of him. She was pressed against the back of her chair, her shoulders hunched forward. “They’re bad, Mr. Savich. They’re really bad.”
    “But what are they?”
    “Tammy said she found them when she and Tommy were hiding out in some caves in the Ozarks a couple years ago. That’s in Arkansas, you know. It was real dark, she told me, real dark in that stinkin’ cave, smelled like bat shit, and Tommy was out takin’ a leak, and she was alone and then, all of a sudden, the cave filled with weird white light and then the Ghouls came.”
    “They didn’t hurt her?”
    Marilyn shook her head.
    “What else did she say?”
    “Said she knew they were the Ghouls, just knew, that somehow they’d got inside her head and told her their name, then told her that they needed blood, lots of young blood, and then they laughed and told her they were counting on her, and then they just winked out. That’s what Tammy said: they laughed, spoke in her head, and just ‘winked out.’ ”
    “But what are they, Marilyn? Do you have any idea?”
    She was silent for the longest time, then she whispered, “Tammy told me just a couple of days ago that the Ghouls were pissed off at her because she and Tommy hadn’t given them their young blood in the barn, that if Tommy was still alive, they’d eat him right up.”
    “Do you think that’s why Tammy got that kid? So the Ghouls could have their young blood?”
    She didn’t say anything, just looked at him and slowly nodded. Then she started crying, hunched over, her bowed head in her hands.
    “Do you know anything else, Marilyn?”
    She shook her head. Savich believed her. He also