Hemlock Bay

understood why she was shivering. He was close to shivering himself. He had goose bumps on his arms.
    Two FBI agents escorted Marilyn Warluski out of Savich’s office. She would remain here at Quantico, a material witness and the FBI’s guest until Savich and Justice made a decision about what to do with her.
    He was standing by his desk, deep in thought, looking out the window toward Hogan’s Alley, the all-American town that the FBI Academy had created and used to train their agents in confronting and catching criminals, when Jeffers, a profiler in the Behavioral Sciences, housed three floors down here at Quantico, said in his slow, Alabama drawl even before he cleared the doorway, “This is about the strangest shared delusion I’ve ever heard, Savich. But what are the things to them? How do they interact with Tammy Tuttle? Marilyn said Tammy told her the Ghouls got in her head and told her to do things.”
    “What we’ve got to do is predict what Tammy Tuttle will do next given this belief of hers in the Ghouls,” said Jane Bitt, a senior profiler who’d lasted nearly five years without burning out.
    Jane Bitt came around Jeffers and leaned against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. “Lots of other monsters but not anything like this. Tammy Tuttle is a monster. She’s got monsters inside her—monsters within a monster. The problem is that we don’t have any markers, any clues to give us even a glimmer of an idea of what we’re working with here. We’re faced with something we’ve never seen before.”
    “That’s right,” said Jeffers, the two words so drawn out in his accent that Savich wanted to say them for him, that or just pull them out of his mouth. “How do we get her, Agent Savich? I sure want to hear what she has to say about the Ghouls.”
    Savich said, “You heard Marilyn say that Tammy went to the Caribbean, to an island ‘right’ for her. She couldn’t have walked there, and she sure can’t be hard to spot. Just a moment, let me call Jimmy Maitland. They can get on that right away.” He placed the phone call, listened, and when he finally hung up, he said, “Mr. Maitland was nearly whistling. He’s sure they’ll get her now. What else do you guys think from listening to her?”
    “Well,” Jane said as she sat down, crossing her legs and leaning forward, “it seems to be some sort of induced hallucination. Marilyn seems to think they’re real, and both you and the boys saw something unusual in that barn, isn’t that right, Agent Savich?”
    “Yes,” Savich said.
    “Maybe Tommy and Tammy have some sort of ability to alter what you see and feel, some sort of hypnotic ability.”
    Savich said to Jeffers, “You did a profile on Timmy Tuttle before he turned out to be Tammy.”
    “Savich is right, Jane,” Jeffers said. “We ain’t got nothing useful that fits a psychotic cross-dresser who may have hypnotic skills.”
    Savich laughed, said, “You know what I want to try? I want to talk Marilyn into letting us hypnotize her. Maybe if you’re right about this, she can tell us a lot more when she’s under.”
    Jeffers laughed. “Hey, maybe the Ghouls are real, maybe they’re entities, aliens from outer space. What do you think, Jane?”
    “I like the sound of that, Jeffers. It’d perk up our boring lives a bit, add some color to our humdrum files. White cones whirling around black circles—maybe they’re from Mars, you think?”
    Savich said, “Actually, I’ve been reading articles, studies on various phenomena involved in past crimes.”
    “Found anything?” Jeffers asked.
    “Nothing like this,” Savich said. “Not a thing like this.” He added as he stood, “Joke all you want, but just don’t do it in front of the media.”
    “Not a chance,” Jane said. “I don’t want to get committed.” She rose, shook Savich’s hand. “Marilyn told you that Tammy met up with the Ghouls in a cave. My husband is really into speleology and we usually go spelunking on our vacations. In fact, we were planning on visiting some of the caves in the Ozarks this summer. No matter how much I can laugh about this, I might want to rethink that plan.”

    Washington, D.C.

    Lily was leaning over her drawing table, looking at her work. No Wrinkles Remus was emerging clear and strong and outrageous from the tip of her beloved sable brush. The brush was getting a bit gnarly, but it was good for another few weeks, maybe.
    First panel: Remus is sitting at his desk, a