Ghoul
Death and life are in the power of the tongue
--Proverbs 18:21
Despite the growling behind the door, Marv smiled and knocked again. “Open up, Kat. We won’t bite.”
“Leave.” Her voice was faint, muffled by door and walls and snarls. “While you still can.”
Marv turned to thrust a thumbs-up at Hank. “And you thought she wouldn’t be here.”
Hank leaned against the car, left eye consumed by shadow while amber streetlight illuminated his crooked grin and extended middle finger. “Hurry it up, Marv.” Hank glanced over his shoulder at the parents and children crowding by the houses at the end of the street, the costumed mob lit by the candles of a dozen jack-o’-lanterns. “Let’s get her to Mouse before we’re knee-deep in trick-or-treaters.”
Marv leaned toward the door. “Open up, Kat. We’ll all have us a nice sit-down and some coffee with you and your mama.”
“Don’t you talk about my mama!” The growling rumbled closer.
“What’s in there with you?”
“Just get away from the door.”
Instead, he sidled against it. “Now, come on, baby. You know I don’t want to have to break it down.”
“I’m not your baby anymore. I’m not your
anything anymore.”
“Daddy Mouse wants to see you, that’s all.” Marv ran his hands along the wood grain. “He doesn’t like it when his girls go missing.”
“So he sent you to find me?” The rumble became a bark. Kat said, “God, I can read you like a book! Can’t you see he’s using you? That this’ll end badly for us both?”
“Not this time.” His hands became fists. “I’ve got plans, a future. And you’re part of it.”
“Some future.”
His fist thumped the door. He told himself it was because he glanced the line of costumed people at the end of the street trick-or-treating their way so close that Hank wouldn’t be able to scare them all off. “Open up, Kat!”
“Marv, please,
go!”
He kicked the door. “Open up right now!”
Another growl, another bark, and the pitter-patter of four feet.
“Call off the mutt.” Marv scowled. “Or I’ll flatten it.”
By the car, Hank shouted for him to hurry. The throng of ghosts and goblins marched down the street, now only a few doors away. Marv said, “Counting to three, Kat.”
“Marv!” What was that supposed to sound like, panic? “Run!”
“One.” The barks became a howl as Marv set his shoulder against the door. “Two!”
Then there was no door.
There was only crashing and tumbling and sprawling across paving slabs.
Panting in the entrance stood a hound like a hyena, the grey fur along its head dusted with splinters of the shattered door.
Beyond the hound stood Kat, stained with red paint and dangling a baseball bat.
As the dog stepped closer, drooling between bared teeth, Marv processed the Kat behind it – the paint splattered across her pale face, auburn hair and white dress was blood, and the bat she held was a severed arm.
And before he could ask what on God’s green Earth was going on, the hound sank its teeth into his right thigh.
(She’ll force a smile, press his thigh with one hand, cup his cheek with the other. Cold. “We’ll get to Mouse. He’ll know what to do.”)
Marv knew what to do. He’d do it as soon as he finished screaming.
The hound snarled, closed its eyes and tightened its jaws around the side of his leg, ripping another scream from his throat as his head slammed into the pavement.
The dog pulled. The ground scraped skin from Marv’s outstretched palms. On either side, trick-or-treaters whipped past, a phantasmagorical zoetrope.
Teeth gritted, he reached into his jacket, flicked out the switchblade and swung it in an arc of flashing steel homing on the hound’s head.
A child screamed.
Multi-coloured rain pelted Marv’s face. Hooked onto the knife was a trick-or-treat bucket which spilled a hail of confectionary, the tip of the blade having skewered a piece of fudge to form a sticky shish kebab that swung down, bounced off the dog’s head, and spun from his grasp.
The part of Marv that wasn’t yelling in pain and frustration thrust knuckles into the glowing yellow gelatine of the dog’s left eye.
It yelped and released him, veering into a ghost-child’s white sheet as Marv twisted to a halt. He pushed himself to his elbows. Before him, the boy under the sheet ran for his mother, the dog whipping the fabric away. It sprawled, panted, glared its bruised Cyclops glare.
Marv gritted his teeth. The hound bared its own and growled, muscles rippling under thin patches of grey fur. It barked. It pounced.
It sunk its teeth into the flesh of an arm extended before Marv’s face.
He twisted to see Kat, her hands clasped round the severed arm that the hound gripped like a chew toy. Onto the curb screeched their car, and through its open window Hank shouted, “Come on!”
Kat swung the detached limb – dog still attached – toward a wall, and dragged Marv into the car. As she slammed the door, Marv glimpsed the hound face them, the arm’s bloody ulna in its maw. Kat yelled, “Drive!”
Hank yanked the stick and spurred the car forward. “We’re taking you to Mouse.”
“Good.” Kat tore off the hem of her dress and wrapped it around Marv’s wound. “That’s the idea.”
“Now you
want to come?” Hank shook his head and shifted gears. “Lady, you change your tune like a jazz band.”
Barks behind them. Marv glared out of the rear window. The hound was a grey speck that drew closer with each howl and bound and bark. “Hank, lose that thing!”
Above the engine’s roar, Kat’s words: “Doesn’t like strangers.”
“What is that, your pet?”
“Belongs to Daddy Mouse. Sure made escaping the catacombs easier.”
The catacombs? Mouse held her
there? To distract him from that pitch-black nightmare, Marv examined his wound through his makeshift bandage, the fabric now dyed red in a jagged circle. “Mouse never told me about a dog.”
“There’s a lot Mouse hasn’t told you.” She gazed at the passing traffic, scratched the dry blood spattered across her face. On her teeth.
“What happened to you, Kat?”
As the car stopped at an intersection, she faced him, red lights illuminating tears in her eyes. “The same thing that’s happening to you.” She forced a smile, pressed his thigh with one hand, cupped his cheek with the other. Cold. “We’ll get to Mouse. He’ll know what to do.”
“Déjà vu.” Marv pressed his hand on hers. “I knew you’d say that. I saw you say it when that mutt bit me.” He trailed off, because in the window behind Kat was the tip of a bone, smearing blood across the glass. Two pointed ears rose into view, followed by grey snout and yellow eye. Marv groaned, “Dammit Hank, don’t you check your mirrors?”
Hank cursed. “It was in my blind spot!” He shifted gears, turned the wheel. The engine grumbled, wheezed and died.
Against the window, the dog struck the bone, once, twice, thrice. Glass burst and twinkled like fireworks. Kat and Marv flattened one against the other, her back against his chest, his back against the door.
And before them, bone between teeth, climbed the hound.
Marv tensed his good leg but before he could kick, Kat grabbed his knee. “Wait.”
The hound paced closer, sniffed Marv’s foot and growled. Kat reached past Marv’s protesting hands to rub her fingers before the dog’s nose. The animal paused, dropped the bone onto the seat. Blood and saliva meandered across the million glass fragments.
Kat stroked the thin skin stretched across the dog’s head. “Good boy.”
The animal panted, mouth dropping open to dangle its tongue.
Kat grabbed the bone. “Fetch.” And spun it out the broken window.
The animal turned and tensed and leapt out after it.
Marv blinked panic from his face. “Did that just happen?”
Kat yelled, “Hank, get us out of here!”
This time the engine coughed into a healthy grumble that yanked them forward. Inertia pressed Marv against the seat, and Kat’s elbow into his wound. It felt like a detonating cactus. Before the scream could escape his throat, his head snapped backward to smash through the window.
The blur that used to be Kat cradled his face. The distorted warble that he guessed was her voice cried, “Marv, are you okay?”
He would have answered had the blurs before him not melted into an ocean of colour whose waves crashed against his concussed consciousness, carrying whale-song resembling Kat and Hank’s voices. By the time Marv mumbled, “No”, the whale that sounded like Hank sang a song whose lilting lyrics Marv’s brain decoded as, “The club’s ahead.”
The moving watercolour which vaguely resembled Kat cradled Marv. “The dog’s still after us, Hank. And what’s going on up ahead?”
Marv turned his head, feeling like a goldfish rotating its bowl. Through the smeared reality of the vehicle’s windscreen, a bright pink smudge that Marv’s subconscious recognised as the sign of Mouse's club drew closer. Back-lit by the sign bayed a crowd of monsters which, illuminated by the passing headlights, coalesced into the drunken forms of a hundred costumed party-goers.
And at the head of the throng stood a familiar silhouette. That wide-brimmed hat, that twirling cane.
Even in his semi-consciousness, Marv recognised Daddy Mouse.
Shadows swayed past the headlights – clubbers whose woozy staggers forced Hank to swerve.
The silhouette of Daddy Mouse sprinted toward them, cane still twirling as he veered for the driver’s side. As the car passed, Mouse sidestepped, leaned back and swung the cane like a baseball bat that smashed Hank’s window, cracking his head sideways. Something warm splattered Marv’s face and Hank howled.
Crowd cheered, Kat screamed and car crunched into brick wall.
“That’s gotta hurt!” the silhouette said to laughs from the crowd, then danced around the car, flanked by three shadows which opened the vehicle’s doors and dragged its passengers onto the roadside.
The blurs sharpened enough for Marv to make out the hound sprinting through the mob to be petted by the silhouette, which sauntered closer. Impaled on the bloodied end of its outstretched cane was an eyeball. The silhouette shouted, “All part of the show, folks!”
As the crowd cheered, the silhouette flicked the cane into its hand, slid off the skewered eye and held it aloft. “Our friend Hank wants to
see what all the fuss is about!” The crowd laughed and the silhouette crouched before Marv, passing its other hand – all gnarled knuckles and gold rings – across Marv’s thigh to settle on the makeshift bandage. Daddy Mouse whispered, “The dog got you, huh?” Chuckled. “You always were useless.” Reflected headlight illuminated the silhouette’s grin as it ripped open the dressing and whirled to the crowd: “Happy Halloween!”
And the silhouette laughed and drove its cane into the wound.
(Mouse will place one hand on the wound, squeeze Marv’s chin with the other. “You want the cure? You know what to do.”)
Marv knew what to do. As soon as the darkness receded, he’d do it.
A hand stroked his cheek, soft and cool. Kat’s voice: “He’s coming to.”
He wondered dimly if he’d been having a dream, or a nightmare.
Or if he’d died and gone to heaven.
His vision cleared. Drab grey ceiling lit by a solitary bulb bobbing with the faint vibrations of music from the floor above. They must have been below Mouse’s club. By the door to Marv’s right stood a sharp-featured man. Marv dimly recognised him as one of the shadows who’d dragged them from the car.
Against the wall on Marv’s left a hooded man was tied by his wrists, wrinkled torso exposed. Next to him was a table on which lay an open book and a fruit basket. Ahead knelt Kat, who smiled her sad smile and stroked the hound, which gnawed its bone.
Beyond them, seated in the centre of the room, was Daddy Mouse, and behind him a doorway to darkness. The entrance to the catacombs.
Kat stroked Marv’s cheek. “Welcome back.”
“Jared, leave us.” Daddy Mouse nodded at the sharp-featured man, who closed the door behind him. Mouse straightened his waistcoat and retrieved an apple from the basket. “Happy All Hallows Day. Hungry?”
In response, Marv’s stomach gurgled like a drain.
Mouse tossed him the apple. Marv held the fruit with gnarled, cracked hands. They weren’t like that before. Even his wound, the tattered edges of its makeshift bandage dangling from his trouser leg, looked different. Dry. Dusty. “What happened?”
Mouse sat, leaned forward. “Last night, after the crash, you bled to death.”
Marv should have felt shocked or revolted or the pure adrenaline-fuelled instinct to turn and flee and scream.
As it was, he just felt like laughing.
Mouse’s eyes, shaded by the brim of his hat, seemed bemused by Marv’s amusement. That just got Marv laughing harder. Kat squeezed his hand. “Marv, please. It’s important you understand.”
“I understand fine. So we have us a merry little chase and end up killing ourselves on Halloween.” He chuckled. “And now what? I’m a zombie?”
Daddy Mouse raised a finger. “No.” Jabbed it at the hooded man tied to the wall. “
He is becoming a zombie.” Pointed at Marv. “
You are a ghoul.”
“Tomayto,” Marv giggled, “tomahto.”
Mouse scooped up the fruit basket. “Interesting that you mention food.” Strolled closer. “Do you know the difference between a zombie and a ghoul?”
“Zombies are in more movies?”
“Zombies feed upon the living, and ghouls, the dead.”
“Really?” Sitting up, Marv squeezed the apple. “Maybe I’m a vegetarian.”
“Indeed?” Daddy Mouse smiled. “Perhaps your tastes have changed.”
Marv wiped the apple, shrugged and took a bite. Eating the dead, what a stupid, ridiculous—
He gagged. Retched. The apple was like sawdust. Daddy Mouse grinned, reached into the fruit bowl and produced a banana. Eating it was like chewing cement and tasting brick. Mouse offered more fruit, but a bite of the orange squirted vinegar onto Marv’s tongue, the cherries were like crunching pebbles and the pear was ash in his mouth.
Marv yelled, “Enough!”
Daddy Mouse set the basket down. “How about something more palatable?” He sauntered to the hooded man, flicked out his knife and carved flesh from the man’s side to lay it delicately before Marv. “Bon appetit.”
And Marv had to admit, it did look appetizing. Once you looked past the blood, which really just added to the flavour, you had a rare piece of steak to make the most of post-haste, especially with the dog drooling and heading closer while Kat said something about “Not knowing where it came from”, but of course that was ridiculous, it was freshly prepared before you and all you had to do was pick it up and take a bite.
And bite he did, and chew and swallow and bite again until there was nothing but blood on his hands and meat in his teeth.
Daddy Mouse chuckled. “Good eating, huh? Didn’t think you had the heart for it.”
Marv licked blood off his fingers and nodded at the hooded man. “Who is that?”
“A dead man fortunate enough to know me.” From his waistcoat pocket Mouse pulled a small drawstring bag. “Which reminds me.” He let the hound lap blood from his hands, then strode to the table, flicked through the pages of the book and faced the hooded man. “Time for another session.” Sprinkling powder from the bag onto his palms, Mouse rubbed the wrinkled skin of the corpse’s torso, working his way up the man’s chest and neck, chanting barely above a whisper.
New wrinkles shrivelled into existence on the dead man’s throat as Mouse stepped back. “Soon he will live again.”
Sucking the last drops of blood from his fingers, Marv asked, “That how you brought me back?”
“My cane helped spread the venom, but,” Daddy Mouse pointed at the hound, “you live thanks to its bite.”
Marv remembered the dog biting his thigh all right, and how the beast had devoured the severed arm’s flesh to gnaw the bone within. Feeding upon the dead. “The dog’s a ghoul, too?”
Mouse stroked the hound. “According to the Arab who sold him to me, descended from the first.”
Marv grinned. This was the first he’d heard of his employer’s taste for exotic pets. Or any of this insanity. “So to become a zombie, you need to be revived with your voodoo skills? But if you’re bitten while still alive, you’ll become a ghoul? What if it just decides to rip you apart?”
Daddy Mouse nodded at Kat. “Ask her.”
Kat set her jaw and met Mouse’s gaze. “That’s got nothing to do with why we’re here.”
Mouse flicked through the book at the table. “You used the dog to escape, but it bit you, too. That’s why the beast doesn’t harm you. The venom in your veins makes you kin.” Mouse grinned. “And to kin you fled.”
Kat stroked the hound’s ears and muttered, “Don’t you talk about my mama.” Louder: “I’m warning you.”
“Warning?” Mouse pressed his palm against the pages. “What warning did she get? You could control the hound but not its hunger.”
“Shut up.” Her voice was a trembling, acidic whisper. “Not one more word.”
“How many words did your mother manage before the hound did its work?”
Kat spun, her eyes yellow furnaces of insanity like the dog’s, and screamed, “Don’t you talk about my mama!” But she lowered her head, auburn strands stuck to her face, and wept. And when she faced them, her eyes had returned to normal. Hurt. Afraid. “I couldn’t stop it.” She sniffed. “It was just hungry. And
vicious. The blood…” She covered her face, knelt and sobbed. The dog lay beside her.
Marv felt the meat in his guts turn over. That severed arm, the blood splattered on her skin and dress…. Shortly before he and Hank had arrived at the house, the hound had torn Kat’s mother limb from limb.
Daddy Mouse gazed at Kat. “When you came here, there was blood on your teeth.” He bared his own. “How did she taste?”
And before Marv had registered the words, rage had pushed him to his feet, thrown him at Mouse and launched a punch at his mocking face.
Mouse dodged, knife a blurred flash that stung Marv’s arm.
Marv gasped, grabbed his scratched flesh. Blood dripped dark and lazy between his fingers.
Daddy Mouse grabbed Marv’s throat. “Careful, Marvin. Anything that can kill a man will kill a ghoul.”
“Maybe this ghoul will become a man again.” Marv met Mouse’s glare. “There’s a cure. You’ll tell me about it. I saw you.”
Mouse nodded, fascinated. “Precognition? One possible side-effect of your condition. Visions of what was, what will be, what could have been. They’ll fade in time.” He pressed the blade against Marv’s cheek. “Like you.”
Kat rose. “The cure.”
“It’s simple.” Mouse released Marv, strolled to the hooded man and nodded at Kat. “You.” Then at Marv. “Eat him.”
Marv shook his head. “Or I eat her?”
Mouse shrugged. “Ghoul must eat ghoul.”
Kat said, “How about we eat your pooch?”
“Hot dogs!” Mouse laughed. “Why so squeamish?” He grabbed the corpse’s hood. “You know who you were chowing down on, Marv?” He ripped the hood from the corpse’s head, whose face snapped forward, right eye glassy, left eye a gaping hole.
And even through the shrivelled roadmap that coursed up the dead man’s features, Marv recognised Hank.
Mouse winked. “Finger lickin’ good.” From his bag, he poured powder down Hank’s throat.
Marv suddenly felt very ill. On the edge of his perception, a white blur he recognised as Kat grabbed the book from the table and said, “The real cure’s in here.”
As she spoke Hank’s shrivelled chest heaved. He coughed. Moaned.
“It’s alive.” Daddy Mouse beamed. “It’s alive.”
And as Hank wheezed, Kat fled through the doorway into the darkness.
Marv caught his breath as Mouse grabbed his leg. “I’d really like that book back, Marvin.”
“Yeah?” Marv fought a wave of nausea. “How about my humanity?”
Mouse placed one hand on the wound, squeezed Marv’s chin with the other. “You want the cure? You know what to do.”
(“We’ll know what to do,” she’ll shout over rushing water and step toward him across creaking boards in the semi-dark. “It’ll tell us everything. We’ll know what to do.”)
Marv knew what to do. He’d do it as soon as Mouse let go and Hank stopped heaving.
The hound had walked over and licked Marv’s face. Despite himself, he stroked the animal and muttered, “Hey, boy.” He rose and faced Mouse. “I’ll get your damned book. Then you’ll cure us and let us go. Got that?”
Daddy Mouse gripped Hank’s convulsing chest. “Go.”
Marv picked up the hound’s discarded bone. “Sorry, Kat’s mama.” He stepped forward. “I’ve heard stories.” Just a precaution. He’d find her. His premonition assured him of that. Besides, he had the dog to help him.
He ripped off the piece of Kat’s dress that served as a bandage and held it before the hound’s nose. It sniffed, straightened and paced toward the door. Marv nodded. “Good boy.” He looked at Hank as they drew away. “Sorry, man. I was hungry.”
If Hank heard him, his only response was a groan.
Marv looked back to the doorway, the hound waiting expectantly at the threshold. Marv swallowed, gripped the bone. “Here goes.” He stepped through.
The ground sloped downward. Ahead the dog’s hindquarters bounced in the semi-dark. Marv muttered, “Don’t usually chase this kind of tail.” He glanced behind him. The doorway was a shrinking arc of light in the black through which Daddy Mouse’s silhouette leaned, before turning back to shout, “Jared, follow them!” A shadow slipped out of the doorway.
Marv looked back at the hound’s tail. “Hear that, boy? We’ll get some company down here.”
Yessss.
He shuddered and focussed on the hound’s tail. “They say these tunnels web under the whole city, boy. Parts pass over the sewers.” Marv looked around the blackness as if there was something to see. “Interesting, huh? Nice place for Daddy Mouse to send his enemies.” The slope had levelled out. The dog veered to the left. “You know why they call him that, boy? It’s a funny story.”
The hound darted into the dark. Marv stumbled and grabbed the wall.
The wall grabbed back.
Clamped around his wrist were wrinkled fingers on whose joints Marv struck the bone, which snapped and slipped into the darkness that birthed amber eyes in twin gaunt, chewing faces.
One of them spoke. “We’ll rip the cure from our flesh.” Hissed a laugh. “Unless it’s in
yours.”
Marv ran deeper into the tunnel, ignored the jangling of the ghouls’ chains, the echoing of the dog’s barks and focussed on the trickle of water to his left. There was water in his premonition and it was water’s voice he followed through the winding black passageways, each slip and stagger a step closer to the liquid’s source, until it drip-drip-dripped into a gushing crescendo.
There.
She knelt in the middle of the tunnel reading the book by the light of a distant lantern. Water trickled down the brickwork, past the boards on which she sat to splash into deeper darkness below. The boards underfoot must have been suspended above a sewage pit.
Kat looked up and smiled. “You made it.”
He nodded. “Come on, Kat. A lot more stable on this side.”
She stood unsteadily, still holding the book. “The answer must be in this.”
“Let’s get it to Mouse.” Marv held out his hand. “He’ll know what to do.”
“We’ll know what to do,” she shouted over rushing water and stepped toward him across creaking boards in the semi-dark. “It’ll tell us everything. We’ll know what to do.”
She took another step. The boards moaned and cracked.
And in a blur, Kat and dog vanished into the abyss.
The boards shuddered and crackled, shaking dust from the ceiling as Marv turned and ran. He leapt forward and hit stone. Behind him wood splintered. A plank cartwheeled from the dark into his wounded thigh.
(He’d cover his wound and smile. “I’ll know what to do.”)
Marv knew what to do. As soon as the pain subsided and the tunnel finished collapsing behind him, he’d do it.
From the darkness ahead, twin green lights bobbed closer and coalesced into a pair of goggles. The suited man wearing them knelt before him. “Time to go, pal.” He dragged Marv back the way he’d come.
Marv called for Kat, even as the man lugged him across the basement, up the stairs, through the passage and heaved him out the back door.
Marv lay in the courtyard and wept beneath the stars.
Footsteps behind him. Mouse’s voice. “You’re lucky I let you live.” A kick in his ribs. It wasn't worth a reaction. Mouse crouched level with Marv. “Fail me, fail yourself.”
Marv closed his eyes. “It’s Kat I failed.” Lower: “It’s Kat who’s gone.”
“And the cure with her?”
“You wanted that book so bad, why not send Mr Night-Vision over there?”
“Perhaps, Marvin, I care more about my men than you’d admit.” Mouse scowled. “You and Hank are both alive, no? If I wanted you dead, I need only have said the word.”
Marv wiped tears from his face. “Guess you’ll say it now.”
“No.” Mouse’s expression twisted into a smirk. “I could chain you up in the catacombs, but the only way you’ll learn is to live with your failure. To see her face every time you feed on flesh.” He drew closer. “And feed you will.” He cocked his head. Smiled. “Cemetery’s not far. All you can eat.”
“You know something?” Marv grinned back. “I’ve never liked you.”
Mouse stood. “Wise.” He gestured to the suited man. “Jared.”
Jared kicked Marv’s stomach, spraying dust from his shoe, and muttered, “Ruined my suit.”
Behind Marv, the footsteps receded. As the door closed, a rat scurried past his hand and disappeared behind the broken nose of their crashed car. The rodent squealed. Marv staggered over for a closer look.
Behind the wreck, a man with shrivelled skin ate the rat like a sandwich. He looked up and smiled with one eye. “Hey, Marv.”
“Hank?”
Hank wiped his mouth and burped. “Eating the living ain’t so bad.” He pulled his dirty coat tighter. “Living outside on the other hand…” He hacked a cough and took another bite. “Heard about Kat. I’m sorry.” Hank’s good eye looked mournful. Just a pity about the rat-tail dangling from his mouth. “You sticking around?”
Marv looked past the courtyard to the city beyond, lights like candles in the dark. “I’ll take my chances.” He covered his wound and smiled. “I’ll know what to do.”
Hank nodded, shadow obscuring his good eye while street light illuminated his open palm. “Don’t be a stranger.”
Marv nodded, waved and headed for the lights, down shadowed streets and darkened alleys whose walls echoed footsteps and laughter.
Ahead, at the mouth of the passage, a young couple giggled and strolled hand in hand. The boy curled his fingers behind the girl’s raven hair, pulled her close. “Oh, Claudia.”
The boy stopped. Stared at Marv.
A part of Marv wanted to run and pounce and tear out the boy’s heart.
The girl placed a kiss on the boy’s gaping mouth and asked, “What’s wrong, Ted?”
And the part of Marv not cursed to eat the dead and remember Kat with every bite lowered his head and shuffled him into the shadows until they couple had passed.
Eventually he smiled. Emotion told him there’d be no more premonitions foretelling his future. Logic advised there’d be no more Daddy Mouse dictating his present. And as for these new dietary requirements? The cemetery wasn’t far. After that trip, Marv was free to do what he wanted with the rest of his unlife.
And he knew what to do. He’d do it after he’d had a bite.