Ghouls by Edward Lee

small, oblong room, walled around by bookshelves all different heights and styles. More evidence of Willard’s decorative ineptitude—some of the shelves were obviously high-priced antiques, while others looked like the do-it-yourself kind they sold in Dart Drug. Carpet tiles vapidly covered the floor in what seemed the worst possible choice of colors—green and brown. Sunlight strained through heavy drapes; he flicked on a lamp and slid his finger through a layer of dust on the shade. The room felt unbalanced, desk and chairs and bar table all in the wrong places. He went to the shelves nearest the light: mostly medical texts arranged in no particular order, alphabetically or otherwise. Fine gray lines of dust had settled vertically between some of the spines, and crammed at the end were several faded manila folders. Glen took the liberty of sliding one out. He leafed through it, dust pouring off the edges like sand. The folder held medical papers, which he stared at through a vertigo of incomprehension. One of the titles read:
    Proposed Mechanisms Detailing Dopaminergic Inhibition of Prolactin-Releasing Hormone (PRH) Production in Cultured Rat Hypothalamic Neurons
    And another:
    Purified Nerve-Growth-Factor Effect on Membrane-Receptor Aggregation in in vitro Chick Neuroblasts Pretreated with Triiodothyronine (T 3 )
    The titles warped his vision; he couldn’t even pronounce the words. What is this shit? he thought. The last title came from the American Journal of Neuropharmacology. It read:
    Role of Vasoactive-Intestinal-Peptide (VIP) Andrenergic Release of Norepinephrine by Cat Dorsal-Root-Ganglia (DRG) Cells
    Now it made sense. The byline was: S. Howard, Andrew M. Freeman, and Nancy King.
    King was Nancy Willard’s maiden name. These must be research papers she’d done while working at N.I.H. before she got married. Must’ve been a lot of fun, he thought. Jesus. He jammed the folder back into its slot.
    Then he noticed the door in the darkest corner.
    It caught his attention only because it added to the room’s imbalance. He supposed it was a closet, but why would there be a closet in here? He opened the door to face a rectangle of absolute darkness, which seemed long yet somehow devoid of depth. Warm air rushed his face, and a faintly unsettling redolence, like tar.
    “Don’t go in there.”
    Glen whirled at the sound of Nancy Willard’s command. Her voice rang with a thin underpinning of panic. She was standing just inside the study doorway, cloaked in a robe of dark gold terry. Her hair glistened slickly from the shower, and she had combed it out in straight, shiny lines. Her looks had always deceived him; she was plain and bookwormish , yet he found something opaquely sensuous about that, more so now without her glasses. The lamplight drew a line on her, shadowing one half of her body and bringing out the other half to a fresh, wet crispness. Droplets of water clung to her neck and bare calves, as though she’d dried herself in haste.
    “Sorry,” he said, and closed the door. “Just curious. Seemed odd to have a closet in a study.”
    Her eyes widened, concentrating speculatively on his face as she spoke. “It’s not a closet; it’s the stairwell to the cellar. I keep telling Charles to nail it shut, since we never use it. One of these days someone’ll go down there and wind up with a cracked skull.”
    He couldn’t stand it when she made him guess. She was doing it on purpose, he knew she was. Her sadistic streak ran deep. He went closer to her, and elevated himself an inch off his heels to look past her shoulder into the hall.
    She smiled and handed him an envelope. “Here’s your paycheck.”
    “Thanks, Mrs. Willard,” he said, projecting his voice. He tilted his head to get a better look behind her. “Hope I didn’t disturb you, coming so early.”
    “Cut,” she said, and laughed. “We can stop with the ‘Mrs. Willard’ for now. I get such a kick out of watching you peek around to see