Short stories: A little suspense

THE GHOUL AND THE GUNSLINGER

It was 1978. Rachel showed up at the Tudor-style house in Palo Alto for the party. A ghoul opened the front door. He leaned casually against the door jamb and, crossing one ankle, said, “Why, hello, Your Grace.”

“That’s Duchess to you,” she said, without missing a beat. “You’re thinking about something and that makes you forget to talk. I can’t tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit.”

The Ghoul, replied, just as easily, “And the moral of that is — Oh, ’tis love,’ tis love, that makes the world go round!”

Rachel was enchanted. She and Ghoul were quoting lines from her role as The Duchess in the multi-media production of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass put on by her slightly misfit company of players, The Antediluvian Repertory Company.

It was Halloween. Rachel was twenty-six and she was all done up like a forties vamp in worn velvet. Her frizzy, long brown hair was piled high on her head and fastened with a rhinestone clasp. She