Ghoul by Brian Keene

lived beyond the Jones farm, along Route 116, but often road their bikes up the hill and into Timmy, Doug, and Barry 's territory. Presently, an uneasy truce existed between the two trios, but all of them knew that before the summer was over, because of slights real or imagined, a new war would break out. The last time, it had been because Ronny and Jason had thrown rocks at Doug and called him fat boy when he rode by their homes on his way to the Colonial Valley Flea Market.
    The time before that, it had started because Barry shot Steve in the butt with his BB gun.
    Although none of the boys would have admitted it out loud, they looked forward to the yearly wars. The familiarity was comforting.
    Barry wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. "Look. If we're inside the Dugout, then my dad can't see us, anyway. He'll never even know that we're over here. I don't see the point in moving. And besides, when we sneak out at night, it ain't like nobody knows. We can play over here then."
    All three of them were experts at sneaking out, crawling through their bedroom windows after their parents had gone to sleep and getting into midnight mischief; or at least Barry and Timmy were. Doug often used the front door rather than the window, since his mother never seemed to care if he was home or not.
    Agreeing that Barry was right, they turned toward more pressing matters. Timmy decided to keep quiet about the fact that his grandfather was aware of the Dugout 's existence. He wasn't sure how the guys would react.
    “Is that the map?” Barry asked, pointing at the tube in Doug's hands. "You done with it?
    Grinning proudly, Doug nodded.
    “Let's see it.”
    Doug glanced around furtively, as if expecting Barry's father, or perhaps one of their archenemies, to be lurking behind a tombstone.
    “Let's take it to the Dugout first. Safer there.”
    With Barry perched atop Timmy's handlebars, they rode over to the fort, and stowed their bikes in the tall weeds, obscuring them from view. They made sure no one was in sight, and then pulled up the trapdoor quickly climbing down the ladder and disappearing into the hole. Once they were settled, Timmy pulled the trapdoor shut, plunging them into darkness. Barry clicked on the flashlight and shined the beam around until Timmy struck a match and lit the rusty kerosene lamp they'd salvaged from the dump. The soft glow filled the underground space, flickering off the moldering centerfolds of naked women and posters torn from the pages of Fangoria and Heavy Metal hanging from the tan-colored wood paneling, which had been rescued from the dump and pinned to the soil with twelve-penny nails, clothesline, and generous amounts of duct tape. (The most important thing that Timmy 's father had ever taught him was that duct tape could be used for anything-- from battlefield triage to plumbing to hanging pictures.) Doug moved a stack of comic books, Hustler, and Cracked magazines off the card table and pulled the cap off the plastic tube, while Timmy and Barry fished cans of Pepsi out of an old Styrofoam cooler. With something bordering on reverence, Doug took out the map, unrolled it, and spread it across the table.
    “Wow,” Timmy exclaimed after a moment's pause.
    Barry whistled in appreciation.
    “You guys like it?”
    “Totally.” Barry's attention was glued to the map.
    “You did good, man.” Timmy clapped Doug on the back. “It's amazing.”
    Spread out before them was a scale depiction of their world, their domain. Doug had captured everything in loving detail: their homes and the roads between them, the surrounding forests, the cemetery, the homes of their enemies, and the location of the Dugout. The area devoted to Bowman's Woods was filled with hand-drawn trees, each one meticulously rendered. The graveyard had hundreds of tiny tombstones. Catcher's driveway had an illustration of a growling dog along with the words, Here There Be Monsters.
    “How long did this take you?” Barry