Lights Out

by Douglas Clegg

  And I said what I felt, although I regretted it within the hour.

  I said, “Because you’re not even human.”

  4

  We took his car, but I drove. “You said you were doing Ice Palace at Crawford’s Dump,” I said, “so we’ll go there first. You better hope to god Lewis had the sense to break out of there.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, a singsong to his voice. “I gave Donkeyman some Chivas to do double duty. I told him to hit Spam on the head with the shovel if he tried to get out. We hosed it down pretty good. Twenty below. Nice thick ice. Ice you could skate on. Ice Palazzo.” Nate was still crying, bawling like a baby, and singing; he had cracked; he was drunk; he kept trying to grab the wheel while I was driving.

  Crawford’s Dump was the old graveyard just outside town, but there were few markers, and even fewer showed through the heavy snow. I skidded the Volkswagen to a stop on the slick shoulder of the potholed, salt-strewn road, and left the headlights on. We tromped in our tuxes through the Styrofoam crunch of snow, and each time Nate tried to pull away I socked him in the shoulder and cussed him out. The snow and a clouded moon provided a soft light, making the dumping ground of the dead romantic, beautiful, sublime. Even Nate, when I spat my fury at him, looked beautiful, too, with the tears streaming, and his eyes always on me. The dump descended into a small valley, where the entire cemetery spread out all around us.

  “Where?”

  Nate shrugged. His tears ceased. The wind, too, died, but we heard it howling around us, up the hill. Trucks out on the interstate blew their horns, one to another, and even the music from the Fancy Dress Ball, playing “The Swing,” could be made out.

  “Where, Nate? Tell me.”

  “Wherever Donkeyman is. You stole my girl, Underdog.”

  “Look, asshole, Lewis is going to die. You hear me? You will have murdered a human being. Don’t you get it? You tell me where that stupid Ice Palace is, or I will kill you with my bare hands.”

  Nate blinked twice. “Suck my dick.”

  I got a good clear shot at his jaw, my second in one day, and then a knee in the groin before he swung back; he only clipped me, but I was off balance, and fell into the snow.

  I thought for a second—just a second—I felt a gentle tugging.

  There, in the snow.

  Like a soft mitten, pulling me down.

  Nate jumped on top of me, spitting all over my face as he spoke. “You are my best friend, Underdog, you are my best friend in the world. Who the fuck cares about Lewis? Are you in love with him or something? Are you? Is that all you want? Lewis? Why are you doing this to me?” He began boxing my ears with snow, until I felt them go numb; I tried to heave him off me, but Nate was heavy; I felt that gentle tugging again. Soft. Like kittens on my back.

  And then, something I had always known would happen, did happen. I just had never had a clue as to the form it would take.

  Nate Wick kissed me on the lips as warmly and sweetly as any lover ever had.

  Something clicked for me then, and for the longest minute in the world, I shut my eyes and just felt the warmth of those lips, and the even tempo of my own breathing through my nostrils.

  I was somewhere else, and the cold of the snow was almost burning now, like a bed of warm coals against my tuxedo. His hands remained around my ears, and the sound of distant music, and trucks, too—their own music—voices up on the hillside, passersby to whom we were invisible. The whiteness of snow, the indigo sky, all there, but without me seeing or hearing.

  His lips were rough and chapped, and I felt my own lips opening like a purse that had been kept too long shut; his upper lip grazed my teeth. His breath was a caustic brewery, but I held each one for as long as I could. I hated this boy, this man, so much; I hated him, and yet tied like this, together, unnaturally if we were to believe those who ran the world, we were perverse brothers, children playing. The blood rushed to my face, an unbearable burning sensation. I opened my eyes; his remained closed. I kissed a corner of his lips, and then the other.

  He made a deep noise, a churning machine somewhere within his gut, or igniting along his spine, as he rose and fell again, softly, like the tugging I felt in the rabbit-fur snow beneath my back. The knob of desire, or prick, or dick, or wang, whatever we had called it through all the shared moments of college life, pressed from his pants against mine. I shivered as much from embarrassment as from lust; but there was no one around, you see, no one within miles. I remembered him in the showers, soaping his underarms like he was scrubbing a saddle, tender and quick and then sandpapering at the last; the tumescence he had, which I noticed only peripherally. I hated him. I hated him.

  He pressed the side of his face against mine, and it was like holding someone for the first time, this boy, this innocent, angry, drunken boy. I wrapped my arms around him. “I love you,” he whispered, and even though I smelled the alcohol, I sighed.

  He said, “Lewis was nothing. He was nothing.”

  And then my mind came back to me, through this physical revelation, through this lightning-swift understanding of all I had done before in my life, as well as much of what Nate himself had done.

  Lewis.

  Stewart Lewis. The freshman that Nate Wick had chosen as King of Ice Palace.

  “You fucked Lewis,” I said. “You fucked him and then you buried him. Get the fuck off me!” I shoved hard, and he rolled back.

  “No,” he said, rather meekly, not breaking eye contact with me. “I didn’t. He wouldn’t let me. He…he didn’t want me.”

  I would’ve liked to have died right there, my secret self that I had worked so hard to hide buried forever in snow, but I was worried about Lewis. The kiss had made me forget him, briefly, but the reality of who and what Nate Wick was came back to me, a sour taste in the back of my throat. “Get up, get up.” I stood, kicking him in the side. But he looked forlornly up at the moon, which had swept off its clouds; the lover’s moon, I thought, the horny poking male moon, the prick of light, the howling desire of man’s madness. I felt dirty, and picked up fresh snow and rubbed it on my face, my lips, to get that awful taste of him off me.

  “It’s so white,” Nate said, packing a snowball, which he threw at me as I wandered the valley.

  At last, I saw a solitary figure, a minute man standing guard: the illustrious Donkeyman, his shovel stuck firmly into a heap of snow. He was the whitest man I had ever seen, and even at night, he seemed to glow in the dark. His chin stretched downward like putty, the ears demonic; blubbery lips, nostrils drippy with snot. He grinned, and brayed some greeting—the bottle of Chivas Regal lay empty beside him, along with several piss stains at his feet. “Preppy boy, how you doin’?” he asked congenially, waving the flashlight that he held tight in his gloved left hand. He wore a deerstalker hat and an oversized tan duster around his shoulders — one that a frat brother had no doubt loaned him for the night. “King a Ice Palace in there. I done my job. You got another bottle?”

  I took the shovel up and asked, “Where?”

  “I said, you got another bottle? Done my job. Icy Palace, nobody goes in, nobody goes out.”

  I threatened him with the shovel, until he pointed out the mound, not three feet away. I tapped it with the edge of the shovel. Hard as a rock. The ice of its outer layer gleamed, for Donkeyman shone his flashlight upon it.

  “Lewis?” I shouted. “Lewis!”

  I listened, but heard only the giggling of Donkeyman as he lit a cigarette and puckered his lips at the first puff.

  “King a Icy Palace ain’t been talkin’ since about six, seven. Done a good damn job. Best. You boys know it, too.” He spat in the snow.

  I took the shovel up, down, up, down. The blade struck the outer edge of the Ice Palace. It was like breaking rocks in two.

  The ice finally creaked and cracked where I struck down.

  5

  I looked through the opening I had dug. Nate was already there at my side, perhaps sobering up a bit, because he seemed nerv
ous and worried. Donkeyman patted me on the back now and again in my labor, cheering me on. We were some crew.

  “Lewis? Stewart!” I shouted into the tunnel.

  Silence.

  “I only had him make it maybe six feet in,” Nate said, with some regret.

  I grabbed Donkeyman’s flashlight, and shone it into Ice Palace. The tunnel in the ice and snow did go about six feet or so, but then there seemed to be a twist. Handprints in the ice, too, along the shiny white and silver walls. There were the ropes. “He got out,” I said, almost relieved. “He got out.”

  “He got out,” Nate said, solemnly.

  “Thank god, thank you god for saving Lewis’s life.” I stood, leaning against the shovel.

  Donkeyman said, “He got out?”

  “Underdog,” Nate said.

  “Thank god, you better thank god, Wick, because if he had died in there…well, you are one lucky SOB.”

  Nate looked stunned. “He didn’t get out, Charlie.” Finally, for the first time in his life, calling me by my real name.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what I said. He didn’t get out.”

  “He must’ve. See for yourself.” I showed him the tunnel, and swirled the flashlight around to show the shape of the curve, to the left, barely visible. “He got loose and dug around that way. The lucky bastard must’ve gone for about six more feet or something, and then tunneled up.”

  “He didn’t get out,” Nate repeated. He shoved me aside, and crawled into Ice Palace.

  I watched him shimmy through the thin tunnel, blocking my light.

  “Nate, get out of there,” I called after him.

  I heard his words echo through Ice Palace: “I’m telling you, he didn’t get out. I put him here, Charlie, I put him here, so I should know.”

  “What’s he mean by that?” I asked Donkeyman, as if he would have a coherent answer.

  Donkeyman scratched his scalp beneath his cap and said, “Don’t know. The boy already got Icy Palaced.”

  I crawled in a ways, shining the flashlight first up ahead, and then to the frozen walls. I saw Lewis’s hand prints, as if he’d pressed against the snow to try and push his way out. He must’ve realized that this end of the tunnel would be iced over from the water that Nate would toss over it.

  So Lewis—you smart dog—you figured on digging some more, I thought, you miserable lucky nerd! Nate turned left, at the twist in the tunnel.

  I noticed a certain indentation in the inner wall.

  A word?

  I held the flashlight at an angle to make them out.

  RESUR

  Then, a hint of red. A bit of fingernail. Lewis had cut his fingers in the stiff snow. He had stopped writing.

  “Nate?” I called, but there was no answer, so I shuffled on my hands and knees, my back low but still pressing the ceiling, to catch up with him.

  I turned the corner to the left, and stopped, for something was different.

  I shone the flashlight all around.

  I couldn’t see Nate at all, anywhere; the tunnel seemed to descend at the turn, rather than do the logical thing, which was to move forward and up. If Lewis were to escape, surely he would’ve tried to push up?

  “Nate?” I cried through what now seemed an eternal tunnel of ice. “Nate!”

  My voice echoed.

  There were other hand prints there, in the ice, none of them the same. All were smeared, and some seemed impossibly thin; in one indentation, I saw what might’ve been a silken patch of the thinnest skin. I began to back up, to get out of the tunnel. As I reversed as far as I could, I turned a bit, shining the flashlight back toward the entrance.

  It was once again sealed.

  “Donkeyman!” I shouted. “Donkeyman!”

  I thought I heard him laughing, but perhaps it was not on the outside, but within this chamber, this tapeworm that had no end. This chamber of ice. I slammed my fist into the ceiling, but succeeded only in skinning my knuckles. Somehow, Donkeyman had sealed us in there again. I moved forward, the only place to go, past the hieroglyphs of hands and the sides of smooth bony faces, a thread of skin here, a spray of torn hair under my knees. The tunnel descended and then widened, so I could move about a bit more; there was less air here, and what there was of it began to stink like sewage.

  And then something grabbed me by the wrist, and shook the flashlight out of my hand. It rolled to the side, shining its light against the wall, casting gray-white-yellow shadow.

  I was in a room with others.

  Nate whispered, “I killed him, Charlie. I killed Lewis.”

  I was too numb to be shocked by what seemed inevitable, for I’d had a feeling from the beginning of the day that Nate would kill Stewart Lewis.

  Nate leaned over and kissed me gently on the cheek, then my right ear. Something moved in front of us. “I love you, Charlie. I’m scared. I mean, I’m really scared. I never been this scared.” His face shuddered, and I drew away from his caress.

  I leaned forward, picking up the flashlight, and shot its beam directly in front of us.

  “Oh god,” Nate said.

  It was Stewart Lewis, hunched in a wider chamber, his white Oxford shirt torn and bloody, with red and black slices through the skin of his chest. His khakis were muddy and soaked. I had never seen him without his glasses, but he seemed handsomer, with his hair slicked back, and a pale cast to his face. Around him, others, young men all, young and decayed, slashes along their arms, or blue flesh as if their blood were frozen, half-naked, tendons dangling from some, others as beautiful as if they were alive, and in some respects I knew they were, and in some respects they had not lived in a very long time.

  Nate said, “King of Ice Palace.”

  Lewis grinned, naughtily, and leaned into us, until his lips were practically an inch from my face. “Pleasures beyond life, Charlie, beyond the snow. The warmth of life, the sun within the flesh.”

  Lewis turned his face toward Nate, who clung to my sleeve. “One of you,” he said, his voice the same hopeless soprano of an undeveloped choirboy, but the face, full of fierce authority, his lips drawn back, his eyes ice ice ice. “One of you,” he said, “is mine.”

  Nate let go of my arm, recoiling from me, and said, “Him. Charlie. You can fuck him. You can do whatever you want to him.”

  “Oh, Nate,” Lewis said, “you wanted me, in the woods, you held the knife to my throat because you wanted me.”

  “I’m not like that,” Nate said, pressing himself back against the wall. “He is. Charlie’s like that. It was because you wanted me to do it. That was all. I have a girl friend. Charlie, tell him about Helen. Tell him.

  “You miserable—” I said, pushing at him. And then I turned to Stewart Lewis. “Lewis, what happened, what…what…are you?”

  “King of Ice Palace, Charlie, just the way Nate wanted me. Frozen, consenting, helpless. Nate, give me your tongue, give me your wet sweet tongue, give me the fire of your breath, give me the secret you.” Lewis leaned into Nate, and I moved to the side, but could not get too far from them. Lewis and Nate had locked mouths, and I heard a gurgling, but not of terror or pain. It turned into a tender moan, like a kitten searching for its mother’s milk. I watched in the white chamber as color returned to Nate’s pale face, for this love was being passed between them, this frozen and glorious and fearful love.

  All the young and dead men in the chamber watched as Nate pushed himself against the wall as if trying to break out of there. His hand traced a line along the shiny wall, gripping, becoming a clench of delight as Lewis leaned forward into him. Stewart Lewis was only newly resurrected, but it made me think how beautiful physical love could be, between two people, a doorway between two separate entities, that submission on both parts, that surrender to the warmth and the gasps of physical contact. I knew then why men enjoyed watching the sexual act almost as much as participating in it:

  Because it is a celebration of the perverse, no matter the context—the thrusting bu
ttocks, the muscular legs tight and kicking as if in combat, the slobbering mouth, the exquisite beauty of lost consciousness.

  That can happen to me, yes, and that, too, you think when you watch one enter the other, one clasp his hands around the other’s shuddering flesh.

  I loved Nate Wick, and I loved Stewart Lewis, and I loved the boys who had died, for the ritual of the ice had been known since before I came into the world.

  All of them, crowned for a season through years of winter, Kings of Ice Palace.

  6

  Leaving Ice Palace, while difficult, is not impossible, for the King is not a tyrant, neither is his court a prison. Nate never followed me out to the other side when the morning broke, but I think he was safer in there. I did not run from that place, but departed after having left my own hand prints along its white walls.

  I helped murder a boy once, or perhaps he had just become a man that night and did not want to return to the warming climates. He was my brother, although he was no blood relation. I do not believe that he is, in any real sense, dead, although his family has given up on him, as has his girl friend, Helen.

  Ice Palace: I do not wish to live there, not yet, although I venture into its white, secret chamber often on dark winter nights.

  It is a secret chamber, Ice Palace.

  Ice Palace.

  But, even so, it is never as cold or as lonely as my days in the world above.

  Why My Doll Is Evil

  She came from Japan

  In 1963

  My father, on business, saw her in a shop window

  With her fan and her obi

  And her curious smile