Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  Virgil patted him on the shoulder. "I'll go with you to John's place."

  "No, it's daylight. Nothing's going to happen with the sun up. You know that. You know how It plays by the rules," Winston said, and then did something uncharacteristic. He rose up from a sitting position and gave Virgil a great big hug. "You're my best friend, you know that, Virgil." He stepped back and shook his head. "You're shaken up by it, aren't you?"

  Virgil attempted a smile. "It hasn't really hit me yet."

  "Tonight it will," Winston also smiled, sadly. "Tonight and the next night, and then—who knows? Maybe we'll stop it again. Hah! Two old farts with one foot in the grave, that's a good one."

  Virgil had to catch his breath; he saw Winston, for the first time, as an old man. Not just an old man, but a man who had some trouble moving around, whose slacks sagged, whose head sagged a bit, too, as if tired of being held up for so long.

  Winston left soon after having a cup of coffee. He didn't ask about what was in the examination room, but he did say to his friend, as he walked out into the crisp day, "I almost wish it had gotten us back then, Virg. I almost wish it had been us so we wouldn't have to live with this all these years. I think Eugene was the lucky one."

  Virgil Cobb locked the door after his friend left.

  ***

  A lone figure sat on Watch Hill, like a sentinel. His face was chalk white, his hair, white, also; he wore torn khakis and topsiders, but had no shirt on, even with the biting cold.

  His eyes could be seen from a distance. Circled with darkness, in stark contrast to the chalk of the rest of his skin, they had a pinkish cast to them as if every blood vessel in them had burst.

  The skin of his back was not pale like his front. It had a layer of red tattoos, designs of dragons and lightning, carved in excruciating detail along his shoulder blades and down his spine.

  He crouched down and watched the town from a distance. When the sun was completely in the sky, he loped towards a mausoleum and rested in its icy stone shadows.

  As he closed his eyes, faint with hunger and dizzy with lack of blood, Byron Cheever whispered to no one, "He chose me. He chose me. He chose me."

  He began digging with his bare hands at a bulky stone cross that was thrust into the ground at the center of Watch Hill.

  ***

  Yet, in spite of these developments, people like Nelda Chambers awoke in the morning, still believing that the hottest news on the grapevine was that Joe Gardner was back in town. After she'd had her day's allotment of leaded coffee, she said, "You remember his mother, don't you, Cally? Well, yes, yes, she still lives out on the river, never going out into town anymore, no thank you, but staying inside, as well she should. Leading a good man like Dr. Cobb astray and then breaking his heart. Well, that son of hers, you remember, what happened with him and the Welles girl. You remember him going around town and telling everybody everybody's business, and finally what he did. Yes, that's right. What he did to the girl's body. Oh, lord, wouldn't you know he'd be back? The chickens will come home to roost, won't they?"

  After she hung up the phone, Nelda typed a letter on the old Royal typewriter:

  You will lose everything you love if you keep this up, you naughty man.

  She folded this, and slipped it into an envelope.

  She addressed it, sealed the envelope, and set it out in the mailbox for her husband, Dale, to find when he finally came home from wherever the hell he'd been sleeping.

  ***

  Others awoke, and the town's geometry seemed to expand with the movement of the living.

  2

  Homer "Hopfrog" Petersen was up by seven. He'd slept badly, perhaps only three or four hours at the most. He could not remember the nightmares too clearly and was hungover, but this never hindered his performance in other areas. He even managed to get in a workout with his weights before eight a.m. His upper body strength was important to him, for it helped him to be less dependent on the outside world. His son, Tad, was staying over the week in compensation for Thanksgiving weekend, coming up in a few weeks, when Becky would take Tad to her mother's house in Richmond; there had been no custody battle, because Homer pretty much let Becky handle Tad's schedule, and because he still trusted Becky to be fair in just about everything.

  While he still had his morning privacy, Homer tried to do his leg exercises. He stared at his knees and concentrated. Closed his eyes.

  Give me strength, he thought. Give me my legs back. I demand that my legs shall move.

  He thought this for several minutes; his head finally ached from the effort.

  "It's never going to happen," he whispered, mostly to himself.

  He went and got ready for his teaching job. He had never finished college, but because of his carpentry work, he had finagled a gig teaching woodshop at the junior high six years before when the carpentry work had dwindled. It was something to do. It paid the bills (barely) and got him out of the house on hungover November days like this one.

  He went around to the back, along the paved drive, to his car.

  On the way, he saw the footprints in the dirt.

  He saw something, caught on the bare branch of one of the azaleas, as if someone had brushed up against it, in a hurry, and had torn part of her dress.

  3

  Hopfrog's son Tad was on the bus to Colony Elementary before eight. He had a lunch box in one hand and two books in the other. He was fairly independent for his age and was used to rising early, making his lunch of peanut butter sandwich, banana, and Twinkies by himself. By eight o'clock, he was in his classroom and his teacher, Mrs. Wilkes, was taking roll. By nine o'clock, he had already given his book report on an old book from his father's library that he loved called Neverland. "It's not about Peter Pan or anything like that. It's about this bad kid named Sumter who has this shack he plays in with his cousin. And then he starts making really bad things happen, until the whole island he's on becomes this scary place. And it's really neat, because his teddy bear ends up tearing up his father."

  Mrs. Wilkes said, "My goodness, Tad, what kind of book is that for you to be reading?"

  "The kind I like," Tad said matter-of-factly, and then went and sat back down at his desk.

  Mrs. Wilkes looked at him, and he knew that she was probably going to call his mother to check to see that he was reading the right kinds of books. It was something Mrs. Wilkes seemed to do a lot of. When the class had to write a short story and read it aloud for Halloween just two days before, he had written one where blood ran in the streets and dragons attacked from the river.

  He had gotten a note home for that one.

  He waited out the school day, as if it were a prison sentence. Elvis and Hank Bonchance sent a note to him which read:

  gunna get u weenie.

  He couldn't wait to get back home and do stuff with his father.

  4

  Tad's mother, Becky O'Keefe was still sound asleep. She had gotten off her shift at two and had fallen asleep at home before three, but something at four in the morning had woken her up.

  She looked out her bedroom window, but could only see the maple trees outside, their bare branches bending in a wind. Just as she was about to fall asleep again, she thought she heard something in the room itself. She switched her bedside lamp on. The room was bathed in a warm golden glow from the light. The pictures on the wall of Tad, from infancy onward, seemed to have been rattled, as if there'd been an earthquake (and surprisingly, several years back, there had been a mild earthquake in West Virginia, so she thought this might again be the case). She called to her spaniel, Whitney, who slept in Tad's room, even if Tad was off on one of his overnights. The dog didn't come running up, as was usual.

  Disturbed, a little frightened, she reached for the pistol from the drawer of the bedside table. Taking it in hand, she grabbed her robe from the end of the bed, threw it on, and walked out into the hallway.

  For just a second, she thought she saw a ghost, standing at the bottom of the stairs. />
  But the stairs were dark, so how could she have seen it?

  She flicked on the light.

  When she saw the spaniel's body, what had been done to it, she screamed and ran down the stairs.

  It was freezing. The door to her house was open, and there were small muddy footprints leading from the dog to the doorway.

  The bare footprints of a child.

  5

  Joe Gardner didn't rise until almost eleven, the phone was ringing, and he covered his ears at first and tried to go back to sleep. But it was not to be. The telephone had an old-fashioned ringer, and its bell sounded eight times before someone picked it up. He opened his eyes. A trace of cold had slipped beneath the windowsill and made him want to snuggle with the comforter awhile longer.

  But a full bladder got him up, standing, wiping sleep from his eyes.

  His head was throbbing, a condition he didn't understand until he remembered the enormous vodka martini of three a.m. or so. He clutched his head and pressed his thumb into his forehead. The sun, so flat and brilliant as only encroaching winter sun could be, flashed across the window. Jenny was already up; he heard her downstairs talking with his mother (a horrifying thought), and there was the clatter of dishes.

  He went to the bathroom to do the three s's: the first two being shower and shave. Afterwards, he pulled on jeans and a blue chambray work shirt; topped it with a gray wool sweater; jogged down the stairs, feeling better since the shower. Only traces of an ache in his head.

  Jenny said, first thing, "You smelled like vodka."

  He acknowledged this with a kiss on her lips. "All gone now, though. Found the Scope in your overnight bag." Jenny smelled fresh; baby powder and his mother's spice hand soap. Her hair, blond and recently chopped, smelled something like his mother, too. He wasn't sure if he liked it, but it didn't seem as terrible a thing as he'd feared.

  His wife wrinkled her nose up. "I still detect liquor." She never liked him to have a drink. He knew it, her fear about writers and alcohol; it was a fine and destructive tradition, often taking with it the most wonderful as well as the most mediocre of literary talents.

  "It was purely medicinal," he said, making a feeble joke.

  Changing the subject, she said, "That was Homer calling a little while ago."

  "Homer?" Joe had to think about that name; it sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it. Suddenly, a face dredged up through his memory: a handsome boy with strawberry blond hair and an absurdly winning smile. "Oh, Hopfrog!" And then, another memory: the last time he and Hopfrog had broken bread together.

  What Hopfrog had said to him.

  6

  "You've been more a brother than any brother," Hopfrog, nineteen, had said. "But this is driving me nuts. I can't sleep. I barely touch my food. I want to be happy in this life, Joe, and if I start thinking about this, all this... this... well, craziness you're talking..."

  "But," Joe interrupted, "you saw it. You were with me. Remember? You saw it, for God's sake."

  Hopfrog had closed his eyes then. "Joe. I don't know that I saw anything. Maybe I did and maybe I didn't. You never heard of mass hysteria?"

  "Yeah," Joe said sullenly. "It's when you laugh in church. You saw what I saw, Hopfrog. You helped me do that to her. Jesus, Hop. And for some reason, something got into me from it. Like a disease. But you know it, too, don't lie to me. You know it."

  Hopfrog opened his eyes and looked at Joe as if Joe were an escaped mental patient, then. "I think you need help, Joe. That's all I can say. If you believe in all that crap, you need a good doctor and a good long rest. I think maybe you've cracked."

  7

  "Hopfrog," Joe said to Jenny. "Jesus, they all come out of the woodwork."

  "What?" she whispered affectionately so Anna, in the kitchen, couldn't hear. "You managed to alienate everybody in your hometown in only nineteen years of life?" She pinched his behind playfully.

  "Apparently," he shook his head, laughing, "What the hell? It's old home week. Can't fight city hall." He was going to try to take a lighter view of things, he decided. The town was not that dreadful, nor was it peopled by monsters.

  Jenny reached up and combed his hair neatly with her finger; what they called between them, "basic gorilla grooming." She took him by the hand, and they walked towards the kitchen. "He said he heard you were in town from the way everybody was looking like a bomb had hit. He was very funny on the phone. He told me they used to call you Baconhead."

  "Oh, no," Joe had to laugh, "not that one. Just because in eighth grade, when my hormones struck, my hair got really greasy. I had to wash it three times a day. Well, better Baconhead than Hopfrog."

  "Well, we're all going to catch up tonight at supper. At the Angel Wing at six fifteen." She led the way into the kitchen. The sunlight through the large window was stronger against his eyes than any emotion he might have had, walking into his mother's kitchen, the same one where he used to find her bent over drunk, vomiting in the sink on some mornings.

  ***

  Joe's mother was at the kitchen table talking rather seriously with Hillary about dolls and their personal habits. He watched her peripherally as he went to get a cup of coffee. His mother had never been good with kids before; yet, somehow, overnight she had transformed into Grandma Barney.

  "Why don't you and Jenny take the day and go out, I'll watch Aaron and Hillary," Anna Gardner said, her voice far too sweet and grandmotherly.

  Joe looked at Jenny. These women were in cahoots. He gave his wife the: I can't believe you trust her with our children look, but he was fairly sure she would ignore it.

  "I already said it was okay," Jenny said, rather too authoritatively. "I want you to give me the whirlwind tour of Colony."

  Joe looked from one woman to the other.One thing he had learned in his marriage, the one thing that set him back five hundred years, back to when troglodytes ruled the earth, was that no matter what, the woman was always right. It was the only thing that ever seemed to keep peace in the household.

  "Good," Joe said. "That'll be great. Then we'll come back and go out to dinner. Say around six? You remember Hopfrog, Mom. He'll be meeting us, too."

  Anna Gardner's face brightened. "Thank you, Joseph. Thank you." She came over and planted a kiss on his cheek. "You're making an old witch very happy."

  "Just don't take the kids down to the river. If something were to happen—"

  "I know, I know. A feeble oldster like me couldn't do much. We'll stay in the yard," then, turning to Aaron, "and you know what I have in the yard to show you?"

  Aaron shook his head.

  "Your father's truck," Anna said. "From back when he was a boy."

  Joe glanced at his mother. Sipped his coffee. "You still have that old rattrap?"

  "I wasn't about to get rid of it," his mother said. She sounded slightly hurt by his suggestion. "I know how much that truck meant to you." She put her hand over Aaron's. "It was a gift from your grandfather. Oh! Aaron, you look so much like your grandfather, and he was the handsomest man in the state. He was smarter than I'll ever be, and he worked hard and loved his family. But he was disciplined and ran a tight ship."

  'That's funny," Aaron said, "Dad told me he ran a garage."

  8

  Joe and Jenny took River Road, the long way to town. The river was noon bright, the water brown and yellow with sunlight. It was warming up a bit, so they kept the car windows down. Even though most of the trees had lost their leaves, there were still enough around with yellow and red bursts of color; the stone houses, all in a row on the river, with the boat landings behind them; joggers in sweats taking a lunchtime run; the sight of the eastern bridge, its girders etched in Joe's memory—he pointed out where he and Hopfrog would hang off the end of the bridge and then jump into the river below. "It didn't seem dangerous back then," Joe said, "but we could've died doing it. Look how far a drop that is. Whew."

  He drove her by the old high school, Dabney Courtland High. "Named for the county's only hero
of the War Between the States. Dabney deserted from the Confederacy right about the time that West Virginia separated from Virginia. Then he led the attack on Fort Harris. Died at the Alamo. I know all about him. We had to study him at least one day a year from first grade on. And there"—he pointed out a large satellite dish, smack dab at the edge of the schoolyard, bordering a brick house; the dish seemed taller than the building—"we have the West Virginia state flower." Joe grinned. The high school was closed down. It was a functional and dull late fifties building, red brick, like a large oven. Three of its windows had been broken. "I guess the high school kids all go over to Stone Valley for school now."

  Jenny got out of the car. "Let's walk some." The shopping district of town was just a few blocks away and amounted to both sides of a very narrow street. He parked the car, got out and stretched. Jenny put a quarter in for the local paper (four sheets primarily of classified ads, with tidbits of local wisdom and what they both imagined to be a rotating restaurant review, as there were only four restaurants in town). As they walked, Jenny browsed the classifieds.

  Joe said, "What, are you looking for a house to buy?"

  She seemed lost in an ad for a second, then looked up at him. "What? Oh, this. It's just that you can tell a lot about a place by its advertising. Look at this, house rentals, four bedrooms go for four hundred a month. Four hundred a month."

  "Yeah," he said, "but it's a long way to Baltimore from here."