Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  8

  Kevin Sloan remained drunk for three solid days, and his neighbors at the Sun Dial Trailer Park were kept awake at all hours by his curses and his screeches. He slept in his jeans and Western shirt the whole time, too, and marched around his trailer slamming his fists into the wall. “Women and fucking dogs!” he’d shout, the room shaking as if from an earthquake. “Well, fuck you, fuck every one of you! Unnatural, disgusting things! I don’t know what you done, but you done it to her and you made me—made me hear all these things and see them things—you made me want to—Wendy get out of my head! Get out!”

  He had seen the puppies as they had crawled from the hole in the ground, just as the sun had been moving to the west, just before the truck had crashed less than a mile away, he had seen them and had run to get his gun to kill them as soon as they had come out of Lammie, but they were gone when he returned.

  And while the truck had burned, he had pointed his gun to the side of his beloved dog’s skull and wept bitter tears as he killed her.

  And doing it, he had lost what little mind he had left.

  He didn’t even remember fighting with Peter Chandler.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  True Confessions

  Written and then destroyed by Peter Chandler

  I can recount every little thing I’ve done wrong in my life before I was sixteen, from the time I cheated my sister out of a dollar owed her from a bet when I was thirteen, or the moment when I knew I despised my father and would lie to him every chance I could, or even the time I cheated on my third-grade history test. But the summer I turned sixteen, everything was wrong and nothing would be right ever again.

  I had begun dating Alison, just a movie here and there and some making out in the back of her car, but nothing too heavy even though I knew she was “the One” even then. Al, Ali, Alison, there are things I’ve never told you from that time, things I’ve wanted you to forget, things I wish I could burn out of my own memory. I suppose I should go back and forgive that teenager named Peter, but I don’t feel much removed from him.

  I knew what I was doing.

  I knew it was wrong.

  I let it happen.

  I went out to see Sloan after the truck fire in the Wash, but all I found was a man standing beside a dead dog—the pit bull called Lammie. Her head had been torn apart by a bullet, and there he stood laughing over the dog’s body. He began babbling incoherently—and perhaps if I’d listened, I would’ve begun to understand what was to come, but all I knew was the asshole had killed a dog and was laughing about it.

  “Her babies, Peter,” he gibbered, drool slipping from his Ups. “I saw them. There was two! Two! They almost looked like dogs, but shit, they had these faces, Peter, and they had these bodies, bigger than any damn puppies I ever saw. Unnatural monsters! Seriously, Pete, I ain’t shittin’ you! It’s Wendy, Peter, she brought it here, I saw their faces, man, I saw their fuckin’ faces, and she knew, my poor, poor Lammie got it in her somehow, but she knew, Wendy knew, she’s not a woman, nope, I seen her in the dark, in the dark, Peter, when she climbs on me now, something’s changed, something gotten into her, she’s a fuckin alien or something!” Rage and laughter mixed in his voice with whiskey that permeated the space around him, and without knowing why I went right up to him and raised my fist. I barely remember the fight, but afterward, I was hurting in every place a boy can hurt, and he was still laughing and pointing to the dead dog. I went and threw up behind the trailer, and that’s when Wendy slipped her arm around me, offering me water, wiping my lips with a towel and whispering, “He’s gone mad, Peter. I need your help. Please.”

  And perhaps if I had just left her there, things would be different.

  If I had just gotten her to the police or to some other place.

  If I had not felt aroused by her need. If it had not made me feel more like a man, bruised as I was, taking her into the truck and getting the keys from her, and driving her out onto the desert, out to No Man’s Land, where the hills rose sharply, where we drank some beers and where she wept, telling me stories of his abuse, of how he’d threatened to shoot her like the dog. And then, in my arms, weeping, she looked up into my face, and I knew she would kiss me.

  And I wanted her to kiss me.

  And I thought of Alison while she kissed me and then, late, night came on, and we had done more than kiss. She whispered, “I need you, Peter, I need all of you.”

  “All of...us?”

  “All of you.”

  The night and that weird aura of the desert seemed to change the way she looked—she seemed to glow in the gathering darkness. For a moment, I thought I saw something in her eyes like shiny glass.

  And then for a second I saw what was beneath her skin.

  Something oily and coated with slime. If I closed my eyes it was as if I were embracing a large, wriggling eel with spines along its back.

  I had the sensation of being within a nightmare, of having dreamed the entire day, and I felt my skin break out in goosebumps as she licked my ear. “All of you,” she repeated.

  I tried to struggle from her arms, but it was as if some creature had locked tentacles around my back. “Who are you? Who the hell are you? Are you even human?”

  Wendy, placing a kiss on my lips, a kiss so hot as to burn, with a tongue of wet fire pressing into my mouth said words that seemed to appear in my mind without coming from her lips—“I am all you want now.”

  I tasted the blood from the back of her mouth.

  And then my body betrayed me.

  And I was no longer where I thought I had been.

  And she had me.

  1 can still recall, years later, the feeling of entering her body. It was as if my skin were being slowly ripped from my flesh.

  And the shivering, erotic intensity of the pleasure there, in the dark, by the caves.

  The intensity was what I began to crave.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Tapes and a Confession

  1

  From the interview with the boy named Peter:

  “The authorities all believe that you were insane. There was a history of abuse in your family. They dug up records in San Diego.”

  “Abuse. Sure. My dad liked to hit. So did Charlie’s dad. For all I know, all dads like to hit. And drink. And wish their sons had never been born. And move up to the high desert to get away from everything. But no, I wasn’t some victim of abuse who suddenly got together with my friends and decided to...do what we did.”

  “Why won’t you tell me more about her?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Because it keeps her alive?”

  “You’re the smart one, you tell me.”

  “Because you’ve seen something that most human beings never encounter.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “Tell me about the others. Alison. Why did her grandmother pull her away?”

  “She had nothing to do with it.”

  “I spoke with her.”

  “Alison?”

  “No, her. Wendy.”

  “That’s not possible. No way. Not after what we did. Even what she became...”

  Silence for several minutes.

  Then, the boy says:

  “Well, then, you’ll bring her here, to us, won’t you? We stopped what happened. But you’re going to bring it back again, aren’t you? You don’t even know what she is. You can’t even imagine.” He catches his breath.

  “That’s it. No more interviews. What are they going to do to me?”

  “Not as much as you’d think. You’ll probably undergo more tests.”

  “I mean after all that. Prison?”

  “Charlie confessed. You’ll probably go to relatives or foster homes. You might get emancipation status so you can work and support yourself, I guess. If that’s what you want.”

  “Charlie?”

  “I doubt he’ll serve time. Might end up in a boy’s camp-type situation. A boy can confess to anything he wants, but u
nless his fingerprints are there, it’s tough to prove anything. Claw marks don’t cut it. And the bodies? Where are they?”

  “I bet they’re still up there, somewhere. I bet the Devil has a way of hiding his work. You can send cops and investigators and FBI to Hell and back and I bet they’d never find a single campfire.”

  “It was the Devil?”

  “No. I don’t know. It was...I guess demons are no good excuse for what happened. I don’t have words for what I saw. Maybe I’m too stupid. Demons is the best I can do.”

  “I believe you, Peter.”

  “Then help us. Help me. Help Charlie.”

  “All right. I’ll do what I can.”

  A momentary silence. Then, “Thank you.”

  2

  From the taped interview with Alison:

  “Who am I speaking with now?”

  “One of the thousands who occupy this bitch.”

  “Devils?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “What do you want from her?”

  “We want to be born.”

  “But you already exist. Why be born?”

  “Because we must come through.”

  3

  From the taped interview with Charlie:

  “That’s an interesting knife.”

  “Yeah. You read Latin?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “It says that this is an athame. It’s a ceremonial blade. It’s rather fantastical.”

  “Does it mention demons?”

  “A particular one, yes. It calls her Lamia, Goddess, Mother, Fertile One, Mistress of Howling Night. And then it has one other word. Translates as ‘oblivion.’”

  “Hell,” the boy said.

  “Perhaps.”

  “You believe now? I mean, I told you where to find the knife. I want it back, too. I know you can’t give it to me now, but I want you to promise you’ll keep it safe and locked up and then you’ll give it back to me when I’m through. If I survive whatever fucking loony bin I get shipped off to.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good.”

  “It’s at least a thousand or more years old. Did you know that?”

  “No. I think it’s older. I think someone with a lot of power created it to stop her before. They just didn’t.”

  “Sending demons to Hell,” the man said. “You kids out there, fighting this thing. Believing. Charlie, why don’t you just retract what you told the police? You won’t be dealt with so harshly. After all, you weren’t the only one.”

  “I have a lot to make up for.”

  “If it was a demon—”

  “I don’t think you get it, Doc. Nobody does. Not even me. I do and I don’t. I guess nobody does until they’re right in the shit middle of it.”

  “Fair enough. But why you? Why you and Peter and Alison?”

  “I don’t know. I guess ‘cause we were there. I guess ‘cause we were ready. Maybe because we could be had. Why does anybody get hit by a car? Or end up on the one jet that crashes? Why does someone fall off the same cliff that a hundred other jerks have been hiking around for years?”

  “And what about her mother? Who was she?”

  “She’s dead, too. We killed her. She was nobody. She was the mother of a demon. That’s all.”

  “All right. And her father?”

  4

  Peter Chandler/Confessions

  Portrait of Palmetto, California, in the summer of 1980. It was the beginning of the terror. Charlie was the first to kill. Didn’t know who lived in that Garden of Eden, not until after Charlie had killed his folks, and before the rest happened.

  What Wendy had inside her.

  It’s calling.

  Who’s left, I wonder? Who will hear the call?

  NOW, TWENTY YEARS LATER

  PART FOUR

  LOS ANGELES

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Interrogator

  1

  Diego Correa owned a muddy-green Mustang that he’d had since 1974, and although the seats had been falling apart for years, he enjoyed the meaning of the car. It had been bought with the royalties of his first book, The Rain Dwellers, and although it was in terrible shape and was in the garage two days out of three, to Diego, symbols were all. But it was raining—sprinkling, really—and one of the tires was bald, and the brakes weren’t in the best of shape. Still, if he drove carefully, slowly, he would not have to worry about sliding. “Oh, Teresa, but I will never get used to this traffic,” he said aloud to his nonexistent passenger as he fiddled with the radio.

  As he turned left into the parking lot, he saw three of his female students standing in wait for him, and he cringed. You are sixty-two, why would those college girls even pretend to be entertained by your old stories? They should get out there and live, not listen to some old man tell of his adventures!

  “Dr. Correa!” one of the women called out, a young woman he did not recognize from his classes, and he pretended to be deaf as he got out of his car and walked swiftly toward his office.

  2

  After class, Diego went back to his office just to smoke a cigar and relax. He enjoyed the corridor the most when everyone was gone. He could sit and read with the office door open until one or two in the morning; he was working his way through Jung again, as he always did in the fall. When Teresa died—at least left the Earth; who knows where her essence had gone on to—he hadn’t enjoyed being home by himself.

  His housekeeper, Mrs. Warhola, kept the place tidy and cooked dinner for him, but she had her own family to care for, too, and she wasn’t interested in talking, particularly about mythology or religious experience. Teresa had gone very quickly, while he had been away; he discovered she had pneumonia one day, and then the next that she was dead. It had been just like her to go so quickly. She had done it to him before, in smaller ways. She had gotten tired of the Andes, when he was doing his research on human sacrifice, and had just gone out to get a cup of coffee. The next he knew, she was calling from Los Angeles to say she missed the house and had work to do in the garden, and couldn’t he come home soon? Another time, in Nepal, she’d taken off for a weekend with her sister to Bangkok and only breathlessly told him an hour before she was to board a plane. He admired her for it: neither of them had grown up with such independent parents. In his household, his father had been master and his mother had been servant, and he’d always felt a great sense of shame for the role his mother had had to play, given that she was the more creative of the two. Once he had asked his mother why she was content with such a situation, and she had told him, “I’m not. I’ve never been happy with it.” But his mother had been on the cusp of the old ways; Teresa had just caught the tide of the new. It was why he still loved her, still felt her beside him. She had taught him so many things that he would never have learned on his own. “It is because of my cold heart, Teresa,” he said, speaking as if she were hovering nearby. He leaned back in his cushioned chair, settling in to read. “You warmed it for a while, but you had to take off in another direction, didn’t you? And leave this old man to teach like a used-up bit of gray matter.”

  Diego almost jumped out of his chair when he glanced up from his book and saw a woman standing in the doorway. He glanced at his watch; it was only eight A.M. Perhaps she was the woman applying for the new secretarial position. “Hello?”

  “I’m looking for Dr. Correa,” she said. She lingered in the doorway, as if stepping in his office were tantamount to dropping off the edge of a cliff.

  “You found him.”

  And that had been a red-letter day for Diego Correa, because it was the first day of treatment with Alison Chandler, a woman he had met and spoken with briefly when she had been just a girl.

  That had, for him, reopened the dream of his life: to get to root of what had happened in Palmetto, California, in 1980.

  A town that burned, that was abandoned, around which legends had arisen. What could’ve caused it?

  Dem
ons, is what the children had said.

  No one listened to them —no one except for Correa and some of the tabloids. Even the authorities had abandoned their search for bodies, as if something up there in that place had convinced them that there was no answer.

  Correa began to meet with Alison Chandler twice a week, to help her find what had been denied both of them for too long.

  The day that Peter Chandler saw something in the basement of a bungalow was the date of the sixth session that Diego and Alison had together, and it was the first in which she mentioned the town of Palmetto, California, directly.

  3

  “The case. 1980. I know you studied it in detail,” Alison said. “I’ve read a few of your books. The one called The Secrets of Childhood, the Mysteries of Youth. You devoted three whole chapters to Palmetto—the vanishing of a town.”

  “There wasn’t much to study, but I spoke with two of the boys. And a girl.”

  She smiled. “One was my husband.”

  “And you were the girl.”

  The smile vanished. “I don’t remember.”

  “I know. Your husband...”

  “Please, I feel like I’m betraying him by just being here,” she said, looking directly into his eyes for the first time. Before she spoke he felt his heart skip a beat because in her eyes was a softness, an understanding he had only found with one other woman, and it terrified him with its suggestion of intimacy. Then it was gone, that light in her eyes. Is it my imagination? he wondered. “My husband lied to you. Who can blame him? We were hounded by doctors and reporters. Anyone would’ve lied just to be left alone. They thought he was crazy, you know. But he lied to protect me.”