Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  She sat back down in the chair, covering her face with her hands. “Jesus Christ, I know those people. Jesus.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Oh, Jesus,” she began weeping uncontrollably, and it took nearly tea minutes for her to calm down enough to tell him that they were her brothers and mother and father.

  2

  Alison felt a presence in the parking lot that night. This didn’t seem terribly unusual to her: she was always feeling some sort of presence, and she attributed it to her childhood trauma, that part of her adolescence that had been wiped clean, the part of her that finally required seeing Diego Correa—and still she didn’t feel she’d made any real progress. All she felt was guilt and stupidity because something in her mind was keeping her from knowing herself as well as she should. Instead I hit a wall and sit there wondering why I can’t see around it. So I feel weird things in parking lots at night. Terrific.

  So why are you so scared?

  She’d come out of Diego’s office just after ten, feeling exhausted and a little weak; she wondered what new excuse she’d give Peter when she arrived home late again. She hated confrontation more than she hated certain unremembering parts of herself. How do you love someone, she wondered, when he keeps something this important from you? And yet she knew: Peter had brought her into life. The past, the town on the high desert—it had all been a nightmare. She was one of the few survivors, and whenever she read an account of it, she hit the wall and could go no further. It hurt to hit the wall; the fever rose beneath her skin and her brain chewed on itself until she was popping Advil like they were M&M’s. She knew she should see a physician, but doctors scared her; and she was so worried about the possibility of a tumor in her brain that she didn’t want to find out. Does that make sense? she’d asked herself as she walked. Does anything I do make sense?

  And then the parking lot.

  She didn’t feel the chill of the night air until she was halfway across the parking lot. It was almost empty. The lamplight shone metallic off the hoods of the few cars still scattered throughout it. Her Honda Civic (bought in 1986 for four thousand dollars, and it looked it with its bashed in back fender and expired registration and bald tires) seemed miles from the other cars, and another end of the world from the guard booth. The guard was there, though, sipping coffee in his booth, clipboard in his hands, and she smiled and waved, but he did not look up to see her.

  Nothing bad happens to you if security’s around. Naturally in the parking lot after ten at night you’re going to freak over nothing, especially after talking demons with Diego Correa, the man who believes that myth has reality, that the unseen exists. Demons, Ali, do you really buy that?

  The autumn days could be in the high seventies, but after dark the temperature could drop severely to an uncomfortable chill. Alison Chandler tugged her blue cotton sweater down, stretching it almost to the pockets of her jeans.

  In the pit of her stomach she felt the need to go seek out someone, maybe the guard, maybe Diego. She felt watched. But then, Alison, you’re certifiably mental, haven’t you always known that? Haven’t you known that since you learned to talk again, learned to think again? If it hadn’t been for Peter you would’ve been either stuck in some state institution or forced to live with the grandmother from hell.

  She walked across the lot, hearing the echoing steps of her own shoes. She reached her car and took a deep breath. Checked the backseat to make sure no madman with an ax was hiding there. All clear. Alison caught her breath, trying to hold it in silence while she slipped the key in the door to unlock it: she glanced around the lot. Animals do this, she told herself, they sniff the wind for predators, they sense things without seeing them. She smelled nothing but her own cologne. When she climbed into the Honda, she rechecked the backseat. “Nobody’s in here with me,” she said to the car’s interior, and pulled out a stick of Juicy Fruit gum from the glove compartment.

  Alison locked the door and checked the other door to make sure it, too, was secure. She strapped herself in with the seat belt and turned the key in the ignition, pumped the accelerator, and turned on the headlights.

  When she put the car in reverse, she glanced up to the windshield.

  On the other side of the chain-link fence surrounding the lot, she saw the man watching her.

  The man’s features were bleached a flat white in the brilliant headlights; his chalk-white hands clutched the fence. His face, pressed against it. He wore a sweatshirt, but the hood was pulled up, obscuring most of his face.

  He opened his mouth wide.

  Something in the emptiness of that shadowed face terrified her. Just a shadow.

  But a shadow she had seen.

  Before.

  I’m hitting the wall, a small voice rose up within her.

  Her whole body began shaking uncontrollably, and tears rolled down her cheeks. The pain in her head was enormous. She didn’t even realize that her nose had begun bleeding.

  3

  In her head, she was not staring out the windshield at all, but speeding like a rocket, moving toward a wall that was moving just as recklessly toward her—and she was sure she would smash against it like a fly on a windshield.

  She heard a boy say, “Alison, you are gonna regret this.”

  The blood silhouette of a woman pressed against a high yellow wall met her head on. And the blood moved in liquid down the edge of the wall, and the blood cried out to her, “You are always here with me. In here. In darkness. Come to me. When I call.”

  4

  Alison awoke, gasping. She felt cold. She saw curved, smooth forms, a landscape of circles and lines. Her scalp felt raw, as if someone had torn her hair out. The ache behind her eyes was rhythmic and painfully slow. Eyes hurt. Throat filled; taste of blood. She tried to form a word, but could not come up with one.

  Finally, a thought and a word: dying.

  5

  But that thought was replaced with another one: Oh, hell, I’m only alive and suffering, damn it.

  Her head rested against the steering wheel. She heard the sound of a distant train, a horn, car horn, blasting from far away, and then coming closer and getting louder, until, as she lifted her head carefully from the wheel, it was suddenly silenced.

  Tapping at the window. She saw the man standing there. It was hard to focus on anything, and her eyes felt like they were filled with sand. Then her vision became clearer the man looked concerned. Had on a uniform. The security guard. It seemed like hours before she finally rolled the window down and lied. “Sorry. I have a blood sugar problem and just fainted, but it’s okay now, I had some crackers.” Would he buy it?

  The guard was in his twenties, probably a full-time student, and obviously not experienced in the world of bad blood sugar levels.

  He had a face like a donkey—long and dumb. “Okay, lady.” He walked away.

  Alison sat for another ten minutes in the car. Just breathing, wiping her eyes, wishing she had a Diet Pepsi to nurse. And Advil. A ton of Advil. And a glass of brandy. A hot bath. And a coma. One coma to go.

  What had she seen? She couldn’t remember. Just the wall. Ouch. A man and a girl on the other side of the fence. Their silhouettes flashed in her mind like lightning. She scanned the fence again, but did not see anyone there. Her head throbbed. Pain like needles pinching all along her scalp. She adjusted the rearview mirror—bloodstains around her nose and upper lip. She wiped at them and sniffed.

  Maybe you should see a doctor, maybe it is a tumor.

  Maybe you’ve waited too long.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Angel of the Desolation

  1

  The hooded man grinned as he watched Alison Chandler drive off. Angel will find you, Angel knows where you sleep at night, knows you sleep naked, knows you sleep with him who denies his true nature, his calling.

  He licked his lips; his stomach growled. He needed the blood and sometimes even the fatty tissue to survive. He had lived off fat during most of his time
with his mistress.

  But this city, alive, so very alive with vessels of blood.

  Hungry. Need some, some warmth, some...

  Love.

  There was a house, the one he’d been staying in, whose owners had fled sometime back. Fire had damaged the kitchen and dining room, but that had not kept the runaways from invading it and sleeping on its bare floors, covered with newspapers for warmth. The windows had been broken, and the kids had taped cardboard from boxes up against them—it was always dark there. And the basement. It was the perfect place for him to sleep, absolute darkness, darkness where he would find her, and warmth, so much warmth from their young bodies pressed up against his while he slept, for they, too, were night creatures.

  He had had to kill a few of them, the temptation had been so strong. How much better were living and breathing bodies than those that were already dead. He felt stirrings in his loins when he thought of the children, his children, sleeping with him in that house. How they looked up to him, or feared him, for it was all the same; and he held them when they shivered from withdrawal, or kissed them when their veins burned with the liquid fire of heroin they kept there. And they came to him, they saw in him their release into bliss.

  The night was like the voice of his mistress, like ice melting against warm skin. He felt his heart beating faster. He tried to calm himself. He could’ve taken her, right then. Alison. They had been on the same frequency for those precious seconds, and he thought he’d heard her skin ripping. Heart beating too fast. He brought his hands up to his chest and felt the pulse of his life.

  Those who betrayed, he promised, will come home. Getting into the car he’d stolen, he closed his eyes, thinking of her. Then he opened his eyes, glancing into the backseat where the dead woman lay. She had provided him with sustenance. But now he needed more. He needed to bring home all the children who had abandoned their beloved.

  His beloved.

  He turned the key in the ignition. He loved all the children of the world. All those who had once been children, all who would become children, all who had betrayed him.

  His love was savage and endless.

  Alison and Peter. He grinned. My friends.

  The night, the smells.

  Beckoning.

  The thought of juice in the back of his throat, burning and cool. He had to go find sustenance, the fatty tissue and the skin and the blood, all would give him strength to bring the children home again.

  2

  Within an hour, on a dark street in downtown Los Angeles, a woman lay sprawled behind a dumpster, and he leaned over her, feeding. The wall of the bank building behind him had a stain from a tower of blood that had shot up as if to the sky—

  Before three A M., three teenagers’ bodies would be found torn as if by dogs—

  By sunrise, the police would already be gathered around what looked like the most brutal slaying since the Black Dahlia murder in the 1940s, a woman with red hair, her skin all but stripped from her bones, and human teeth marks deep into her torso—

  3

  Dawn would be coming—he could smell it in the sky, in the chill that was burning off. Still he was unsated.

  He was tired, but the drive was still there: he wanted to find her, the girl, the right girl, who could take away the nightmares of that empty place inside him, the girl whom She could come into, could possess for that one moment between life and death. The freshness of flesh.

  The driving force within him would be his appetite.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Trials of Marriage

  1

  Alison slid into bed, and whenever she did it, she knew Peter would wake up. She hated waking him up. Peter was always so sweet asleep, so calm. Sometimes, the nightmares, sure. But not all the time. Not most of the time. How can you love somebody so much and lie to them? She could answer so few of her own questions in life. She felt sticky with sweat and freezing cold; she pulled the sheet up around her shoulders. “You awake?”

  “I guess I am now.” As he said this, she saw the shadow of his arm stretching for the bedside lamp, hesitate, and then drop down to the bed again. “How was class?”

  Her eyes adjusted to the dark. She couldn’t tell if his eyes were opened or closed. His voice was strange, like he’d been lying in bed pretending to sleep for her benefit. He didn’t sound sleepy. Maybe he suspects. Jesus, what’s he going to say when he finds out I’ve been seeing Correa? Her head still echoed a hammer beating down on a spike. Four little Advil later and one glass of cheap wine from the fridge, and it keeps on ticking.

  “Ali?” He said.

  The head banging continued unabated, and she began to worry that she would start screaming at him for no reason at all. Like having a full year of periods at once. The palm of his hand rested on her forehead; his hand was like ice.

  “You’re burning up.”

  She tried to sound fine. “Peter.” She reached over and scruffed his hair up. “Just a touch of fever. Maybe I should sleep on the couch so you don’t catch anything. Maybe it’s the flu.”

  “No, stay here, okay?”

  “I’m all achy.”

  He wrapped his arms around her. It made her feel uncomfortable. “If it’s the flu...”

  “No, I was kidding, I’m fine. I’m just overheated. Like a car. I was studying so hard it made my brain hurt, if you can believe it. I think I’ll take a bath,” she said, disentangling herself from his arms. “You sleep, I’ll be in later. Oh, damn and double damn,” she said, rising, throwing off the sheet. “I forgot to take my contacts out. God, I was so keyed up today, I always end up keeping you up, and you’ve got to get up so early.” She was almost in tears from the pain and she didn’t want him to know it, because she wouldn’t have an explanation. Walking across the carpet barefoot seemed like stepping on nails. It was the headache, it was the damn wall in her mind, making every part of her body sensitive as if she were all nerve endings.

  “No problem—I wasn’t really asleep, anyway,” he said, switching on the light. His dirty-blond hair hung over his eyes. He watched her in the mirror as she set her contacts in solution. “How was work?”

  She sighed. Work was years ago in the morning, before her session with Diego. Handling cats and dogs. “Same old same old. Had to help put a sixteen-year-old spaniel to sleep, and I couldn’t stop crying. Isn’t that stupid? You work with animals, it’s what happens. You see anybody?”

  He didn’t reply.

  2

  In the bathroom, Alison turned the water on in the tub as hot as she could get it. The bathroom was steamed up when she finally got into the water. She sat down in the tub and let the hot water pour over her. It felt right.

  The hooded man on the other side of the chain-link fence at the parking lot. The headache. The blackout. The nosebleed. The worst part of remembering it was that it wasn’t an awful feeling. It was a feeling of being alive. Not being made of stone.

  She closed her eyes and inhaled the steam of the bath.

  She saw: a boy, dark-haired and handsome, a teenager; tried to open her eyes but they were sewn shut. “Alison?” the boy asked, and then another boy screamed, “ALISON? HELP ME! ALISON? OH MY GOD, IT’S IN HERE, IT’S COMING FOR ME! ALISON? HELP ME JESUS GOD SOMEHOW HELP ME, DON’T LEAVE ME!” And then the boy who stood over her said, “Don’t cry, it’s a dream you’re having a bad dream, it’s not real, I don’t hear anything, honest to God, you don’t have to hear it, either,” and he brought his fist down to the side of her face. And she turned to look away, but she didn’t feel anything. He didn’t hit her after all. Her head was pounding but it didn’t hurt, and she saw a wall. Bright lights like sheets of lightning. She was moving fast, crying out, “Mom! Where are you? Mom!” And she was seeing the walls move, walls covered with framed pictures, and with windows that looked out on crosses, and shining tabletops pushed against the walls. The dark stain outline of a human being, a woman, Mom.

  Alison turned her head back to the boy and opened
her eyes and said, “Charlie?”

  She heard water splashing and felt heat and saw fog.

  She was in the tub. The steam cleared.

  “Ali?” Peter asked from the doorway.

  Alison saw the bathroom door opening. Hands parted the glass partition. Peter stood there in his white jockey shorts, tall and lanky like a shy farm boy. His ribs stuck out—he wasn’t eating enough; he looked weary.

  “I couldn’t get back to sleep,” he said. He reached down and slipped his underwear off, kicking it across the bathroom floor. He had a tan line up to his thighs, and another just below his navel. “Mind if I join you in the waterfall?”

  Hanging on to the metal soap carrier and one side of the tub, he slid in alongside her, facing her. He grasped the white soap and rubbed it along her neck and shoulders. He leaned over, stretching his neck, his jaw moving forward to kiss her; her shoulders slumped; she leaned toward him, kissing him. His lips and tongue were smooth and she felt, in the spray, as if she had never been touched before. She felt his hands slip down along her breasts, sliding along her ribs; he nestled into her; she leaned back, raising herself up slightly as she groped with her feet around his waist until she had her knees pressed against his sides, her feet flat on the warm tub floor behind him. She rubbed soap across his chest and nipples, tickling his belly slightly, purling her fingers into the hair on his stomach, plucking it back. “Al, Ali, Alison,” he whispered, kissing her chin, her cheeks, her ear, the back of her neck as he pulled in close to her. They fit together with difficulty, like two pieces of different puzzles. Making love always involved a level of tension and discomfort before the pleasure kicked in, even after all these years—just when they fit together, just when he entered her, it would take her so long each time to enjoy it, she would try meeting him with each thrust, but found herself pulling back, sliding along the tub floor. Why were things always easier in the imagination than in the act of doing? Why did the mechanics always seem to get in the way with Peter? It had taken twelve times with Peter before she’d even started enjoying it, but she thought that was normal. She’d been a teenager then. The idea of having this large thing inside you while you positioned yourself at this awkward angle, in a way you’d been told all your life was somehow bad and not what nice people did, while this boy seemed to be jabbing all over the place when you were wishing he’d just lie still for a few moments so you could adjust some, while all your life you’d been taught that no one should ever get the upper hand with you, and here you were fulfilling a natural calling, and it involved penetration of your body: well, she hadn’t expected the first few times to be fun and games, there was too much baggage attached with it. But after all these years together. Loving each other so much. Knowing so much about each other...