Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  10

  From the tapes:

  “All right, Peter. You say it was this demon and this demon juice and something taking you over. Because you slept with her.”

  “Yeah, I told you it was insane. It makes no sense. Even now I hear myself. It couldn’t happen. I know. But I was there. I watched it all. It was like the town was vanishing and burning and melting—and everything and everyone was a phantom or something. But if you believe in demons, if you believe they can exist, then maybe it makes sense. I still don’t know why she wanted us.”

  “She already told me why.”

  “Through Charlie?”

  “Through you, Peter.”

  “I’m fucked. We stopped her but she still exists. You’re bringing her back. No more interview. I’m out of here. It’s over. And don’t you ever come near Alison. I mean it. I’ve killed people before. There may be no evidence of it, but I’ve done it. And I will make sure you can’t get near her ever again. It’s you that’s doing this. You and these interviews and hypnosis and shit. It’s you. The demon is gone. We stopped it. And you want it to come back.”

  “Charlie, you’ll be going to a psych hospital, but a good one.”

  “Cool.”

  “You’ll get excellent care, I promise you.”

  “And the knife?”

  “When you’re released, you can have it. I would like to keep it longer. But I won’t break my promise to you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Now, who gave you the knife?”

  “Wendy’s mother. The woman who healed me.”

  “And where is she?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Tell me one more thing about Palmetto, that night. The night of the Fourth of July. There was another boy, wasn’t there? He was the one who knew what ritual to perform. What happened to him?”

  “Ah. Yeah, Than Campusky. He thought he was protected from her. Some old desert rat convinced him he could get some kind of armor on if he drank this crap called demon juice. I guess it protected him for a little while. But that’s the million-dollar question. What happened to Than? I guess she got him. As long as she doesn’t have me, Pete, and Ali, I think she’ll just stay put. I guess a loony bin’s a good place for a guy who talks like me, ain’t it?”

  “Who am I speaking with?”

  “Wendy.”

  “What did they do to stop you?”

  “If I tell you, it will ruin all the fun I’m having.”

  “Did they kill you?”

  “You tell me. Am I dead?”

  THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW

  PART NINE

  RETURNING WHAT WAS ONLY BORROWED

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Peter

  1

  Peter Chandler is in his thirties and looking at what he believes is his wife’s blood on the wall of their apartment in California. He has come home from seeing a man named Diego Correa, who is supposedly helping his wife. It is October, even in his heart. He has listened to tapes of himself as a young boy; he has added to the older man’s knowledge of the time by telling him the truth. About the town and its people and the girl of his dreams, the monster called Lamia or Wendy or, as Charlie Urquart would say, What-The-Fuck-Ever. He has called his wife’s work and she hasn’t been there all day. It is almost three o’clock in the afternoon. He has spent the day deliberating, not knowing that the time was quite as precious as it is.

  As it has turned out to be.

  Before he sees the blood on the wall, he thinks maybe it’s time for the whole thing to come out. He has told the old man everything, but not what happened in the cave. Not what he found there; not what reached out and touched them all;

  Perhaps he can even trust someone, an outsider. Perhaps Diego Correa. Enough to tell him about Alison’s eleven months after the cave.

  Now he is feeling more than a little feverish. A prickly heat rash on the back of his neck; the palms of his hands are sweaty; he is feeling weak and is wondering if this is the flu or if it’s something far worse, something he’s been trying to keep at bay within himself for more than a decade, something inside himself that he is surprised to have ever kept at bay. But it’s Her way of playing with me, it’s Her way of showing me the extent of her power and of her damn eternal patience.

  The first thing he notices in the room is not the blood on the walls. The first thing he notices is his wife’s purse. It is dumped in the middle of the beige carpet, all of her Kleenex, her extra tampon, her keys (although if he were to inspect it more closely, he would notice that the key to her car is missing), her half-eaten roll of cherry Life Savers, her Tic-Tacs, her wallet, all spread around. Then he sees the blood spread out like fingerprints on the white wall just above the sleeper sofa, which also has blood on it. He doesn’t for a moment think it is paint or theatrical blood; he has no doubt that it is human blood, but he stands there, stunned, hoping that it is not his wife’s blood because there is a lot of it. It is smeared into loops and curlicues to read:

  “WHERE IS IT?”

  and, “SHE LIVES.”

  He stands there, for a moment, thinking that time has stopped, thinking that the hours and minutes and days between that summer years ago and this moment have all been erased on some cosmic blackboard. He is wearing his white button-down shirt and his khaki slacks are hanging a bit loose on him because for the past six months he has been losing a little weight without really meaning to: it’s the dreams, the dreams have taken away his appetite, particularly for meat. The world around him has just blinked off like a computer screen going down, and all he sees for the moment are those three words: “WHERE IS IT?”

  The living room is completely torn apart, as if a storm has come through, or as if six thugs have come in looking for their stash, and living in Los Angeles, if this were anyone else, he would remember things like ordinary serial killers, people who murder for fun with no motive, who chainsaw and slice and poison and shoot, all random, all chance.

  But this was no psycho coming in here, this was someone who had a purpose, who had a question that needed answering.

  “WHERE IS IT?”

  Peter Chandler, his dark-blond hair already slick from sweat, his lips dry, his hands shaking almost imperceptibly, knows what it is.

  He has spent his adult life trying to wash himself clean from the memory of it

  And then what he’d felt that morning, a feeling of being invaded, almost a feeling of rape, of something forcing its way beneath his skin. Coming over him again.

  Standing there, wondering who or what had taken his wife, Peter Chandler knows without a shadow of a doubt that it has gotten into him, just a little of it, but that is enough. Turning.

  He now has to face the fact that Wendy is—somehow—alive, that she is calling to him, that the only hope he has of rescuing Alison from her (if it isn’t already too late) is to return to that ghost town and allow her to do to him what she must in retribution.

  He has seen before what Wendy can do to men, what she is doing to him even from that distance.

  If only we’d made sure, if only we hadn’t been so goddamned scared and so goddamned relieved, if only we’d gone back to look, to see that she was completely destroyed.

  And then he begins walking through a living dream.

  2

  “You must come,” Wendy said. She had not aged since he’d last seen her in the flesh. She had that empty beauty that he remembered from his adolescence. She was wearing a dress sewn completely of human skin, faces stretched across her high, firm breasts, their curves and nipples giving the torn faces dimension, almost life. The skins clung to her, wrapped tight around her hips, and as she came toward him he was reminded of an old woodblock print he’d once seen of Beauty and Death meeting on a road, and this was it, Beauty and Death meeting in this one woman, her own skin and bones being the crossroads, her flesh and her skull mated together.

  When she smiled, he saw that her lips were stained as if from eating berries.

&n
bsp; As if from drinking blood.

  Her eyes turned from dark onyx to deep red as the blood flowed into them. Vampire, demon, shape shifter, phantom—she was all.

  He stood in the cool darkness of a cave, and from somewhere above him came the steady torture of dripping water.

  Her mouth was like a small red rose blossoming.

  Wet crimson petals bending backward, opening to him.

  She said, “Turn with me, Peter, I forgive you for what you did to us. Turn with me.”

  “Where’s Alison?”

  The small red rose petals closed again, as if keeping a secret, but she couldn’t hide a smug half-smile. She smoothed the front of her dress across her stomach, just below her stomach. She smoothed it over carefully until it stretched downward, clinging to her.

  “What have you done with her?”

  Peter saw what she was doing, he saw that this was her answer.

  The face there, its forehead rising up to the curve of Wendy Swan’s belly, the face she had brushed her hands across.

  It was Alison’s face, torn from her skull, eyes empty, dark holes, mouth ragged—the tanning of the skin had been rough, no time for delicacy.

  But then, the eyes were there, opening, Alison’s eyes filled with terror and pain and hurt, and the mouth widened into a scream, “IT HURTS, PETER, HELP IT HURTS.”

  And then Peter Chandler watched as the skin fell from his bones and he looked at his bleeding arms in wonder as something else emerged from his tissues.

  3

  Peter awoke, standing, staring at the blood on the wall of the apartment, and he knew where he must then go.

  No Man’s Land.

  He reached for the phone and dialed Diego’s office. The man on the other end answered. “Peter?”

  “Too late. Alison’s been...taken. Blood here. Going back,” Peter said, and was in awe of how he was less shocked and surprised than he knew any normal human being would be.

  But then, I’m no normal human being, he thought. I’m infested.

  4

  Peter elected to drive against Diego’s protests.

  “I need something to do, I can’t just sit and watch the scenery,” he said, and Diego saw the wild look there in his eyes and was a little scared.

  “I’m fine.” Peter said. “I just want to drive. I can’t just sit still.”

  They took Peter’s car, an Oldsmobile on its last legs, but drivable, and followed the Ventura Freeway to the Pasadena Freeway to the San Bernardino Freeway until Diego thought the world was a blur of enormous highways and cloverleaf overpasses, and suburban communities like herds of sheep on the sides of yellow hills; the air was clean, owing to the Santa Ana winds coming through after the rains and sweeping the pollution back to Los Angeles from whence it had come. They did not talk at first. Diego was hesitant about asking any questions; he watched Peter to make sure he would do nothing reckless while driving, but Peter seemed a competent if speedy driver.

  Diego wondered at the turns in the road life took. Who would’ve thought when this man was just a boy, that their paths would again cross, that he would be going out to the desert, to the place of demons, together with Peter Chandler, who was so reticent to speak back in the eighties, and who was, now, willing to trust him on his journey?

  5

  Peter began telling Diego the rest of the untold story. “We left Palmetto and I knew we’d be separated for a while. We were both minors and I knew if I put up a fight it would go worse for both of us and maybe people might try to keep us apart, and I didn’t want that. I figured going to the papers was a good idea, because maybe, you know, I was really stupid, but I thought maybe if we were upfront about a lot of it no one could touch us. I was wrong, and after that we all got it bad from the press—Charlie worse than me because he was such an easy target the way he babbled. Alison was in the hospital, drugged up, but her grandmother got her pulled out of there fast. Which was good. Her grandmother was one of those people who thought doctors were no improvement on God and Nature, so she got this legal care thing for Alison. She was kind of wealthy, this grandmother, and she hired a nurse there at the house in San Francisco, so Ali was okay for the time being. I got put in a group home near Pasadena, but I was out of there pretty fast. I had some relatives who got me emancipated minor status so I was pretty much a free agent, and I knew I had to go get Ali, because it was really going to hit the fan up at her gramma’s.”

  “Because she was so sick?”

  “Well, her grandmother was beginning to get suspicious about some things, and she believed Alison was a sinner doomed for Hell. That kind of grandmother. And it was just going to get worse before it got better. The old lady hated me, thought it was all my fault, which I kind of felt at the time, too.”

  “And Alison had her hemorrhage during the fire.”

  “No. She was shell-shocked and had nightmares like we all did, but she was pretty much okay. It was...” Peter hesitated.

  Diego finished the sentence for him. “Later, the next year when she had the stroke.”

  “Cumulative effect, I guess.”

  “I talked to her grandmother before the book came out to see if I could talk to Alison.”

  “I guess I knew that.”

  “She had a baby, didn’t she?”

  Peter kept his eyes on the road.

  “Was it your baby, Peter?”

  Peter sped up to seventy-five then to eighty.

  “I guess it’s not important.”

  “It is.”

  “There is no baby now, is that right?”

  Peter shook his head. “Complications.”

  “It must’ve been very rough losing your baby at seventeen. It took its toll on her body, and it must’ve been hard on you, too. As parents, there must be a naturally protective feeling toward our children.”

  “I loved her,” Peter said. “Love her.”

  “Did you love the baby?”

  “The baby died.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “No you’re not. It’s what you want to hear. But you want the rest, too, don’t you? All right,” Peter said. “I took Alison away and took care of her in the last months before she gave birth. And then when I saw it coming out of her—yes, I knew she might die, yes, I knew I might kill Alison just by keeping her away from doctors and hospitals. But I knew that it was not going to be a normal baby. I knew what it was going to be.”

  “It was a demon?”

  Peter was silent for a moment. “It was a litter, Correa. Eels and scorpions and insects, covered with blood—delivered from her womb, a mass surrounding the creature and I took a large rock and I smashed into it and didn’t stop until Alison started weeping, and I knew she was somehow back. And if you had seen its eyes...”

  “Tell me,” Diego gasped.

  “There were hundreds of them, like a fly’s, all over its malformed face. Black shiny eyes, tiny, all over the face, and the scorpions came from its mouth, and that’s all she wrote,” Peter said. “I believe the Biblical term is ‘abomination.’ I’d say that about sums it up. But at least it died. At least it had mortality.”

  6

  “I’ve crossed a line, Correa, I know I’ve crossed it. So there’s something I haven’t told you or anybody, and I guess I’ll come clean now. About Alison. And the caves. It wasn’t just that we went in there and there was an explosion and the old mine caved in. We were in there awhile. I saw things. In the dark. Me and Than.”

  “What went on inside them?” Diego nodded. “The great mystery of that time. What happened in those caves? If you recall, what you told me back then was the town was the place, the fires and the demons. But the caves. I knew they played into it. I knew from Alison that the heart of it was there. What was in those old mines?”

  “It was a slaughterhouse,” Peter said, and the freeway seemed to go on forever before them, but in his mind he was still there. “We heard Alison screaming, so we ran toward that sound, and Than shines his flashlight up aro
und the mouth of the cave, and there were things hanging there to dry, and he was the first to cry out. He dropped the flashlight before we could really see anything, so I grab it and flash it around and we see this room practically full of hanging body parts, arms, torsos, even a few people hanging upside down, but we can’t tell who because their heads are cut off,” Peter said. “I call out to Alison, and she screams back. It’s her last scream. All we hear is that silence, for a minute. Maybe more. And then something’s coming out of the caves at us. Moving toward us. We can feel its heat—heat and cold at the same time. The flashlight doesn’t even help, because now there are thousands, hitting us, battering at us, and then out again into the night. Than is shouting that they’re demons, and I would’ve believed anything, but they’re just bats. Cave bats, all over the place out there. Like a blizzard, and I get the wind knocked out of me from them. I fall down and hit my head on the rock, and it’s dark ‘cause Than lost the flashlight or it turned off or the battery died, I don’t know. And Than is gone, completely gone. I call out to him, but he’s not there. And when I try to stand, I feel those things.”

  Diego sat back, amazed, because Peter was driving automatically, even more cautiously than he had been moments before, but he wasn’t here. He was really there, in that cave, as if one half of him never got out.

  7

  Then

  Peter cried out, “Campusky! Where are you? Campusky!” But no answer came back to him. His head ached; he rubbed it, feeling the blood alongside his ear. The only sound from the cave now that the bats had scattered and had flown out into the desert was the sound of slowly dripping water. Peter’s voice echoed back to him. “Alison!” he shouted, and heard it three more times as the shout wandered the caverns below. In the dark, brushing against him, a human leg dangled from rope; hands brushed his scalp as he moved through them, trying to crouch down low enough so that they wouldn’t touch him.