Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  Except one.

  "Lily," she said aloud.

  "I think she's so out of it these last months of pregnancy she doesn't know what's going on with anything. She's been imagining a lot of things, anyway."

  "Like her husband having affairs?"

  "You know there's something between us, Clare, even now, some chemistry." Warren was doing his best matinee idol rap. He smashed the bag of ice down on the shelf and several bricks fell off and broke on the floor.

  That septic tank smell was getting to Clare, and the human septic tank that was standing in front of her smashing ice and leering was also making her feel a bit nauseated. She stood up from the bottom step, brushed herself off, and turned to go back up the stairs. "If you see Lily, tell her I'm looking for her," Clare said flatly. She was not going to put up with any more of Warren's guff.

  "Okay, Moonbeam, I will do that," but even as he said this, and even as Clare turned to go, there was a creaking noise coming from the cellar doors that led to the outside of the Marlowe-Houston House. Clare turned around—that sound had been like someone tapping her on the shoulders—and the septic tank smell like a foul-sweet wind came up.

  Coming down the steps of the other side of the cellar directly across from Clare was her sister, Lily.

  Her belly full in her seventh month. Clutching her stomach with her hands as if the child inside was the only thing left for her to hang onto.

  "You bastards," Lily moaned.

  Looking back on that day, nearly a year afterward, Clare Terry could honestly say it was a bad day, that day. The Founders Day luncheon. The day her sister found out about her affair with Warren.

  But that wasn't the worst day.

  Because every progressive day became a worst of its kind.

  Clare had an awful feeling that the worst day was still to come.

  Chapter Five

  DREAMERS

  December 3, 1986

  1

  After Midnight

  Tommy Mackenzie, Jr., lay in bed and could not sleep. He had heard a noise in his closet. He was fifteen and no longer believed in the Boy-Eating Spider. He did believe in the strength of his father's fist, and that his mother had pretty much given up on both him and his father. She spent too much time away.

  In the morning, Tommy might discover that the noise in his closet had been a scarf falling down, or just the house settling again. Old houses were always supposed to be settling—that explained away a lot of his fears.

  But after midnight, Tommy could think of no such rational explanations.

  In that vivid darkness, the thing in his closet was the same thing that had scuttled through the nightmare he'd been having.

  And it was the Boy-Eating Spider.

  2

  Before Sunrise

  Sheriff George Connally woke up in a cold sweat, screaming. His wife, Rita, wrapped her arms around him. "Is it the same one?"

  George pressed his face into her neck, closing his eyes. "Yes," he gasped.

  "Want me to warm up some milk?"

  "What time is it?"

  "Almost four."

  "Might as well just get up."

  Rita stroked the side of his face. "You're working too hard. These dreams "

  "Just dreams," he said, drawing away from her. He got up out of bed and walked over to the bedroom window. George Connally looked out onto the dark streets of Pontefract. A dog was barking somewhere. He'd been sweating so much his boxer shorts clung to him.

  "I ll put the coffee on," Rita said.

  "Just dreams," he repeated.

  Dreams, Rita, that you wouldn't understand, dreams that the goddamn state boys couldn't even figure out when they'd descended upon the town years ago. Dreams of love.

  It had been what old Frank Gaston wrote on the wall of his hunting cabin. In his own blood. "LOVE DID THIS." Could anything but love be so terrible? An old man whose wife is dying of bone cancer shoots her to lay her to rest and then turns the gun on himself. "Murder-suicide," the investigating detective from Roanoke had said, "happens every day." But the writing on the wall in blood.

  George Connally, as he looked out the window of his house on Lakeview Drive, thought Clear Lake was, itself, turning to a bright blood red with splashes of amber. But it was only a reflection of what was to the north of the prep school, behind the football field, set back near the woods.

  A house was on fire.

  The Amory house.

  3

  Sunrise

  Teddy Amory fell asleep twice along the roadside. She dreamed of nothing, and was happy for that. Each time she'd crawled back into the dead, high grass, trying to ignore the cold and damp. She knew it was early morning but did not feel any safer than she had in the dark night. Every few minutes she would hear her brother Jake wailing, fanning the fire with his monstrous tongue, but she knew it was only in her head. She wondered if she would freeze to death.

  And she wondered if her seizures would come on again, the rumbling inside, the heat rising through her stomach and up to her heart, her arms and legs, shaking, tossing her up and down like a rag doll. The cold blue water. Under her skin. She wondered if Jake was going to find her. She did not wonder what he would do to her. She knew.

  And Teddy Amory wondered if that was not such a bad idea after all. To let him get her. Maybe what she'd once heard her father tell her mother had been true: she should've drowned in the lake. Maybe she was meant to. If Jake caught her, maybe it would all be over soon, everything would be all right. No illness, no more fever, no more chills. No pain. No nothing. No people staring, no kids laughing and yelling, "Hey, freak!"

  Teddy lay on the cold earth, sheltered by tall stalks of dead yellow grass, gazing up at the hazy purple sky, trying to remember what it had been like before she went through the ice two winters before. She blinked, and in that split second a shadow came across the sky. She opened her eyes and saw a Halloween monster towering above her.

  Teddy Amory screamed.

  4

  From The Nightmare Book of Cup Coffey:

  AN INFORMAL TOURIST GUIDE

  Pontefract, Virginia, is the kind of town you miss seeing because of the new overpass between Cabelsville and Newton, or the interstate that runs between the mountains to Charlottesville. Even so, it's the Westbridge County seat and means something to those who live in the county. It means history. And when you're worried about last month's bills, or what life means, or if you'll ever be happy—just remember, someday, you're going to be dust. Just like the song says, the worms will go in and they're going to come out, too. There's no way around it, we all end up six feet under. But history continues, above ground, in things that never die: buildings, traditions, books, even gossip. People who live in small towns know this. They know history is the only thing that lasts.

  Folks in Pontefract, for instance.

  Maybe you've heard of the school. Maybe you know someone who went to the Pontefract Preparatory School for Boys. Or you've heard of the hot springs over in Cabelsville, and you know that Pontefract is the last gas station stop before you head over the hills. Perhaps you drove through Pontefract and remarked to your spouse, "Looks like a great place to raise kids," or "Imagine the history, honey."

  The name of the town means "Broken Bridges," or something close to it. There's an old Revolutionary War story about the footbridge that was torn down and this bridge was not resurrected until the 1920s, but nobody recollects that story the same way twice.

  Dr. Prescott Nagle, when he delivers his Founders Day speech, refers to the town as "Point-of-Fact," and has a hundred different stories about it. He'd be sure and drop a few Scotch-Irish and German names into his anecdotes so that the original town's descendants would stand up taller and contribute a few extra dollars to the Historical Society.

  Pontefract does have its historical interest Point of Fact: the Virginia Society for Historic Preservation partially funded an archaeological excavation just to the north of the prep school. The prep school was buil
t, in fact, on the site of the original settlement. Now the town is set directly across Clear Lake from Pontefract Prep. Dr. Nagle could tell you everything you'd ever want to know about that dig, the Scotch-Irish in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and the military school that later became Pontefract Prep. He could even show you army uniform buttons and the bits and pieces of muskets from the 1700s he and his students found in the dig. Before he lost state and local funding.

  If you drive that overpass, say on your way to Route 64, or south to Roanoke, you wouldn't even have to blink twice before you'd gone by Pontefract.

  But if you caught a glimpse of it, you'd think this was just another picturesque Virginia town, with a whitewash of Southern genteel history, nestled, as the guidebook might say, in the southwest Shenandoah Valley, three hours from Washington, DC, two to Richmond. Someplace to pull in for gas or a bite to eat or a look-see.

  A place where young people move away and old people remain to play out their last days.

  Chapter Six

  THE CALL

  1

  From The Nightmare Book of Cup Coffey:

  END OF FALL TERM—ALMOST CHRISTMAS!

  As far as I'm concerned, it's been a bad fall, to say nothing of the entire year.

  Besides the usual bullshit, I've been having those dreams again. Dreams? More like nightmares. About the kids.

  Last night's was a doozy. Unlike the series of dreams I was having back in August when I slept with the entire cast of the TV show Dynasty. Those sexual dreams were something of a relief, actually, and good normal fodder for my therapist. He can handle nonviolent dreams brought on by boob tube addiction, Oedipal struggles, sexual unfulfillment, and couch potatoism.

  In these recent dreams, though, the bad ones, the kids are buried up to their necks in this beautifully manicured lawn, perhaps half an acre or more of children's heads rising up to my ankle. Some of the kids are talking, while others are just looking at all the flowers that border their ears.

  In the dream I go over each kid's head with a lawn mower. Power mower, in fact, the kind where you just flip a switch and the wheels move all by themselves.

  I told my therapist some of this. You know, my basic theory about kids: they are monsters in children Ziploc suits, which they discard when they go to school each day. Parents never fully realize this.

  The first time I had this nightmare I woke up laughing at its absurdity.

  Then, on my way to work, it began to seem eerily plausible. You actually could bury kids up to their necks and mow them down. I mean, I'd never want to do it, but it is physically possible. Reminds me of something I heard in college, to the effect that when you come across a potential vice, first you look at it and are repulsed, then it starts to seem attractive and okay, and finally, you embrace it. Since my college days—six years now—I could've screwed that expression up in my head, but that's how this dream starts coming to me. I am at first repulsed. Then, after a few evenings of head mowing, I start thinking it's kind of neat. In a very gross way, of course, and only in this dream. When I wake up I'm still disgusted with myself for having dreamed it. I've had this dream off and on for about three weeks now. Always with a slight variation on the basic theme.

  For instance, one time the kids are all crying, another time some of these kids don't seem to care that their heads are being torn off. I write about this with the calm serenity of a madman, but let me tell you, when I think about the implications I am scared shitless. How many young boys' bodies did they finally dig up in John Wayne Gacy's backyard? And who knows, maybe old Johnnyboy had nightmares, too, and maybe he shuddered every time he saw someone mowing their lawn. But then one day Yeah, and maybe he saw those bodies buried under the house before he ever dug that first grave. In his dreams.

  I told most of this to my therapist. About this journal, too. God, I hope no enemy of mine ever gets a hold of this thing or I am in deep shit. He asked me just whom I was writing this for, and I told him, "Posterity." I don't want to make his job any easier than it already is—not at sixty bucks a shot. The good doctor believes that all this journal-writing has served its purpose and will only remind me of bad things from here on in. But I am convinced there is a reason for these nightmares. It's this feeling of unfinished business. Somewhere inside these dreams is a key, to God only knows what, but it's there. And I hope, through this Nightmare Book, I will find that key.

  Back to those dreams. The good doctor says these nightmares are a combination of many things: my own unfulfillment in terms of children, that I'm being pressured by society to marry and raise kids, and subconsciously I am rebelling. He also thinks I am cutting off my own childhood memories "at the head." Heh-heh. Pretty good joke from such a humorless man.

  The one thing my sixty-bucks-an-hour therapist can't make out is the essential symbol: the lawn mower. He did suggest that perhaps the mower is a symbol of my maleness. My phallus. My penis. But the good doctor actually put it another way. He said it represented my "member," as if there were a country club where all those members gather. Men, he explained to me, traditionally do yard work. "So there we are," he said, closing his files for the afternoon, content with his summary.

  Was that summary worth sixty bucks?

  Doubtful.

  But what I haven't even told my therapist, and I don't intend to, is that last night the worst thing happened in the nightmare.

  What, you may ask, could be worse than mowing a lawn full of children's heads?

  It was right after one of those miniseries episodes with Jane Seymour and Richard Chamberlain, I think, a costume epic where everyone has adulterous affairs, lots of people get killed, and no one seems to do anything for a living. Miniseries are great sleeping pills. Most TV has that effect on me. I always fall asleep in front of it. The week had been shot to hell anyway since over the weekend I saw Tess (my sort of girlfriend) with another guy. They were waiting in line for an Ingmar Bergman festival at the Circle Theater, and I was walking up H Street. The guy was some lawyerly type in a blue pinstripe suit and a lemon tie. How could she go for a man like that? A lemon tie to go see Cries and Whispers? So what if he was All-American good looking, tall, broad shouldered, had stylishly cut blond hair, probably made megabucks? A man who wears a lemon tie to a Bergman film just ain't all there. He probably saw Rambo and wondered if Stallone subscribed to the Stanislavsky method.

  It seemed like the ultimate betrayal to see Tess with this yuppie. Although I don't know why I expect her to be faithful; I am no great shakes. I make very little money, and most of it goes to therapy. Believe me, I am not proud of seeing the good doctor as often as I do, but with lawn mowing dreams and others, it quickly becomes a necessity. I stand about six-foot-one on a good day, have dark brown hair, and no visible scars. I have, as people who want something from you will inform you, a nice smile and deep brown eyes. I do not wear lemon ties, and occasionally my gut pushes up too much against my size-thirty-six-inch-waist slacks and I have to cut out the ice cream (never the beer). Oh, and I have recurring nightmares about chopping kids up with a lawn mower. There's my personal r sum , and looking over it I can see why Tess might be standing in line with Mr. Lemon Tie for a Bergman festival (and she hates Bergman, too).

  In the eight months I've been seeing Tess our relationship has gone from potentially romantic to a user-friendly system: I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. We have a lot of welts on our backs from all that scratching.

  So, depressed, I sit in the evenings in front of the tube, begging it to occupy my mind with something other than Tess and Mr. Lemon Tie, and last night, the dream came.

  In this dream, the kids are, naturally, buried up to their necks, some screaming, some apparently enjoying the situation, and a few who actually look like they belong there in the dirt. As if they just sprouted. Don't ask me how I know, but I do. Some of these kids are growing out of the ground like flowers. As if this head, above ground, is a blossom, with roots just beneath the earth. I push the mower over their heads
and think: I'm doing the right thing. These kids are evil. They should be nipped in the bud.

  I go about my business. I chop the heads off most of the kids. It isn't quite that neat and easy, but why describe the gory Technicolor spectacle? If you're reading this journal you already know I belong in a zoo.

  In the dream I feel like I have been given a mandate, that I am restoring the natural order of things. When things are planted in the ground they need to be trimmed and pruned.

  But the mower's blades jam when I come upon those kids who, like I said, give me this funny feeling that somehow they're growing up from seedlings. Their heads break the blades of the mower. I keep trying to go over these ankle biters, but nothing doing. It's like when you're vacuuming and you come upon this toothpick caught in the carpet. You keep going over and over it, and it never gets sucked up into the machinery. But do you simply reach down and pick the toothpick up? Oh, no, that would make it too easy, and I think people really don't like things to be too easy. So you keep going over and over with the vacuum cleaner. You are going to conquer this thing through sheer force of your will.

  Well, these kids' heads are like that. I keep running over them with this mower, but the machine is not doing its job. So I turn off the mower and walk over to the toolshed. You know how dreams are—one second there's just a lawn full of kids' heads and the next, presto, there's a toolshed? In the shed, I find a large pair of pruning shears. Possibly the largest, sharpest pruning shears I have ever held in my hands.

  I return to the lawn to finish the job the lawn mower had been unable to do.

  But these kids' heads are no longer planted in the ground. The kids have emerged. They are somewhere in the yard. And I am terrified. I break out in a cold sweat. I jab the blades of the pruning shears into the empty holes where the heads had been a few seconds ago, thinking maybe they've just sunk further down.