Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  Veronica Lay was quite a gal. She wanted it so bad. She talked in that video like Betty Henderson had in her letters and over the phone (except for that last part, where Howie had wished he owned a steel jockstrap).

  Veronica looked at the camera and licked her lips. Howie noticed that these girls licked their lips a lot. "I have this problem, Doc."

  Off-camera, a man's deep voice boomed, "Tell me about it, Veronica."

  "Well," she said, and Howie thought she seemed rather sweet, "I haven't been getting any lately. I think I need a shot of something sticky and warm."

  "And what kind of shot would that be, Veronica?" the man asked.

  ("I know! Oh, I know!" Howie shouted at his TV.)

  Veronica began inching her bright lollipop red panties down her legs. She said, "I need it now, Doc, I need it now."

  Howie was close again as he watched Veronica's fingers glide down her belly, but he thought he'd better hold off until he'd seen the whole movie. He liked to decide which was the best scene for the old Lustometer and then rerun that scene and really get into it.

  The man in the movie, called Dr. Long, walked into the picture and began fondling Veronica's big breasts. She oohed and ahhed and licked her lips some more. This went on for a while; Howie belched in between oohs and ahhs.

  Veronica reached for the man's crotch.

  A close-up of the man grinning.

  "C'mon, c'mon, show me whatcha doin', Veronica!" Howie shouted, spilling his beer all across his bed. "I need it now, Veronica!"

  Then the camera pulled back, as if hearing Howie's plea. What Howie expected to see was Veronica doing some sexy thing with her tongue like spinning it on the guy's dong or something, but instead what he saw was:

  Veronica Lay gnawing on what looked like a piece of raw, torn steak hanging between the guy's legs. The man in the video was screaming. And for the barest instant, Howie thought that it was himself in the video, with Betty Henderson down on her knees chewing hungrily on his penis. Her eyes burned lasciviously. She was enjoying her meal.

  Then, her mouth full of bloody meat, she turned and stared into the camera, and said hungrily, "You next, Howie."

  Howie felt his Friday Night Massacre pizza with extra anchovies gurgling up through his stomach.

  He ran into the bathroom, leaned over the toilet (he always left the seat up), and vomited into the porcelain bowl. What hit the water now really did look like a Friday Night Massacre.

  "Holy mother of Jesus," Howie gasped. He wiped his mouth, gasping with the sour aftertaste. He felt a fever burning inside him. Tears blistered from his eyes. He reached up from his kneeling position and pulled down on the toilet lever.

  It didn't flush.

  Again, pull!

  Again, nothing.

  "You son of a bitch," he muttered. Howie reached up for the third time and practically tore the metal lever from the toilet.

  The toilet made a glup sound. It went ga-lung, go-lung.

  The bowl began to overflow. Pepperoni, mushroom, semi-digested cheese, anchovies all rinsed across Howie's shirt and pants.

  He began gagging again. He lowered his head back down into the bowl, a half-inch from the polluted water. He felt a surge inside, like a wave coming from far off to break upon a shore.

  That was when he felt pressure on the back of his head.

  Someone was standing over him, pushing his head down into the toilet.

  Howie McCormick screamed bubbles into the murky water.

  7

  Clare felt drunk as she stumbled up Main Street toward her VW Rabbit, which she'd parked in front of the Key Theater. Her head was aching, and the few sips of wine she'd had, mixed with the Valium she took in the ladies' room at the Columns restaurant, gave her the feeling that her feet were not even touching the ground. As she approached her car, wondering if she should drive it at all, she noticed a woman staring at her from the alley by the movie theater. A woman in a blue dress, dressed for summer. A tall woman with blonde hair who should've been shivering with the icy chill, but instead she leaned comfortably against the brick wall. Staring.

  Lily, Clare gasped, but when she looked again, it was just the movie theater poster for Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty, and the blonde in the picture was a cartoon character, and next to that poster, another advertising the Midnight Show, Dawn of the Dead.

  Clare felt her legs turning to jelly, and knew that in a moment she would be falling down. She wondered if she would crack her skull on the sidewalk. What a silly way to die, she thought as she leaned against the glassed-in movie poster. She rested there a few seconds, taking deep breaths.

  "Lady, are you all right?" a teenaged boy asked. She hadn't seen him come around from inside the ticket booth in front of the Key Theater, and when she didn't answer, he handed her a large cup of Coke. "Here. It's on the house, only don't tell my dad or he'll put me back in there scraping Raisinettes off the floor."

  "Thank you." Clare accepted the cup and took a sip. She still felt unsure of her balance, and the teenager, sensing this, offered her his arm to lean on. "I just had a bit of a fright."

  "You're Dr. Cammack's daughter, right?" the boy asked. "Remember me? I mow your dad's lawn in the summers."

  Clare hadn't really looked at the boy carefully, working hard to focus her eyes. He looked to be about fifteen or sixteen, clear blue eyes, light brown hair, a few of the obligatory adolescent pimples, and he was neatly dressed in a white button-down shirt, a blue crew neck sweater, and dark pants. "Clare Terry. But still Dr. Cammack's daughter underneath all that. And you're Tommy Mackenzie? I barely recognized you—you've really gotten taller since August. Is this your, uh, winter job?" She had never really spoken to the boy before, just paid him his eight dollars for lawn work. Clare felt so confused at this moment that she hoped he only thought she was drunk and not crazy.

  "Dad runs the Key Theater. I'm just the hired help. You want some more Coke?"

  "No, this is fine, thank you. Do you go to the school?" Clare cringed at the snobby sound of this, something she detested in other people associated with Pontefract Prep like herself; they called it The School, as if the public schools in the area weren't worth considering.

  Tommy Mackenzie nodded. "I'm a sophomore. School starts up again in a week. Dad figures I can put this time to good use in here." Clare took his arm, feeling a bit like a feeble old woman, but that still felt better than a woozy, neurotic, feeble young woman; Tommy made her feel better. She directed him to her car, but clutched hard enough onto his sleeve and then onto the car door to realize she was in no condition to drive.

  "I can walk you home, Mrs. Terry," he volunteered.

  Clare was about to refuse the offer. "What about your work?"

  "Nobody buys popcorn at this hour, anyway." Tommy Mackenzie shrugged his shoulders. They walked up Main Street, Clare leaning against him, tripping slightly every few steps. "Can you smell that?" he asked her. Clare was afraid he'd meant her breath, and then tried to remember if she'd had more than just a few glasses of wine. The last thing I need is a reputation as the town drunk as well as everything else. But his head was back, his eyes closed, nostrils flared. Clare inhaled, smelling nothing. "It's the way the sky smells just before it rains. It's a clean kind of smell now, but I can guarantee that just before the rain starts coming down, there's going to be that kind of trashcan smell when the dust blows down Main Street. You'd never know a town this small would have that much dust, Mrs. Terry. It's all there just waiting for times like this, though—all that dust. But I'll get you home before the rain sweeps through. We still have a few minutes before this clean smell goes away."

  8

  You might not recognize Jake Amory as he stood in Howie McCormick's bathroom, gazing down on the mailman who had just drowned in his own vomit. He still wore the dark glasses, but his skin was pale white, even his hair seemed to have blanched. Perspiration beaded his drawn face. He looked a lot like a worm in a leather jacket and jeans. He was covered with dirt and slime
as if he'd been crawling through sewers—which he had been doing a lot of lately. His left hand was shriveled in on itself from his having accidentally set it on fire in December; it looked like a fried won-ton, with plump meat in the middle.

  He was looking at Howie McCormick funny. Howie's head bobbed on the overflowing surface of the bowl.

  Howie was a big man; Jake, even at six foot, was weak. Had become weak. He'd been losing some blood over the past month—not much. His dead friends who were taking care of him only took out enough to feed themselves for a short while. They left enough in him to get around without feeling too dizzy.

  But he'd told them he'd bring them one of the people they wanted, and they could feed off him.

  Now Jake had to figure out how to lift the dead man and get him in the Hefty trash bag he'd brought with him. And after that, just the thought of lifting fat Howie McCormick and having to carry him through the shadows back to the house—Jake groaned imagining it

  But they were hungry, and if not Howie, then it would be Jake they would dine upon.

  Jake held the Hefty trash bag up, looked at the corpse, and said: "Okay, sucker, time for the kiss of the Pocket Lips." Jake went to the kitchen of Howie's efficiency apartment, found a large cutting knife, then returned to the bathroom.

  Jake figured it would be easier to carry a corpse back to them if it was divided into several pieces. Unfortunately, the blade was dull, and it took some hacking for Jake to complete his piecemeal work.

  9

  From The Nightmare Book of Cup Coffey:

  I don't know exactly what to make of what Nagle told me that first night in Pontefract. I'm not even sure what led up to it. What kind of prank is going on, what kind of elaborate lie is being spun. What kind of sick mind is at work.

  Or is it my own sick mind? Have all the power lawn mowers in my dreams really been going over my head all this time instead of those dream children's?

  Once Lily's name was brought up, and I explained that I was in town on her behalf, his apparent openness, his gregarious nature, all seemed to cease—as if a dam had been closed suddenly, and not a drop could penetrate it. He changed the subject several times, talked about his archaeological dig, talked about an old diary he was transcribing for the Historical Society, talked about a funeral he had to attend on Saturday.

  Finally, we heard the chapel bells from campus and I mentioned that it seemed unusual to hear them so far away. "The water carries the sound," he said, and then, more seriously, "at least, I hope that's what carries it."

  I suggested that I'd better be getting back to the boardinghouse, that I'd have to sneak in the back way as it was.

  Dr. Nagle drove me back to Patsy Campbell's. On the way he pointed out some of the newer buildings in town. As he did this, I was beginning to wonder if, in my state of near-drunkenness from all the sherry we'd consumed, I had made some awful gaffe. There was one point in our after-dinner conversation when he began talking about his late wife, Cassie, and my attention waned as he went on about her. She'd died long before I'd even enrolled at Pontefract Prep; I had no frame of reference with regard to Cassie Nagle, so my mind wandered. Perhaps I made some innocent but insensitive remark—I just don't know.

  That's the trouble with becoming reacquainted with someone; you go away unsure as to whether or not you got along at all. I sat in the car next to Dr. Nagle wondering if he thought I was the biggest jerk he'd ever had the displeasure to invite to dinner.

  As Nagle pointed out the gutted buildings along Main Street that had been filled like Patsy Campbell's chocolate MoonPies with the marshmallow of boutiques and hair salons, he kept interjecting in his monologue, "Perhaps this is why it's happening now."

  "You're not telling me something," I finally interrupted.

  We turned on that part of Lakeview Drive that eventually swings into Campus Drive, and he took his foot off the accelerator; we'd been going progressively faster as we went along, although this was still not too speedy since we'd begun our drive at a slow crawl.

  "Yes, you're right, I'm not telling you something," he said.

  "About Lily. She's in some kind of trouble, isn't she?"

  "Coffey," he began, but then hesitated. It was after midnight and droplets of rain were beginning to hit the windshield. Within a few seconds, it became a steady drizzle. "No one predicted rain." Nagle reached over and flipped on the wipers.

  We turned right onto East Campus Drive. The stoplight at the first intersection was flashing yellow, and as our car approached it, Dr. Nagle slammed on the brakes. A hot rod sped by in front of us, honking its horn. Some teenagers leaned out one of its back windows and shouted, "Hey, gramps!"

  Dr. Nagle kept his foot on the brake. The rain quickly became a torrent. The windshield was dripping amber, reflected off the stoplight, with the wipers coming up and slicing into the rain, momentarily cleaning it off. "I am an old man, Cup, like those kids just yelled. And because of that I've been afraid to tell anyone anything about this, because if I were wrong I would lose my job. Senility. They're looking for a way to get rid of the older teachers now. Right now only Mr. Lowry and I are left of the old-timers. And he has already begun throwing dirt around to the Board of Governors concerning my suitability as a teacher. You know they've made him Acting Headmaster since Dr. Cammack's retirement?" He said this as if it were the tragedy of the century; and if my memory of Gower Lowry served me correctly, I heartily agreed with that mood.

  "I'm very sorry to hear that," I said, "but I still don't understand "

  He glanced out the window; the rain transformed the car's windows into perfect mirrors, and what I saw reflected when he tried to look out through his was a man haunted by something. "It has to do with history," he whispered, "and you're somehow tied up with it. And I am, too. And there are others, in this town "

  "I don't get it, first Lily calls me and leaves a message, and then I talk to—"

  "She called you?" Dr. Nagle's face was alternately a bright yellow and then a deep purple from the flashing stoplight. "My God, my God," his voice was hoarse, defeated, "then it isn't just me after all. It's you, too." He said this as if confirming something, answering a question in his head.

  "Lily's all right, isn't she?"

  "Good lord, Cup, you talk about her as if "

  "As if what?" I was impatient. Whatever the worst was, I wanted to hear. She'd gone crazy, she'd killed someone, she was a whore, she set fire to buildings, she walked naked down Main Street, she was in the hospital, a victim of the mad rapist. I don't know if it was my drunkenness or his own lack of clarity, but with the stoplight flashing and the rain shooting down against the car like bullets, I felt like I'd been blindfolded and someone was spinning me around in a circle.

  "As if," he finally finished his sentence, his hands covering his face, "she were still alive."

  PART TWO: THE TAINT

  Chapter Nine

  TORCH

  1

  A Brief Return to the Early Morning Hours of December 2, 1986:

  Teddy Amory Meets a Monster

  The monster looked as frightened as Teddy herself did. He glanced about the roadside, then back down to the little girl. He mumbled something; she didn't understand him.

  Teddy felt as if she were frozen to the ground. Her hair seemed to be filled with icicles from the damp grass she'd laid down in, and her arms and legs felt stiff. "Please don't hurt me," she said, tears welling in her eyes.

  The monster dropped to his knees beside her. He reached out with his hands; when he touched her face, she flinched. He drew his mittened hands back and then laughed. His face was covered with dirty rags, and he wore a pair of jockey shorts between his gray hat and his head like it was his hair. His pants were filthy with large holes up and down the legs—but wherever there was a hole, it was stuffed with another rag. His coat was similarly shredded and patched. She noticed there was not an inch of him, other than his eyes, over which he wore sunglasses, that was not covered with rags. He smelled like B
O.

  "Are you what got into Jake?" she asked, less afraid than curious.

  The monster shook his head. He struggled out of his coat and offered it to Teddy. When she didn't move, he laid the coat gently down upon her.

  As he bent over her, folding his coat around her legs, Teddy reached up to take his sunglasses off so she could see his eyes more clearly, but he flinched. She brought her hand back down in front of her face to defend herself. But he just reached up, took the sunglasses off, and revealed his eyes to her there on that cold morning.

  His eyes were pinkish-red.

  She felt a kinship to him then, that they were somehow marked in similar ways: her, with her cursed seizures, and he, with his beautiful red eyes.

  But this occurred nearly a month before Cup Coffey arrived on a bus in Pontefract, and this good monster allowed Teddy to see his face for the first time the morning of January 3rd when he brought her the dead cat he'd found in an alley.

  2

  He had forgotten his own name, it had been so many years since he'd last heard it. Call him Torch, like everyone else who called him anything did. It was a cruel nickname, considering the reason. He almost died in a fire back in '72. Burned seventy percent of his body, although it looked like a hundred. But as Georgia Stetson said to her husband Ken when she saw Torch rummaging through their trash cans on Tuesday mornings, "Maybe he looks better under all that with the scars; those people are frightening enough as they are, getting burnt could only be an improvement." By "those people" she meant albinos. There were many in the county, living up in the cabins in the woods, with the scattered hill folk. They said that if you hiked up the Cawmack Trail to Steeple Ridge, you'd see their shacks. You never noticed them most of the year, because you were too busy with your own life. But in the winter you tended to notice them; they might come into town on a snowy day, wearing their sunglasses, looking pale and wormlike, making the boys in front of Fisher's Drugstore feel uncomfortable. It was as if they burrowed in the ground and only emerged in the cold weather. Not that there were dozens of them, just a handful, but even one stood out like an inverted advertisement for genetic engineering.