Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  Probably what bothered the Georgia Stetsons of this world the most was the possibility that they were related to each other. That Georgia, who was from the Houston and the McCormick and the Connally lines back to the mid-1700s, might have a cousin among those pigmentless people. Or worse, that if she ever had another child, or if her son, Rick, married a girl from town, the offspring might have those fierce red eyes.

  Torch was one of the few who lived in town. And it had cost him. He did not come out much during the daytime, both because the sun bothered his eyes, but also because of the abuse. Teenagers tended to chase him down alleys and beat him up, while their parents didn't even seem to notice. He was Pontefract's invisible man.

  The story of his burning goes like this: Torch is looking for food in a dumpster back in '72. Some kids are heading down the alley toward him, so, out of fear, he jumps in the Dempsey Dumpster. The kids see this, and one of them gets the bright idea to "smoke" him out. He drops a lit match into the trash, and the thing practically explodes. Torch, afire, leaps out of there and runs down the alley, out into the street.

  Now, probably, if he'd just stopped and rolled around in the mud, he might've been okay. But this guy Torch was positive that if he stopped running, he would die. Often he wished he had. He was put in the medical center for two months (at county expense), and then released back on the streets. He tried getting a job at the Kountry Kitchen Bakery, and then at Maude Dunwoody's Ham Biscuit Haven, but was told that he would scare away too many customers.

  It seems he gave everyone in town the creeps.

  The big joke around town was to take a burning match and, holding it upright, move it along a table. Then you say, "What's this?" and when nobody knows, you say, "It's Torch celebrating his anniversary." Gets big laughs down at the Henchman Lounge. Another good one is if you see Torch around town, and he doesn't seem to come out much these days, you yell across the street to him, "Hey, how about cooking up a nice Torchburger?" or another, "I heard your favorite song is 'Come On Baby, Light My Fire'!"

  Torch had a lot more things burning up inside him than any fire that got him on the outside. He would've liked to have told those guys off who beat him up outside the Henchman Lounge one night and then gave him a bottle of booze. "This is so's you won't talk!" one of the men shouted at him, and all the others slapped him on the back because it was such a good joke. Because Torch couldn't speak anymore—in fact, his throat probably got burned worse than anything.

  He would also tell them that there were compensations, if he could. Compensations for losing your voice. For losing most of your smooth skin to scar tissue. Compensations like being able to smell things. Not just things like coffee, or flowers, or dog shit after you stepped in it.

  Torch could smell things like Evil, as well as Good. He would've liked to have told those guys who beat him up that he smelled them coming a mile away. That they stank to high heaven with their evil intentions. And he would've liked to tell the little girl he'd found by the road on the way into town that he smelled her, too, but that she smelled Good, that her smell was strong, like honeysuckle in the summer, that her scent made him feel warm even in the middle of winter.

  He would also tell them about that other smell, the one coming out of the sewers in Pontefract, the one coming out of the frozen lake like dead fish to its surface. The foul odor of corruption that was, like a magnet, seeking out the girl's own power.

  And Torch knew the many uses of fire.

  3

  Up-to-Date: January 2, 1987

  "Is it you?" Teddy asked. The knocking at the door had awakened her from a dream where she was not sick. But now, sitting up in bed, hoping it was Torch, she shivered with the fever and chills. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, dragging it on the floor as she rose and went to the door.

  They had been living in a large cold place, surrounded by that gas station smell of her dreams, but she knew she was safe. Torch had promised her they would be safe, and when the time was right, he would get help.

  From the other side of the door she heard a faint mumbling. She didn't know what time it was—she never did anymore, it always seemed dark in the room. When she heard Torch's characteristic scraping on the door, she did as he had instructed her to. She first went and got the oil lamp from her bedside. Then she turned the fire in the lamp up as high as it would go—being careful, he had shown her, not to get too close to the flame. He'd written DON'T END UP LIKE ME on the Etch A Sketch he communicated on, always in a squiggly script. When he had jokingly warned her about the oil lamp, she reached up and tugged his hat down further over his forehead. "I don't have enough clothes," she said, giggling, "to end up like you."

  Teddy brought the lamp over to the door, carefully removing the hurricane glass that enclosed the flame. She set the glass chimney down on the floor. She remained crouched there by the door and held the lamp by its base. She brought it close to the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor. Then she rolled the large rubber tires away from the door; they were heavy, and it took all her strength sometimes. Teddy picked up the lamp again and held it steadily in front of her.

  Teddy didn't understand this ritual he made her go through every time he was out. Or why he surrounded their living quarters with candles. She didn't understand a lot of things that he wrote to her on the Etch A Sketch. But she did understand that he had saved her life that night in December, and that he was protecting her from what got inside Jake, what wanted to get inside her and open her up.

  The door opened, and as instructed, Teddy held the lamp up in front of her. FIRE PROTECTS, Torch had written.

  Torch stood there, swaddled in his rags, and attempted a few words, but as always, the sounds came out like an animal being tortured. He held a plastic bag up in one hand and a small paper sack up in the other. "Rhoo," he whined, "rhoo."

  "Food," she said, and took the small paper bag from him. He came into the room and set the large plastic bag down on the floor. Then he turned and bolted the door. He pulled one of his mittens off and felt her forehead. It was hot and damp. "Heh," he said, pointing to the bed, which consisted of an old mattress covered with moldy blankets.

  "No, really, I feel better, honest," Teddy lied. Her face was pale white, and her hair stuck to her scalp with sweat.

  Teddy impatiently tore into the paper sack. She pulled out a round package of bologna, a small jar of peanut butter, a half-pint of milk, a double-pack of Twinkies, and a Coke. At the very bottom of the bag were two cans of Purina Cat Chow. "Cat food?" She wrinkled her nose. "You got cat food? I'm not that hungry, you know." She held one of the cans up like it was diseased. She took the groceries over to a low metal table, spreading them out as if she were preparing a banquet. "I'll make sandwiches," she said. She reached under the table for a cardboard box. Inside the box were plastic forks and knives, and half a loaf of Wonder Bread. Her back to him, spreading peanut butter on the bread, she said, "You've been gone a long time, I was getting worried."

  Torch made a moaning sound from the corner of the dark room near her bed.

  Teddy turned to look.

  Torch was holding up the black plastic trash bag.

  "More food?" she asked.

  He shook his head violently. He motioned for her to come and sit beside him on the bed.

  Teddy went over and tried to peek in the bag, but Torch kept it shut tight "Okay, you win. What is it?"

  Torch reached into the plastic bag. He kept his arm inside it for a while to tease her. "Oh, come on," she said, her eyes wide with curiosity.

  Finally he brought the dead cat out.

  He laid it across his lap, smoothing its fur.

  "Deh," he said.

  "I know," she said solemnly. "Poor baby. Poor little kitty."

  Torch reached to the floor for the Etch A Sketch. He fiddled with the dials and showed Teddy the gray screen. Written on it was: FOR YOU.

  Teddy stroked the dead cat's fur. She was crying. "Poor kitty," she said under her breath.


  Torch wrote: MAKE U STRONG.

  "You don't know that. You just think that. You think because you can smell what's inside me, that it's good, but I think it's bad. It's all just bad. And it doesn't make me stronger. I just get sicker. What I have is all about dead people, not like this." She saw that her words had no effect on him. "Besides, you don't even know if I can do it."

  Torch wrote: SEE MY FACE. Then: IF U DO IT.

  Teddy looked at him, surprised. "You will, you really will?"

  Torch wrote: PROMISE.

  And then: MAKE U STRONG. WELL.

  But Teddy didn't believe it. She took the dead animal in her arms, stroked its fur. She didn't like to do this. Jake had made her do it, and even if she felt stronger, she hated doing it. She hated when her mother had made her go into her fit, and she especially had hated it when Jake had forced her to hold a dead rat, with all the maggots spilling out of it.

  Teddy was playing last November in the woods, and Jake showed her the rat he'd caught in the basement and slam-dunked on the concrete floor. Its brains had smushed out of it. Then he'd buried it for a few days to see how quickly the worms ate into it and then Jake had dug it up. "Everybody knows how you got dead people coming out your wazoo," Jake said, and Teddy laughed because he was being funny. She liked it when he was funny; no one else ever made jokes about her seizures. She still remembered the times before the fits, when things were normal at home, and Jake took her for rides on the handlebars of his two-wheeler, or brought her candy from town. But all that had changed when she fell through the ice two years ago. Jake seemed that way on the autumn day when he'd brought the dead rat to her. "I hear you can take the ghosts out of your body and put them back into theirs. Like this rat. You can make this rat live again, I know you can." At first she had refused, but he scared her by telling her what he would do to her if she didn't. Naughty things she didn't even like to think about.

  "But I don't like to do it," she told him.

  Jake had smiled then, wagging the dead rat by its tail in front of her face. Some of the maggots that clung tenaciously to its viscera lost their grip and fell into her hair. Jake helped her get the worms out—he said he didn't mean that to happen. He seemed so nice, even with that ugly gross rat, that she began the fit herself by gazing up into the blue sky long and hard. It took a while before she felt the first tremors within her—the pale blue of the sky was no match for the brilliant blue bug zapper her mother used in the s ances. But if Teddy imagined the blue of blue, the blue water, she knew she would black out.

  When Teddy came out of her fit, she watched the rat, its brain still exposed, scamper around by the woodpile. Teddy felt a surge of power, as if she had batteries that were recharged while she was out. She even felt happy that the rat was alive again.

  Then Jake took a rock and slammed it down on the creature, killing it a second time. He turned back to her, smiling.

  Jake should never have made her do it. Because while she felt stronger afterwards, she knew that that other thing, that thing that had touched her in the water, felt stronger, too, whenever she did it.

  As Torch held the hurricane lamp above her face, Teddy petted the cat's fur. Reluctantly, she looked into the blue heart of the flame, concentrating on it, imagining a blazing pyramid of blue. She felt the fit coming on, could practically taste the blue water

  She didn't know how long the seizure lasted. Teddy awoke with a sharp pain in her arms—the black cat that had moments ago been dead was clawing at her, frantically trying to get away. "Don't be scared, kitty," Teddy said, and she realized that the fever had passed. She felt cool and dry. She let the cat jump to the floor and watched as it stood still in front of her, sniffing the room.

  Torch wrote on the Etch A Sketch: BETTER?

  Teddy was a little sleepy, and yawned. She nodded her head. "But it's evil, isn't it? Like what got into Jake."

  Torch shook his head. "Naah," he bleated. He wrote: U GOOD.

  He pointed to the cat. He wrote: NAME?

  "How about Torchy'?"

  He wrote: HA.

  "You promised," Teddy said as she reached up to his face and parted the rags around his eyes. "I get to finally see what you look like."

  He wrote: DONT B SCARED.

  "I won't," she said.

  4

  After she saw his face, she got back under the covers. She thought he was crying, but she couldn't be sure because he'd quickly covered his scarred face as soon as she finished looking. "I love you, Torch," she said. Teddy watched the black cat go cautiously about the room, occasionally meowing, dipping her head down to the floor to sniff. "And now I know why you got the cat food you didn't steal it, did you?"

  Torch was about to write something on the Etch A Sketch but didn't.

  "Oh, I don't like it when you steal. It makes me feel bad."

  Torch drew an angry face on the Etch A Sketch.

  "Yeah, that's how I feel on the inside," she said, and then reaching over to the dials, added a moustache and horns to the face.

  Torch shook the Etch A Sketch to erase this.

  "How do you feel on the inside?"

  Torch bowed his head. Then he drew a picture of a hurricane lamp like the one Teddy kept by her bed.

  When she'd seen the picture, he erased it and wrote: SAFE-LANTERN-FIRE.

  "The kitty belongs to somebody," Teddy said, sadly. "After we feed it, we should let it go so it can go home."

  Torch nodded.

  Teddy turned her head away from him and looked at the stone gray wall. "Someday you're going to have to let me go, too, Torch. Because someday what got Jake is going to get me."

  Chapter Ten

  TALES TOLD OUT OF SCHOOL

  1

  Saturday Morning in Pontefract

  Howie McCormick didn't show up for work down at the post office, but nobody really missed him. Jodie Gale took his mail route without realizing that for the next several days he would still be subbing for Howie. Perhaps sometime in the following week somebody would wonder what the hell happened to Howie, but until then nobody really cared. His porno videos would remain unreturned to the video store in Cabelsville.

  Georgia Stetson was gossiping with her husband Ken while she squeezed (just barely) into the dark purple dress she'd chosen to wear. "It's not like you're the widow," Ken chortled when he noticed her somber clothing, and Georgia remarked, "Don't I wish."

  Sheriff George Connally sat in front of the television set and watched Pee-Wee's Playhouse, but did not scream when the secret word was spoken on screen. He didn't even notice when his wife, Rita, came into the living room and turned off the set.

  "Why don't we take a drive over the hills," she said, trying to get his mind off yet another nightmare he'd had in the early morning. George had awakened her at three, she'd gone through the usual routine of warming him some milk, and then listening to him describe bits and pieces of the nightmare.

  He'd told her, "It was just another Frank and Louise dream, honey, nothing new. They just told me they loved me like a son, that's all." But what he hadn't told Rita was that she was in the dream, also. Nothing frightening there, though, nope, just Rita Connally pushing her husband away from her as he tried to hug her. And when she opened her mouth to speak, just a gargling sound.

  "Yeah, a drive over the hills." George combed his hand through his waxy golden hair and aimed for a smile but ended up grimacing. "You think my job's getting to me?"

  "I think you take the world on your shoulders." Rita tried to look him in the eyes but could not. She was exhausted from being awakened every other morning before sunrise with his screaming. "And I think this town is not the world. You can't even find a decent bowl of grits in the dang place."

  "A drive over the hills, good." George nodded and attempted to rise from the couch; but pushing his hands into the cushions, he just sank lower.

  "It's Saturday," Rita said, "today you belong to me, not Pontefract."

  Cappie Hartstone was up at the crack of
dawn with her Jane Fonda Workout tape going full blast downstairs in the family room. The room had flooded in the night when one of the pipes burst, and the fuzzy blue carpet where she exercised her buns off was damp and stunk to high heaven; it squished when her knees came down from doing fire hydrants. Bill had put electric fans in the corners of the room to try and dry the carpet out. Cappie was positive she would catch pneumonia. And of all days for this to happen, when she and Bill were hosting the calling hours for her Uncle Arthur's funeral. When it rains, she thought, it certainly does pour.

  But nothing, not even these acts of God like pipes that burst in January, would keep her from her morning aerobic routine.

  Saturdays were never good days for Cappie. The Altar Guild usually took up the better part of the day—she was always down at Christ Church organizing potluck suppers, or ironing palls, as she had to yesterday, or arranging flowers on the altar. And then her little angels, Heather, Jennifer, and Jason, needed to be driven to scouts or ballet class or to piano lessons. Thankfully Cappie could count on her husband Bill to be out of sight most Saturdays, over at the club in Newton vegetating in front of a giant video screen with his sports cronies. And today, she'd managed to borrow Georgia Stetson's maid to get the living room tidy and to serve food and drinks after the funeral.

  Saturday was rarely ever Cappie Hartstone's piece of the pie.

  She wrote in her Day Runner Book:

  This is the morning I will work on me, before the church obligations, before the reception. To become the best me I can be.