Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  Then, inside my head, the throbbing stopped.

  I heard the white noise of a fan, eclipsing all other sounds.

  And then Bart Kinter whispered in my ear: "Well, asswipe, it's about time you came here. We're all monsters here, even your little debutante twat, Lily. I got her in the hole now, if you know what I mean "

  I felt someone pull on the bone, leading me over to the ancient toilet and the long torn shelf.

  I saw:

  A gaping hole where the toilet shelf had been, with brick and wood blistering around its outer edges like venereal sores. The blue fumes were particularly strong there, curving and twisting, almost like a veil billowing upward from below. The dim light was coming from that pit, and as I went toward it, I stepped on what felt like several hundred jellyfish. The floor of the cellar crawled with worms. The worms go in, and they do come out, oh, yes, they most certainly do. Where you've got dead bodies, and this house must be a good gravestone to hundreds of 'em, where you've got dead bodies you got to have maggots.

  I gazed down into the opening.

  A throbbing membrane was stretched like an animal hide from one end to another. Seepage from some stream running beneath the house slushed and gurgled across what was left of the muddy floor. Spiny tendrils had sprouted along the slick wet walls; a pink liplike membrane hung like a canopy from the ceiling, dripping with a thick, cloudy mucus. The netherworld I gazed down upon pulsated as if the entire sewer was alive.

  And a circle of human bones, dozens of them, ribcages, arms, legs, skulls, some half-in and half-out of the mud, some stacked one atop the other. Within their circle, something moved.

  I thought I saw many things at once, as if overlaid one atop the other. First some dark creature bending over another, reminding me of a lion feeding upon a fallen antelope. And then it was something closer to a Portuguese Man-of-War, its many tentacles grabbing some small, pale creature beneath its translucent sac. Then a lover and his beloved, naked, lying in an undulating bed, the man, in a dominant position, bending over her, kissing her breasts. Then, for only a second, a little girl caught in a mud hole, surrounded by bones, but this flashed back to the lovers, and the man moved aside, giving me a better view.

  And lying down on that slowly undulating floor was Lily Cammack, her royal blue dress torn, a look of terror in her eyes. Bart Kinter, naked, his backbone jutting out like a dinosaur ridge, pulled her knees apart with his hands. He turned to look up at me. That evil face, the stub of a nose wrinkling in lascivious glee, his green eyes becoming slits, his white hair blown by a static wind. "Hey, Coffeyshit, this old girlfriend of yours tastes pretty fucking good," and he licked his lips; but the tongue that emerged was blue and studded with warts as it slathered along his lips and down as far as his chin. "Through eternity, you know, we'll be banging her little brains out."

  Weakly, Lily whimpered, "Help me, oh, God, help me, Cup," but then her head fell back and her eyes closed.

  "You're a good corpsefucker, aren'tja, Coffeydick?" Bart laughed. "Come on down and join the fun. We've all had her at least a hundred times, but she's good for another pop or two."

  Just a show. Welcome to my nightmare, that's all. Bart Kinter is dead, and Lily Cammack is dead. Something coursed through my veins like Drano, burning and scarring as it went. The aches and pains returned, the feeling of being absurdly constructed of flesh and blood, vulnerable to constant attack. I felt a throbbing in my head like it would explode. I felt like I was sixteen years old.

  As if someone else were doing this, and I was just watching the event, completely disconnected. I saw myself smack the bone against my swollen right hand.

  I wanted to kill Kinter all over again. It was like a call in my blood. Just kill him. If he's already dead, well, so what. You know what kind of monster you are, you've always known. Just get down in there, in that pit, and tear that motherfucker apart. All those years, that guilt you carried. And he was always just waiting for you, back here, waiting for you to see this, to see him do this to Lily. Can't you just see yourself clawing into his flesh, hear his screams, look what he's doing to her now, he's God, Jesus, he's raping her, and you're going to let him get away with it. You said you loved her, and you did, and you still do, so get that perverted creature, rip his throat out.

  I heard a woman screaming from somewhere close by. I looked away from Bart (whose back was arched and whose buttocks beat like a tom-tom as he pumped away into Lily, her hands spreading out to clutch the earth—but it wasn't really earth—it was moving, like a thick liquid), but all that was behind me was a blue fog. For the barest instant I thought I saw Prescott Nagle through the haze, holding a gun, and then, the cellar steps running up to the kitchen, and a woman struggling against a man on a staircase, and in between these visions, layers of rippling blue fog, none of these visions seemed connected to me.

  Something like mud was sucking at my shoes. My knees buckled.

  And just before I fell down into what I thought might be hell, I saw a naked nine-year-old girl in the center of that pit of human bones, excrement, and filth. She was unconscious, but trembling like a seismographic needle.

  7

  Tommy

  As Tommy Mackenzie's bed seemed to wrap around him, his father's spindly arms and legs stroked his cheeks, and he smelled mud and feces. And gas. His father's proboscis tongue shot out of his mouth and into Tommy's neck. Tommy felt warmth spread from his jugular vein outward. His father made horrible sucking noises, and his face became puffy and bloated; his father fattened, engorged on his own son's blood, and Tommy knew this thing above him was no longer really his father, but the Boy-Eating Spider Incarnate, like having a giant tick sitting on his chest, stroking him with sharp needlelike feelers, drawing his life essence out. When Tommy finally thought he could scream through the silver webbing, all that came up from his throat was a bubbling gurgle.

  8

  George

  George stepped into what he knew to be one of the old upstairs bedrooms, but what looked to him like a poorly lit cabin. Written in blood across the wall: LOVE DID THIS. He was standing in the center of the cabin which seemed to grow and surround him as he breathed. The blood dripped down the wall slowly. George thought for one second that, hey, I'm just going to leave this room, shut the door behind me—if I can find the fucking door; it was here just a second ago—and I'll just wait this thing out in the hall, I don't need to open any more doors, no way, Jose, but when he tried to move, his feet seemed to be mired in some kind of thick gum, like flypaper. He knew he was the fly.

  Hearing the creak of floorboards, he raised his Smith & Wesson up to the level of his chest, pointing into the flickering darkness. There was a gasping sound, and George whispered, "Tommy? Are you—"

  Frank Gaston's Southern Gentleman's voice interrupted him. "We saw it coming, George, we saw the turn of the tide while we were staying here." Emerging from the drapery of shadows: Frank and his wife, Louise. They seemed connected as they walked, leaning shoulder-to-shoulder as if comforting each other in some great tragedy.

  Frank looked healthier than he had in the years before his death; his wrinkled skin had smoothed across his face like a hide that is stretched in the tanning process. He was wearing a Sunday Best suit, and his hair was thick and ash-blond. Louise wore a dark purple pillbox hat with a veil, which was pulled up to reveal a peaches-and-cream complexion. Her dress was black formal. They looked like they'd just come from a funeral and were celebrating the death.

  George held his gun in his hand, but pointed it at the floor. His eyes became blurry with tears. "Oh, God, what's happening to me "

  "They're beautiful," Louise piped up. "George, you can't begin to imagine their beauty. I was in terrible pain, George, and Frank decided that it would be best if we ended our lives here, but look," she brought her hands up to her face, lovely and years younger than George ever remembered it being, "what they've done for us. The wages of sin, George. They can confer immortality and some beauty."

  "A
s much as mortals can stand. Because, George, you see, most folks are just mortal, aren't they? You live sixty, seventy, eighty years, and then," Frank snapped his fingers, and it sounded like a bone cracking, "it's over. But these creatures, when properly worshipped and fed, why, just being near them, among them, you live forever."

  "But you're both dead," George said, and Louise's face rippled with anger.

  "Death is just a word," she spat. "After all we've done for you, and you treat us like this." She turned her face into her husband's neck and licked his throat around the curve of his jiggling Adam's apple.

  Frank's eyes brightened. "Now, we know it must be quite frightening at first, to realize how empty your life is when faced with their omnipotence. Why, we're just shadows when you think about it. We're less than nothing. The best we can hope for is to be sacrificed or to be chosen. You got to think about how empty life is when you see how full they are."

  Louise nodded, nuzzling against her husband like she wanted to crawl inside him. "How full they are."

  "Then tell me, who are 'They'?" George asked.

  "They are many, and they are one. Imagine a being so powerful, so strong that It would be worshipped as a god, sacrificed to, so omnipotent It could raise the dead, George, do you understand? Raise the dead. It must be a god, mustn't It, for It to do all that? We live in a godless world, and so It must be our only god."

  "It might be a demon," George said.

  Frank laughed. "Oh, that's how narrow our minds are, George, that's where our blinders come into play. We can only imagine in terms of our cultural limitations: demons, devils. But try to get beyond that, George, take it further. Put yourself in Its shoes: what if you were a god, were sacrificed to, could speak in the tongues of nightmares and dreams, and then were buried by blind ignorance? Made to feel small and puny, by creatures as absurd as man, whom you could easily rule? Wouldn't vengeance be on your mind?"

  "Well, maybe. But if this thing is so powerful, why would it even deal with us?" I am only speaking to these corpses because it is the polite thing to do. George had to repress the mad chuckle that wanted to burst out of his gut.

  "Because, George," Frank said, "sometimes It gets hungry. Everybody's got to eat." Frank took a step toward George, but George was momentarily distracted by Louise. There she was, looking so middle-aged smart in a pillbox and veil, her dark gloves, her shiny dress, but something was coming out of her mouth. Something small and slippery, and George wondered if she were vomiting an oyster.

  George could feel the stench of Frank Gaston's breath as he moved closer and said, "Just put down that gun, George, those things are dangerous, you should've seen what it did to Louise when I pressed it against her temple."

  Louise said, "Yef, you foulda feen, Gee-oo." Her words were garbled by the flicking membranous thing that slid down her chin.

  George remembered Rita's tongue. What they had done to his wife. "Oo-weef," Rita had moaned, and here Oo-weef stood as big as life with her own tongue problems.

  George pointed his gun at Louise's mouth.

  "I want Tommy Mackenzie," he said.

  "You foulda feen, Gee-oo," Louise repeated, "da bwud, da wovewey bwud."

  Frank Gaston snarled, "You want Tommy Mackenzie, do you? Well, we aim to please, George, that we do, and our aim is rarely off the mark. Louise, honey, George wants Tommy Mackenzie."

  George could not take his eyes off Louise, whose entire form seemed to shimmer like gas heat above a radiator.

  "How do you want him, George?" Frank growled. "Rare, medium, or well-done? I think the lad's down a few pints at this point."

  Louise's entire face seemed to change with the slick dark thing that now flapped across her neck, her eyes began leaking a yellow milky fluid, while her jaw stretched outwards becoming a set of mandibles; her dress and pillbox hat melted against her skin. Her body crackled and became segmented, her hips expanded like a hot air balloon. Her arms reached out to him as he stood there, his own hand trembling, the gun bobbing up and down in his hand. Louise's arms turned into long crab-like pincers. The room itself was transforming around her; Frank Gaston seemed to bleed his skin, his suit, his ash-blond hair, right into what was quickly becoming his wife's arachnid abdomen, and the walls dribbled across each other, leaving streaks and crosshatches until George realized that he was standing in the center of a spider's web.

  George saw what looked like Tommy Mackenzie suspended in the web, wrapped as if in a cocoon. He seemed to be sleeping. Dozens of thin red scratches were etched across the teenager's face. Shit! They're giving me what I want, Tommy Mackenzie, they put me right in his own fucking nightmare—

  "Tommy! Hey!" George shouted.

  Then he heard the snap of the Louise-spider's mandibles as she moved closer to him.

  9

  Tommy

  The Boy-Eating Spider had moved from Tommy's chest. He gasped for air, breathing through the dark webbing that encircled him. Tommy couldn't focus his eyes in the dim room, but thought for a moment he heard his name mentioned.

  But Tommy felt peaceful, warm, tired, like he just wanted to sleep forever in that feathery web.

  Then something pulled him back, out of the warmth of unconsciousness.

  Someone was shouting his name.

  10

  Clare

  The skinless creature pushing her down onto the stones let up for a second. Like a dog letting up so it can get a better grip on a bone.

  Clare, with a renewal of strength, pushed up against its heavy body, trying to turn over, fighting the father-thing. "Oh, lovely, lovely Clare." It made more smacking sounds. "Big Kiss." She would not be able to hold the Thing off much longer, and she longed for death to take her before all her strength gave out. She kicked out at the Thing, and with each kick, the long pink tongue wrapped itself tighter around her left leg.

  She prayed the end would come quickly.

  Clare thought the end was finally coming. The light at the end of the tunnel, right? Except everything's getting dark, it's growing dark, dark and heavy.

  "Little blind Clare," the Thing cooed, its tongue releasing her for a moment. "Little blind Clare with no eye."

  Clare felt worms crawling across her face, coming from the water, and covering her eyes.

  11

  Tommy

  A tear ran down the side of the spiderweb. Tommy opened his eyes, trying to focus on the room. Struggling against the web. He heard someone yelling at him, someone he was afraid was his father, but whoever it was wanted him to try to get out.

  12

  George

  George could not move his feet; it felt as if a thousand hands were pulling him down, trying to get him to fall on his knees. WORSHIP THE EATER OF SOULS.

  He looked down to the floor, and the gummy web was tugging at his ankles. A tingling sensation began at his toes, and was slowly moving up to his calves. DRAIN YOUR BLOOD, METER MAID!

  "Drain this!" George shouted, raising his gun up to Louise's snapping jaws. As he pulled the trigger, his legs went cold, and he felt himself withering.

  The bullet he fired sliced off half of the Louise-spider's head, and the remaining right side of her arachnid face seemed to grin as she lisped, "Wove did thith."

  George fell to his knees, and began crawling across the sticky floor toward Tommy Mackenzie. He felt something grasp him at the knee.

  Turning, he saw that Louise was wrapping him in her silver cord.

  13

  "What are you doing in my nightmare?" Tommy asked groggily. He did not know if he was still dreaming. Sheriff Connally was hunkered down on his hands and knees. Behind the sheriff, the Boy-Eating Spider was busily spinning a new web across his legs.

  "Get out," George gasped.

  Tommy struggled against the web; he twisted his body to the side, but it held him fast.

  "Pretend you're strong," George whispered, "believe in your own strength the way you believe in this nightmare. Pretend that you are stronger than this thing." George reac
hed across the web. The Boy-Eating Spider was sewing a gray-white shroud around his hips now. Stretching his arm out, he ripped his hands down the webbing that held Tommy down. His fingers came back, bleeding, the nails torn back to the roots. George's face creased in agony. His hands, bloody, but free of the web, reached inside his coat pocket. He brought out a flare.

  "Look," George gasped, then laughed. "I fucking forgot about the flare!"

  Tommy managed to wriggle into the slit that George had made in the web's fabric.

  George turned back to the spider. He held the flare up.

  The Boy-Eating Spider paused in its wrapping. George was immobilized from the waist down. The spider reached one of its pincers out, pausing in midair near the flare that George held.

  "Go! Run! Get the hell out of the house!" George shouted with all his remaining strength. He did not turn back to Tommy, but remained staring at the spider, keeping it at bay with this new threat.

  14

  Tommy slipped his shoulder through the slit.

  15

  "Hey, Louise, I know what fire does to you."

  Inside his head, a voice cried: THE EATER OF SOULS WILL SUCK THE MARROW FROM YOUR BONES, METER MAID!

  "Well, hell, let's just have a barbecue," George laughed. His face shone with sweat.

  Tommy pushed his upper body through the web.

  The Boy-Eating Spider remained still.

  "You got about ten seconds to get outta here, Tommy, so give it all you got," George said. He did not take his eyes off the spider. "You can't feed on nightmares anymore."

  "That flare," the Louise-spider wobbled her remaining mandible, "you don't really want to set it off, do you? Let me tell you, if even the smallest spark erupts from that flare, well, take a deep breath, you are surrounded by it."