Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  It was not until ten years later that I was able to live in the normal world again, ten years of Foxmeadow, a spa for genteel ladies like myself, women of culture and character who had fallen off the edge of the flat world of sanity.

  I would never, of course, return to that house, or even to that city. I could not bear it. Yet the house still will not let me go. I carry it within this weak-vesseled form, and all that is that house is here with me even as I write this.

  I have moments of wondering if, at every corner, I will not behold that sight once again.

  3.

  The telephone was ringing. Not really a ring: these new phones seemed to produce an inhuman trilling that Hugh found painful to hear. Hugh had just begun getting into the book, sinking into the rhythm of the prose. Finally, Verena Standish was getting interesting, if a bit ghoulish. He almost resented this new intrusive noise. But maybe it’ll be about a job.

  He sprinted to the kitchen and caught the receiver by the fourth ring, juggling it to within an inch of dropping the whole contraption on the linoleum. Hugh cleared his throat; he wanted to sound professional. His voice came out an unnaturally deep baritone. “Hello?”

  But it was Penny Dreadful from downstairs. “Sorry to bother you, dear, but I’m having a bit of trouble with me garbage disposal and I was wondering what I should do—I have a plumber I can call, but I thought I should check with you first…”

  Hugh sighed. This was the problem with being a landlord. “Oh, what’s the trouble with it?”

  “Ghastly noises, like someone choking on eggshells—it just spits whatever I place down its gullet back up in me face.”

  The cockney affectation in Mrs. Deerfield’s voice was a dead giveaway as to her state of being: sauced to the gills. He was about to tell her to go ahead and call the plumber and then stick the bill in his mailbox. But curiosity about the downstairs apartment got the better of him. “I’ll be down in a sec.”

  Mrs. Deerfield greeted him at the door in a pink silk pajamas-type outfit, smudges of sky-blue eye shadow beneath her brows, fuchsia lipstick smeared across her mouth; all framed by a sort of pink tint to her cotton-candy-white puff of hair—she’d had it curled since he last saw her. She fanned her hands in front of his face, and he caught the strong odor of beer ( makes me thirsty). Her fingernails were long and painted green, with what looked like small gold astrological symbols glued to them. She introduced her two lady friends quickly, slurring her syllables together. “Annie, Betty, Hugh. We’re all a bit legless at the moment.” Mrs. Deerfield giggled mischievously. “I was missing my Ramona, and we held a little séance and she meowed through dear old Annie. The logical thing to do was have a pint or two.”

  “It was embarrassing, hon,” one of the women said. “I just started making these noises and I suddenly wanted to catch a mouse or something. Spirits are like that.”

  The third woman remained silent; she glanced down at the floor.

  These must be the weird sisters Rachel had gone on about that first night in the house. “They’re really queer, Hugh,” she’d said, “and they kind of scared me, and you know how easily I can spook myself without outside help. They say they contact spirits.” Hugh sniffed the heavy air in the apartment. The only spirits he noticed as he headed back to the kitchen were the empty bottles of John Courage ale sitting on top of a card table. The third woman, the blonde named Betty, was tapping the toe of her right foot rather nervously, and he looked beneath the table, to the area where she cast her glance: the outline of a trapdoor.

  The crib. “I just read about that.” He pointed to the trapdoor. It fit the exact dimensions of the card table above it. What had Verena said about it? It’s a quirk of the architect, or something? Now, Hugh, try to sound knowledgeable in front of the weird sisters—and this might not be the right group to tell about the governess who ate kiddos for dinner. “It’s an architectural oddity.”

  “Dear?” Mrs. Deerfield was over at the sink, turning the garbage disposal on and off rapidly.

  “Oh, it’s this book I’ve got about the house—apparently, there’s some kind of passage—stairs I guess, though there’s not much room for them—underneath there that continues up to the second floor—next to the dumbwaiter. Although it’s kind of nutty, isn’t it? I mean, why build it like that, when you could just make it like a normal staircase? But evidently, the guy who planned this house was into weirdness.”

  “Julian Marlowe was a madman,” Mrs. Deerfield stated unequivocally. “But everything in its place and a place for everything, isn’t that right, dear? Perhaps it was a wine cellar of sorts, dear. It’s rather cool there, even in this weather, and it keeps me jams and pickles from boiling. But about the disposal…”

  “Oh, right, well, there’s a trick to that—anybody got a broom handle?”

  “As a matter-a-fact—“ Mrs. Deerfield went to get the broom from behind the back door. She handed it to him as he approached the kitchen sink.

  “You just poke it around like this, sort of spinning the doohickeys down there.” As Hugh spoke, the women laughed, and Hugh, when he had gotten the garbage disposal going, accepted a bottle of dark ale from them. He sipped it slowly. It was ice cold and froze the back of his throat. “I better get back upstairs.”

  “If you must, but it is nice to have a man around the house—don’t you agree, ladies?” They giggled their agreement, although the one called Annie seemed to be laughing at some other joke entirely. Mrs. Deerfield said, “But you both’ve been avoiding me, and I want you to tell your sweet wife that it was just an accident, after all, I know you didn’t mean to kill Ramona, accidents do happen. The world isn’t a perfect place.”

  As Hugh left her apartment, he invited her to the housewarming party, and her friends, also. But there was something going through his mind as he thought about how the cat had died: there are no accidents. He was getting drunk. Off one damn beer, too, but it was strong. He almost tripped up the stairs, but there are no accidents. Scout, take a lesson. Not an accident from birth to death. There’s a meaning and a reason for everything. Just like my good friend Verena Standish says, that cold-blooded murderers have their reasons, too. Like the Old Man and my first wife—now that car wreck was no accident, it may have been a drunk driver, but the Old Man probably made good and sure they were straddling the white line, I’m willing to put some money where my mouth is, and his mouth felt dry and scratchy. He knew that he would go out somewhere and maybe have another beer or two. Like that cat in the car, sure, it looked like an accident, but nope, it must’ve been a sign—like that omen Penny Dreadful had when we moved in, the way her cat barfed hairballs—just like I’m a lawyer, it was no accident, it was real life. I had been raised to go to lawyer college, he chuckled, so I did as I was told until the lie got to be too much, which is right now, which is, he looked at his watch, which is 2:30, which is Miller time.

  Hugh Adair felt in his pocket for his wallet, and then turned back down the stairs to go out into the sultry day and find himself a bar stool and knock back a couple of brewskies.

  There was something, something he’d told Rachel that morning, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, something about a leaf, and as he stepped outside to the sweltering afternoon, the front sidewalk was littered with dead leaves from a gingko tree that did not have long to live itself. Yeah, that’s it, a new leaf. Something about a new leaf. But he continued on through the park to the shortcut to Nineteenth Street, trying to forget his unbearable thirst.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHILDREN IN THE PARK

  When Rachel finally got Sassy on the line, she said, “I want to thank you personally for scaring the bejesus out of me. I have a couple of your photocopies here in my purse and I can’t tell you how entertaining it is to know I live in a chamber of horrors.”

  Sassy snorted a laugh on the other end of the line. “I’ve even found another article or two. That place is some kind of magnet for lunatics. You and Hugh are just two of the recent ones. M
akes much more interesting reading than most of this home shit I’ve got to research.”

  “Yeah, well, do me a favor, Sass, and don’t spread that stuff around at the party.”

  “My lips are sealed. You all prepared?”

  “Hardly, and I’ve got a shitload of work, I got yelled at by a client who I know for a fact is guilty and—yikes! It’s four, I want to get out of here so I can get some shopping done before Larimers is swamped with yuppies.”

  “Can I bring anything tomorrow?”

  “Your ass, now gotta-go. Bye.”

  Rachel had to run to the bank, which she’d forgotten to do earlier in the week. She’d barely done any shopping for the housewarming party—time seemed to be rushing by this week, between the briefs she had to prepare, and her mother calling at work to see how she was doing. (“It’s just that it’s been a week since you called, and that always means you’re keeping something from me,” mom had said, and Rachel wondered if her mother were clairvoyant: Rachel’s mind, when not in gear, went to the thought of the baby she might be carrying. But I’m not going to jinx this and blab it until we’re both a ways along in gestation.) Rachel broke down on the phone and invited her mother to the housewarming party when her mother kept needling her about seeing the house.

  But the sphere ( Don’t call it a baby yet, if you call it a baby, Scout, you’ll lose it, it’ll drop out of you and once it’s out you can’t put it back) was on her mind through all of it: work, play, rushing as she was to the bank, waiting in line at the automatic teller machine. Her blouse was soaked with sweat; the back of her neck was itchy; her pantyhose was like heavy fur— why the hell are you wearing hose in the middle of summer anyway? Do you think any of your colleagues are going to care if your legs are once again pale and knobby? The line at the bank was long—everyone ahead of her seemed to move in slow motion, making deposits and withdrawals, not writing their checks out until they were right up to the machine, inserting their bank cards the wrong way. She dropped the cash into her purse, wrapping it with a few of the articles Sassy had messengered over earlier in the week. I haven’t thrown these out yet? Larimers Market was already packed with shoppers. Rachel did her best to squeeze between people to get to the produce, and then there was another line at the deli counter. She glanced at her watch: 6:15.

  She was just crossing Winthrop Park with her arms full of groceries when the street lamps flickered on. Children, like playful lost shadows, ran across the thin grass after one another, ducking behind the bushes, leaping over each other’s backs, playing tag and hide-and-go-seek near the playground. A little girl in a pink party frock sat crying on the swing set—a street lamp spotlighted her. Rachel had seen her before, playing with a boy out in the alley one weekend day. Rachel thought she was both the most beautiful child she’d ever seen, and the saddest. Rachel’s arms ached from carrying the groceries, the headache seemed to be kicking in again, and she was getting a mild, distant pain in her stomach. You be okay, sphere, we don’t want anything happening to you, we’re going to do this pregnancy right. She went over to the little girl, setting the grocery bags down in the dirt, her purse propped between them.

  “Hello. What’s your name?” Rachel asked, sitting down into the curve of the swing next to the girl.

  The girl, who was probably no more than eight years old, eyed her suspiciously. Her eyes were red from crying. She had wispy brown hair tied back with a red velvet ribbon; her face was empty as if she were all cried out. Her eyes were pale green like lima beans. “Pudd’n’tame, ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.”

  Rachel felt pressure on her back, and then she was swinging upwards, down again, skidding her shoes into the dirt to stop. A small boy ran out from behind her. “Ha?” he shouted. “I pushed you!”

  “He’s Jamie and he’s my brother,” the girl said. “And he’s a wicked little boy, too. He made me cry.”

  “And he’s a strong little boy, too. Jamie, is your mommy here?”

  The boy, Jamie, smiled. “I stepped on a crack and broke her back.” He started rummaging through her groceries.

  “No you don’t.” Rachel caught him by the arm and pulled him backwards, lifting him up on her knee. So light, like lifting a pillow.

  “Naughty, naughty boy,” the girl said.

  “Where’s your home?” Rachel asked.

  The boy giggled, made a snarling noise, then giggled again. The little girl pointed across the darkening park. “The one in between.”

  Draper House. Mrs. Deerfield’s lights were off. Their floor, the second, was brightly lit up. Hugh’s home. I hope he’s got a job, oh please, just any old job. “But that’s my home. Are you friends of Mrs. Deerfield’s?”

  The girl shrugged. “We haven’t been out to play in forever.”

  Jamie, now sitting sturdily against Rachel’s knees, kicked his feet up. “I have this secret,” he said.

  “Is it a secret secret, or a telling secret?”

  He giggled. “It’s something you know. It’s about babies.”

  The girl reached across with her right hand and gave him a resounding slap on the cheek. “You wicked boy! If you tell I will tell. On you. ”

  The boy rubbed the side of his face. “I know how babies are made.” He leapt from Rachel’s lap, crouching down in front of her, writing with his fingers in the dirt.

  “God makes them. Is your mommy somewhere here?”

  The girl shrugged her shoulders. She began swinging back and forth. The chain clanked against the swing-set bar. “He knows he’s not supposed to say these things.”

  Jamie kept his head down, his fingers scratching in the dust. “He sticks it in and then goes to the bathroom inside her and that makes the baby.”

  Pain along ribs, down to stomach, side stitches. Be safe, sphere, be safe.

  The little girl scowled. “Wicked boy.”

  “It’s true! And then the baby crawls out of her cunny. Only if it’s all done. If it’s not all done, it has to crawl back in. What do you suppose would happen if the half-done baby couldn’t find his mother’s cunny again? I suppose it would find one eventually. Teacher says one is very much like another.”

  The pain was subsiding, like summer thunder, becoming more distant every few seconds. “That’s very bad language for such a nice young boy to be using.”

  “You’re not supposed to tell.” The little girl stood up, pushing the swing away from her. “You’re a bad wicked boy and bad wicked boys get cooked and eaten like in Hansel and Gretel if they don’t watch out!”

  “Cunny, cunny, cunny!” Jamie screamed at the top of his lungs, leaping up like a frog from the dirt and running off, out from under the street lamp, through the darkness, hooting like an owl as he went. His sister took off after him, crying, “Wicked, wicked bad boy! She’ll get you, she’ll get you and turn you into gingerbread!”

  Rachel leaned forward in the swing, wondering if she really wanted to have children after all. But mine will be different because they’ll be mine. She bent down, lifting the bags, sliding her purse up under her arm, expecting a hernia at any moment.

  She saw what the boy had been drawing in the dirt: a stick figure wearing a top hat.

  Beneath this, a word:

  HOUNFOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE THING IN THE WALLS

  Hugh only caught the barest glimpse of the thing. Like watching a train heading into a tunnel, like the echo of a flashbulb, or a firefly glowing for a fraction of a second at twilight and then vanishing. Just a pure whiteness in that dark hole—then gone. He’d made a hole in the wall, at first just by tugging at the cheap wallpaper, and then at the paper beneath that. There was a small dent there, as if someone had poked at the wall, and he found that if he pressed there with his fingers, the plaster came off. Bad workmanship. He pushed a little harder. A chunk of plaster came off in his hand. The wall had been cheaply constructed. He took a screwdriver and pried some more away and peered into the dark room and saw something whit
e.

  It’s ‘cause I’m drunk. I am rip-roaring drunk. These were Hugh’s first thoughts on seeing the thing, the white motion, the blur of movement. But he was not that drunk, he knew it. It had only been two beers; well, three. Or maybe I drank more without realizing it? Maybe I knocked back a few six-packs, and now I just don’t remember any of them beyond the first two, that would explain seeing this thing. This something in the crack in the wall of the vanity, something that could not be a small animal shaved of its hair, could not just be a rat covered with white dust.

  Hugh knew that in dark caves there lived creatures of transparent white jelly, blind and glowing; he knew that underground streams throbbed with life that was so different from the daylight world as to be alien, but this...

  What had lived in the shadows of this dark room and fed upon roaches and mice, what was it that had just crawled back into its small cave within this vanity within this house?

  I must be blind drunk.

  A hallucination like this was what drinking was all about. Now, if I’d dropped acid I could label it a bad flashback and be done with it. What should I call it?

  He shuddered. His shirt caught under his armpits, down his back, at his chest: he was sweating. He could smell the sourness of his own breath. His right hand held a chunk of plaster from the vanity wall; it crumbled as his hand became a fist. The hand even seemed alien, it seemed too white to be his, the hair on his knuckles and the back of his hand seemed too blond, he saw scales crossing each other like lizard highways across his fingers. Plaster dust settled across his fingernails. He opened and closed his fist slowly, turning his palm upward. Drunk, drunk, drunk.

  The house smelled differently, a subtle change, like an odor from childhood remembered years later. Where it had smelled like nothing to him, empty, it now smelled inhabited.