Coming of Age: Three Novellas (Dark Suspense, Gothic Thriller, Supernatural Horror)

by Douglas Clegg

  Sometimes, I get so lonely I want to just hold Jenna.

  As a friend. I want to see Mooncalf again, but he's been avoiding me since the party. I've had two weeks now, seeing Jenna and her family, playing a little golf, some tennis, taking the boat out when I can. Jenna's been good about this even if she's turned icy. She seems to handle my silences well. She really is a friend. I'm glad we can be this close and that she can be so understanding. Most of the time, she seems to act as if the night of her party never happened, that I didn't go off with him.

  She won't really understand what it means, anyway. She'll think she'll know, but I'll let her know it was nothing.

  I'll get her thinking about us again, which is what she really wants, anyway.

  Chapter Seven

  The Hurricane Approaches

  1

  There he is again: I see him. That boy Owen. He's been running down on the beach; swimming too much for his own good; working on his oxygen intake because breathing is the key; and he's felt a strength grow within him to match his body's power.

  2

  The weeks after the party went in a blur of moments and flashes in his brain—the sky clouded and then became unbearably sunny, the humidity soared and then dropped and then soared again; a tropical storm to the south had been upgraded to a hurricane but it would not strike so far north as Outerbridge; once, in the dead of night, Owen lay in bed convinced he'd heard a gun go off somewhere on the island.

  August was like that sometimes.

  3

  “Owen. Why?”

  “Why what?” he asked, shielding his eyes from the sun. Jenna had emerged from the deck all wrapped in a big yellow towel; to him it was as magnificent as a summer dress. The smell of the pool was intoxicating. He had just finished his morning laps and felt clean and strong. Chlorine stank on his skin.

  He looked up at her. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to touch her. They stood so close.

  “Why the gun?”

  “It's just a pistol. It's an antique.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought you'd want it. I thought you'd like it.”

  “I'm not a fan of guns.”

  “No one is. But it has that inlay. It's mother of pearl. It seems feminine.”

  “You must be out of your mind. To give me that as a gift. On my birthday.”

  “It was my grandfather's.”

  “Well, I'm giving it back. God, I don't want it in the house, let alone in my hand.”

  “You need protection.”

  “From what?”

  “Jimmy,” Owen said. He sucked a breath in briefly. It was time to let it begin.

  He felt a curious shiver sweep through his body, as if he were on the verge of some delightful pleasure.

  “He told me…”

  “Told you what? What did he say? Was it about me?”

  He wanted to make sure that she was completely focused on him. On his lips as he spoke. “No, it's nothing. I just think you should keep the gun.”

  “No, he said something,” she nearly snarled. “Tell me.”

  “I'm sure he didn't mean it,” Owen said.

  “It made you think I needed a gun?” Her face went blank. She looked down at her feet for a moment. Then, she glanced up and looked him in the eye. “What's been going on between you two?”

  “Nothing,” Owen whispered.

  “Owen, what's going on?” she said.

  He looked at her and said, “Jenna, I want you to be safe. That's all. Look, I know you don't care for me, and that's fine. I can't make you like me. And I know I can't make you…care for me…in a way I happen to care for you. No one is magician enough for that. I've thought about you since we were both little kids. I've always considered you someone special.”

  “What?” she asked in a voice that was barely more than mouse squeak.

  “I know that you'll go on to some really great college and you'll meet lots of guys like Jimmy and you'll come back to the island during the summer and be friendly with me but you'll see me as the island townie who paints houses for a living, or maybe works on boats. And you'll have a different life.”

  “What is this all getting to—” Jenna gasped, and then her eyes lit up. “You lost the island accent. You talk like one of us now.”

  She said it as if it was one of the most dreadful things imaginable.

  As if the “one of us” was the worst thing that could happen.

  “That isn't true,” Owen said. Then, he glanced away from her, at the house and the beginnings of the roses his father so lovingly tended. “Look, I know I'm nothing to you. Just consider the gun some kind of protection. He's dangerous.”

  He walked away from her, his body barely dry from the swimming pool.

  She called after him, but he didn't turn.

  He walked from the pool to the back lawn, and disappeared down the path.

  4

  Another morning, he helped Mr. M with his golf clubs and luggage, driving the truck up from the ferry. Mr. M had almost missed the summer on the island.

  “Business takes a man over,” he told Owen on the way up the hill to the house. He was the biggest man Owen had ever seen—like a bear, but slick, too, and shiny. He had on dark glasses and a rumpled blue oxford cloth shirt; his skin was like pink snow.

  When Owen got to the door with the last of the bags, Mrs. M (he had to start thinking of her as Cathy if he was going to ever grow up) kissed her husband lightly on the nose.

  “How's the summer?”

  “Quiet,” Mrs. M said.

  “Where's that boy?”

  “Which?”

  “McTeague,” Mr. M said.

  “I think it's over. She's gone to Dr. Vaughan three times in two weeks. That's a record for her,” Mrs. M said, and then turned to Owen. “Sweetie, can you go grab the mail?”

  Owen nodded, feeling far too obedient, feeling his heart beating too fast, feeling too much within his frame, as if his muscles were about to twist and untangle and he was afraid for a moment that he had not heard what he thought he'd heard.

  5

  Owen sat by the koi pond, absorbing the last of an afternoon sun on one of his days off—the weather had gone back and forth, between brief bouts of showers and then sudden sunbursts. He was about to reach for Dagon beneath the placid green water, when he noticed a shadow reflection move across the water.

  He didn't turn, but knew that Jimmy had come up behind him.

  “Aren't you ever going to talk to me again?”

  Owen shrugged.

  “I thought…I thought we could…we could at least be friends,” Jimmy said. “I think about you. All the time.”

  “Don't come here again,” Owen measured his words carefully.

  The shadow withdrew, and Owen had the sun again.

  6

  Owen lay back in the grass and closed his eyes to the sun. As the violet darkness of his inner mind grew, he began to see the shadow sea of Dagon's realm. From the dusky waves, a form emerged, a magnificent sea god, its eyes round and without mind, like those of a shark, its body slick as oil with thousands of fins sprouting along its back; and as it grew, Owen knew what the god asked of him.

  7

  “I said peel the potatoes,” his mother said, but he could see the look in her eyes. She wouldn't look directly at him. His mother was afraid of him. A little. Just a little fear.

  That was good.

  “Don't use that tone of voice with me,” Owen said almost politely, as he lifted the first potato and brought it to the small sharp knife.

  “Something's missing in the house,” she said, but his mother had begun saying strange things the past few weeks—sentences that didn't go together, phrases that meant something only in her mind.

  “You probably misplaced whatever it is,” he told her almost non-chalantly. “You've always been like that, haven't you?”

  8

  When storms come to Outerbridge, they usually have lost most of their power, they usually have bee
n downgraded from hurricanes by the time they hit Bermuda to tropical storms when they reach Long Island, and by the time they make it past Block Island and start heading to the Avalons, it's usually high winds and warm rains but not much damage. The islanders who are over sixty remember the storm of '53 that “took the hats off houses,” as they said, and generally made a mess of the summer homes.

  The storm that arrived the last week of August was not a terror, nor did it threaten to take the hats off houses. It was a warm palace of rain and wind and it changed the geometry of the island with its shifts and movements.

  The sky became a hardened gray, and the rain was constant, and the koi pond overflowed. Owen ran outside with his father, newspapers curled over their heads, to try and save the fish as they flip-flopped along the mud and grass, their patchwork colors seeming to melt beneath the downpour.

  9

  Owen was on his way to work, using his father's truck to get to the Salty Dog, when he saw the figure standing in the pouring rain of afternoon down by the docks. Owen pulled the truck to the edge of the road and parked. He got out in the rain, opening his dark umbrella. The smell of fish was overpowering—it was a stink he was used to, but with the storm it was worse.

  Jimmy looked otherworldly: he wore a shiny parka, and his face was pale beneath it. He nearly galloped over to Owen, and reached out to touch him on the shoulder, but Owen pulled back.

  Owen slammed the truck door shut.

  “I'm going to work,” Owen said.

  “Mooncalf?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I thought you—”

  “You thought wrong.”

  “I've been waiting for you. At the boat. Every night, I watch you leave the restaurant and walk home. Every night I wish you'd come to me.”

  “You disgust me.”

  “Stop it. I know that's not true.” Jimmy's shoulders began heaving.

  The sound of the rain became thunderous and sheets and blocks of it seemed to dump right down around them.

  “God. God!” Jimmy cried out, his arms going up to the sky like some clown, like some revival preacher clown; the rain pouring against his face. A thunderclap hid the sound of his bleating. “If only you knew! If only you could grow up inside me! Knowing how I've been pushed and pulled, first my father forcing me into tennis and basketball and soccer since I was six years old, the camps I've gone to every summer, and these schools I go to, and what it all means when inside…inside Owen… you know something about yourself that's like a doorway into a different world. Something that's like…I don't know…like a doorway out of this torture place and into this garden.

  "When I was nine I had this garden that I helped create. It had vegetables and flowers in it, nothing pretty and nothing special, but it was mine. My dad dug it up in the middle of the night. He dug it up and told me that no son of his was going to be a goddamn gardener.

  "That's what this feels like. Like someone is trying to dig up the garden I need to grow. And you know you need to go to that garden but every single human being from your mother to your father to your coaches to your teachers to your friends to even strangers—every single human being—wants you to keep away from the one garden where you know you can just help things grow and where you'll feel calm for once in your life…where you will feel that what you have known inside your body, inside your heart, inside your mind, is the way God and nature and whatever it is that moves things within any human being—meant for you to be.”

  Owen gasped when Jimmy finished.

  “Jim, Christ, I know,” Owen said, feeling as if he'd rehearsed the lines. He attempted a feeble smile. Part of him felt removed within his body. He was watching himself—Owen—react, seem gentle, seem kind. “It's just like that.”

  Then, he looked around at the tourists coming off the ferry, their black and clear and red and green umbrellas all blossoming above their heads, and there, beyond the Crab Shack were six of the island guys he'd grown up with; and when he looked through the thick rain, he saw other people he had known all his life.

  “Look, we can't do this here,” he said. “Get in the truck.”

  10

  Owen drove in silence through a rain-shattered world—and followed the slick black island roads until they were nearly to the Great Salt Pond. Jimmy seemed content with the quiet of the drive. When Owen glanced over, he noticed that Jimmy pressed his forehead against the window beside him, reminding him somehow of a puppy. Finally, they came to the end of road-break that looked out over the enormous pond.

  When he'd turned off the ignition, Owen reached over and took Jimmy's hand.

  “I know it's difficult,” Jimmy said. “I'm not like this either. Not really. There are things I want out of life. Things that have nothing to do with this. But right now. Christ, right now, this is it.”

  “Other people can do this kind of thing, but I can't. It wouldn't be right.”

  “No, it wouldn't be. But we can go somewhere it'll all be all right.”

  “Where?” Owen laughed. “Where would it be right? My god. Where?”

  Jimmy recoiled as if he'd been slapped. “Out to sea. In the boat.”

  “For how long, Jimmy? How long before your dad cuts you off, or before we move on? How long before you need to go off to your Ivy League school and then marry and meanwhile, I live in some kind of shame on this island. I'm not like you. I'm not like the kind of men who do this with other men. I'm just…Just.”

  “Just?”

  “Just not sure what I feel right now.”

  It was easy to lie once Owen knew what he would do with Jimmy. How he would destroy him. How it would go easy once everything was in place.

  “Oh, baby,” Jimmy moaned, leaning over, into him, pressing his scalp against Owen's neck. Owen felt wetness along his throat. “You don't know how long I've hoped you'd say it.”

  “We don't need Jenna do we? Or girls like her,” Owen whispered. “God, if I could, I'd kill her.”

  “Who? Kill? Owen?”

  “I didn't mean that,” Owen said, and kissed him on the top of his head.

  The rain beat down in heavy sheets around the truck and the great clouds roiled and Owen knew that he had him now. He had Jimmy right where he wanted him. Where Dagon wanted him.

  Chapter Eight

  Dagon

  1

  “Owen?” his mother asked, holding it in her hand.

  The statue. It had always seemed enormous to him, but in her hand, it was only a foot in length. The base was cracked, some of its teeth had fallen out, and all that remained was something that someone had carved and had left behind.

  “Where'd you get that?”

  “Where you left it,” she said. She hefted it in her hand. “Where did it come from?”

  “I…I found it.”

  “You found it?”

  “Yeah, I did. It's mine.” He held his hand out.

  “Did you buy it?”

  “That's none of your business,” he said.

  “Why did you put it in the fish pond?”

  “It's an ornament. It looked nice there. Give it back.”

  “It's terrible looking. Its eyes. The skin on it. Whoever made this thing was sick. I think some kind of animal was used. It smells, too.”

  “Mother.”

  “Don't mother me. You may be a young man, but you have a thing or two to learn. I know you, Owen. I know how you think. I saw you that morning.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw you. You cut your arm and let it bleed on this…this thing.”

  “That's crazy. Why would I do something crazy like that? Like—what—like cut myself? And what—did you say—bleed?”

  “It's some kind of awful thing, isn't it? This thing. It's some awful thing for you. The way your mind works.” She looked at the small statue in her hand, and then back at his face. She squinted as if trying to see him more clearly. “You've never been quite right. You know that, too. You know how you're different
from other boys, don't you? Yes, you're crafty and you look good in a suit and you can make your muscles talk for you. But I know you better than you know yourself, Owen Crites. I know how cold you are on the inside. I know how you believe different things.”

  He felt her closing in on him as she moved toward him.

  “What exactly is this thing? Is this a toy? Is this something else? Is this something you talk to? Is this…is this…some kind of devil god? Do you worship graven images now?” She said it in a half-joking manner, and that was the worst of it. She wasn't taking Dagon seriously. He could feel it in her tone.

  Owen felt as if his tongue had been cut out. He felt a heat rash along his neck. He looked from the statue to his mother and back again. Then, he grinned.

  “Don't be ridiculous," he said. "You have such a small mind. You're so quick to judge me when you yourself are the one with the cold heart. You set a trap for dad and now you punish him for that same trap. You can't even love your only child. And your imagination—your paranoid imagination—finding some carved art in a koi pond, something that you claim you watched me bleed over, did you ever for a moment think that perhaps I hated myself so much that I wanted to slit my wrists? But something made me stop. Something kept me from hurting myself. But it wasn't the thought of you, was it? It wasn't the love of my mother that saved me, was it? It was the thought that maybe one day I'd have a moment just like this. A moment when dad is out of the house. A moment when you're at your worst. And then, do you know what I am going to do with you?”