Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  "I don't want to move here, Joe, I'm just amazed that there are places in this country that are still so inexpensive." A middle-aged blond woman was walking her dog. Jenny folded the newspaper up and passed it to her husband. She petted the dog, a Rottweiler. She looked at Joe and they continued walking, as if they were going somewhere. They passed up two antique shops and a bakery. "Let's go in one of these," she said, and then her face tightened with concern. "You're almost pale, Joe. Is it that bad? Aren't you happy we came down here?"

  "I guess I am. I didn't expect it to be like this."

  "Neither did I. But I knew it wouldn't be as awful as you expected. You know something, Joe?"

  He looked at her.

  She clasped his hand. "I wasn't sure if we were going to make it. I wasn't sure I could... only now, I think I'm falling in love with you all over again."

  It felt like a magic word to him: love. He began seeing Colony differently. The bricks which met haphazardly on the buildings, so ancient and so fresh, as if, when the town was built up again after the Civil War, time had stopped and there was no decay, neither was there poverty or squalor in this place. The streets were no hotbeds of commerce during the daylight hours, but those people he saw, the locals who worked at the bank or the real estate office, or who were taking their lunch breaks from their shops, all seemed to hold untold secrets of the good life. Rosy cheeks, sphinx smiles, bright eyes, expressions of subdued joy upon them—he had forgotten this in the years he'd been gone.

  He entertained, for a moment, the idea of moving home, getting a nice old town house, and teaching his children about the quiet life of quiet towns nestled among quiet hills. Jenny kept turning to him with a look of mild surprise each time someone waved hello, as if they'd known each other for years; she was born and raised in Washington, DC, and had never known a town like this.

  Joe noticed the birds: the blue jay and cardinals, the mockingbirds jabbering from the tops of the gingko trees that were planted along the row of shops on Main Street. He remembered being seven years old and how interested he was in birds, how he and his mother raised a mockingbird abandoned by its mother. How his mother had taught him how to feed it with an eyedropper, how to teach it to fly by letting the bird grasp the end of his finger and then moving his finger slowly up and down. Joe had a good memory of his mother after all; then a flood of memories washed through him. He remembered his mother taking him to horror movies as a boy, because he loved them so much. He remembered when he hadn't studied for a test and faked illness, how his mother had taken him to the cliffs over the hills to look for fossils. He remembered how his mother had showed him how to plant flowers the correct way, so they'd grow and bloom.

  And then, the most powerful memory:

  He remembered how he had been sad when his pet mockingbird was eaten by a neighbor's cat.

  And how his mother had given him a small typewriter when he was in fourth grade.

  And she had said, "I want you to tell me a story about your mockingbird."

  How he had typed and typed, learning how to use the machine, hunting and pecking, until he had written a page.

  How his mother had read the story and cried.

  He had said, "I'm sorry, Mommy, I didn't mean to make you cry."

  And she said, "This is the most beautiful story I have ever read. You are going to be a writer. You have made me a very proud woman."

  Joe stopped in the middle of the street.

  "Joe?" Jenny tugged at his arm. "Joe?"

  "It wasn't always bad," Joe said. "My mother wasn't always bad. She gave me my writing."

  They walked to the opposite sidewalk, and Joe shared the story with Jenny. They sat at a table in a small tea shop and drank herb tea.

  He said, "Something happened with her later. I don't know what. Maybe it was the alcohol. Who knows? Maybe it was Dad. Maybe she just had something in her that made her do the things she did."

  "But you love her, Joe. Don't you see? You love her."

  He sipped from the pottery mug and nodded, but didn't talk for a while.

  ***

  Later, on the sidewalk, a policeman waved to him. "Joe? Joe Gardner? Baby Joe?" He came jogging across the street to them. He wore the tan uniform of a local sheriff, had a gut like a two six-pack-a-day Pabst Blue Ribbon man, and the yellow teeth of a chain-smoker. His eyes were bright, and there was something that seemed familiar in the Elvis-like curl to his upper lip and the last wisps of hair on his shiny pate. The sheriff started yabbering a mile a minute about hearing that Joe was around, that he was back with his family, that he looked like the same old Joe. "Same old Baby Joe," the sheriff said.

  Joe didn't recognize the man at first, but within a few seconds, listening to the chawed-up cadences of his speech, he realized it was Dale Chambers, the Gump. "You're sheriff now, eh?" Joe asked after they shook hands.

  "For six years, cuz," Dale said, then, to Jenny, "We're only second cousins once removed, if you were to get technical, but that makes you and me pretty near kissing cousins." He hugged her and pressed his lips against Jenny's before she could protest. "Hey, Baby Joe, you married a live one, didn't you." He leered at Jenny. "Long and leggy, that's how I like 'em. Mmm." Nudging Joe, he whispered seriously, "You're not back here to stir up more trouble again, are you, Baby Joe? Don't tell me your wild days aren't behind you?"

  After they got away from Dale, Jenny smirked. 'That's your cousin? No wonder you haven't introduced me around. I could practically smell corn squeezins on his breath."

  "Yeah, that's the Gump. It's a sad statement about this place, if he's sheriff. When I was thirteen, he taught me how to spit tobacco at six paces. He's pure class." Joe found himself laughing. He grabbed Jenny's hand and together they walked down the sidewalk like kids in love.

  "What was all that about 'your wild days'? He actually sounded concerned." Jenny shook her head, stopping to glance in a shop window.

  "Oh, it's all that stuff that happened. I was hearing voices, I was seeing things. And without the help of drugs. Hell, maybe they were all on the mark when they said I was nuts. I did something I'm not proud of."

  "Oh?" Jenny didn't sound interested. He knew she wasn't pursuing the subject because she wanted him to enjoy this trip, and not dwell on all the bad things again.

  He loved her for it.

  They went door-to-door to all the antique and knickknack shops. Bought the ugliest garden sculpture possible, a fat little stone faun to sit among the ivy in their small backyard in Baltimore. It was too heavy to lug around, so Joe told the shop owner, Athena Cobb, that he'd be by sometime before closing to pick the sculpture up.

  "It was too expensive," Jenny said, shaking her head as they left the shop. "We should've talked her down."

  Joe shrugged. "I'm feeling pretty good. As Bambi's mother said, why not blow a few extra bucks when the mood strikes?"

  He bought souvenirs for the kids: a sweatshirt for Aaron, and a dried-apple-headed cornhusk doll for Hillary. They had lunch at the Angel Wing Pub, and, to Joe, it felt as if he were on a second honeymoon with his wife after thirteen years. Someone at the next table was annoying him, going on and on about some lost little girl who had just shown up in town, Joe and Jenny were having such a lovely time that Joe wanted to turn around and tell this loudmouth to shut up because this was, maybe, one of the best days of his life, and could he keep his gossip to himself, please? But even with the loudmouth, Joe was rediscovering a love for humanity and life and small towns that he didn't know he had ever possessed.

  9

  Winston Alden carefully got out of his ancient Corvair, bought in Stone Valley at auction for one hundred dollars in 1979 and still running like an asthmatic junkheap. He had parked at the edge of the road. It wasn't going to be dark for a couple of hours. He still had time. He had been postponing coming to the house the entire day. There had been ham biscuits to enjoy over coffee at breakfast, and then a stroll to the library to read newspapers; between noon and four, a nice siesta on the hamm
ock he kept in the back room of his office.

  And now.

  The hour of doom, he thought.

  He looked the Feely place over; it was completely dark inside. It had always seemed that way to him for as long as he could remember. The Feelys were hard, cold people who kept to themselves; they kept their secrets hidden.

  Don't go in there, a voice in his head warned.

  Don't be a fool and risk your life over something that you know is going to destroy you.

  He touched the hood of his car. It was warm. He'd been feeling a chill beyond the afternoon frost. "You don't need to go in there," he said aloud as if coaching himself. "If John Feely's alive, you'll see him. If he's dead, well, then, what in God's name are you going to do, old man?"

  The stink of rotten fruit wafted down from the apple trees near the barn.

  Winston felt in his pocket for his old Smith & Wesson revolver, model 10. He'd had it for fifteen years; before that, he'd had a shotgun under his bed.

  The bullets were silver, because after decades of tossing around the thought of what had happened to Eugene Cobb back in the thirties, Winston Alden decided that it was high time to believe in something that might be supernatural. Something like vampires and werewolves and ghosts and ghouls. He kept his belief in a corner of his mind, what he referred to as his insane twin, the one who still believed that a man could see angels and dogs could go to heaven.

  The belief came out only now and then in his life: when his wife died, when his sister lost her baby, when it happened to Eugene.

  He had a vision of Eugene:

  Flesh burnt where the crucifix had touched him.

  The necrotic and scarred flesh sloughing off, molding new skin over Eugene's face.

  Winston shook this memory off.

  He walked up the path to the front door. Went up the porch steps.

  Knocked at the door.

  He didn't wait. It would be weak to wait, to admit his terror. He needed to be strong. He opened the door.

  He called out for John. His voice echoed in the musty hall.

  He went inside.

  The walls of John Feely's house were papered with pages from the bible.

  Some of these had been torn away; beneath them, holes and cracks in a yellowed wall. There had been some kind of fire, too, for many of the pages were burnt.

  Winston walked down the narrow corridor which he knew led to John's bedroom. The master bedroom led to the other room. The room he'd seen as a teenager, the room he had tried to forget about his whole life.

  He opened the door.

  The room was in the same condition in which it had been when Winston had been a boy and had been ushered into the room by John.

  John Feely had said, "It has lived since before God created Man. It was thrown from heaven and has dwelt in the rock since Adam first was expelled from Eden. It is called Abaddon. It is the Angel of the Pit."

  Winston, at sixteen, stood beside an equally young Virgil Cobb and whispered, "And if there ever was a Pit, this is it."

  The window had been long ago boarded up, but there was light from a single candle, which seemed an encouraging sign. Nervous, Winston drew the revolver out and held it up as if willing to shoot anything that moved. The dressing table and mirror were clear, as if no one lived within this room. The drapes were drawn shut on the ornate canopied bed; John Feely had once bragged that his great-grandfather had brought it over from Bavaria piece by piece and then had spent four years reassembling it. Its dark wooden posts had grown dull; the drapes, enormous red and gold, were caked with dust.

  His hands trembled with the gun's weight.

  Winston was about to turn away and go into the other room, that inner sanctum, when someone called to him from within the drapes.

  "Boy," the man said. "Boy, you've finally come." It was none other than John Feely's own braying voice.

  Winston sighed, "Oh, John. It's out, isn't it?

  "Oh, yes," John Feely said. A hand pulled the drapery aside, and from the darkness of the bed, Eugene Cobb, still a boy, leaned into the dim light of the bedside lamp.

  When he grinned, his teeth were pasted with red.

  "Lights out," he said, covering the candle flame with his thumb and forefinger.

  The candle let out a feeble hiss before the room went dark.

  The door shut behind Winston. He did not want to turn around to face whatever was behind him now.

  Winston began shivering uncontrollably. "It's not even night, yet," he whispered. "I thought you only lived at night." He pointed the revolver towards the dark spot where the bed was.

  The creature answered him, now with Eugene's voice, "Where I am, it is always night."

  When something touched his neck, he panicked and shot the gun off six times, spending every round. After the first shot, he thought he'd gone deaf from the sound of the blast.

  He felt lips on his wrist; the featherlike slice of a cold razor there, at his pulse point.

  He dropped the gun.

  He knew his life was over. He knew he was powerless.

  Winston Alden stood in the darkness, waiting for it to happen.

  And it took forever.

  10

  When he got off the school bus, Tad Petersen figured he had a good fifty seconds to race down the street, make a right, and then a zigzag left until he was just about to his dad's place. It was quicker to his mom's, but he wasn't staying at her place this week.

  If he didn't make good use of those fifty seconds, he was dead meat at the hands of Elvis and Hank, who were like yappy dogs on his tail. He ran as fast as he could (he wore his old sneakers to school for just such occasions), but Elvis tackled him on the Withrows' lawn, throwing him into a pile of leaves.

  When Elvis, already a good one hundred sixty pounds at the age of eleven, was sure that Tad was squashed, he began stuffing wet leaves in his mouth. Tad tried to shut his mouth, but Hank was on him, too, holding his jaw down.

  "Eat it, wussy," Elvis crooned.

  Tad was sure he was going to choke to death right there. Sure that his life was over, he only saw one alternative, but it was the kind of choice that a kid could not return from.

  He reached up and started tickling Elvis just under the ribs. The boy quivered like jelly, and his face turned red, as if he were about to explode.

  And then, he started laughing.

  Elvis Bonchance, for the first time in his life, started laughing from something other than sadism. It was truly a red letter day.

  Elvis rolled off Tad, still giggling. He laughed so much, he farted, and this started him laughing all over again.

  Hank looked confused. Tad spat the leaves out and went on the offensive, attacking Hank, too, tickling him until he cried out for mercy.

  When Hank was exhausted, Tad stopped and said, "In the Ming dynasty, the emperor would designate a special man as chief tickler. This man would torture criminals by tickling them to death."

  "No shittin'?" Elvis was wide-eyed.

  Even though he was making it up, Tad nodded. "It's true. I read about it in National Geographic. He would tickle murderers and blasphemers with peacock feathers and sometimes with a razor."

  Hank recoiled. "Jesus, a razor?"

  Tad nodded. "They would laugh themselves into a coma."

  Mrs. Withrow came out onto her porch and called out, "What are you boys up to in my leaves?"

  Tad shouted back, "Just being boys, Miz Withrow!"

  Hank leaned back, gasping for air. "We was gonna beat the crap outta you, boy. We was." He erupted into a laughing fit again, as if he had never truly laughed before in his miserable existence. And knowing the Bonchance family, with its beatings and incest and tattoos, this was quite possible.

  Elvis grinned, slapping his meaty thigh. "You sure are a funny guy."

  Tad smiled, proud of narrowly surviving a Bonchance incident. "Practically a weirdo," he said.

  After that, he went home feeling pretty damn good.

  He could no
t get the smile off his face for hours.

  11

  When Joe picked his mother and the kids up for dinner, Aaron said, "I saw your truck, Dad. Gramma said I can have it when I turn sixteen. She's so cool. And this." Aaron held up a small blue spiral notebook.

  Joe felt his face go red as he recognized the notebook. "You've kept that thing?"

  Anna Gardner beamed. "Of course. Do you think I'd throw out one piece of writing by Joseph R. Gardner?"

  Aaron opened the notebook and read slowly and haltingly from the yellowed typewritten page that had been glued to the notebook paper. "I lost a friend today. He was a bird. His name was Fred. He was a mockingbird. My mother and I found him on the ground outside. He was too little to take care of himself. And he was buck naked. He had not earned his feathers yet, and so we took him into our house. His mother, a big mockingbird who eats our crab apples, attacked us when we took him. She was a very mean bird, because she kicked him out of the nest too soon. But I learned later on that she didn't know better, because she wanted to protect her baby, but she wasn't able to do it because she could only do what a bird could do...'" Aaron paused, glanced up at his father and sighed. "Jeez, Dad, you were a terrible writer back then. You were worse at writing than I am at reading."

  "Let's go to dinner," Jenny said, taking the notebook from him. She set it on the table by the front door and whispered to Joe, "When we get home tonight, I am going to sit up all night long and make you read that to me."

  "I cherish those early writings of his," Anna said.

  Joe shook his head in wonder. "Mom, I thought you didn't like my writing."

  "Oh, you mean what you write now. I don't. Maybe if it was about something I might enjoy it, and maybe if it didn't have all the kinky stuff... You write like you're building bridges and dams, Joseph, I want to read books about people, about life in a way that I never thought of it before. Maybe I'm just a tough reader." Then, she patted his shoulder. "You can't expect to write a novel to please your mother, son."

  Joe followed the rest of them out to the driveway, feeling as if he didn't know what the hell was going on anymore. Jenny stood beside the car door. The look on her face was unmistakable: love, lust, affection, warmth, all of it there in her eyes, in her smile, in the glow across the surface of her skin.