10
"It'll be dark in ten minutes," he said, driving the slick streets.
"We'll be there in less than that." Becky leaned back in her seat; every few minutes she reached over and touched Tad as if checking to make sure he was still breathing. "Hopfrog told me you fought It before, Joe. You were Tad's age. How did you do it?"
Joe said, "I'll tell you what I remember, I don't know if it's going to help us or not. What happened when we were little..." and he began the story about Patty Glass and Hopfrog and Melissa on a rainy spring day when King Joe Dragonheart thought he'd killed a dragon. The story lasted until he'd parked the Buick beside the barn and walked in and showed Becky and Tad the well that had once seemed to be a metal cylinder filled with golden light. It was capped with a crucifix and etched with ancient symbols. They sat near John Feely's old workbench.
Tad seemed to not be listening to the story at all, but huddled against his mother, staring at the well, as if expecting at any moment that something would emerge from it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE CHILD WITHIN
1
After he'd told Becky the story, he said, "And then, you know the story about Melissa's death."
Becky nodded. "Hopfrog felt so much guilt about that."
Joe shook his head. "It was an accident."
"He never told you." Becky leaned back against the workbench.
"Never told me?"
"He had nightmares every night for years, and in all of them, Melissa was there, and sometimes, you, too. He told me it was right after the accident, and he was standing on the shore. Both you and Melissa came out of the river, moving towards him. He said she kept saying, 'Hopfrog—why? Why?' Eventually, he told me. He wanted to kill himself that day. He was in love with her, too. He knew she didn't love him. He wanted the car to crash. He wanted all of you to die." Becky reached over and placed her hand across Joe's. "I know he didn't mean it. He felt like he was going to hell his whole life because of it."
Joe closed his eyes, angry at the world. "I don't believe now it was Hopfrog. I don't believe it. I think the bloodsucker got Melissa. I think each one of us was picked out when we saw that this Angel of the Pit could be stopped. I think that no one is allowed to see its true face and live. I think this... evil thing... has been scared of us all along, because we have something that can hurt it."
"He tried to kill himself twice, that I know of," Becky said. She reached back over to Tad, still mumbling to himself, his fever cooling as he slept. She felt his forehead, then his cheek. "Look," she said. "Let's put some of these crosses up in the yard around here before it gets too dark. They'll be coming out soon."
Joe and Becky gathered up as many as they could and went outside. The sky was almost completely dark, with an incipient light, the last light of day, over the western ridge of the Malabar Hills. Using a mallet and hammer each, they drove the crosses into the ground until the land around the barn looked like a graveyard.
Then, they secured the barn door with a cross and lay down in some ragged blankets next to Tad.
Tad shivered. "Will they come in tonight?"
"Nope. We have enough religious symbols out there to open a revival meeting and then some. If they follow the rules like they've been doing, we're safe tonight.
"Tomorrow morning, I'm going to go down and get the bastard while it's sleeping."
"Why not tonight?" Tad asked.
"It follows too many of those vampire rules, that's why. Now, you go to sleep. You need your strength." Becky wrapped her arms around her son and fell asleep immediately. Joe sat up awhile, thinking he heard noises. Gradually, he, too, drifted off to sleep.
In the morning, he awoke suddenly. Becky was already up.
"Wish I had some coffee," she said.
"Me, too," Joe said.
"Wish my ex was still here," she said, sadly.
"Me, too."
"Tell me the rest," Becky said. "About what happened after Melissa died. Homer told me that you went down there before."
Joe nodded and resumed telling tales. "I tried to kill myself, too, back then. It would've been happy if that had happened." Joe began spinning the story of his eighteenth year. "It was after Hop and I saw Melissa again. After she was dead. We dug up her grave—there was a lot of rain, and the ground was easy to break, although it was backbreaking work. I needed to know if she really was a vampire, or if we both were just going insane. The coffin was gone, only a tunnel in the earth downward..."
2
From the Journals of Joe Gardner / when he was eighteen:
I left Hopfrog above the grave and slid down through the shaft beneath it, holding onto the chain with my dad's gardening gloves. Hopfrog had tied the chain to his chair, so if I started to fall and grabbed on, the chair would block his falling down, too. I tied flashlights to my hips, and kept a large one tucked uncomfortably under my armpit. I lowered myself down until I came to a kind of burrow, as if somebody had just dug under the moist earth. It reminded me a little of the stories of tunnels that people made to get under the Berlin Wall. It reminded me of a gopher hole.
I didn't start shaking until I lay down in the burrow and let go of the chain. I had to dig through some of the dirt that had already fallen across the recently dug path.
After a while, controlling myself from screaming from that feeling of being buried alive, the tunnel opened onto a chamber.
After that, I can't remember. I really can't. I know something happened down there. It's more like my body knows it than my mind does.
I think maybe I saw something, but I don't remember what. I was blind for about an hour afterwards, and I was back in that tunnel, trying to grab the chain so Hopfrog could pull me out.
When I got out, Hopfrog said he didn't know what to do when he heard me screaming. I said, screaming? I was screaming?
Three times, he said, like nothing he'd ever heard before.
Bloodcurdling, he said. Three screams.
I don't remember any of it and I don't want to.
We waited at the grave until just before dawn. When Melissa came back, bloated and grinning, I threw her onto one of the slabs and drove the screwdriver into her heart until Hopfrog told me to stop because I had plunged it all the way through her back.
The voices stopped, then. For a while.
I'm writing this because it's my confession. Tonight I'm going to kill myself. I can't live with what I did.
I don't want to live, knowing what happened to Melissa.
I want to be with her more than anything. I want...
3
"I wanted to die," Joe said. "I didn't want to go on. The more I thought about it, the more the idea of death seemed appealing. But I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. It was like I was King Joe Dragonheart again, and he would never kill himself. Now, I know I'm going to die. But I have to stop that thing."
Becky glanced at her wristwatch. "It's ten a.m. If the sun ain't up, we're all screwed." She glanced at the barn door, with its boards across the inside, keeping the Night Children out. "Do you want to do the honors?"
Joe managed a smile, as if survival were enough. He felt this was all a grim duty, that life had lost what little savor it had ever possessed. "Crosses. God bless Old Man Feely for having them, for knowing how to keep them at bay."
He stood and went to the door. He got a whiff of himself—he stank, from his jeans to his sweater to his black denim jacket to his sneakers.
He drew the latch and board from the door, pushing it open. The door creaked on its hinges. The morning air was biting cold.
The apple orchard and the Feely house seemed empty of all life.
He turned to Becky. "They're in their beds today. All the children of the world."
"Good. Now, we have to go kill their owner."
Joe leaned against the door. "No. I am going to kill It. You are going to stay here and make sure your son lives. I am not going to let another child die in this town, so help me God. If you won't get
out of town now, you certainly aren't going down in the mines with me to find the vampire."
4
Some of the Night Children were asleep in Old Man Feely's house, along the stairways, and four, in the bed, looking as innocent as if they were truly human children dreaming of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, rather than the puppets of some alien creature.
Joe put a spike to the first one, but Becky could still not bring herself to do it. Instead, she went and stood in the doorway, in the sunlight, with Tad, wrapped in a blanket, sitting on the porch.
"I'm sorry, Joe, I just can't."
"They aren't children anymore," he said. "They're just cast from children. The real children have been consumed. Remember. These are just re-creations of the children." He felt robotic inside, as if he, too, were merely a re-creation of the Joe Gardner who had once been.
When the work was done, he took a flashlight from Becky and a cross. In his belt he'd stuck a mallet and screwdriver to take care of whatever he was about to find down below.
His only thoughts were for those whom he had loved who had been taken from him.
He didn't say anything to Becky or Tad. He wasn't sure if they would get out of this alive. He just turned and went to the room.
The rotting body of John Feely lay in the corner. What had once been religious symbols and icons had either been defaced or destroyed and lay about in clumps beside the small doorway to the closet on which was scrawled:
He is risen.
Joe opened the doors to the closet and shined his flashlight into it.
The beam of his light hit a winding stone staircase.
He took a step down, then another, and another, until he felt as if he were descending into the farthest pit of hell.
5
He heard a fluttering like wings, and then someone grabbed his hand, knocking the flashlight from it. He heard the flashlight clatter to the ground. Instinctively, he reached for the screwdriver, intending to use it as a stake, but the darkness spoke to him in soothing tones.
It was Melissa's voice, her hand, too, guiding him in the dark.
"I've been waiting for you, all these years," she said, "in my prison."
Don't give in to her. It's not Melissa. It's the vampire.
"My mind is free to wander, but I am not free of this existence."
Joe asked, "Why don't you kill me?"
"I want to do more than kill you, King Joe."
"King Joe?" The stairs ended abruptly, and as he continued walking, the walls of John Feely's cellar gave way to the walls of the mine, shining with a yellow phosphorescence, as if rubbed with fireflies.
As the darkness receded, he glanced at Melissa, who, for a moment, was clearly visible, wearing the same clothes she had on the day she had died, soaked to the skin, smelling of river water. "King Joe Dragonheart, the boy who managed to lock me in my cage again when I was almost out."
Then Melissa seemed to evaporate, right before his eyes. Joe blinked twice, looking around in the darkness. The room that had been built into the rock gradually gave way to earth. He saw the shape of the mines, the chambers that led off to other routes.
The light came up, blinding, as if he were in some celestial presence too brilliant for human eyes. The golden light was sensual. Joe felt as if his skin were being brushed with thousands of feelers. A humming sound accompanied the light, until it was deafening, millions of locusts swarming around him, locusts made up of light and dark, spinning atomic particles of fire yellow and night; his arms, his whole body, in the light, seemed transformed as if by Midas's touch, until he could not separate himself out from the light—he no longer sensed his own body.
And then, something like wind, but like a jackhammer, slammed into him; he felt as if something smashed through him, through flesh and blood and bone, and he was falling to the ground.
It's going to kill me, he thought. I've just delivered myself to the monster who killed my family—the spike he'd brought to stab some vampire in the heart had dropped to the ground, the intent he had to destroy this creature was lost to the sensations, the electrical currents, running through his body.
6
Joe lifted his head up. He was forced to shut his eyes for a good minute or two because the light was like fire—and then it dimmed and he could see the yellow-gold fluorescence of the creature. Its multiple eyes were small and shiny, and the proboscis which jutted below them swung like an elephant's trunk out along the chalky walls of its prison. It had two pair of vestigial wings along its spine, and these fluttered slightly, but they were tattered, as if from centuries of abuse from thwarted attempts to escape. It was half melted, its thorax ending at a scarred abdomen which ended at the halfway point; he was reminded of pictures of mosquitoes and ants trapped in amber.
He wondered why he was able to see It. Why me? Why Joe Gardner from Colony? Why not any of the others?
And then, a voice. A voice far more dreadful than any he could've imagined from this creature. Upon hearing it, he felt as if his heart would stop.
"Joseph," his mother said, and she was standing there before him in one of her housecoats as if she had only woken up a half hour before and was putting on coffee. There was nothing inhuman about her. It wasn't just his mother, it was the mother he had always wanted, for she seemed warmer. She wore the kindest expression he could imagine on her face. Her arms were outstretched to him. "Joseph, thank God you're here. Oh, my baby."
"No!" he shouted, clawing at the air as if he could make her disappear.
A flash of lightning crossed Joe's vision as he was thrust into the middle of a movie of his own past: the Volkswagen going over the bridge... Joe reaching for Melissa to save her... the crash, water pouring into the car... reaching again for Melissa and touching something else... something other than Melissa.
"You believed," Anna Gardner said. "You understood. You knew about losing what you love. You had great belief, even for a child."
His vision faded to the blue again, and he saw the creature. The tentacle-like arms rubbed together, and the voice resumed, you knew what I felt. Then, it was his mother. Her skin was pale and shiny, and reminded him of a larva. She was weeping. "Oh, Joe, Joseph, I'm so frightened. Why do you hate me so much?"
"You're not my mother."
"Joe," she sobbed, her hands going to her eyes. "What did I do to make you hate me so much?"
"Don't do this to me," he said, fighting back every instinct he had to go and embrace this woman. "Don't do this to me. You're a monster."
Anna Gardner grinned. Blood tears streamed down her cheeks. "Yes, I am a bit of a monster, aren't I?" She advanced on him. "A bit of a monster, fucking other men, hating your daddy, hating you for being born. You're the destroyer, Joe, did you know that? You're the Antichrist. Look: everything you touch turns to shit. How many people have died because you came back here? How many? All those children, Joe. It was you who killed them. Just by stepping back over that bridge, you sealed their doom. And Aaron, my grandson. Oh, my Lord, you should've heard the squeals when his skin got ripped off—like a little piggie at the slaughterhouse. Hillary? We boiled her. We made a big pot of baby soup. Her skin slid right off her back after ten minutes. It was like skinning a tomato. I sucked her myself, Joe. Her blood was so pure and fresh."
"Stop it," Joe whispered, shivering. He felt as if he'd been thrust into a freezer. His skull felt like it was scraping the inside of his head raw. "You're a fucking monster!"
"Let me tell you about Jenny," his mother cackled, throwing her head back. "Oh, Lordy, Joseph—she was the difficult one. You married a cunt. She fought, she scratched, she bit. She was the trophy, I'll tell you. Do you know what a woman sounds like when you have her own child open her up down there? It's not even a scream, Joe. It's like air escaping a balloon. It's very amusing. The wonderful part was she called your name out, Joe, in the end. You should be proud. She called your name out. 'Joe—Joe,' she gasped. 'Where are you, Joe? Why aren't you there, Joe,' she cried." Anna Gardner erupted
in a fit of giggles. "And all because of you, Joe. I wanted you here. We all did. You could have saved your family and friends, if only you'd just come down here in the first place. I learned all about you from your wife, before she died. She told us the most shocking things. She said you fucked some other bitch behind her back. She said you weren't a very good father. And your poor old mother's such a witch, is she? Well, look at yourself for a change."
Trembling from the cold, Joe said, "I know you're not my mother." He tried to block the images this creature was conjuring in his mind, but he saw them: Aaron bleeding to death while some horrible being crouched over him lapping at his wounds. Hillary screaming as children pushed her into scalding water. Jenny's face tensing and calling out to him in her last moment.
"Why the hell are you doing this! What is it? Do you need us for fuel? What the fuck is it?" Joe cried.
Anna Gardner shook her head, sadly. "I'll tell you why, Joe. You want to know? Why the children, why blood? Why vampires and demons and the whole masquerade? Because I like it. Because it's fun. Because your kind is so disgusting to me that I can't think of anything I'd rather do than fuck you over. I am your god, you stupid fuck." His mother's eyes beamed. "And you're my baby. You're my little Joey, writing his little stories about things that can't come true. All the bedtime stories are shit, Joey. Mamas never do get their babies back."
Then, it came to Joe. An insight, as if pieces of a puzzle had just come together. "You had children, too."
"What?" she said, caught off guard.
"You had children, too. We killed one of them. Maybe the last one. Maybe Old Man Feely killed some, too. Maybe his father and grandfather and great-grandfather killed one or two. Me and Hopfrog and Melissa, we killed one, too. That day at the barn. Somehow, we killed one of your children."
A piercing shriek came from the creature. Joe had to cover his ears. Even then, his head pounded from the noise.
Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set Page 27