Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  The Grubman wasn’t known for his intellect, but for his unflagging libido. Like all ugly men, he had a need to constantly hear the kinds of lies you only hear in bed with someone who doesn’t care for you: his flavor of the season was Jeanne Hunt, but she was getting too weird, too serious, it wasn’t just fun and games anymore with her. She wasn’t running a tight enough ship, she was letting real concerns in between the sheets. Her girl was a problem, getting sullen, giving accusing looks; her husband, Ed, that old piss artist, bothering her conscience. It’s just sex, for chrissakes, it’s not like I’m taking something away from your family, woman. Time to give her the old dump truck. Least I still got my main squeeze, Jinx, who understands me. His wife of twenty years, Jinx, had always given him his space, always made room for the fact that he was just more man than most women could handle. But Jeanne Hunt: she was like every other woman he’d ever encountered, she was beginning to act like some kind of friggin’ wife. Women were like that, they only wanted to have fun so they could drag you into their little Whirlpools and then you were on a rinse cycle. With gals like Jeanne it’s more like a menstrual cycle, he thought as he drove down to Trudy Virtue’s Magnificent Diner for a coffee and sticky bun, and who knew which end was up once a woman got going with her problems?

  Today, the Grubman was going to meet Jeanne for what might be the last time, and it saddened him a little because she was a pretty good piece of tail even if she was slightly damaged goods, and that was hard to find in a town this small; he’d have to start doing his hunting up to Twenty-nine Palms or down in Yucca Valley. ‘Course, should’ve taken that Swan babe with the independent hips for a test drive before she got her head shot off. He pulled his cruiser into the parking lot at the Majestic; the place was fairly packed for so early in the morning.

  The Grubman looked up to the skies: a good day for partying, a bad day to dump a gal. His stomach rumbled, and he thought of breakfast, and then, later on in the day, that great chili that Jinx, his wife, always improved on at the annual cook-off. Fill me up with chili and fart the night away.

  3

  “This kind of weather don’t bode well,” he said to Trudy as he pushed his way into the diner and made room for himself at the counter. “Gonna be too hot for peppers. We’re all gonna burn up.” Trudy filled up a cup of coffee for him, slapping it down on the counter. The Grubman knew she didn’t like him, which was half the fun of coming in here for snacks four or five times a day. He could see it in her eyes. Women are like wild animals, and Trudy’s a big old grizzly.

  “Something sure smells good in here, Trudy, you start using deodorant?”

  As she had been doing for nearly six years, she ignored him. She pushed the creamer in front of him. “How do you want it this morning, Officer, white or black?”

  The Grubman grinned and said, “How about red, white, and blue, sweetheart?”

  Trudy arched an eyebrow. “How about you just drink it and get out there and make sure we don’t got no delinquents throwing no more rocks through my window?”

  The Grubman craned his neck and saw the rectangle of cardboard taped across the lower corner of the front window of the diner. “Coulda been the quake,” he said. “Maybe the quake. I felt a quake. Little one. Probably from Indio.”

  “Mr. Policeman, you can’t be telling me that no earthquake threw a rock from the ground through my window. No, it’s those delinquents that run this town while you’re eating your Twinkies.”

  “You want to come out and fill out a report, Trudy? Be happy to fix you up with some paperwork if it’s what you want. You see these kids throw a rock?”

  “Don’t have to see things to know them,” she grumbled.

  Bristles like a cat. He sipped his coffee. “Could be some of the kids in town, Trudy, I won’t deny that, but not much to do if we don’t know for sure, you read me? Now how ’bout you slipping me one of those sticky buns over there? Not that little one on top, but that big old sticky bun down at the bottom of the pile—man needs food that sticks to his ribs, you know, I got a big day ahead, need all the energy I can get.”

  As he reached for the napkin dispenser, Trudy caught his hand. The Grubman looked at the tear in his flesh as if it weren’t even his own hand. Two deep gashes and four lighter indentations: something had bitten him. But when? He remembered, vaguely, an animal. “Something nipped me a few days back.”

  “You got bit by an angry husband, maybe?” Trudy Virtue raised an eyebrow.

  4

  Palmetto and Nitro were twin aspects of the one true town, what used to be called Boniface Well, divided the way other towns were by railroad tracks, this one by the Rattlesnake Wash. Their alliance was an uneasy one, and one of the few visible signs of their connection, besides the telephone lines and the sewer system and the schools that all the children had been bused up to Twenty-nine Palms to, was happening this very day. The Fourth of July and Grubstakes Day had been plotted by a joint effort between the local American Legion Post, the Oddfellows, the Rebekahs and the Daughters of the Western Star. While every town in America was planning some kind of gala event, Palmetto had settled on a turn-of-the-century theme, it’s Grubstakes Days, since the original Boniface Well was founded in 1876 and therefore what was a national celebration also would have its own local resonance. The American Legion Post was halfway through a pancake breakfast, after which folks would drive down Highway 4 with the floats for the street parade. The Oddfellows and Rebekahs would host a luncheon at the Oddfellows Hall, and the Daughters of the Western Star, of which in Palmetto there were twenty-seven members, were taking over the home tour and the Western Star Dinner honoring the oldest resident of Palmetto, Mary McGee Joiner, who was born just fifteen years after the original town was founded. In spite of these planned festivities (involving endless committee meetings over the past two years), it was estimated that less than a third of the residents would be participating, since most would go down into Palm Springs, or over to Redlands, or up to Twenty-nine Palms, or even drive the two hours to Los Angeles for other, swankier celebrations.

  They were the lucky ones.

  5

  The day is hot and long. Out on Highway 4, the lazy parade is passing, and it consists of a few cars and some children dressed as either Liberty or Patriots, with a kazoo band in back playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” But the children are dragging their feet, and you might think it is from the heat, because it is a warmer-than-normal day, must be well into the hundreds.

  The town has a ragged quality to it, as if it is just too tired to be up for a full-scale celebration of the Fourth. There’ve been reports of a mountain lion having come down from the hills, or of a child having gotten bitten by a mad dog—some citizen has taken it upon himself to tack up posters about it on the telephone pole, which Jeanne Hunt reads as she waits for the parade to go by.

  Just because the town looks dead doesn’t mean it is dead. July is the dead month for Palmetto. It is the dead month for much of the desert. Even the lizards stay out of the sun until the late afternoon. Tumbleweed gets caught beneath the Pinto and scrapes the road like fingernails as the car continues on down the empty highway.

  A boy who calls himself Deadrats stands in the shadows of the oldest structure in town, the old meeting house.

  He thinks, teenage wasteland.

  He smiles because he knows his thoughts travel to Her, his mistress, and, like radar, he feels this thought bounce against her skin.

  The demon is passing, she responds, through bites, through infection, and those who are weak will fall, and the strong will stay. I will spread my fingers across this parched land and it will be mine and for those who come after me.

  All this in one word, one thought he hears from her:

  Lamia.

  He continues smiling, because he doesn’t know that he is already in pain. He mistakes the curved needles hooked into his soul for a sensation of pleasure.

  6

  And then the sun sets, and the whole town is there, and even
Peter feels it, in his blood, the call, and he begins to not feel so much like a boy of fifteen named Peter Chandler but like a creature hankering for blood and feasting, and when his father comes home from some days down in the flatlands, Peter is waiting for him, and it’s sunset, and something that might be fire seems to explode across Peter’s vision as he takes his fists and pummels his father to death.

  7

  Or is it a dream? He can’t tell anymore, he doesn’t know in this moment of rage and power what is life and what is dream, and he goes with the dream and watches the blood begin to soak his shirt. He watches the blood, he watches the red scorpions crawling from the blood, dancing in some firelight, and he sees her—

  —the girl of his dreams.

  Wendy Swan is with him, and he’s not killing his father—he’s watching something else do it, some red creature like an angel tearing at his father, and then his mother walks into the room—she’s screaming, and his sister cries out his name, but Peter is no longer there, he’s in a dark cave with Wendy and she whispers to him as she brings him into her body, “Come here, my lost boy, yes, Peter, yes, like that, just like that.”

  8

  Peter Chandler/Confessions

  So here’s the end of the road, as my father would say. If he had lived. Yes, I killed my father, and although I probably had enough justification for doing it from the various physical and mental tortures he’d put me through, I still feel the heaviness of a burden of guilt for that. And yes, I can blame a demon for it. I can even blame a demon for what Charlie did. What all of us did. Did I kill my mother, and my sister? I have no memory of those acts, although I suspect that yes, I must have. I must have, although there are no bodies and no blood and nothing other than a fire to indicate that anything had happened in Palmetto.

  All of us did this, except for Alison, the one innocent in the bunch.

  I would tell you that I was there for the barbecue of human flesh that got served up that day, that I remember the houses as they burned, and the people desperately trying to get out to their cars, trying to get away from the festivities of the Fourth of July, with Charlie and Sloan and Wendy there—

  But whatever power the demon had, it took me over, and all I could do was watch as if from a sideline at a football game. My emotions were nowhere to be found; my will was gone. All I could do was watch and hope it was the dream.

  I walked through a minefield of dead and dying bodies, a carnival of flesh tearing at itself, a curious steam rising as of energy being given off. Than stood among a pile of the dead, his face ragged, his eyes blurry with tears, his chin quivering.

  Cutting through all my disbelief, I said, “Okay, so tell me what you know.”

  I stepped over the wriggling body of the man who had been our mailman. My mind began a hammering sound, and then I heard what might’ve been the flight of a million locusts across the land, I thought, the noises of the cursed.

  “I drank this demon juice and it makes me see things, and I went with old Bonyface to dig up her grave—” And rather than interrupt him by shouting, YOU WHAT? I accepted all he tossed my way. I felt like I had looked upon the face of madness and nothing in the world would be the same. “And she had changed, Bonyface called it shifting, only he was one of them, and oh shit, Peter, I think I am, too, now, I got it in me, and you...you must have it in you, too.” His words slowed as he eyed me suspiciously. We got the keys to his mother’s car, a Ford Country Squire. I didn’t need to ask him if his family was dead. As far as I knew, everyone was dead.

  “Are you one of them, Peter?” he asked me, passing me the keys.

  “I don’t think so. I’ve seen things, but...I don’t think so.”

  “You might be lying.”

  “And so could you.”

  “Okay, look, I believe you. But she’s done it. It was her demons that turned Sloan into his dog—”

  As soon as he said it, I knew it was true. I remembered Sloan in the half-light of the streetlamp. His face had elongated, his body was stooped. “Who weeps, Chandler?” Sloan had asked.

  “And she made him infect the town with what he’s got. It’s something like the juice I drank, only it kills some people and...”

  “What about here! Is this some damn juice!” I shouted. The blood on my hands had driven me over the edge. Whose blood was it? Whose? My father’s? My little sister’s? A friend’s from school? Who had I butchered that day? Had it been me? Had it really been me?

  These are the questions I ask myself to this day. I know I’m not insane. I know I’m not a killer. Yet I can distinctly remember the look on my father’s face as he died beneath my fists.

  “Look back there,” I told Than.

  Than turned and looked at the fire that grew downtown, with night and its dark cloth dropping behind the rising yellow and blue flames, and the wind blowing.

  The town of Palmetto had become a funeral pyre.

  “Alison,” I said.

  “She must be dead, too,” he said.

  “She can’t be.” I didn’t know why I said this, other than a sixth sense, a feeling that Alison could not be dead, that something within my soul would not let her be dead, too, that she was somehow my future and I could not let that go the way of this nightmare.

  The desert winds can blow a fire across a highway, from house to house, and if no one comes to put it out within the first half-hour, you can kiss a good ten-mile stretch of homes good-bye.

  I watched it burn in the rearview minor as I pressed my foot on the brake. And then I had to laugh, because I had stopped at a red light and there was no reason. Who gave a fuck if I stopped at the lights? I laughed a little too heartily. I laughed a little too long.

  At Alison’s house, I smelled death, and resisted going inside.

  Than began whimpering again, and then crying.

  I left him there with the engine idling and did a thorough search of the house. Nothing was touched, except in the dining room, where a vase was broken, as well as a china dish.

  There was a whispering sound from one of the bedrooms, and I lost my courage. I think I even peed my pants. I began walking backward out of that house, and just as I was to the door, a voice like her mother’s (although different, like a snarling animal) rasped, “She’s at the caves, Peter, they’ve taken her, tell her she must be home by eleven, we can’t have her spreading her legs for every boy in town.”

  I just lost it and ran out of there, jumped into the car. “Let’s go, Than. They’ve got Alison in the caves, she’s probably dead, but I don’t give a shit, Campusky. Let’s get the hell out of this place and drive!” I put the station wagon in reverse and gunned the engine; the car shrieked back down the driveway, to the street, in reverse all the way to the highway, and then we burned rubber as I put it in drive and slammed my foot on the accelerator.

  We only got as far as the Rattlesnake Wash, though, because I saw something sitting down in the ditch with the motor still running: an old shitkicker Thunderbird. Her car.

  I slammed on the brakes. Than’s head almost slapped the windshield.

  “You trying to kill me?”

  “Campusky, you said you drank demon juice and you know all about them! If we go out there, to those caves, do you think we can save her?”

  “Alison? I told you, I think she’s dead already.”

  I pointed to the Thunderbird. “That’s hers.”

  “You can’t fight demons, Peter.”

  I looked at him strangely, wondering what else he knew about this stuff. “I may be one of them now. I may be just the one to fight them. Wendy wants me.”

  Than said, “There’s only one way to stop what Wendy is. Bonyface taught me.”

  9

  Than began shivering uncontrollably as Peter maneuvered the station wagon over the edge of the highway into the Wash, around the Thunderbird.

  It was another twenty minutes, driving out across the hard, flat earth, before Than pointed back to the fire at the rim of the highway. “It’s beautif
ul,” he said. The comment didn’t seem out of place. The hillside of houses and trailers was swept with a blur of fire. “Like a fire river. It’s like the end of the world, huh? Maybe there’re demons everywhere right now and every town is like this. Demon fire. God, I wonder if somebody’s sitting on the can or waking up from a nap and they smell like smoke and the demons didn’t get them, and...”

  “This is the end, right? The end of everything.” Peter looked straight ahead. The volcanic hills of No Man’s Land were up there, and within them, caves and old mines. Somewhere to the east, the sun began its painful ascent.

  And she was out there in the western hills, he knew.

  He could sense her. Not Alison.

  Wendy.

  “Let’s go find her and stop her before she gets in me again,” he said. But he was lying—he could still feel the demonic within him.

  “At dawn, she’s the weakest,” Than said, the only person in the world Peter knew had any knowledge of what Wendy truly was. “There’s one way to stop her, Peter. That’s what Bonyface told me. One way.”