Jake Amory was six feet tall, just turned sixteen, and skinny. He was skinny by default; he'd never found any food he particularly liked. He combed his hair back away from his forehead, greasing the thick red strands with Brylcreem where it fell over his ears. He liked his ears. They were pointy. Devil ears, his ma called them, and he took this as an indication of his being special. Marked. Born to some purpose.
And this was it.
He covered his bloodshot, yellowish eyes with sunglasses. Jake had become sensitive to light this winter, and just that thin shaft of lamplight sketched across the porch hurt his eyes. His shades were the coolest things going, the kind with mirrors so that any jerk looking at you only sees himself reflected back.
Jake knew how intimidating that could be. To only see yourself every time you look at somebody.
It was like he'd told his girlfriend the other night when she met him at the cemetery. They were making out on top of a flat gravestone. It was freezing but it felt kind of good, the cold stone against his back. "You want to become me," he told her, and she looked at him like he was crazy. "I can see it, inside you, like The Man with the X-Ray Eyes." But he knew that Maggie wasn't listening. Nobody listened yet, but they would. Not just another pretty face, oh-no, my friends, not just another pretty face. I am the herald of the Pocket Lips, dig?
They'd all listen, and very soon. Those assholes at that snot-faced prep school, too. Just because his pa had been some Bozo at Buildings and Grounds the tuition was free and Jake was forced to go to that private zoo called Pontefract Prep. PeePee.
But Jake Amory was not part of that prep school bullshit. Jake was a townie and proud of it, a rebel when you came right down to it. Not a backwoodsman, either, like you, Pa, although he respected the hell out of his old man for what he'd done. It was the best thing his father could've done given the way things were.
Jake was made of sterner stuff. Sure, everything was a slimy joke in this Virginia backwater, but Jake knew how to fix that. Oh, yes. The end of the world is coming, the Apocalypse, what Teddy called the Pocket Lips. It's all coming, Soon to a Theater Near You! And when that shining moment arrived, Jake Amory intended to be wired for sound. He could feel it.
All those preppies with their pretty boy smiles and shiny hair and Daddy's credit cards. Nasal southern accents. Jake could only stomach so much of those squirrels at school before he felt like puking his guts out all over them.
And that night, lying on the cold gravestone with Maggie McBean, he'd told her, "I don't just hate them, babe, you know, Ma, Teddy, the fucking school, prepdipshits. Hate ain't enough. I want them destroyed. Kiss 'em with my Pocket Lips." He dreamed of the sky raining fire and snowing fallout down on Pontefract. Anything would've been better than the way things were: dull, stagnant as a swamp, like a sewer. "They're all dead now, only nobody told 'em." Jake grunted as he dry-humped Maggie against the stone. As he continued his tirade against the town, punctuated by heavy breathing, Maggie gave him that look. The look that meant she knew he'd been dusting or speeding or snorting. That look meant she was scared of him, what he might do.
Jake loved that look.
But these days he was into heavier junk than you could get if you hopped a bus to Richmond once a month. Junk made him think more clearly, and it pushed his soul to the limit. It made him potent, focused him. Like a magnifying glass on an ant, frying that sucker to a crisp at high noon. But he didn't need the kind of junk you bought from some two-bit pusher in an alley.
Jake wiped his nose as he ground his crotch into Maggie's. "It's gonna be judgment day, Mags, and they're gonna see. Who they are."
He squeezed Maggie's right breast through her sweatshirt.
"Ow!" she cried out and slapped him, leaving a crimson hand print across his pale face. "Jeez, Jake, that hurt!"
He didn't even feel the slap. "You know I could do it to you right here, Mags. I did it to a stiff this morning, and I could do it to you, too. If you lie real still I can pretend that you're dead, too."
"You're gross, Jake, stop it, will ya?"
He continued bucking his denimed hips into her corduroyed thighs. "You know what this town is, babe? It's a scraping. A scraping from the asshole of hell." And Jake thought, what a beautiful image, what a clear way of looking at things. It turned him on.
But now Jake Amory stood on the front porch of his mother's house at three a.m. and heard the voices in his head. They were getting louder, more insistent, like drums driving the beast that was within him out into the front hall light.
The voices seemed to be just under the skin of the world. He felt like if he reached out and scratched the surface of things with his dirty fingernails, beneath would be the veins and arteries and the yellow fat of the world.
Just like when you skin a rabbit.
You ever skin a little girl, son? The voices curdled into this one voice, buzzing around his head. Now Jake could almost see his pa standing in the half-light of the front hallway. His pa looked none the worse for having shot half his face off, because it was like a mask had been pulled off to reveal another face behind the one Jake had grown up with. A face that sizzled with red tendons stretched across a shattered yellow skull, and skin torn back to his ears as if a wild animal had eaten into it. Jake might've wondered how he could speak at all, given that he had no lower jaw. But there he stood, clear as day now, in his bib overalls that he wore to work, his hands tucked tidily in his pockets, acting like he was just giving Jake another talk on the birds and the bees. It ain't so hard a thing to do, you know. You just hang her upside down, heat yourself a good sharp blade. Your Boy Scout knife'll do. Then you start down at her ankle—it's real tender and thin there—and it's just like peeling potatoes. Only most potatoes don't scream, I guess, but it can't be helped. You got to ignore her screams. She's only tricking you. She's only after one thing and it's a blasted thing for a sister to want from her brother, you know, it, boy. But you always knew what she wanted from you, didn't you, boy? You was always a smart one. You know your shit, son, you ain't just another pretty face. You been kissed by the Pocket Lips. And now you just got to peel that skin off her so you can show the world what she really is.
Some kinda monster. Some kinda monster.
She ain't your sister and she ain't no little girl. She ain't human. Why, you know your real sister drowned in that lake two years ago and what that water sent you up was this monster in your sister's skin. But it's just skin, son, and you got to remove it. She'll scream, boy, but don't you pay her no never mind. 'Cause under that skin it's just laughing its nasty little head off at you. You know what it really wants from you, dontcha?
But his pa stopped speaking as Jake entered the house. We'll be waiting for you, Jake, and we will be waiting for the skin and the blood. We will be waiting for you, too, though, so don't fuck up. We don't take kindly to fuck ups. The image of his pa burned away reminded Jake of the time he was at the movies and one of the picture frames got stuck and burned and bubbled on the screen. That was how his pa went—he just bubbled and blistered until all Jake saw was the staircase behind him. The voices were also gone.
Jake climbed the stairs. His left arm ached from carrying the gas can, so he changed it over to his right hand. Gasoline sloshed across his wrist. When he reached the landing he set the can down. He was sweating.
Jake reached up to wipe his hand across his forehead, careful not to knock his sunglasses off. He coughed from the smell of gasoline. He rubbed his bone keychain but felt no heat. He was on his own.
2
Jake's sister Teddy sat up in bed.
She thought she'd heard a noise in the hallway.
She'd been dreaming of gas stations, of having to use the "facilities," which her mother kept telling her was more polite than "I gotta go to the can, man." In the dream a stranger was driving her somewhere in his car. They pulled over at a gas station. She got out of the car and went toward the restroom. The gassy smell grew stronger. She thought she might faint.
; Teddy knew that if she passed out she'd be drowning in that cold blue water again, that clutching water where that thing had touched her, tried to get inside her; she had been dying, she even had wanted to die in that water, it was so peaceful, but that thing had grabbed her, tried to pull her back. And she knew that the thing in the water had been bad. The way the gas station smell was bad.
Teddy, in her dream, did not faint. She went into the restroom. She was determined not to give in to that weak feeling. And even as the gas grew more intense and smothering when she opened one of the toilet stall doors, she felt all the more powerful for not giving in to that collapsing feeling inside her. No, she would not faint.
That was her dream. And this was also her dream: within the toilet stall of that gas station she knew she was safe. But just beyond its four walls she sensed its presence. The thing in the water. The thing that smelled of gas and swampy decay.
Teddy awoke from this dream just as she relieved herself in her pajamas.
Wet the bed.
Whenever she dreamed of going to the bathroom, she usually did. As her mother would say with a disappointed look, "It came to pass."
It came to pass, she imagined Mommy whispering in the darkness, and passing, it draws near. The kiss of the Pocket Lips.
Teddy shuddered, but knew that it was her imagination speaking to her in the blackness. It was only her imagination that pressed against the side of her face like her mother's lips kissing her goodnight.
Teddy was now wide awake. Her eyes began adjusting to the dark. She smelled something strange. Something besides the gas station smell and the odor from the damp yellow stain on her bed. She thought she smelled something burning. But when she sniffed the air again, nothing.
Do dreams smell?
3
Jake stood over his mother's bed and gazed curiously at the sleeping figure as if she were an alien. Through the purple darkness, Jake could see her dirty blond hair stuck greasily along her face with sweat, her flimsy nightgown barely covering her flabby body, her sagging breasts beneath the robe's sheer material, heaving with each snore, exhaling putrid air. He smelled the bourbon all around him. Drunk as a skunk, just like every night since Pa bit the big one. The sight and smell of her nauseated him.
Then Jake heard his pa's voice rise like a gust of wind in his head. Her first, boy, and then the little monstergirl. But you be careful with that fire, hear? The voice came and went with Jake's own deep breathing.
Jake lifted the gas can and began pouring its contents around the edge of the sleeping woman's bed. Like warmed-up syrup on a stack of pancakes.
Odessa Amory stirred in her sleep. Her eyes remained closed as she sniffed dreamily at the air.
Jake reached into his breast pocket for the book of matches. Boy Scout motto was Be Prepared. Even though Jake was kicked out of the Scouts when he was still a Tenderfoot for painting swastikas on gravestones, he still went along with it. He was always prepared.
His mother's head twitched as if in a spasm. She smelled the gasoline. She smelled him.
"Who's there?" she whispered, slurring her words so that it became "Whooshere?" like wind escaping from a balloon.
Jake flipped open the matchbook. His hands were trembling. He hadn't expected her to wake up, not if she was on one of her drunks. He expected her to be like one of the corpses he'd been digging up—to just lie there and be still. To allow him to get his job done right. Jake plucked a match from the book and struck it against a bedpost.
The match gave off a brief puff of smoke and a spark. It did not catch fire.
"Jakey? Zhat you?" his ma asked. "Whatshallthish?" She rubbed her eyes. When she turned onto her side, trying to sit up, a bottle of Virginia Gentleman rolled out from the bed and thumped to the floor.
Maybe if you were cold sober you'd figure it out, stupid bitch. Jake tossed the bad match down on the bed. "Shit," he hissed. He tore another match from the pack and struck it against the bedroom wall, but it bent in two and he dropped that one, also. "Goddamn it, sucker, light up!"
Odessa Amory sat bolt upright in bed. She clutched her hands to her breasts, holding her robe together. "Jake?" Fear curdled in her voice.
He gave no response.
"What are you—that you, Jakey?" Her voice was meek and pleading, and he knew that she wanted him to answer, yeah, Ma, just me, no Manson family in these woods, no boogeyman gonna jump out from under the bed, Ma, just your boy, and I got something here for you, too.
His ma began coughing violently, her smoker's hack.
Jake reached down to touch her face. He slid his fingers from her earlobe down her cheek to the tip of her nose. His fingers left a slimy gasoline trail.
"Jake," she whimpered, sounding like a thick sponge being squeezed of water.
Jake jerked his hand back. Made a fist. Brought it down in a razor-fine arc. Across the bridge of her nose. He kept his eyes closed. He did not want to think about what he was doing.
When Odessa yelped an image formed in Jake's mind: he saw a bristling rat with blood-red eyes lying on his ma's bed. And he knew that if he was smart, if he wanted to make it through this night, he must hold that image.
Jake could open his eyes now. It was safe.
He saw the rat. Blood spurting out of its snout. Its whiskers bristling as it gnashed its silver, daggerlike teeth. It shrieked in pain, its red eyes widening in feral terror. Dirty, dirty, filthy, the words flooded through Jake as he lifted the gas can over his head, you stuck your fucking whiskers in the wrong mousetrap, you dirty, dirty, and brought it down full force on the rat, oh God no Ma what am I
The rat did not shriek a second time.
Jake hit the rat across its forehead three more times. Each time the can came down, more gas splashed out on the bed.
The rat lay still.
He took a few deep breaths. The gas smell was beginning to make him sick. He reached down and touched the rat's muzzle. He opened its mouth. He poured gasoline down its throat. The rat made some choking noises, spitting up as much gas as went down its throat, but continued to lie very still.
It was beginning to look less like a rat and more like something human. Something familiar. Jake turned away quickly. He went over to his ma's dresser and switched on the lamp. He would not look back at the rat. He was afraid it would start bubbling and melting, that it would pull off its mask. That it would no longer be a rat.
"Yeah," Jake mumbled, as if answering a call within his brain, "got to burn the rat, my man." He opened the top dresser drawer. There among scarves and earrings were a couple of packs of Merit cigarettes and a Bic lighter.
Jake smiled. He lifted the lighter carefully out of the drawer. "Just want to flick my Bic," he said.
Then he returned to that bed where the rat lay unconscious.
4
Teddy was in the hallway when she saw Jake come staggering toward her. He held a can in his hand. Like her dream, he smelled of gas stations.
He set the can down on the hall carpet.
He did not say anything. She could not see his face clearly in the dim light.
"Something's burning," she said to the dark figure.
She peered beyond him to her mother's bedroom. The door was shut; smoke curled out from beneath it.
"Mommy!" Teddy squealed. "Jake!"
Jake stepped closer to her. He seemed to relax when she cried out, tired, but still able to smile compassionately for his sister. He opened his arms wide to her.
Teddy took a step backwards.
Jake moved forward swiftly and touched her shoulder. A blue spark ricocheted between them; Teddy jerked back as if she'd been hit with a rock. The blue of that spark was like a flashbulb in her face. Jake's hand smelled of gas stations.
"It's under control, Teddy," Jake said, his voice raspy. He patted her on the head, his fingers lingering in her long strands of hair. He began stroking her hair, and she felt shivers inside her. A crackle of static electricity seemed to go through her.
"But,
Jake, Mommy," she sobbed.
Jake grabbed her hair in bunches, pulling at her scalp. "Gimme kiss, Teddy, gimme kiss."
"Let me go!" She tried pulling her head back, but it hurt too much. Jake did not let up on his grip.
"C'mon, Teddy, you want it, you need it now—kiss of the Pocket Lips, right? Here it comes, just for you, Teddaroo, the Pocket Lips," and with his free hand, Jake reached into his pocket and pulled something out. He held it up for Teddy to see, forcing her head back. "Behold, the kiss of the Pocket Lips!"
It was a knife.
"Kissy-kissy," Jake cackled.
Teddy screamed. As she cried out, striking at Jake with her arms and legs, she felt the heat rising under her skin. And she knew it was coming. It had been a flash of blue she'd seen, something was short-circuiting her brain. Unlike in her dream, she would not be able to resist passing out. What her mom called a "gift from God," but what Teddy knew was a curse. What had begun two years ago beneath the ice of Clear Lake. What Dr. Scott called a seizure. Coming. On its way.
Not now, she thought, not now!
Teddy was losing consciousness. The world was becoming pinpoints of blackness. She felt a prickly heat along her arms and legs. She was not even aware of her older brother standing over her as she fell to the carpet; he was singing, "Kissy-kissy, time to dance, baby, dance for the Pocket Lips!"
Behind Teddy's eyes the world became a translucent ice that shattered as she fell into a cold, viscous blue darkness.
5
Excerpt from Dr. Prescott Nagle's First Families of Pontefract, Including a Brief History of the Region ($12.95, Lexington-Jackson Printers. All proceeds to go to The Pontefract Historical Society):
Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set Page 73