Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  20

  Neither Georgia Stetson nor her husband Ken would think it unusual if their son, Rick, did not emerge from his room until the afternoon. He always slept late during his breaks from school.

  Chapter Fifteen

  GEORGE

  1

  The fire at the Key Theater had not spread to the adjoining buildings on Main Street; the fire department had seen to that. On Wednesday morning, the theater itself did not look that much different than it usually did. The top windows had broken outward, and the huge marquee was a mess of melted plastic. Part of the outside wall was blackened. The worst part of the fire had been inside the theater. When Sheriff George Connally returned from the medical center that morning, one of the firemen, Mike Scoby, was down at the courthouse filling out a report. George asked him what the probable cause was, and Mike had shrugged. Said something about film being flammable, and the whole conflagration having begun in the projection booth.

  Nine people died in the fire, although only two had been positively identified so far. One guy they were sure of was Thomas Mackenzie, the theater's owner, and another name that came up was one George hadn't heard in years. Well, at least not the fellow's proper name, which was Dylan Houston, better known as Torch. The albino who had once been burned, and perhaps liked to burn. Allegedly, Pontefract's resident arsonist. George hadn't believed it when Lyle accused the man of torching the Amory house; but hell, maybe Lyle was right. Because the witnesses out on Main Street had seen this guy Torch leap from one of the second-story windows of the Key Theater. Everybody knew Torch—he was the popular scapegoat. George would not even be surprised if parents used stories about Torch to scare their kids away from matches. "If you play with matches, Torch will come get you."

  And when Torch made his dramatic, Errol Flynn exit from the theater, he landed on the pavement. "Splat!" Mike Scoby said, splaying his fingers out, "just like a bug on your goddamn windshield, only this bug was on fire."

  "And he was dead?"

  "Not quite. We got there just about that time, and I saw what happened to him. He was trying to stand up; you know, it reminded me of that Mommy joke about 'Shut up or I'll nail your other foot to the floor' 'cause he kept going around in circles, all on fire." Mike realized what he was saying, and added softly, "'Course, it wasn't funny."

  "Didn't anybody help him?"

  But George didn't need that question answered. Mike's eyes said it all: it hadn't even occurred to any of the bystanders to help Torch, or put him out of his misery. He was a non-person to them, he was the invisible man. "So you people just let him burn."

  Mike went back to writing his report and said, "That guy was a goner before I got there, Sheriff, and if you ask me, he's better off now than if he'd lived."

  George got back in his cruiser and went to look at the wreckage, but by 10:00 a.m. a crowd of gawkers was milling around the building. Jesus, he thought, no matter where the shit comes down, the flies are always there before you can clean it up. And speaking of cleanups, he thought as he smelled his own BO in the car.

  He hadn't thought about himself since the night before, since that moment he had walked into the bedroom and found his wife, Rita, beneath the sink, her tongue cut out. Dr. Scott informed him that despite appearance, her blood loss had not been that great. It hadn't even been her whole tongue—just the last half-inch to the tip. "Isn't that enough?" George had asked, and Dr. Scott had patted him on the shoulder and said, "Well, let's say it could be worse Tell me, Sheriff, has your wife been depressed lately?"

  George had put his hands up in the air. "Hey, I know this line of questioning. But Rita says someone did this to her."

  "She told this to you?" The way the doctor emphasized the word told, George recognized his mistake immediately.

  "I mean, she tried to make sounds like—"

  What Dr. Scott told him next chilled George to the bone.

  "Your wife, Sheriff Connally, wrote on a pad to one of our nurses, just before she went to sleep, that she didn't mean to eat the glass. Which, I'm afraid, would indicate "

  I know what the fuck it would indicate, George thought as he drove down Main Street in the morning, it would indicate that she either was taking her own life or awfully anxious to sink her teeth into something that might sink its own teeth into her. I'm going to go home and take a shower and clean this damn town off of me, wash all of it down the drain, and then I am going to be someone else, not sheriff, not even a cop, but just a someone who lives his own life and walks down the street and doesn't lift a goddamn finger when his fellow man bites the dust. Rita and I are going to live a normal life, albeit a quieter one now that she can't say much—Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, I'm losing it. Burnout, it's here, it's happening, it's burning, just like the Key Theater, just like Dylan Houston, a.k.a. Torch, Mommy-Mommy, why do I keep going around in circles? Shut up, or I'll nail your other foot to the floor; that's me, going around in circles, aimless goddamn circles.

  George Connally had not slept in two days. When he got home, he lay down on the couch for five minutes, setting his shoulder holster across the couch arm, and did not wake up again until someone standing over him said his name.

  2

  Wednesday, January 7, 1987

  IN THE P.M.

  Cup had spent the night at Prescott's, after drinking too much of Prescott's beer. ("My way of coping, I guess," Cup said; Prescott raised his pipe. "This is my way—both methods have their hazards.") The beer helped Cup sleep, and he slept into the afternoon. When he awoke at 12:30, he shoveled Prescott's driveway for him. Anything to take his mind off what was going on. As the shadows grew longer, Prescott suggested he go collect his things at Patsy Campbell's and that he could borrow the car.

  3

  "George," the man said, and George awoke, his back sore from the couch, his left arm asleep because he'd kept it behind his head for support while he napped on the couch. "It's okay, it's me, Lyle." George's eyes began to focus on the figure looming over him. The living room was prematurely dark; all the drapes were drawn on the windows. George did not at first notice the nervous quality in Lyle's voice.

  George sat up on the couch. "What time is it?"

  Lyle went over and peeked through the drapes that covered the sliding glass doors to the patio. "I dunno," he said, "it's getting late. And you know what happens when it gets dark."

  George combed his fingers through his greasy hair, and tasted the scum residue of his own bad breath. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

  "They're all out there, I needed someplace to go. Someplace they wouldn't look because they already looked here, so I know—"

  "Lyle? You all right?"

  "It's vampires, George, and it's werewolves, and it's ghouls. They got the girl and they almost got me, too, but Christ! I was smart! Christ! I brought this cross." Lyle pointed to the coffee table, and George focused his eyes on the outline of a crucifix about the height of his arm. "I stole it, actually, George, from Christ Church, I spent the night there, behind the altar, 'cause vampires can't go to church, and I know I'm taking a chance coming here, but I seen something I think you should know, and they already been here, so it's safe, and it's not dark yet, well, the sun hasn't gone down, so I think we're okay, brought this cross with me, I stole it, and—"

  When Lyle took a breath, George interrupted him. "Lyle, will you just relax a little, now what the hell has happened to you?"

  Lyle stood motionless, but silent.

  George got up and turned on the overhead lights. He gestured for Lyle to take a seat on me couch. "Do you need a drink, boy?"

  Lyle sat on the couch. He began bouncing up and down on the cushion nervously. He picked up George's holster off the arm of the couch. "I never even take mine off when I sleep," but somehow when he said this, even he was not sure what he meant. Lyle set the gun and holster down beside himself. He shook his head. "I smoked a little weed just a couple of hours ago, well, a shitload of weed, and I think a drink might not sit well with me right no
w."

  George sat on the edge of the coffee table and tilted the brass crucifix back. He laughed. "You actually stole this from church?"

  "Nothing to laugh about."

  George brought his left hand up and clapped it against his forehead. "Lord, Lyle, I leave you in charge for a day and you're nothing but a fuck-up. And you're fucked up on top of that. You march in here high as a kite, you who swore to uphold the law, on marijuana, you steal this thing, and now you've got some Hunter Thompson syndrome—and I know he's an idol of yours, though God knows why—and you think devils are chasing you down. Your daddy must be spinning in his grave."

  For a moment, Lyle reminded George of Tony Perkins in Psycho. He kept smoothing out the upholstery of the couch and glancing from side to side as if someone else was in the room speaking. George had never touched marijuana in his life, and he wondered if this was a side effect. "Well, come on, Lyle, talk to me, but slowly, okay?"

  Lyle Holroyd half-grinned. "That's what he said, too, slowly, slowly, slowly, they eat you, very slowly, and you get to live a while because they like especially to eat you alive."

  "Lyle, make some sense, who said that?"

  For a moment some semblance of his old self appeared in Lyle's face. But when he spoke, the words came out scraggly and torn, mutilated by a bad case of paranoia: "Jake Amory."

  4

  "Daddy?" Clare asked the empty house.

  She wanted to search it again, for a fifth time. Then a sixth time. Then a seventh time.

  She did not want to think that her father had left earlier in the day. That he had taken a long stroll. Across town, across the footbridge, across the lake, to

  The Marlowe-Houston House.

  For the party that his favorite daughter, his wife, and his favorite son-in-law, who were all, ha ha, as Lily would say, dead as you're feeling right now, Clare, although maybe you feel deader, if that's possible, little blind Clare with no i, the party they were throwing.

  Before she began crying, wondering how insane you have to be before it all seems rational, Clare decided to call the sheriff's office again.

  5

  "The Amory kid?" George asked. He decided to play it cool with Lyle, let the man speak.

  "Oh, but you never would recognize him, no, no, no, I didn't recognize him, George, and I used to whup him upside the head every other day when I used to catch him inside the Henchman—had a fake ID. But down there, George, down there, he wasn't half the troublemaker he was before—that's pretty fucking hilarious, you know, him not being half the troublemaker, because all they'd left was his—Oh, Christ, George," Lyle said, and his face crumpled in on itself, becoming a mass of creases and wrinkles. Lyle began crying like a baby, "Christ, I was smart, I was so smart, I was so so so smart."

  "It's all right, Lyle, whatever it is, you're here and you're safe," George said. He kept his voice at an even pitch.

  "They got the Amory boy, he told me they eat you real slowly, slowly, they like to play with you like that, and that Amory boy, he only had one arm and no legs, no legs at all, none to speak of—ha-ha—only stumps and you can't run on stumps, so they didn't even have to tie him up or anything. They only tied up the arteries, George, they're pretty smart when it comes to keeping us alive, because they like to play with us, George, they like to play with us, and maybe not kill us right off the bat, that's what he told me, but I'm smarter than he is, I still have both legs, and both arms, and your Smith & Wesson," and Lyle reached into the holster that lay beside him on the couch and pulled the gun out. His hand trembled, and he had to hold on with both hands to keep it steady. He pointed it at George.

  "Lyle," George said.

  "Christ! I'm smart! George! Because they really want you! Not me! And I told them, I'll get him, yes, yes, yes, I'll get him, just like I got the girl, and wasn't that—oh dear sweet fucking Jesus H. Christ—wasn't that smart!" Lyle pulled back on the trigger.

  6

  Patsy Campbell, wearing her foamy pink curlers, blue chenille robe, and fluffy slippers, was watching TV when Cup came through the front door, and if there was one thing that struck him as, what's wrong with this picture, it was not only the absence of chocolate MoonPie essence wafting in the air, but also that the house was very cold.

  Involuntarily, Cup said aloud, "Brrr."

  Patsy did not turn around, but seemed glued to the TV.

  "Hello, Patsy," Cup said, but softly; for some reason he felt as if he'd entered a library and so could not speak above a low whisper.

  Patsy Campbell turned and looked at him. Those hoot owl eyes magnified a million times by her glasses, a cursory glance, and then back to the Oprah Winfrey Show. When she turned her head, one of the pink curlers fell to the floor, and rolled a few feet toward Cup. He went to pick it up, and then stopped. He felt like he'd done something horribly wrong, like an errant lover being punished with silence. Perhaps this is how she treats guests who spend their nights elsewhere.

  Cup went up to his room.

  Another what's wrong with this picture, only he knew almost immediately what was wrong with it.

  His diary, The Nightmare Book, lay open on his bed.

  7

  George Connally was hoping his face did not betray his true feelings. He wasn't half as scared as Lyle Holroyd evidently was. Even while Lyle pointed the gun at him, his eyes darted left and right as if at any moment someone would come in the room.

  "Are they in the house?" George asked.

  "George—if you knew what they could do—you wouldn't even ask, no way no how, 'cause they can be anywhere and anyone they want he told me that, he still could talk, they hadn't eaten all of him, his nose, just his nose, he looked like a goddamn leper, George!" Lyle's voice had become high and shrill, and he was fighting to keep the tears back.

  "But are they in the house, Lyle?" George repeated.

  Lyle's breathing was rapid; he sounded like he'd just run a marathon and his heart was giving out. "I don't know, Christ! I'm safe, don't you get it, I'm safe, and I had to do this, George, because they want you more than me, and they promised me, promised, they'd kill you right away, so you know you won't suffer or anything, not like him—Oh, God, George, his face, you wouldn't—wouldn't—"

  "This house, Lyle, are they here?"

  "Cut that, stop that, out," Lyle said, hiccupping his words. George had trouble taking his eyes off the barrel of the Smith & Wesson. "No, I told you, I told you, they're not in this house, they got what they wanted, the girl, the girl—"

  "If they got the girl, Lyle, why do they want me?" George tried to sound as calm as possible. He tore his gaze free of the wobbling gun Lyle held and glanced about the room wondering what he could grab that would be a good weapon: next to him was that brass crucifix, and he could throw it, but (Lyle answered, "Sure, yeah, they got the girl, but you're part of it, too, they're friends of—now—you won't believe this—") by the time he got hold of it a bullet could be plowing through his brain. If he rolled back on the coffee table, he could use it as a shield, and then try and get to the—

  "You listening, George? What you looking at, anyway?" Lyle was suspicious. "You trying to get away?"

  "No, Lyle, I'll do whatever you want, honest."

  "What were you looking at just then—you saw something."

  "I just thought I heard something in the house."

  Lyle sniffed the air. "I don't smell nothing, 'cause they got a real strong smell, because, ghouls, you know, and vampires, they're all dead, George, so they're bound to smell, you should see the maggots, George, the white white white maggots "

  George sniffed. "I smell something, Lyle, are you telling me you don't smell it?" This better work.

  "They can't be here, 'cause they've got the girl, they don't care—they don't really care—it's only an eye for an eye they want, and you, why, I'm gonna be a hero, yes! Christ Almighty!" But Lyle's voice was fading as if he'd been running on empty for the past half hour.

  "Lyle, seriously, didn't you hear that? T
hey must be here."

  "Don't make me shoot you, George," Lyle said.

  "Don't tell me you can't smell them, right now, it's as strong as "

  "Like gas?"

  "Yeah, like a big ol' tanker just spilled across the highway."

  "Well—I don't—you could be lying."

  "I'm telling you."

  "They won't hurt me if I have my cross." Lyle had come down from the heights of his screechiness. "Hand me my cross, George."

  "I'll do it if you promise to let me go," George reached for the crucifix.

  "I can't do—"

  "Did you hear that?"

  "For Christ s sake, they'll tear me apart, and they don't even want me!"

  George picked up the cross. It was heavy. Good. Serves this bastard right.

  "H-H-Hand it to me." Lyle now held the gun with his right hand and turned his palm toward George. "Carefully."

  George held the cross out, but it was too far from Lyle.

  "I can smell them, Lyle," George said.

  Lyle took a step forward.

  George lunged at him, swinging the brass crucifix down as hard as he could against the side of Lyle's head; the gun went off, and George felt something like fire in his left shoulder and then a freezing numbness, but that was okay, he only needed his right arm to bludgeon Lyle into unconsciousness. Which was relatively easy. Lyle toppled over on the first blow, and George hoped the son of a bitch was alive so he could kill him.

  8

  "You say they're at the Marlowe-Houston House?" George asked as he secured Lyle's handcuffs. The bullet Lyle fired from the Smith & Wesson had only grazed George's left shoulder, but it felt like it had gone into his heart because Lyle had finally cracked, the son of Cal Holroyd, former sheriff of Pontefract, former mentor of George Connally, had lost it.