Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  10

  When Prescott Nagle awoke from his nap and looked out the window upon utter darkness, he was disoriented. He leaned forward in his cushiony reading chair and strained to hear the music again that seemed to be coming from outside, but could not. The creaking of the boards in the stable continued, and he called out for Cup, wondering if he was just getting in from parking the car. He waited for an answer, but none came.

  He looked out the south window of his guest bedroom at the stable entrance and saw a horse ambling from the stable out across the snow. It stopped at the edge of the gravel driveway and sniffed at the air. Sleet was coming down and drove the shiny dark horse back into the stable.

  "Lady Day," Prescott said aloud; his face felt like it was burning with blood as he watched. He felt like someone had gotten hold of everything he was ashamed of and had sent it all in the form of this horse. If you were a smart man, you'd wait for your friend to return.

  And then the opposing thought whispered in his ear, and his skin tingled with a new awareness: your friend might be dead. You've been waiting too long, Scotty, you've been waiting for all the pieces to come together, but it may be too late. You may have missed your golden opportunity, you old fool.

  They may all be dead.

  He pulled a wool sweater over his head, slipped his rubbered loafers on, and went outside.

  11

  "What was it?" George asked as he leaned over Ken Stetson's lifeless body. "Was it just Ken? God, what happened to him?"

  Cup looked unbelievingly at the gun in his hand. "It called me a breeding ground. Something else it said, about using Patsy Campbell—for what?" And then, it dawned on him. A diversionary tactic, it had said. But what is it diverting our attention away from? His face drained of all its color.

  "Prescott, I completely forgot! Jesus, we've got to get up there, he's all alone!"

  12

  Prescott could not see anything of the horse itself in the shadows that enveloped the inside of the stable. The floodlighting along the drive and the outside of the barn house cast only the thinnest of beams into the first few feet of the doorway. But in that feeble light, Prescott saw twin breath clouds from the horse's nostrils; he could hear its impatient whinnying as it kicked against one of the empty stalls.

  As Prescott approached the doorless entrance to the stable, he heard the animal shy away, moving farther into the shadows. When he got inside the stable, his feet clopping like a horse's on the concrete floor (he didn't wonder why the horse itself had not made this sound with its hooves), he switched on the string of lights he'd set up along his worktable. The sleek black mare stood silently against the far wall, watching him.

  Prescott glanced at the tools he kept piled against the bench, finally picking up the pitchfork that leaned against the bench. It was so heavy he dragged it as he walked toward the horse.

  The horse stamped the floor with its hooves. It snorted; Prescott saw no animal intelligence in its eyes. Its movements were not as fluid as the real Lady Day's had been. Prescott held the pitchfork up with both hands. He aimed the tines at the horse's neck. He continued to walk toward the mare.

  One of the lightbulbs on the overhead string popped out, and Prescott looked up for a moment, and when his eyes returned, quickly, to the horse, it was no longer a horse.

  "Cassie," he said, and the pitchfork fell, clattering, to the floor.

  13

  She was as young and beautiful as he remembered her being, her eyes still possessed that element of sadness which he found so attractive in a woman, and her auburn hair fell in a Rita Hayworthish wave to her shoulders. Wearing the green dress, what she called her "green folly." She bit her lower lip like a child hesitating to admit something to him. "It was stronger than me, Scotty, I thought I could escape it, but I was wrong. It was inside me, Scotty, it's inside us, all of us. It's not something that will ever go away."

  Prescott tried to stay calm. "Cass, what is it?"

  "I loved you both, you know that, and I've been to see Gower, and he agrees that you should leave, Scotty, it's too dangerous. You could never defeat it, not in a million years, and I don't want it to end for you as it did for me, Scotty, I was so cold and so alone, and it hurt—oh, the pain I went through." She clutched her left arm with her right hand and took a step toward him.

  "But, Cassie, your skin, what you did "

  "I was wrong, Scotty, so wrong, to take my own life like that, to destroy the gift I had been given the gift we'd been given " He noticed her feet were bare, dirty, as she took another, more confident step. "I was to be the door, Scotty, but I squandered my gift, and now they've chosen another to take my place. What I did is unforgivable, but they've promised, if you would just go away that you won't be hurt, Scotty, and then I'll be free." She was close enough so that he could feel her feather-light breath upon him, and when he inhaled, imagining Shalimar and Ivory Soap, what he got was something rotten, something so foul that tears came to his eyes as much from the odor as from this vision of his late wife. She saw the change come over him, and clenched both hands in fists and beat the air between them. Cassie was sobbing, "Oh, don't you even love me? What I've gone through, and just for you, what I sacrificed "

  Prescott reached out and grabbed her small fists in his hands, just as he used to, and as he looked at them, they unfolded like a fast-motioned film of a flower blossoming. He kissed each one in the center of the palm, and he thought: yes, death can be sweet. I am old, I am ready to die. If it means being with my wife, then surely I must do it.

  He glanced up and caught her off guard. Something in her eyes. Something in those eyes, for a split-second before they glazed over with Cassie's eyes.

  He had seen something there in those eyes, something fierce, and wild. A caged beast waiting to spring.

  You know I saw you, for just a moment, Prescott thought, and let go of her hands. Her arms swung lifelessly to her sides. You know something else? I almost had you fooled, I just about caught you at your own game. You thought you had me.

  Cassie's voice broke the silence. "I do have you," and then it was no longer Cassie's voice, or even Cassie's body, but Gower Lowry standing before him, leaning on his silver-tipped cane. "Prescott, I must warn you—you are treading on thin ice, just like that Amory girl did, and look how she ended up, will you? I know I kept my distance from you all these years, but I had my reasons. I was afraid—Lord, how afraid I was. Those missing pages you're so anxious to see, they can tell you nothing, Prescott, just the ravings of a lunatic. But you're up against something so powerful, Prescott, and good, too, a powerful, terrible good "

  "Why don't you just show yourself to me?" Prescott asked.

  Prescott watched as the shape flickered. He was seeing through Gower Lowry, through his wife, through the mare, all superimposed one upon the other.

  "I am beneath the skin, Prescott, come closer, see, taste—" The voice possessed no human quality, it rasped as if experiencing some difficulty in breathing.

  "Like hell I will!" Prescott dropped to the floor and grabbed the pitchfork that lay between them, and with all his might drove it at an upward angle into the creature. Prescott lay on the concrete floor in a heap; his legs had given out when he fell, and his back felt like a ton of bricks had just been dropped on it There was a pain in his ribs, shooting up to his head like an electric current; he saw flashes of light. But Prescott still clutched the wooden end of the pitchfork. It was vibrating wildly in his hands. He did not look up. He expected that at any moment, the pain of death would be upon him.

  Prescott lay with his head against the cold concrete floor of the stable waiting to die. He wondered if the piercing siren sound and the howling wind through the storm would be the last things he'd ever hear.

  But then there were other voices above him.

  "We're too late, goddamn it," one man said, and Prescott recognized that one and lifted his head. George Connally.

  "Better late than never," Prescott muttered, and it hurt just to ma
ke that feeble joke.

  Cup stood over him and grinned. "Mister, you have got nine lives, if you ask me."

  14

  "Look at it come down," Tommy said. He stood with his back to Clare, looking out the window in the sheriff's office. The sleet was turning to clumps of snow as it fell down on Main Street. He wrote: TOMMY MACKENZIE WAS HERE on the windowpane with his finger.

  Lyle Holroyd stopped whining so much after George and Cup had left. He whispered to himself, "Firestone got him, didn't he, yes, yes, he got him, he wanted him, and now they got him, too "

  Still facing the window, Tommy asked, "Who are they?"

  No one had paid much attention to Lyle since George had handcuffed him to the file cabinet. Clare Terry kept calling people she knew on the office phone asking if they'd seen her father yet.

  "You talking to me?" Lyle asked, nervously.

  Tommy moved away from the window and went to the opposite end of the room from Lyle. He treated Lyle as if the man were a tethered lion.

  "You want to know, don't you?" Lyle asked. Tommy hated to look at that face. The deputy looked the way Tommy felt inside: disheveled, deadly white, slick and shiny with sweat. His eyes were wild. The eyes of a man who would believe anything you told him. Angels, gods, devils, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, ghouls, aliens; an acceptance all there in those bloodshot eyes. Wanting to believe, just like Tommy did. Because if they were up against the devil, you just go to church and maybe confess your sins. And if they were just ghosts, well, what's to be scared of? After all, people are just ghosts waiting to happen. If it was God or gods, then they must walk happily to their fate. You get a werewolf with a silver bullet, a vampire with a stake, and for aliens you call in Sigourney Weaver.

  And if they were up against the Boy-Eating Spider, you waited patiently for It to eat all the bad boys. Or maybe It wraps you in Its web and saves you for an after-dinner mint.

  Yeah, Tommy thought, when you've got a name for what you're up against, it makes it easy. There are rules to every game, just like school. You go in the morning, you sit still for a few hours, you pretend you don't care when they pick you last for the team, and then you go home. Home, there were rules for home, too. You keep your room clean so your dad doesn't blow his stack and sock you in the jaw, and you try to stay out of the way most of the time. That was what life was all about.

  "I'll tell you, okay? If you promise not to take me there, okay?" Lyle said, jerking Tommy's mind back into the room.

  "I don't want to know," Tommy said softly. I already know where they live, he wanted to say. What I want to know is what they are, and you can't tell me that. Because nobody in this room or in this town knows what they are. What it is. What he is. What she is. Whatever the hell It is.

  Lyle began telling about the Marlowe-Houston House, the cage of bones, Jake Amory, how they were eating Jake Amory piecemeal, heh-heh, but Tommy wasn't really listening.

  He heard Clare on the phone: "Well, I'd appreciate that, Shelly, but only if you're going there anyway, and be careful, no, not just the snow, you know, all the accidents—yeah, let me give you the number here "

  "They aren't accidents!" Tommy yelled, hoping whoever was on the other end of the phone heard him.

  Clare cupped her hand over the phone and whispered something into the mouthpiece. Tommy heard his name mentioned. Then she hung up. "This must be awful for you, Tommy, but it'll be over."

  But Tommy wasn't even listening to her. Tommy looked at Lyle Holroyd. "What do you call them?"

  "They're vampires, you know, but they're all ghouls, yes, yes, ghouls they eat people, I seen 'em. They got that little Amory girl down in that shithole, man, and I just know they're gonna eat her, too, 'cause they're all hungry sons of bitches."

  "You saw a vampire," Tommy stated, waiting for Lyle's nod.

  Lyle seemed to hesitate before grinning. "Got to be something like that. Big teeth. Hungry as the devil."

  "And a ghoul."

  "Well, they were dead people, the Gastons, eating people, isn't that kinda what ghouls do?"

  Clare rolled her eyes. "Don't forget the big teeth."

  Lyle scratched his head with his free hand.

  "I don't believe in vampires," Tommy said. "Or ghouls."

  "Thank God somebody is being normal," Clare said.

  "I saw my friend Rick get killed, but I didn't see who did it. I just heard the—the Boy-Eating Spider. What did you see?"

  Clare sighed. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

  "Nothing at all?" Tommy asked.

  "I'm just here because my father has left home, although to be honest, he might be back there by now—I've wasted all this time waiting here for Sheriff Connally to get back."

  "Heh-heh, yeah, but you're scared, too, huh? Huh?" Lyle sounded like a dog worrying the flesh off a bone. "I can see right under your skin, lady, heh, and they know about you, they asked about you."

  Clare gasped when she noticed that Lyle's mouth was foaming.

  "And that other guy with the sheriff said he called it the Goatman, and Sheriff Connally " Before Tommy could complete his line of thinking, the telephone rang and Clare picked it up.

  Lyle, who leaned against the file cabinet, his face now turned to the wall, moaned, "It's them, huh? It's them, it's them "

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE HENCHMAN LOUNGE

  1

  Clare was glad to be out of the courthouse, even if it meant braving the sleet and snow, and trudging the few blocks up to the Henchman Lounge. Tommy Mackenzie walked behind her several steps as if watching for something. He had refused to let her go alone. Back at the courthouse, Lyle had been crying, "You cain't leave me alone! Puh-leez, you just cain't!" But Clare actually felt safer out of the sheriff's office, away from that crazy deputy, and on the slippery winter street.

  When Shelly called her at the sheriff's office, she'd said, "Well, you'd never believe who I found sitting all by his lonesome at the Hench, drinking Brandy Alexanders. Your dad, that's who. He seems really out of it, Clare, but none the worse for the weather. He keeps talking to people about Lily, you know, which is kind of creepy, but other than that—"

  Clare felt like she was standing outside a brothel. The indistinct voices emanating from beyond the front door of the Henchman Lounge were wild and raucous; it sounded like a bacchanalian orgy inside.

  She'd only been in the Henchman Lounge once, and that was when she'd first made friends with Shelly Patterson and Debbie Randolph. Shelly loved to go there "to scope men," and Clare had gone in with her newly acquired friends thinking it might be fun. Nearly two years ago. Clare was only recently divorced from David, and was bored to tears by her hometown when compared with the vast choices that Manhattan had offered. Clare warned Shelly that she hated singles bars, and Debbie told her that to call the Henchman Lounge a singles bar was to give it too much credit. But Clare had felt cheap when some man she'd known from childhood had bought all three of them drinks and then suggested they take a drive together. She even felt cheaper when she accepted the drinks, thanked him politely, and then left feeling vaguely guilty for not having taken that ride with him. From that night on, Girls Night Out met at the Columns restaurant, which Clare felt had a more dignified ambience.

  Clare closed her umbrella; she was freezing, and even the umbrella hadn't made her feel any less soaked to the skin. Tommy was still behind her; he was dripping wet, and had, in fact, refused to stand under the umbrella.

  She hesitated only a moment at the door of the Henchman Lounge.

  "I'm freezing," Tommy said. "We should've waited for the sheriff."

  Clare pushed the door open, stepped inside, and then the inner Western saloon-style shutter doors swung open against her as a tall drunken man loped past her, tipping his hat as he went. Clare caught the swinging doors, held them open for Tommy, and entered the barroom.

  The place was packed. The drone of conversation filled the air, replacing the usual smog layer of cigarette smoke. Their voices rose and
fell, as if someone were playing with the volume knob.

  Tommy Mackenzie sniffed at the air like an animal trying to locate danger. "We should go back and wait for the sheriff," he repeated.

  A short fat barmaid with a blue beehive hairdo sailed past them with a full tray of beer pitchers. A young pretty blonde in tight jeans and a white frilly blouse leaned against the bar and raised her eyebrows at a couple of lawyerly types who were talking shop at the other end of the bar.

  Groups of men in baseball caps and flannel shirts sucked in their guts as Clare passed them by; she kept looking over the sea of heads for Shelly's carrot-red hair or her father's wool cap. Without realizing it, Clare had reached back and grabbed Tommy's hand. (She glanced back at him to make sure he was with her, and he was, soaked, tired, shivering, in the pea jacket and the red baseball cap he had had scrunched up in his back pocket, and Clare was thinking: see? this is normal, I don't need Valium or a drink, my father's somewhere in this dive, it's snowing outside, somewhere someone is watching an I Love Lucy rerun, and here's a teenager who doesn't use bad language and wears a red baseball cap in winter. All is right with the world.) Clare faced forward again, squeezing Tommy's hand, and he squeezed back as if in a vote of confidence and trust, only he was squeezing a little too hard, and it hurt just a little too much, his grip on her hand became like two rocks crushing together with her hand in the middle. She wanted to tell him to ease up, to let go, because it was hurting too much, but something inside her told her to not turn around suddenly, because maybe just maybe it wasn't Tommy back there at all. But that's a silly, stupid, dumb shit thought. On the jukebox was "I Fall to Pieces," and Clare began scanning the booths along the far wall. Trying to ignore the screaming pain in her hand. I will not turn around, he's just squeezing it hard because he's scared, and that kid has been through the wringer, so who am I to tell him to lighten up?