Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  "Gas," George said. That sweet foul odor; not the smothering smell of your everyday fill-'er-up gasoline, but something more obscenely seductive. Sweet, that's all he could associate with the smell that hung in the air, sweet and deadly.

  "Yes, it is sweet," Hank Firestone said; he had his hand out in front of him, palm turned upward. GIVE ME THE FLARE, GEORGE. YOU DON'T WANT TO BLOW ALL THIS TO KINGDOM COME, DO YOU? he was shouting inside George's brain. They crawled inside me, they got me already. We got you, George, yes, that's good, now, please, the flare, you're being very tiresome, and besides, it's over for you, don't make this difficult for us.

  16

  Tommy flexed his entire body as hard as he could. The gummy strands across his legs gave a little. It was like fighting off quicksand. His feet made a spitting sound as he brought them out of the cocoon-like thing he'd been wrapped in.

  Behind him, there was a rattling at the door. He glanced back for one second and saw the door slide open. He stretched his leg out and pivoted toward the doorway. Someone was here to rescue them. Tommy leaned toward the opening door. Someone would be out there to help. He plucked his other foot out of the web. It was like his feet were nailed to the floor, rusty nails, ripping into him as he brought the foot up. He wanted to lie down and give up—the pain was too much, he wanted to lie down and cry and let the Boy-Eating Spider get him.

  But the door—opening.

  Slowly.

  Uncertainly.

  The pain, the pain, the pain, it's like spikes in my feet, I'm so sleepy, just want to rest.

  The door opened farther. Tommy touched the edge of the door with his hand.

  Something was out there. Waiting.

  You can t wake up from this nightmare.

  17

  "The gas that the dead give off, as Pres Nagle told you." Frank Gaston was undressing from Hank Firestone's skin just like it was a zipper-suit. The old man was naked, wrinkled skin hanging from the bone. Frank's head was half blown away. George had seen Frank that way before. He was prepared for it. He didn't scream. George did not want to give this thing that pleasure. "This house reeks of gas. You're thinking now of its hallucinatory qualities—quite right. The stuff that dreams are made of. And, just like dreams, quite explosive I assure you. But when the door is open wide, tonight, we will be invulnerable even to your flares and fire sticks. Nightmare will become flesh and our long sleep, like your Sleeping Beauty, will be at an end. I could show you all your companions as they burn, George, before you've even rubbed your pathetic magic lantern." Frank's half-face seemed to be smiling, the half with the upper jaw that dripped like crimson buttermilk, and for a moment George did see Prescott screaming as he burst into flames, Clare trapped in a room as the fire spread across the drapes, Tommy just undressing from the spider's web exploding like a human fireball, Cup Coffey rolling around in the dirt trying to stop his shoulders from burning.

  No. George ground his teeth together.

  "I've always thought of you like a son, George," Frank said, stepping completely out of Hank Firestone's discarded skin. "But this corruption has always been with us—all of us—in this town, the sins of the fathers and all that rot, we need a clean sweep, fathers and sons, George. But flares, honestly. Would you do this to your old man? Your daddy?"

  No.

  "Give Daddy a big kiss," the thing said, sounding like a record that had been too long in the sun.

  What the hell? George clutched the flare as the corpse shuffled toward him.

  18

  Tommy watched the door as it opened.

  A hand held desperately to the doorknob.

  The hand was not attached to an arm.

  Hanging from the shorn wrist of that disembodied hand was a handcuff that had not quite slipped off over the knob of bone.

  "Heh-heh," a low voice sputtered from the hallway. "Christ! I was smart, George, I got them to take the 'cuffs off me! And they OBLIGED! THEY SET ME FREE, GEORGE! LIMB-BY-FUCKING-LIMB!"

  Tommy Mackenzie did not scream. He had seen too much in the past week. He was beyond screaming.

  He just wanted out.

  19

  "Big kiss," the thing repeated.

  George managed a desperate grin. "You want a big kiss? Suck on this! "

  He snapped the flare, thrusting it forward, almost touching the monster that was reaching a feeler toward him.

  20

  Tommy tugged his foot again from the sucking web, and fell onto his stomach into the hallway. The hand that had been holding the doorknob dropped like a full tick into his hair and slid down the back of his shirt. Tommy brought himself to his elbows. He barely felt the fingers gliding down his back dragging the handcuffs with them.

  Two inches from his face was another face.

  Deputy Lyle Holroyd's head lay, battered and bloody, on the carpet. His eyes had been gouged out, and when he grinned at Tommy, blood sluiced from between his lips.

  Tommy reached up and batted the head down the hallway.

  Lyle howled as his head thudded against the carpet and rolled to the edge of the stairs. It tottered there for an interminable second, and then went over.

  Tommy heard the whump-whump-whump as the head hit every step going downstairs.

  From behind him, in that room, Tommy heard Sheriff Connally yell: "Run, Tommy!"

  Then the door slammed shut behind him. Tommy pushed himself up. The crawling hand pinched at his back; Tommy felt the ice-cold handcuffs swinging beneath his shirt.

  Tommy ran for the stairs.

  21

  George snapped the flare a second time.

  Nothing happened.

  No light, no spark, no explosion.

  Frank Gaston hissed like butter in a frying pan. He plucked the flare from George's hand. George did not put up a struggle.

  What the fuck? George moaned. Shit, Lyle Holroyd, goddamn you to hell for not replacing those damn flares like you were supposed to last summer. Goddamn you to hell, Lyle. Gauzelike webbing reached his waist. He felt Frank's razor-sharp pincers resin his face with something warm and sticky: his own blood.

  "Feel free to scream, George," Frank said, "the Eater of Souls would like that very much. Loud enough for everyone to hear."

  Sorry, George shook his head, in the middle of a prayer, no last requests. What could've been a large spider, or perhaps just an old man with his face mostly torn off, or maybe an old lady in a shiny black dress and a pillbox hat, laid its hand just beneath George Connally's chin.

  The last thing George heard was a grinding, slicing sound, the way a garbage disposal hawks and spits when you put in too many old eggshells and grease and you forget to turn the water on.

  The sound was coming from George's throat.

  22

  Tommy was running down the staircase. He could feel Lyle Holroyd's hand hanging on to his back, trying to crawl back up to his shirt collar, pinching the skin, but Tommy did not stop running to pull the thing out of his shirt. The stairs descended into a twisting vortex, what Tommy imagined was like being in the eye of a tornado. He heard a woman screaming from down there, and saw that the stairs shifted in response to the scream, curving and wriggling like a snake as he ran down them, and Tommy realized too late that he was headed straight for the bowels of the house, the cellar, the place where Hardass Whalen had bitten the dust, and where Rick had been devoured and then spat out. Heh-heh, he thought he heard Lyle Holroyd's head laughing as it rolled whump-whump-whump into the dark pit ahead of him.

  The stairs had uprooted themselves from the house and were forcing him into the cellar.

  Tommy could not stop running. The hand dug its fingernails into his shoulder as it shimmied up his spine. Tommy clutched the banister as the pain from the burrowing fingers became too intense; it felt like five hypodermic needles were injecting air into his blood. He arched his back and dropped down onto his side with the pain.

  He had reached the bottom of the stairs.

  He was staring through an open doorway.<
br />
  More stairs. Those leading from the kitchen down to the cellar.

  Lying there in a blue smoky darkness was Clare Terry, looking up at him with wild eyes, reaching a hand out to him for help. Her hand was covered with what looked like smushed maggots. And on top of her was something that Tommy knew was a creature from her worst nightmare, nothing more. The skinless man in the seersucker jacket was crouched over Clare, his head to her ankles, his knees crushing down on her chest. The thing swiveled its face around—as if it's looking at me—and Tommy realized he was no longer frightened of anything if he could look straight on at this monster without puking.

  "Please," Clare whimpered. Her eyes were now blank and staring. Tommy wasn't even sure that she recognized him.

  Tommy heard a noise that sounded like a vacuum cleaner being turned on full blast. He noticed that the creature pushing Clare against the cellar stairs had some kind of long pink tube running from its mouth along her legs.

  "Join me for a drink from the red river?" The Thing sniggered, drool slopping from the side of its mouth.

  Got to help her, but shit! How?

  The Thing withdrew the tube back into its mouth.

  Still holding Clare down, It turned to face Tommy.

  ITSY-BITSY SPIDER CLIMBED UP THE WATER SPOUT, a voice that sounded like his father screamed in Tommy's ear.

  Then Tommy felt Lyle Holroyd's fingers encircle his throat.

  23

  Prescott

  Young Prescott asked, "I killed myself?" Cassie's finger remained on his lips, so he found speech difficult. Her finger was cold, like steel, and when he moved his face away from his wife's pressing digit, it was the barrel of a Smith & Wesson for a flickering moment before becoming his wife's finger again.

  "You saw clearly how little your life meant in the face of such unearthly Love and Beauty," she murmured, pressing her face against his neck, kissing him with her moist lips.

  Then she looked deep into his eyes, and he felt drawn to hers; green orbs of light, turning to blue, like the cold heart of a gas flame suddenly turned up. Then he struggled briefly (no, I don't want this, I have to resist this, I want life, I don't want to die, but her voice was already inside his head in a perfect union, twisting his thoughts. Give in to this, you were an old man, now you are young, let it go, the battle is over, now the warrior must surrender), caught in an undertow, being pulled farther away from shore, down, down, down; the others were dead, there were no others, only he and his wife. He let her kiss him, slipping her rubbery tongue that tasted of sour vomit in between his lips, sour vomit and cold steel, her tongue became a cold steel rod stroking his tonsils.

  He gagged, and it was the gag reflex that brought his teeth down on the barrel of the gun, and there was a pain in one of his molars from biting it. For a brief moment he knew that it was a trick, that they wanted him to pull the trigger, that he was in the cellar of the Marlowe-Houston House, but then he saw her again, her face pressed against his and he reached up to stroke the side of his wife's beautiful face one last time. His thumb pressed into a cold hollow of her cheek, but it came down on a trigger.

  Quickly, Prescott pulled the gun out of his mouth.

  Cassie exploded into a shower of cool blue radiance.

  24

  Tommy

  The hand was crushing his windpipe; he tried not to gasp for air. Hold your breath, that's all, just like you're swimming, hold your breath, this hand's got to get a better grip, and when it lets go for that split second, you can get it.

  "Oh, God," Clare was moaning, "oh, please, please."

  Itsy-bitsy spider! his father shouted from some empty room in Tommy's mind.

  "Give Daddy a Big Kiss, Clare, lovely, lovely," the skinless thing sputtered.

  Tommy thought: Just another second, c'mon, you can do it, Mackenzie, you can feel those fingers just getting ready to—

  He felt the fingers relax. He exhaled.

  Tommy grabbed the hand with both of his and wrenched it from his throat.

  Lyle's fingers wriggled violently; it was like he was holding a horseshoe crab upside down and it was mad as hell. The handcuffs swung from side to side.

  Clare began to make watery gasping noises that began deep in her throat.

  Lyle's hand clenched its fist and beat at the air.

  You want to strangle somebody, Mr. Hand? You want to really do a number? Tommy stepped onto the stairs. Carefully, he went around Clare who gazed up at him with unseeing eyes.

  The creature that lay upon her growled at Tommy.

  It opened its mouth. Tommy saw tiny silver teeth embedded in the purple gums.

  NAUGHTY BOY! NAUGHTY. NAUGHTY! his father screamed from deep within the skinless thing's bowels.

  Tommy slapped Lyle Holroyd's hand against the creature's neck. As if by instinct, the hand snapped like a bear trap around the exposed sagging muscles beneath the chin. Yellow froth began pouring out of the monster's mouth; Its own pulpy hands went to Its throat, tugging at Lyle's fingers.

  While the monster was distracted, Tommy reached down and with all his might—pretend you're strong, that's what the sheriff said, believe in your strength the way you believe in the nightmare—and pushed the monster off the woman.

  It went over the edge of the stairs, falling into the deep blue cellar below.

  Tommy heard a mushy-thud as it hit the unseen floor.

  Chapter Twenty

  THE GHOST DANCE

  1

  Cup

  The fall was no more than two yards, and I was cushioned by the writhing mud that splashed around me as I came down. It smelled like shit. I vomited into it. I landed beside Teddy Amory, who seemed to be asleep, dreaming. And I knew: The Eater of Souls, the Mother of Nightmares, needed this little girl to sleep, to dream. Awake she was just that ordinary little girl from the newspaper pictures, a blank canvas. An empty field. But asleep, in her trance, she was the door, she was the gift, she was the passage from the nightmare world to this. The house, above me, inhaled and exhaled with each of her breaths. And she did look beautiful, an otherworldly beauty, her skin smooth and glowing, vibrant.

  They were keeping her in a constant state of arousal, of seizure. Attached to her arms, legs, chest, neck, along her ears, her forehead, matted in her hair, were the crawling minions of the Eater of Souls: the worms, the maggots, the leeches of corruption. They clung to her, but did not invade her body. All they were doing was keeping the door open for as long as possible. That meant for as long as the girl could survive. Their power increased with her in this state of flux; with the door kept open, the Eater of Souls was still on the verge of coming. The dead would rise, but not really the dead, just images of the dead, images to manipulate, to cheat, to use Its twin weapons of fear and revenge upon what the Eater of Souls, the Mother of Nightmares, was most jealous of:

  Those who lived and breathed in the flesh, who possessed free will to worship as they chose, to love whom they would, who lived a limited span of years, and whose souls could not be eaten, could not be destroyed, but were beyond the reach and grasp of this sewer-rat god—even the Tenebro Indians had abandoned this spirit to Its underworld prison.

  "You're mad because you can't live!" I shouted on my knees to the translucent blue smoke that drifted about the pit. "You're nothing but a grave robber and a molester! Come on, you fucking Nightmare Breeder, why don't you take me on!"

  Sound of sniggering, and then like wind through a long twisting tunnel, "We have taken you on, we are a part of you, and you are a part of us," and the voice seemed not a voice at all, but words drifting through my bloodstream like the beginnings of a fever, blood cells fighting this new strain within me, fighting for their survival.

  The voice I recognized finally: my own.

  "I am not part of you, you, you—" Then an image from my past shot through me like a bullet: Billy Bates on the jungle gym, saying "You, you, you," and seeing Bart Kinter in the gauze darkness of the school's boiler room, and Bart's hand clutching my
ankle at the footbridge as he said, "It's you, Coffeybreath, I'm in your blood," and Clare slapping me at the courthouse, crying, saying, "What kind of disease did you bring with you!" You-you-you.

  Inside me, the voice ate away at my strength. The Mother of Nightmares is your mother, Cup. You are the key, and the door waits for a turn of the key. Do you understand?

  I was to feed upon Teddy Amory. I saw myself tearing her apart while her small white legs flutter-kicked out at me, spilling her steaming entrails across the slime and filth before the life went out of her, drinking the warm blood, gobbling down her heart while it was beating, sucking the eyes from her orbital ridge.

  Like the Tenebro Indian Initiation, the test for shaman, if I could survive it, if I could resist it (Why, Cup? Why resist such power, such glory, such beauty?) Teddy has the taint, she has the gift, oh, God, she is the door, but not from the world of the spirits, but the doorway to this particular spirit, this Ghoulmaker, and she is dying, I knew that, because a human being could not live long with that inside them, that fit. That dance. (That ecstasy, Cup, notice the gentle crescent of her lips, happy, pleasured, she longs for the key to bring her to the heights, to the pinnacle, oh, sweet Cup.)

  The goat dance within her, the empty field of her soul.

  Mow it, mow that field. Get down on all fours like a bull, tear at the flesh and the grass, all flesh is all flesh is all flesh

  To wear her skin and shave the thin epidermal layer of her face and wear it over my own as a mask. Because the birth of the Eater of Souls, the Spirit made Flesh, would come from within me.