Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  Twelve years. It was you who took up the bone and who sacrificed Bart Kinter to us, when Bart himself had been Our Chosen. But your blood, new and fresh. Our corruption is coursing through your veins, taking you over. You have survived the years well; you have tried to resist, but that is done. You heard our call, and you came. Now, deliver yourself unto us. You are the key to unlock the door. It shall be closed no more forever.

  I bent over the girl, her breath was like the sweetest perfume, and when I looked at her, she was Lily Cammack, naked, white, her hair licking the tips of her tumescent breasts; her legs were carelessly drawn apart, one knee bent, her body trembling as if from a slight chill. She gazed languidly up at me, and her petal lips drooped into a pout as she said: "To you shall be all love, all love, come to me, feel how my flesh desires you," and she reached out, grabbing my right hand, guiding it down her slightly distended belly, to the soft thatch of hair below. "Rip me, Cup," Lily said, forcing my swollen right hand against her moist labia, "there."

  "No!" I screamed, and my cry echoed, bouncing and crashing through the throbbing chamber. I tore my hand away from her grip just as if I'd stuck it into a hornet's nest. Below her stomach, where her vagina should've been, was a small mouth, flashing silvery sharp teeth, grinning, and Lily also was grinning at me. It was no longer Lily, but Bart Kinter, laughing, and the mouth between his legs became an uncircumcised penis. It flopped to one side, and out of it poured blood, at first just dripping steadily, but suddenly it was spraying. Kinter began sobbing, "Jesus, man, it's bleeding, what did you make me do, man? You made me bleed, oh, man " Beneath his face was Lily's face begging him. "Give it to me, rip me to shreds, yes, oh, dear God, yes," and below her face, another, some anonymous girl who might even be dead so what did it really matter if you were to tear into her flesh?

  "Just shut up, just shut up!" I cried out, and drawing myself back on my knees, I raised the bone high above my head and hit Kinter across the nose with it.

  Like snow dissolving to rain, all the faces united for a moment and then separated. I saw Teddy Amory beneath the bone as I hit her. Her eyes opened with the contact, her nose was bleeding. It had brought her out of the low boil they'd been keeping her on.

  Dozens of tiny dark snouts vacuumed at the blood when it splashed down on the filthy ground. Crawling maggots.

  The blood, Cup, you will like her blood. You are hungry for her. You want her inside you.

  I felt the pull within my muscles, as if every cell cried out for the food this girl's body could provide.

  2

  Teddy

  Teddy screamed as if she were just being born, her eyelids fluttering as she tried to resist the constant seizure that was upon her. A pain shot across her eyes and her nose clogged; she gasped through her mouth for breath.

  She awoke.

  3

  Cup

  I KNOW WHAT KIND OF MONSTER I AM.

  MY NAME IS CUP COFFEY, AND THEY ARE INSIDE ME

  MY NAME IS THE EATER OF SOULS

  GIVE ME A BIG KISS, TEDDY. KISS OF THE POCKET LIPS

  WE ARE GONNA BREED MONSTERS, TEDDY, YOU AND ME

  YOU LOOK LIKE YOU BEEN GROWING IN THIS GARDEN TOO LONG

  TIME TO MOW YOU DOWN, GIRL, TAKE MY MEMBER AND JUST PLOW

  ALL FLESH IS GRASS.

  4

  Tommy

  "I-I can't see, please, help me," Clare gasped as Tommy lifted her up to a sitting position. "It made me—oh, God, it made me blind—blind—no eye—"

  "It's all right now," Tommy said.

  "So weak, I'm so so sleepy," Clare gasped, and Tommy tried to bring her to her feet. He glanced down into the gaseous pit of the cellar and saw the floor writhing with maggots and leeches.

  The hideous slick and shiny creatures foamed and rippled like a slow, viscous waterfall toward a gaping hole along the wall. Blue gaslight like steam hissed and boiled from the depths of that hole. Moans and muted shrieks seemed to be coming from that aperture, nothing that Tommy could say was recognizably human, although it did sound at times like a far-off chanting of several voices superimposed one upon the other. Images like slides were pressed one on top of another as Tommy gazed across the edge of that pit, and thought for a moment he saw Prescott speaking with a young woman in a green dress, and there were dark formless things crawling across his face as he held a gun to his lips—

  But that moving-picture image flickered and was gone, and Tommy saw an old man named Frank Gaston putting a gun to his wife Louise's head, just to the bottom of her pillbox hat, and pulling the trigger—

  But that image melted like wax into a great valley of bones, ribcages, skulls, then separating into gray fat maggots, hungrily devouring the skinless creature that had once been Dr. Brian Cammack—

  Tommy knew he was seeing only the hallucinatory vision caused by that gas that billowed from that pit. For a moment he thought he saw Prescott again, the old man reaching down into his pocket—

  He shouted out for him, and he thought, for one split second, that Prescott looked at him, but out of the corner of his eyes, stealthily, as if he didn't want it known that they could see each other for that tenth of a second.

  Then suddenly, through the fog of noise and blue, came the tremendous wailing of a young child.

  5

  Teddy

  Teddy Amory awoke from her deep sleep. Her nose was bleeding where Cup had hit her. She looked up into the face of a human monster, sores bursting across his face, his hair slicked back, thick drool dripping from between his lips. He held a bone in the air. The end knob of the bone was red.

  Red with Teddy's blood.

  "I know what kind of monster I am!" the man shouted.

  6

  Prescott

  "Show me who you are," Prescott said. There were moments when he saw the others: Clare at the top of the cellar stairs, George Connally drained of blood in a tangled spider's web in an upstairs bedroom. Tommy staring deep into the cellar. Teddy Amory shrinking from Cup Coffey as he waved a long bone in front of her face, dripping blood-stained maggots into the festering mud; then his surroundings became that endless yellow field alongside the stream. When he had managed to remove the Smith & Wesson from his lips, and point it at his wife, she had disappeared, exploding into a million colors; he looked down into that stream and saw in the misty blue darkness Cup bending over the Amory girl and he was about to tell him to get her and get out as quickly as possible, but there was something about Cup that shimmered and was something else, something unspeakably monstrous there, something that was inside Cup, devouring him. But the vision melted into a stream again and his own reflection.

  The mirror of our souls, he thought. Prescott even felt them crawling on him, along his arms, on the back of his neck.

  You see, the voices hissed.

  "I see you keep us looking into ourselves so much and showing us the fear in our own hearts, but I don't see you." Prescott realized that they were speaking to him inside himself. He was becoming infested, just as he was certain that Cup was also becoming infested.

  The voices screeched in unison: We are unspeakably beautiful. We are already inside you, Scotty, we are burrowing beneath your skin we will lay our eggs in the gray matter of your brain our children will suck the marrow from your bones—

  Prescott felt something squirming in his hand and looked down. The gun in his right hand became a mass of leeches, attaching themselves to his palm. He shuddered, plucking them from the skin. "You carrion-eaters!" And he realized too late that he had just tossed his only weapon away—if there was any weapon. Another illusion, another hallucinatory vision.

  No, this is real, this is the world as it is, Scotty, the voices coursed through his bloodstream, our world, the world of the Eater of Souls, the breeding ground of Nightmares, it is what all men come to, what you, too, shall call home, and very soon. We were worshipped and feared by men for centuries before your kind's history was even born. And now, through this door and with this key, and for a brief flic
kering moment, Prescott saw below him again. Cup raising a bone against Teddy Amory, who lay naked amongst the filth and slime of that underworld. But the image became molten lava, and then Prescott was again surrounded by the blue fog.

  "Then show me, show me who you are," Prescott repeated. He reached into his pocket and hesitated.

  What are you do—

  "I was just thinking—"

  We know your thoughts—we are your thoughts.

  "Really? But an old man like me, my memory, so bad, sometimes I don't even know what I'm thinking." Prescott knew he would have to act quickly, he would have to juggle several thoughts at once, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is up to—is that the quote? My memory, so bad He would have to distract—

  Distract? It was the chorus of voices sifting his blood, his memory.

  "'When I was one and twenty,'" Prescott began, and he fished in his jacket pocket for that thing—keep thinking thing.

  Thing? Their searching voice inside his head, like a blood disease taking over, like another being crawling beneath his skin, with his body fighting it.

  Prescott was sweating, trembling. "'When I was one and twenty, I heard a wise man say '" His hand clutched the thing in his pocket. Prescott thought: thing. Just a thing.

  What thing?

  "Poem, by Housman," Prescott gasped, and he felt suddenly weak as if someone had just punched him in the stomach, and he lost control of his bladder. "Oh, Lord help me," he cried.

  7

  Cup

  Like strings of spit, the jawless sucking mouths of worms clung tenaciously to Teddy Amory's body, holding her in the damp filth in which they lived. Teddy moaned as Cup ran the edge of the bone over her stomach; her white naked body was soaked in a viscous slime smelling of human excrement and rotting meat. The chilling water seemed to be rising gradually, soaking through his skin.

  Cup looked up above him to the entrance to this ancient toilet. For a brief moment, he thought he saw Prescott Nagle. Cup did not recognize him as someone he knew.

  I KNOW WHAT KIND OF MONSTER I AM

  The smell of the girl, so delicious, irresistible.

  HUNGRY—UNDER THE SKIN, SKIN OF THE WORLD, PEEL BACK, YELLOW FAT, INSIDE HER,

  UNLOCK, DOOR, MAGGOTS, EAT

  8

  Clare

  Clare cried out: "Prescott!"

  Later she would be convinced she saw him standing before her in the cellar—but how could she when she could no longer see anything? It felt like another episode coming on. One mind, she thought, we are all one mind now. We've been separated in our nightmares, but we've come together again. We're still one mind. The pain from the blindness had been swift, but it was gone now. Her fear was still enormous, but she felt comforted with this communion.

  She felt that Prescott was speaking directly to her, although she knew he wasn't. He was reciting some poem, and the thought: whatchacallit, pipe thing, ran through her brain. In the dark night that she now was surrounded by, she heard his mind sifting through its own memory. "My whatchacallit, oh, for goodness sake, I can never remember simple words like that, isn't that silly? I could tell you the maiden name of every married woman in this town, but not the simplest of objects—"

  Clare saw it: the pipe thing. It was silver, and had "To Scotty, Love, C." on one side, and when he opened it in the movie in her head it had a wheel, like a Ferris wheel spinning faster, but not a Ferris wheel, a spinning wheel—and then something else flashed with a lightning brightness:

  "She shall prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die " and Clare knew that was from Sleeping Beauty, but could not figure out what that meant, it had something to do with the memory of having seen Lily in front of the Key Theater, and Clare didn't understand

  But the wheel continued spinning at a faster rate, and the silver pipe thing in Prescott's hand—

  Without imagining the exact word, the precise image, Clare knew.

  "We," she whispered to Tommy as he lifted her up, "have to—out—get out—now—out."

  9

  NO!

  All flesh is grass, mow the field, we know what kind of monster you are. Cup, you are us, we are in you, and in HER, Cup, the power, you will rule the living and the dead—

  NO!

  The Eater of Souls has conquered Death, Cup, life and death, one and the same, there is no life, only death, sweet death, we eat the dead, Cup, we eat the living, and you are us and we are you.

  10

  Prescott

  We are your Lord now, old man, show us what thing you have in your hand. The voice was at once inside and outside his head. It was as if something had crawled right in his ear and was speaking to him.

  "'Give crowns and pounds and guineas, but not your heart Not your heart '" Prescott rumbled with the lines, trying to remember, and at the same time trying to forget something else, trying to not think about it, what his hand was curled about. He could feel his body going, losing functions: even his hand trembled, but he worked hard to embed that thing in his palm. That thing. Prescott thought: whatchacallit. You know, pipe thing.

  He felt them rippling beneath the skin of his ankles, and he knew in moments he would be dead. Moments, the thought fluttered like some bloodsucking winged insect landing upon him, finding entry into his bloodstream, and Prescott didn't know if it was his own voice or their voices, because he was beginning to sound more and more like them.

  Dead, yes, you will be dead, you will be food for us, you are food for us, Scotty—but like an alarm going off, the voices broke off and were searching through his blood, sifting this thought from his organism, trying to translate those words: whatchacallit, pipe thing, images swept before his face like a swirling cyclone. His beautiful Cassie, Gower Lowry, Jake Amory, Lily Cammack, all blending into each other, the burning children at the goat dance, the Ghost Dance, visions of Tenebro Indian winter blood feasts, Virginia Houston sleeping beneath a bundle of kindling, burning, burning and screaming, burning, burning

  And his blood cried out against him: PIPETHING!

  It had an image now, brilliant fire, it had a picture from Prescott's own brain, and he knew that he would have to move fast, he would have to do it, just do it, thank God for my bad memory, for not remembering whatchacallit, my pipe thing.

  Prescott shuddered as he lifted the silver lighter up high and pressed his thumb against the metal wheel. He sent out a prayer to the others. Through the filter of blue gas, he'd felt Clare there with him for just an instant. He hoped she could escape, that Tommy would run free, but he had no hope for Cup and Teddy in the sewer beneath the house: it was too late for them, Cup had already been taken over and the girl, the door, was in his grasp, awaiting the turning of a key. The Eater of Souls must be destroyed, its carrion eaters must be buried in their catacombs for good.

  But their thought was eating its way out of his body: destroy. The skin along his legs was ripping open like rice paper, he would crumble in a moment. He felt his entire body begin to pull apart as if he were just a rag doll. Blood began pouring from his nose.

  11

  Teddy

  "NO!" the man cried as he towered over Teddy, waving the bone above her head.

  Teddy smelled the gas station smell, the one in her dreams, the one that reminded her of Torch, and of that night when Jake came after her.

  Do dreams smell?

  "I know!" the man cried out. His face glowed as if inside him an electric current had been switched on and was making him twitch. "I know! What! Kind! Of! Monster! I! Am!"

  Then Teddy knew:

  It was in him just as it was in her. And what was in them was not Good or Evil, but was powerful, and whatever was keeping them here in this mire was Evil, and wanted their power.

  "No!" the man cried, and his eyes were rolling up into the back of his head, until all she could see were the whites. "All Flesh!"

  The bone came whistling down toward Teddy's face.

  12

  Tommy

>   Tommy had felt it, too, what would happen, what Prescott was planning, and that thought went through his brain as he helped Clare to her feet, One mind, we are whatchacallit, we are one, pipe thing, mind. When Clare grasped his arm to bring herself up, it was just as if she'd said those words to him. Those words through her mouth, but with Prescott Nagle's voice.

  13

  Teddy

  The bone came whistling through the air, Teddy flinched, turning her head to the side. It missed her jaw by a fraction of an inch. The bone slurped as it sank into the steamy wastes.

  Teddy looked up at the man standing over her.

  He fell to his knees in front of her.

  He was gagging, trying to vomit something out of himself. He twitched spastically; his tongue flagged out of his mouth, dripping with a yellow-green cud.

  14

  Cup

  Something had distracted the screaming voice inside Cup; something had sucked the corrupt blood right out of him.

  PIPETHING! It cried.

  Pipething! the voice got smaller.

  pipething!

  Drenched in sweat, gasping, Cup tried to spit the voice out of the back of his throat. He drooled maggots from the sides of his mouth. He coughed violently, expelling the evil that screamed like a tiny creature caught in his windpipe, pipething.

  15

  Prescott

  With the last of his energy, Prescott Nagle spun the metal wheel of the lighter his wife Cassie had given him, and a tiny flame erupted from its heart.