Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  2

  In the smokehouse. Bloodstains. Chalk, fading. Fragrant, almost March-like smell of seedlings and freshly turned earth mixed with the coppery tang in the air and the smell of dead animal. Dead man. Dead father.

  "Why do you think he came out here?" Harry asked.

  "No idea. I really don't know."

  "It's almost a ritual," Harry said. "He was laid out spread-eagle." He spread his arms and legs wide. "No ropes, no tethers. They suspect he was lifted up at one point, but then laid back down. Whoever did it let him go slowly. The major cuts didn't happen until near the end. Whoever did this wanted him alive for most of it. Whoever did this, he didn't fight them."

  3

  I caught my breath and held it. Then, exhaled. "I feel like a little kid scared of the dark."

  "You used to play that game in here," Harry said.

  "Yep."

  "I never understood it. I always wondered what was going on because when I tried to play it, I just didn't see what you saw."

  "It was just imagination," I said.

  "Sure," he said. "Like any other kid's make-believe game. You close your eyes and you start making a journey in your mind."

  "Is that what you're interested in?" I asked. "The Dark Game?"

  "Not really. But it happened here. Your father's murder. You played the game here, and you all had some strange stories to tell back then."

  "We did?"

  "You don't remember?"

  "Done everything I could to not remember. And then some. I just seem to remember creating a fantasy world."

  "An escape hatch," Harry said, "That's what your dad called it. I heard him yelling at you one time because he found some rags we'd used as blindfolds. And he told you not to keep using an escape hatch, that it was only for truly bad times."

  I looked up and around the walls. Harry shone his flashlight into the corners of the stone walls.

  "Awful," I whispered through gritted teeth.

  The blood had begun to turn brown on the stone. The ceiling of the smokehouse was too dark to see. Harry's flashlight spun around; he went to the walls and carefully looked at things that I had no desire to see, let alone know about. I just caught a glimpse of the markings on the floor where my father's body had been found, a jigsaw puzzle of a body, cut in several places. I got the feeling that someone else was there, in some dark recess of the place. I began to feel the small hairs on my arms stand up. I felt the way I would've waking up from a nightmare that had seemed all too real.

  The temperature inside the smokehouse dropped several degrees, and I felt something on my earlobe, as if an insect were crawling along it, tickling.

  I felt light-headed, and the room seemed to spin. I tried saying something to Harry—I think I'm fainting, I wanted to say—but words wouldn't come out of my mouth.

  "Holy shit!" Harry gasped as he turned toward me, and I felt the beam of the flashlight on my face like an exploded sun—it blinded me for an instant, and when my vision returned, I felt as if I were looking out from someone else's eyes.

  4

  The world seemed to fall in on itself, into a black hole of darkness as a wave of nausea went through me and my knees buckled. I knew I would fall, or was in the process of falling, but suddenly, it all went dark.

  5

  When I woke up, I was outside, looking up into the empty sky, feeling a coldness at the back of my neck and the worst headache of my life pressing against my skull.

  "Nemo?" Harry asked. He crouched beside me; I felt his arm under the back of my neck, supporting me.

  I tried to speak, but my mouth felt dry and raw, and I could feel the beginnings of a sore throat.

  Harry's face was white. He had scratches all along his cheeks. His lower lip was cut and bloody, and he had the purplish beginnings of a black left eye. "Jesus H. Christ, Nemo, what in God's name was that all about?"

  I coughed out, "I don't know." Felt like razor blades in my throat.

  "Is that you in there, or do I need to hit you again?" Harry asked.

  I felt pressure from his arm across my neck.

  He was afraid I was going to lunge at him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  1

  "You nearly beat the crap out of me," Harry said. His face bore thin red marking around the eyes and nose. He sweated profusely. "I thought it was a seizure. At first. It was like trying to help a grizzly."

  "Sorry," I said, feeling awkward apologizing for something that I wasn't even sure had come from me. "I can't believe it."

  2

  I felt as if something had been torn out of me against my will. I felt raped in some awful way.

  Cold and torn and used by something that had pressed its way into my body.

  It was a feeling of insanity.

  Was I going crazy? Was this a sign? Was it stress?

  I tried to remember the stories that my father had told of Granny and how she'd had her spells when she'd start talking to people who weren't there; or when my grandfather had tried to set a fire in the gas oven and nearly blown up Hawthorn altogether but for the quick thinking on my father's part.

  But those were old-age diseases—those were dementias that came after seventy.

  They weren't this.

  Part of me genuinely could not believe it.

  Part of me even harbored a damning hope that Harry had made it up and would tell me in a moment that it was a big joke. That he'd scraped up his own face, punched himself with the back of the flashlight, and was having a good one at my expense so soon after my father's murder.

  "Let's get back to the house," he said, easing up on my neck and chest. He stood up and offered me his hand. "I don't know what the hell just happened, but you look like you should lie down on something other than mud."

  3

  Once I felt well enough to stand, I decided that I wasn't going to go back to the house.

  Not just yet.

  I had grown a bit worried about Brooke's nocturnal rambling through the rooms of the house, and I didn't want to add yet another disturbance to her life if I could help it.

  Harry offered to drive me to his digs in the village—he'd inherited both the Burnley Gazette office and the house in which it existed. He had a big fat Jeep Grand Cherokee that was about seven years old and seemed like it had the crap kicked out of it in dents and nicks—the roof itself had a dent that made it seem as if an elephant had fallen on it. "I got it cheap. One of the rich guys got in a wreck up island two summers ago," he told me. Then he laughed. "Christ, I can't believe I'm talking about this car. All I'm thinking about is what just happened."

  4

  When we got to his office, the first thing he did was get a bottle of aged scotch from the middle file drawer by his desk.

  "None for me," I said.

  "You sure?"

  "Okay. Okay. Maybe just a little."

  "It's for me, Christ almighty," he said. He filled a tumbler with the brown liquid and drank half of it back before coming up for air. Then he filled a mug about half full and brought it over to me.

  The warm fire of the scotch was a nice antidote to the ice I'd been feeling in my flesh.

  "How bad was it?" I asked.

  He pointed to the scratches on his face and around his throat. A dark bruise on his wrist where I'd apparently tried to tear his arm off. "And you tried to bite me," he said. "You practically knocked the wind out of me, Nemo. I'm not sure how, but you did."

  "Shit."

  "Any idea why?"

  "No."

  "You said you'd get all of us," he said. "And then you knocked the flashlight out of my hand." He made a motion with his arm as if he were physically trying to remember what I had done. He moved his arms slowly and cocked his head to the side. "Then you you reached up and tore my glasses off. Somewhere in there, your fingernails went into my face. Not sure when you hit my lip. And you socked me a good one right here." He tapped a finger just below his left eye. The skin around it had grown darker.

 
; "Jesus. I'm sorry. Jesus."

  "Ever have seizures?"

  "None that I know of."

  "Ever have a scan done? MRI?"

  "No."

  "When was the last time you had a physical?"

  I shrugged. "College. Junior year."

  "Any accidents?"

  "Like what?"

  "Anything that would cause trauma to your head?"

  "Nothing. Accident free. I guess I fell on the sidewalk once down in Virginia. It was muddy. I slipped and hit my knee and elbow. Hard. That's the only thing I can think of."

  "Didn't you get hurt on the ice once?"

  "Oh, yeah. You mean when we were fourteen? Yeah, I fell and cracked my head open."

  "But you were checked after that."

  "Nothing beyond some stitches."

  He took another swig of scotch. "You didn't even sound like you."

  "Who'd I sound like?"

  "No idea. Someone different." As, an afterthought, Harry Withers added, "A woman."

  5

  He went over it again:

  "So, I'm looking around. I was crouching down, and I hear this noise. Well, maybe not much of a noise. It's like a high-pitched sound. I smell smoke, but I'm not sure why. Except it's an old smokehouse and it's winter. You know how sometimes those old stone houses can reek of smoke even if they haven't been used in forever? Only you say something right at that moment, and I'm ignoring you—you say something I don't quite understand. Now that I think of it, it was as if your tongue was heavy in your mouth, like you'd been shot up with Novocain. I turn my head back, Nemo, and you're standing over me. The freaky thing about it is that not a second before, you were across the room. I know it's a small room, but I would've heard you. But it was as if you suddenly were just standing over me.

  "I'm not one to get started over nothing, but I have to admit, my mouth went dry when I saw you, and I felt something in the air, as if the weather had changed outside, or as if there were static electricity. Maybe the feeling you're supposed to get when lightning is about to hit where you're standing. That's what it felt like. And I look up at you. I can't quite see your face. It's not so dark with you right there that I can't see your face at all. But you seem funny, and I'm a little freaked, and I hold the flashlight up, and that's when you knock it out of my hand. But I see your face for a second, and Nemo, it ain't your face, buddy. It's someone else, it's like you took off a mask. I don't know what was so different, but you looked angry, and your lips seemed different.

  "And then I stood up, and you were whispering something over and over again. I said, Nemo?' and you started in on all that stuff, and it's just not you, Nemo. I know you too well, and it's not you at all. You clawed at my face and my glasses went flying, and I had to shove you as hard as I could, which is why your head probably hurts a little, since you hit the wall and went down.

  "It was like " he said, finishing with a last sip of scotch.

  "Like?"

  He smacked his lips. Shook his head. He nearly grinned when he said it. "It's gonna sound crazy. But it was like you were possessed."

  I thought for half a second he had said "obsessed." Then I remembered that Harry had been the superstitious one. He had always believed there were ghosts on the island—at least as a boy. I had figured he had outgrown this, but based on mentioning possession, I assumed he still believed that there were ghosts. And that they got inside people.

  As if reading my mind, he said, "It's probably just stress. Anxiety. All the crap you've been going through since you got back."

  I nodded.

  He leaned forward slightly, staring at me with an intensity that made him seem a bit maniacal. "We gotta go back there, bud. This time with a tape recorder."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  1

  I agreed to go back to the smokehouse with Harry.

  I didn't want to go in there again.

  I didn't want to feel it.

  Not a terrible feeling, or a fear of being out of control.

  I had been turned on in the smokehouse. I had felt an arousal the likes of which I can only call sexual, but which seemed more encompassing than that.

  It bad been like some kind of high within my bloodstream, and when I finally tried to figure it out, I realized: I had felt like a kid again, on the cusp of pleasure and a rare, nearly erotic feeling that all my burdens in life had been lifted.

  It was like taking a hit of a really powerful drug that made the user feel euphoria, excitement, and a liberation from gravity itself.

  2

  Harry and I trudged up one late afternoon, about three or so, with flashlights and a digital voice recorder that Harry usually used when interviewing some old salt or corporate CEO who vacationed up island. "Just talk normally. It'll pick up all kinds of sounds. It's a sensitive bit of machinery," he said.

  Unlocking the door to the smokehouse, he made an "after you" gesture with his hands.

  3

  I stepped inside, and nothing happened. I stood in the smokehouse, closed my eyes for a second or two because I did feel anxious just being there.

  I guess it was during those few seconds that something did indeed happen, because when I opened my eyes—it was little more than a blink—my watch—and Harry—told me that twenty minutes had gone by.

  And it was all on tape.

  4

  "It's fantastic!" he said, with the glee of a boy. "Oh my God, is this ever amazing! It gave me goose bumps, standing there. It was absolutely chilling!"

  "Harry?" I asked.

  He pressed the play button on the small cylindrical machine.

  "Who are you?" Harry's voice on the tape.

  Silence. I glanced at Harry, but he kept his eyes on the recorder.

  Five minutes or more passed. I tried to block out all other sounds in the room, and any from outside the window. I was sure I could hear the whirr of the tape itself. I leaned slightly forward as if I might miss whatever it was that he was so keen on. I imagined myself standing there, eyes closed, in some kind of trance.

  And then something changed on the tape. Like a small mouse scurrying in a corner. Just a whisper of a noise.

  I tried to focus all attention on that small sound.

  And then it exploded.

  "LET ME OUT!" The scream was so loud it was nearly distorted on the tape. "LET ME OUT! PLEASE! OH GOD! LET ME OUT! DON'T DO THIS TO ME! PLEASE! OH GOD! LET ME GO! PLEASE SOMEBODY LET ME OUT! GOD HELP ME! GOD HELP ME!"

  PART THREE

  "You owe me five farthings, say the bells of St. Martin's "

  —traditional

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  1

  The voice kept screaming until Harry shut off the machine. He held it in his hand, looked down at it, then up at me.

  "Worst part is," Harry said, "I've heard this voice before."

  2

  Harry said, "I interviewed a psychic once—a medium. She and her husband rented the Houghs' place up on Grotto Road for the summer four years ago. My dad still ran the paper, and I was trying to do those pieces about local color and the tourists, and she had just gotten on some TV show about reaching the other side or something, so she was a near-celeb. She told me that she'd channel to show me what it was like. I may be wrong, but it was that voice. I've got the tape somewhere back in the files." He said this as if he were just thinking it aloud for the first time. "Either you're possessed," he added, "or you're insane. You choose your adventure."

  "Insane," I said, and looked at the small tape machine and wished it didn't exist.

  "Ever had any problems of this sort before?"

  "This is ridiculous," I said.

  "Ever had any problems of this sort before?" he repeated.

  "No."

  "That you know of," he said.

  "Harry," I said. "Give me a break."

  "Can I get your permission to do something in that smokehouse?" Harry asked.

  "Depends," I said.

  "You want to find out who murdered yo
ur father?"

  "Of course."

  "I think the police missed something." He wiped his face with his hands. "I hate to ask you this, but do you believe in ghosts?"

  "No," I said.

  "Good," Harry sighed, half grinning. "I was afraid this was fraud. Like you were trying to create some bizarre defense."

  "Why the hell would I do that?"

  "In case Brooke gets arrested."

  "You think she will?"

  His face became unreadable.

  "Look," he said. "Let me find the other tape. Maybe it'll mean something to you."

  3

  That evening, we sat in Harry's uncomfortable living room, and he played the tape. It was on an old reel-to-reel that his father had used for interviews. The psychic, named Mary Manley, had written two books on the subjects of life after death. One had been called Where Angels Fear and the other, Talking to the Lost. Harry pointed to the books up high on his dusty bookshelf, next to the fireplace, in which he'd built a comfortable, cozy fire. We picked at our white cartons of noodles and chicken with the chopsticks, although I ended up going for a fork. Harry told me about her books.