Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  Hugh sipped his beer. Verena, you old white supremacist racist, I’m willing to bet you were not well liked by many people. I’m willing to bet if it weren’t for your daddy’s money… Hell, just like me, Verena, you and I are part of the same class, ain’t we? But I’m willing to bet that, just like me, if someone scratched your surface, you’d be as common as a whore. Hugh skimmed the pages. Verena, in her tedious eighties while writing her life story, went on ad nauseam about the lost, refined qualities of fin de siècle society. Hugh thought: You dumbass debutante, Verena, you had everything served to you on a silver platter, you lived in one of the most fascinating times of history. You and me, Verena, you and me. For me, the best prep schools, the best college the Old Man could buy my way into. a pretty damn good law school (although not as good as the one Ted got into, and certainly not as good as the Old Man’s), summers in Europe and winters in the Caribbean. Hugh lifted the beer in a silent toast. Here’s to the girls who do, Verena, although I guess you’re one of the girls who never did.

  He finished the bottle; there were three left in the six-pack he’d picked up at the liquor store on Nineteenth Street. He flipped through more pages in the thick diary.

  Get to our house, lady, I don’t want this shit about the glorious days before these times of Sodom and Gomorrah. I want specifics: the wallpaper, the size of the rooms.

  He read:

  …Draper House was small by the standards of my upbringing. Its narrow passages were no match for the stately halls of my father’s Hudson River estate, a home which I grew to miss terribly. But my husband, Addison, was no doubt relieved to be out from under the wing of a rather demanding father-in-law, and the children seemed to enjoy the carriage rides around the park and the contact with so many other children being a daily occurrence rather than something reserved for planned weekends. Emmie and James were just reaching the point in childhood where everything seems an adventure, and if I had only had some inkling of the tragedy to come, I suppose I would have been more strict with them, I would have observed the goings-on in the house more carefully. But as I write this, for the first time, nearly fifty years later, I realize what a vain and foolish young woman I was, a woman barely thirty who believed that children should be seen and not heard, and that all matters of education and social carriage should be left in the hands of a competent governess. I have no one to blame but myself for the tragedies that befell my children, for not seeing when I should have seen and not hearing when I should have heard. But the house itself. Draper House, was as much to blame, I think, as anything.

  For it was the house itself that brought about the deaths of my young children.

  What gives a bad place its intention?

  4.

  For Rachel, the migraine came and went in a few hours. She became restless, wandering down to the living room and then to the turret room. The wallpaper was in the same shambles they’d left it in before the trip, and the room seemed washed out in the bright sunlight. That word HOUNFOUR was still up on the wall. Hugh sat over in the window seat, reading; he didn’t notice her as she came in. She saw the beer beside him, and it didn’t really bother her as much as it normally would have. He could have a drink now and then if he wanted to. It was no big deal. She just didn’t want him drunk, because daddies shouldn’t be drunk. Rachel wanted to tell him what she was thinking ( Let’s Pretend, Hugh, that you’re the daddy and I’m the mommy) but Hugh seemed so involved with the book he’d bought.

  “Is it any good?”

  He glanced up. “Scout,” he said as if waking from a nap; he made a motion to hide the bottle.

  Rachel shrugged her shoulders. “Is that the Verna Standish book?”

  “Verena, Scout. Yeah. It’s kind of interesting. I’m just into the part about this house. Headache gone?”

  “I just needed to close my eyes for a little while. See if she has anything about our walled-up vanity.”

  “Will do.”

  “I’m thinking of going out. You just going to read?”

  Hugh nodded.

  “Maybe I’ll give Sassy a call. You think something like a housewarming party would be out of line—maybe next week or something?”

  “I don’t know. We’ve lived here what, a couple of months? Is it too late for that kind of thing? I mean, what would Miss Manners have to say?”

  “Any excuse for a party. We could plan it for Labor Day weekend, unless everybody we know is going away—but I doubt it. The weather will be miserable still so people will be up for a party and it’s not like we’ve had anybody in. Maybe we can finish this room next weekend if we work together. I have an idea for a Laura Ashley pattern I saw, but see if there’s anything about the patterns in the book. Would she have something like that in there? Maybe about that vanity, too, and then my big strong husband can knock it down with his sledgehammer of the gods.”

  Rachel went over to his tool box, stepping over scattered wrenches, to his sledgehammer. She lifted it up.

  “Watch your toes, Scout. Old Verena lists everything else about her life—most of this diary’s just her laundry list. If she weren’t the daughter of such a famous man I doubt this would ever have been published. You see Penny Dreadful yet?”

  Carefully laying the hammer flat on its side, she gave him a clownishly sad look. “Oh, Hugh, I feel so bad about her cat, I wish you’d use her real name.”

  “All right, all right, sorry. Penelope Deerfield.”

  “I’m afraid to run into her—she must hate us, and I don’t know what I’d say to her at this point. The trip was fun, just what I needed, but that was like a black cloud hanging over us. I hope the kittens are okay.”

  5.

  It was after six when Rachel met with Sassy Parker for coffee at La Fourchette in Adams-Morgan. They sat outside in front of the restaurant, and Sassy ordered appetizers.

  “I am so damned starved, and I have a ton of things to tell you. My news first,” Sassy said, “and then when the food comes I’ll chow down and you can talk.”

  “I don’t know, I haven’t even told Hugh mine yet and I’m about to burst with keeping it in.”

  “All right, you go,” Sassy huffed, “but this means I’ll have to talk with my mouth full.”

  Rachel lowered her chin and raised her eyebrows. She grinned goofily, even though she was trying to be dramatic.

  She took a deep breath.

  “I’m,” and then blurted in rapid-fire succession, “pregnant—I think I’m pregnant—Shit, I don’t know, but I feel like I think I’m pregnant.”

  “How long?”

  “A week?” Rachel winced.

  Now it was Sassy’s turn to raise her eyebrows. She laughed, but then saw that Rachel didn’t think this was funny. Sassy reached across the table and patted Rachel’s left hand which was tearing at her napkin. “Retch, give it a couple of weeks before you feel like you think you’re pregnant.”

  “I really think I am. I haven’t had my period, and I never miss, it’s always on time.”

  “What, were you and Hugh doing it like bunnies at the beach?”

  “Well, before the beach, at the beach, on the way home from the beach. Not that the horror stories don’t abound, too, the whole time I was thinking about that poor cat. But the sex was terrific.”

  “And you think the rabbit bit the big one?” Something about Sassy’s tone made Rachel feel like she was being mocked.

  “I shouldn’t have told you, it’s too early, I’ll jinx it, and you’re probably right, I’m probably just being dumb, and maybe I’m off about my period, and I’ll start gushing tonight.” You are so stupid, Rachel Brennan, to ever tell a secret before it’s definite, how many times do you have to learn this in life? Rachel stared at her coffee and watched little swirls of milk dissipate like clouds. This reminded her of a song, but she couldn’t remember exactly which song, and she felt depressed that she’d ever gone and opened her big fat mouth.

  “I’m not saying you’re not pregnant. It’s just a little early
to start knitting booties.”

  “No, this is dumb and it is so typical for me to go off the deep end as soon as I get laid. And we weren’t using, you know, condoms or anything, and I don’t know… I just feel so… fertile.”

  “Oh, please, what, were your eggs bubbling around or something?” Sassy laughed.

  Rachel managed to smile. “Okay, let’s drop it. No, really, let’s drop it. I am hoping I am pregnant and I’m being silly and you’re being normal, but I don’t care. We’ll just drop it and then in a month you’ll see I was right.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So what’s your news, now that you’ve stuck the pin in my balloon?”

  “Well, it’s your news, too. Have I got shit for you,” Sassy said, “and I’ve been waiting for you to get your ass back from the beach.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I had to scour the archives for stuff on the DuPont Circle and Capitol Hill houses because of the upcoming house tours, and guess what I came across? No, don’t even guess, let me tell you, I found reams of shit on your house.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “It has quite a spotted history. Retch. And it’s just like me to forget to make copies for you. The file on your house is fat—I can get it to you Monday. You’ve got to read what’s in it.”

  “A lot’s been written about Draper House. I’m surprised it isn’t on some house tour. Hugh just bought a book on the house, well, it has some chapters about the house, anyway. You know who Verena Standish was?”

  “I do work for the ‘Home’ section of the Her-Ex—and she’s mentioned a bit in these articles I dug up.”

  “What do they say?”

  “Stuff like you wouldn’t believe. You’re living in some kind of haunted house.”

  “Oh, right, there’s something about the ghost of a hooker.”

  “I don’t know about a whore. Retch, but I do know about the weirdo drugged-out things that went on there in the sixties and seventies. Some kinky murders, and devil worshipers.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “No, it’s for real.”

  “No, you’re making this up because you know how easily I get scared by stupid things like this, just like when we were in college and you used to tell me the story about the claw, where the girl heard it scraping at the back of the car, and you had that bunny man story every time we drove over the hills and I kept thinking bunny man would jump out of the woods with his ax and smash the car up. This is going to be like the bunny man story, isn’t it?”

  “No, Retch, we’re talking Charlie Manson meets the girl next door. You know what the papers used to call that place?”

  “I give up.”

  “The Screaming House. Ain’t it grand?”

  6.

  At work on Monday, Rachel glared at her desk as if she could melt it with her glance—unfortunately she could not. It was piled high with every memo known to mankind. She had three court dates in the next two weeks, and the briefs weren’t even prepared. Her secretary, Carl, had come down with the flu and would be out until Friday. Gretchen, the blue-faced Slavic blonde with the sweaty palms (leaving damp fingerprints on anything she touched—including the files), was acting as both receptionist and secretary. By 10:30, Gretchen had played fifty-two-card pick-up with the summer clerk’s mag cards, and Rachel would’ve screamed bloody murder except she didn’t really care.

  Rachel turned on the radio to listen to the local disc jockey tell crude, racist jokes; she switched it off again, and began sucking on a Rolaids. She craved a cigarette, could picture a Virginia Slims, could almost feel it between her lips. But then she remembered what Hugh had told her when they were in law school ( “It’s like licking out an ashtray” ). She remembered the X-rays of her father’s lungs, and Hugh holding her, entering her which she always enjoyed but which always frightened her just a little because she couldn’t control his movement, are-you- there-Hugh-Adair? —all this curiously reminding her of the pain she’d felt in her stomach the morning of her miscarriage. Just when she was beginning to re-experience that sense of loss she’d felt (and the loss of not knowing what she was losing— just a tiny sphere mixed with blood), one of her lower front teeth began aching. She felt around the tooth and gum with her tongue and then decided she must be picking up radio waves because the pain vanished.

  Rachel settled back down to work—or at least to thinking about work—when five junior associates trooped into her office to bitch about an upcoming meeting. When the other lawyers finally left ten minutes later, Rachel began separating the papers on her desk into three piles, with no rhyme or reason to their divisions. She figured that if one of the partners walked into her office just then he would think she was organized when she was not. And she had no intention of becoming organized. She hadn’t gone to law school for organizational skills, after all.

  Sassy called at noon. “Retch?”

  “Hi, Sassy,” Rachel sighed into the phone, whisper-singing: “What a day this has been. I hate lawyers.”

  “It’s just a job. Weren’t those your exact words? ‘When Hugh gets on at a firm I’m going to quit, have babies, and never diet again. It’s just a job.’”

  “You cold, calculating hardened woman, to turn my own words against me. Have a little sympathy: my secretary’s sick.”

  “Some of us don’t have secretaries. You want an ulcer or what? And here I’ve gone and copied all these articles for you—I stole the file from research without signing out, so I am going to be shot come sunup. And I’m going to send them over right this instant. Retch, will this ever take your mind off your work.”

  “Okay, send it, but I won’t promise to read it, especially if it’s scary.”

  “Chicken!” Sassy cried, hanging up on her.

  7.

  The messenger dropped the manila folder off at two, but Rachel didn’t get to it for a week. Sassy called every other day asking if she’d read any of the articles (“You mean, Retch, I pay through the nose to messenger them to you and you haven’t touched them?” ), but Rachel allowed herself to be swamped with work and office gossip in order to make it through the week—on average, she stayed at work until seven at night. She thought about the sphere possibly growing inside her, and one evening she decided: screw it, screw work, time to relax, get the hell away from legalese.

  It was a Wednesday evening, towards the end of August. Rachel was not sure what the weather was like outside because she was spending so much time inside her house or office, putting herself into her work more completely than she had all year while Hugh re-wallpapered the turret room. She was feeling, in spite of the work, in love with life again, the way she’d been in school: the sphere inside her subdividing, Hugh being relatively productive, Hugh seeming to be happy, and work taking over whenever she began to feel the slightest twinges of melancholy. The firm was still holding an organizational meeting down the hall in the conference room, but Rachel was beginning to feel physically sick over the proceedings and went back to her office and her messy desk feeling like she would collapse across it. She looked out her window, across at the Madison Hotel; usually, if she was lucky, someone would be undressing in front of their window without noticing the offices across the street. It was a cheap form of entertainment, but she felt pretty cheap this evening.

  She leaned back in her chair and turned her attentions to the news clippings from The Washington Post, the old Washington Star-News, The Washingtonian Magazine, as well as the rag Sassy worked for, The Herald-Examiner.

  CHAMBER OF HORRORS IN NORTHWEST

  Oct. 12, 1969—The bodies of seven women were found buried beneath a house in the Winthrop Park area of Northwest Washington, following an investigation into the bizarre group of individuals who had occupied the block. None of the women have yet been identified, although it is thought that they may have worked as prostitutes in the surrounding neighborhoods. Three of the women appear to have been bled to death using some kind of medical apparatus, and there ar
e indications that the other four were buried alive in concrete…

  SEX SLAYINGS CONNECTED TO DEVIL WORSHIP

  Oct. 23, 1969—A group calling itself the Disciples of the Last Circle have claimed responsibility for the torture and killing of seven women in the Winthrop Park area. The Herald-Examiner received this letter from the self-proclaimed spokesman of the group, a Mr. Swampgrass Rainbow.

  Dear Pigs,

  Our Lord Lucifer has arisen from his chains. We take the sacred mushroom and glorify his name. Kiss my a—, you suckers. Life is dream and dream is life, and we see the stained glass bleeding down the walls. We did not slice the entrails from the piggies, we set them free and their blood which is sacred to our Guru, the Horny One. The girls were to be His brides and the mothers of His children. The Devil is America in Nam. We drank napalm and saw it was good. You are just puppets of the pigs who run the fascist world. Imperialist running dogs crapped on the lawn of the world.

  Sincerely in the Name of the Tortured,

  Swampgrass Rainbow, Unholy Light Priest of the Disciples of the Last Circle

  p.s. pigs

  We sliced them open because they begged us to, because they wanted Him inside them, they wanted to bring it into the world.

  Mr. Rainbow was taken in to custody early this morning, although at press time, no charges had been formally brought against him. Mr. Rainbow was charged in 1968 with possession of drugs, and resisting arrest. One district police officer, who wishes to remain anonymous, told this reporter, “This sounds like something out of Rosemary’s Baby, doesn’t it? Except we got a half-dozen Rosemarys cut up like the Black Dahlia, and a bunch of drug-crazed hippies walking around like zombies, and you know something? This used to be a ritzy neighborhood—all changed. It isn’t just the LSD, and it isn’t just all this sex going around, you know, those are just symptoms. It’s the bomb, I think. The kids know the world can end and they just figure, ‘If it feels good, do it.’”