Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  “Poor dear Joanna, right, well, Hugh was a fool not to see that, everyone else who knew her knew she was after the Old Man’s money and not Hugh. I tried telling him, but he can be pretty stubborn sometimes.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “But pop’s put his boys through the wringer all right. And I guess he’s paying for it now.”

  “Ted, now I know it’s crazy for me to ask, but did your father tell you why the house screams?”

  “You’re right—it does sound crazy, but not half as crazy as the answer. He says the house screams because it’s in labor, Rachel; you know, giving birth.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  AFTER THE PARTY

  1.

  The party was over when Rachel returned home, having to drag herself through the front door, up the stairs. Her stomach pains were returning and she thought again about the possibility of being pregnant, and wondered if the pains were bad or good. She laid her hand across her lower stomach and the pain went away momentarily. On Monday, I’ll call Dr. Longford. Shit, on Monday I’ll probably be filing for divorce.

  Hugh was sitting on his college chair, his head in his hands. The room smelled of cigarettes, perfume, and beer.

  “Oh, Hugh,” she sighed.

  “Scout,” he said, looking up. “I thought you were gone for good.”

  “I guess you were wrong.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I just don’t think ‘sorry’ cuts it.”

  She stepped out of her heels. Her feet were sore, and it almost tickled her toes to step down on the soft oriental rug. She walked across it and stood in front of him. He leaned over, embracing her hips, resting his head against her stomach. She felt warm inside when he touched her. She reached down and combed her fingers through his hair. She could smell his sweat, and it was like river water and she wanted to dive in.

  She disentangled herself from him, holding his hands. Crouched down in front of him, she kissed him just beneath his left ear. Kissed him on his lightly bearded neck—it had grown out like microscopic blades of grass since he’d shaved that morning. Her lips found his—they were rough and dry and stank of gin. But they were warm, and she needed warmth, and as if in a dream she saw herself kissing him, drinking him. Felt his arms go around her back as they both fell to the oriental rug, losing themselves in the swirling patterns, undoing the back of her dress and slipping out of it. Her back ached and the sharp pain pinched her just along her ribs, but he was kissing her, he was rubbing his fingers across her just-freed nipples, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, ripping her dress, but who cared. He was warm and she needed warmth, she’d been cold for too long, cold and in the heat but never warm, never this. Her skin tingled with his warmth.

  His tongue was like a scaly lizard in her mouth. Her own breath went bad with his. Under ordinary circumstances this would’ve been all wrong and she would’ve been turned off, but as she closed her eyes she thought it was Ted even when she knew it was Hugh, and not just Hugh, but Hugh and Ted and Ted and Hugh and all of them licking her and stroking her and entering her. And whatever pain she’d been feeling was gone with the rhythm they were creating, all her senses were concentrated in that one area, and her mind was a dark closet of sensation and movement. She had no control, and could tell by his raspy breathing that he had no control, that together they were out of control. She heard her baby inside her crying, and he was licking her breasts as he shuddered inside her, licking her breasts which dripped with liquid warmth.

  And when it was over, and she lay there in his arms, and the baby inside her had stopped crying, and the unpleasantness of post-coitus had come back (the body smell, the muscle soreness, the wet spots, the need to urinate, the vulnerable nakedness), she realized what the pain in her sides and back had been.

  There, faintly shiny between her legs, and partly on him, too, and even on the rug, was a dark brownish smudge, a red carnelian stain.

  Menstrual blood.

  Rachel did not know when she began crying, was not sure when she pushed Hugh away from her, but sunlight burned its way through the French door glass, creeping across the living room, eclipsing the dark emptiness of night, when her sobbing finally ended.

  2.

  Penelope Deerfield held the thing to her breast. “Soon, very soon, my love, you will be born again. We who have waited will wait no more.”

  It cried for its mother.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  RISE AND SHINE

  1.

  If you were to pass by the alcove in the wall at the DuPont Circle Metro stop, you would think someone had left their trash bags piled up, perhaps waiting for the city sanitation trucks to come by and take them. But if you were to watch the bags for several minutes, you’d notice that they’d rise and fall in barely perceptible ripples.

  And sometimes they’d gasp.

  All night Mattie prayed, and in the morning none of her prayers were answered. She lay on the cold, dusty floor of the subway station, in the shadows. The filthy wind brushed the tunnels, fluttering across her dark, shiny form. Trash bags of invisibility cloaked her, but she knew they would not protect her from what was to come, what was in the daylight world above her.

  What waited in the house.

  Come and get me, Baron Samedi! Take these old bones and tear them apart!

  Mattie Peru slept uneasily in the subway, afraid that at any moment the baron would find her through the darkness. He could go anywhere as spirit, he could travel any distance. She prayed he would come for her, come for her while she slept so it would be over and done with. Her power was coming back along with her memory, but slowly, and it made her sleepy, sluggish. She wished she could throw the power away: it was of no use against the greater power that remained in the Screaming House. She was afraid of him, the baron, but not as terrified as she was of the other one.

  The spirit of Nadine.

  Forgive me, daughter! Forgive me for letting him get to you, you and your baby!

  When the subway gates slid open in the morning, Mattie rode the escalator up. Mr. Big Men and Mrs. Big Women in their suits, lugging their briefcases, dodging her as if she were a hole in the fabric of the world; if they touched her they might fall out of their comfortable hammocks of existence and land butt first on the ground. But the down, the subway, was the land of the dead: these people were dead, their eyes were dead, no life in them despite the fact that they continued to move, to glance at their watches, to whistle for taxis. They had no spirit. The whole world seemed dead to her. She didn’t have the urge to panhandle for breakfast; she had no appetite, no thirst. Mattie had abandoned her shopping cart days ago—left it in an alley on Newport Place. All her possessions were in it, all that she had in the world. She felt the power surging through her, the power of Voudun, the religion of her mother, the power that came from the spirits, and she knew the house was stronger than even the gods of her youth. The Screaming House was like a furnace that consumed spirits to fuel its evil. And even with her power returning after so many years, she felt weak and useless. How could she even think about trying to stop what was going to happen in that house? Why should she even care? A Mr. and Mrs. Big Man lived there now, and when had a Mr. Big Man ever tried to help old Mattie Peru?

  Screamin’ House gonna make ‘em scream, but so? My baby-girl scream loud and nobody heard, I scream louder, nobody come runnin’! Mr. Big Man, he drink her blood like it was whiskey, so let ‘em scream, let ‘em scream. She beat her fists into her stomach. From her mouth came the words, “Let ‘em scream!”

  She began walking faster, her fists beating her hips like she was trying to fly; and she flew, her trash bags floating in the breeze behind her, her open-toed hiking boots barely touching down on the pavement; she felt light as she ran. Let ‘em scream! Let ‘em scream! The ax in her heart going chop-pity-chop-chop! She brushed people at the bus stop. They laughed and gasped and swore at her. Let ‘em scream all they want, it’s out of my hands, can’t go back into the Sc
reaming House! The chopping of her heart slowed her. She heaved, gasping for breath, leaning against a brick wall. There, on the other side of a gas station, was the bridge, and beneath it, the place where Nadine’s grave had been.

  When Mattie caught her breath, she trudged towards the bridge.

  And my baby, forgive me. Forgive me for letting ‘em do it to you. I didn’t know, my baby, I didn’t know. He said he was just going to make you better. I didn’t know.

  2.

  Ted watched: Rachel spread-eagled on the bed, ripping her dress off with her bare hands. Pocketbooks and sports coats lay between her skin and the bedspread. Beneath this bedroom, down in the living room, the housewarming party continued, the laughing, the stereo blaring “Tuxedo Junction.” Ted could even make out the sound of Hugh’s voice booming over the rest, “What’s the name of the game?”

  Ted dove into Rachel, sliding across her tummy, catching her by her breasts, folding into her like a scrambled egg, into her skin, into her moist warm body. And she cried out, but he slapped a hand over her mouth, and she bit down, drawing blood. And for Ted it was ecstasy like he’d never felt, like he was shooting himself into a mystery -

  Other voices invaded his erotic dream.

  One, the clock radio. The alarm was set for nine and had apparently gone off. A DJ said, “... And it’s ten o’clock on an oldies fave Labor Day weekend with yours truly, the slime ball of the airwaves, Sludgeman, and I’m gonna lick out your inner ear with this blast from the past, the Monkees, and ‘Daydream Believer’...”

  The other sound, his father’s voice.

  “You’re not taking me to any hospital,” Winston Adair said.

  Ted awoke slowly. First thoughts: What time is it? What was I dreaming? Who’s standing over me? The dream left a sticky residue in his underwear; it was the first wet dream he’d had in years. The apartment smelled like crap, thanks to the Old Man’s messiness coupled with his unwillingness to open any of the windows. When Ted had come in the previous night the Old Man had gone so far as to try and nail the windows shut. Ted, too tired to argue, told him, “After this weekend, pop, we go in for an exam, okay?” Then it had been off to erotic dreamland with his brother’s wife.

  While the Monkees sang on the radio, his father stood beside the bed looking down at him. Ted rubbed his eyes, coughing. “Pop? What’s -”

  His father stood beside the bed, holding something in his hand.

  The object in his father’s left hand was a hammer. Ted was not used to seeing it—he never used it himself. Ted avoided manual labor as often as possible. He usually kept the hammer in a drawer in the kitchen, along with a plastic case full of nails and some screwdrivers. For a moment he wondered if his father was still nailing down windows to keep the wasps out.

  Winston Adair was naked. His bloated pink flesh gave him the appearance of a skinned animal—he had been losing so much weight that folds of skin, deprived of their usual fat, hung like pancakes down his sides, under his arms, along his neck. He looked like a walking cadaver whose innards had been sucked out. With his right hand he was playing with his balls; with his left he took swipes at the air with the hammer. “Buzzing, buzzing, all around us,” his father said, grinning. “You heard of the lord of the flies? Well the old whore, she’s queen of the wasps, she is, and you know what they’re telling me, those wasps? All the buzzing in this old brain? Son, they’re telling me I got no choice but to high-tail it over to the Screaming House and set that house on fire, send them all back to Hell where they come from!”

  His bloodshot eyes fixed on the hammer. As if every bit of energy the Old Man possessed was concentrated on holding it steady as it hit the air.

  And still his hands trembled; the hammer wobbled; folds of skin shivered.

  “Put it down, pop,” Ted commanded, trying to sound in control. He sat farther up in bed, kicking the sheets off his legs.

  “You hear them buzzing?” His father was sweating. “No doctor, no hospital, boy, they’re gonna buzz right in between the sheets. But I can’t go back there, Ted, and no hospital’s gonna keep them from getting to me.”

  “Give me the hammer, pop.” Ted sat up, kneeling. He extended the palm of his hand.

  On the radio: “Wasn’t that a sweet tune, all you virgins of the world? But the world isn’t really like that, is it? It’s a nasty, naughty place, and Sludge had himself a tough night last night. Sludgeman knows what goes on out there while you’re listening, I know about your kind, yeah, Sludgeman likes it when you talk dirty to him, so give me a call right now, kick your boyfriends and girlfriends out of bed, and ring me up at...”

  His father’s voice steamed. “You don’t believe me, Ted, but all I’ve told you is true. They’re trying to buzz me right over to that place. I have given up Hugh and Rachel to that house, to what is in that house. But I’m not dumb enough to go there. Do you have any idea what the housekeeper is going to do?”

  “It’s okay, pop, it’s cool, just give me the hammer.”

  “She was drawn to Draper House, you know, and she died there, but something evil, another waiting spirit, invaded her flesh, and she now belongs to the house. She’s the Housekeeper, boy, and she’s the wet nurse to that ... abomination.”

  “The hammer.”

  “She’s the one renting that apartment, Ted, calls herself Deerfield. But she is as old as the house, her spirit is as old as the house and what it contains. And do you know what she’s going to do, Ted? Any idea?”

  “Pop.”

  “She’s got the aborted fetus from my daughter Nadine, my daughter and one of my long line of girlfriends. And the housekeeper’s going to bring him back, bring Gil DuRaz back in the flesh, but not just him, boy, but every breath of evil in that house, in the flesh, brought into our world. As some kind of Messiah of the damned. I saw its face, son. It was part me and part that little girl, but mostly something else, something scrawled across its bloody chewing flesh that looked like the inside of somebody’s festering wound. You think I’m insane, but what? If it happens, if that monster is born, insanity’s going to be nothing compared with what happens. Insanity will be a goddamn blessing! But what do I care? I’ll be dead soon enough. I’m old, I’m dying, I can hear the buzzing in the walls. Let the world go to hell, let it burn, let it buzz. I’ll be dead, boy. Let the bomb drop right on top of my grave, let it mushroom over this sky like a rainbow, spray the wasps with Raid, let it all die when I die! But son, a baby needs a mother, even a monster fetus, and they got one, I’ve given them one. And the Housekeeper is going to stuff the new mother with that creature from Hell, is going to use her as an incubator, and when it’s ready, when it’s ready to be fully born, Ted my boy, it will use her body like a host and eat its way out of her.”

  From the radio, “And Sludge is now gonna spin three in a row from the BeeGees, so disco down, babies ...”

  “Pop, please, the hammer.”

  “You don’t believe me, but screw belief! Nobody believes in nothing, but I tell you, son, if you’d been there, the night of the riots, the night we all drank that girl’s blood, if you’d seen what I saw, you’d believe.”

  3.

  The grave had filled with mud. Mattie bent over it, imprinting her face against it. The mud was cool, like a reassuring touch on her cheek, on her forehead. She began digging with her bare hands through the soft dirt, water squeezing against her fingers, digging, tossing mud back over her shoulders, burrowing beneath the mud until she found it.

  Nadine’s skull.

  It was covered with slick wet strands of grass and dirt. Mattie carried it down to the creek, dipping it into the water as if in baptism. Gradually the skull came clean. The lower jaw was gone. It was a small skull, and she closed her eyes, feeling along the top, the sides, the ridges of bone that rose up and fell, and she imagined that she was bathing her daughter, washing her hair, wiping her face with cool water. She kept her eyes closed, imagining that Nadine was there, with her, and not off in the world of the dead. Matti
e kissed her forehead, cradling her daughter’s upturned face, rocking back and forth on her knees, singing a lullaby.

  Then her daughter spoke to her.

  Through the skull.

  It was faint, as if from some great distance, and then it was in her ear, buzzing.

  And as Mattie listened, she knew what she would have to do.

  She knew it was time.

  4.

  The music on the radio continued.

  Ted said, “The hammer, come on, now.”

  “None of it should matter, boy, we all have to die sometime, it’s the way of all flesh, we’re born to die, so what the hell? Let the monster be born, let it disembowel her when it’s delivered, let the demons of Hell rejoice!”

  Winston Adair swung the hammer down. Ted slid to the far side of the bed quickly. The hammer thudded against his pillow.

  “Shit, pop!” Ted leapt out of bed.

  “We’re all gonna die anyway, boy,” Winston giggled, foam dribbling from his mouth, “it don’t make no never-mind! It’s getting closer, gonna buzz around and around and around until it stings you. Between you and me, I’d rather get ripped to shreds by the talons of the demon than stung to death by the wasps out of that whore’s cooze. And when you got wasps after you, you better sure as shit have a fly swatter. What’s it gonna take to make you believe, boy?” Winston twirled the hammer around, swinging it down between his own legs, smashing his testicles. He dropped to his knees. “This?” he coughed, “this?”

  “Pop!” Ted rushed over to him.