Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  5.

  The words hit Hugh in the gut, and he felt the sour vomit of day-old-drunk gin threatening to come up; he wanted the crazy woman not to touch him like that, not on his hand because she seemed to be connected to an electric current. The current stung him and hit nerves in his arm, racing up to his head, to his brain, and then in his brain it felt like doors sliding open, lights flicking on, and behind the doors in the rooms:

  bloodstained sheets, the Old Man’s battered spirit fighting to remain inside a fragmented, flesh-torn body, using the tips of his blood-spurting fingers like they were fountain pens, scratching letters across the white wall: HELPRACHEL.

  Hugh recoiled from touching Mattie’s hand as if he’d stuck his fingers into a light socket.

  Suddenly, the evening was normal again, all sounds returned, cars honking around the Circle, screeching brakes, men shouting to each other, women scolding children, and children running around the fountain, radios blaring. Hugh felt like he’d been diving down for miles and then was swiftly pulled up, his eyes popping, bursting, and then breaking the surface: Normal Life.

  “Look, whoever the hell you are, get away from me,” he said. God. I feel sick, like I’m dead. Oh, Scout, forgive me, please, I love you. Balancing himself against the peeling green back of the bench, Hugh managed to stand without keeling over.

  6.

  Mattie Peru watched the man walk off. “I’m gonna make you see, mister.”

  Holding her daughter’s skull with both hands beneath the folds of her trash bags, she felt a wave wash through her:

  a walking dead man building a wall of bricks at the crib. and in her apartment, the Housekeeper holding a sucking half- formed baby, the one that had been taken from Nadine’s mutilated womb. The Housekeeper held it up to another woman’s wrist. Ragged vertical slices up and down the wrist. The baby was sucking blood from the woman’s wrist like milk.

  Too late, am I too late?

  But the woman nursing the child on her blood wasn’t the woman they had chosen as the mother, this woman was older and the Housekeeper said to her, “Betty Kellogg, you’ll spoil him.”

  A vision of the woman upstairs, the one called Rachel, sleeping the sleep of one who has been given the baron’s sleeping juice, her bloodstream already turning to ice.

  They were preparing her.

  Am I too late?

  As Mattie came out of her trance, she heard the choppity-chop-chop in her heart and felt stabbing pains between her ribs. She held her breath until the ache went away. Gotta keep goin’, Mattie, gotta keep the spirit in this old bag of skin and bones. No more girls gonna die in the house for no Baron Samedi. If I gotta do it alone, I’m gonna. If her man don’t care enough for her—it gotta be done.

  She felt warm drops of rain spattering down on her scalp, tapping along the edges of her trash bags. She raised the bags around her neck up over her head like a hood.

  Mattie Peru began shivering, but not from cold. Her bags rattled, and she felt her bones chafe against her tired flesh. The taste in the back of her throat was warm and sour, like her daughter’s blood.

  Mattie knew what waited for her in the house-She knew if she stepped over its threshold, it would mean death. She could stand in the rain and scream at the house and let it do its worst. She would be safe on the outside.

  You could just get Mr. Big Man to go in and stop it and you could live, but as this voice tunneled through her brain, she swatted at it. “Nadine,” she said aloud, “how am I to do this thing? I am weak, I am nothin’ against that. ”

  Nadine, I will die in there.

  Mattie wiped rain across her face with fear and memory.

  But I will die nowhere else. And I will take the screaming with me. And Mr. Big Man would help her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  SLEEPWALKING

  1.

  “Okay, okay,” Rachel slurred her words slightly as she tumbled out of bed, grabbing Hugh’s terry cloth bathrobe, “I’m coming, I’m coming.” She squinted at the clock on the dresser: 7:00 p.m.

  Have I been asleep all day long? Her arms were sore; she thought she must’ve been sleeping on them all wrong; her back ached, and a muscle spasmed along her lower ribs. Her legs were still asleep—she steadied herself against a bedpost as she slipped her other arm into the sleeve of the bathrobe. An aftertaste from dreamland tea on her tongue: raspberries? More like drippy licorice and almonds, not cream, not anything sweet. She combed her fingers through her clotted hair, untangling the greasy strands. She avoided looking in the full-length mirror as she passed, wobbling and stiff legged, the bedroom door. She could barely keep her eyes open and someone was still banging at the front door. Should never have taken the antidepressant, it must’ve been that and the brandy that Nanny Dreadful gave me. Whoever was knocking at the door had been doing it for at least the past hour; she’d been dreaming of things banging.

  The hallway was dark; she felt for the light switch when she got to the stairs. She flicked the switch up, and then brought her hand back to her waist. Rachel pressed her fingers against her stomach to stop the dull ache that throbbed there. Her skin was ice cold. She tied the bathrobe together. “Hugh?” Her voice was still groggy from sleep. The brilliance of the hall light hurt her eyes. She covered them as she switched off the light. Not dark enough to worry about tripping down the stairs. But her feet weren’t working quite right, she had to think carefully with each step, feeling around the edge of the stair to make sure she didn’t slip. Her legs now seemed rubbery, reminding her of an experiment they used to teach in elementary school where she’d soak a chicken bone overnight in vinegar and it would bend like a plastic straw. She clutched the banister. Scout, you are a klutz. “Hugh?” Am I still dreaming?

  As she came down into the living room the floor seemed warm, like the heat was on. Where she’d been cold a few minutes before, now she was sweating from heat. She wiped at her forehead. Fever.

  Whoever had been banging at the front door was now banging on the wall, or a door, or a window, down by the turret room. Was Hugh back and in one of his rages, tearing down more wall, mad at himself because he wasn’t a better husband?

  Only in my dreams.

  As she drew closer to the room, she realized the noise wasn’t banging at all but scraping and a kind of soft patting. Remembering the morning when she thought she heard a rat ( or babies? Am I off my rocker enough to believe there are babies down that tiny staircase? ), Rachel approached the end of the hall with caution.

  Something was coming up, just a shape emerging from the narrow staircase half hidden in the torn vanity.

  Rachel knew that sometimes, when she blinked, she saw things for a fraction of a second—things that weren’t there. Something was hanging from the ceiling in the vanity. Had Hugh hung his shirts up along the molding? But not shirts—no, they looked more like— sacks?

  But as she drew closer, the objects hanging in the vanity became clear to her:

  The little boy and girl she’d seen in the park, naked and dressed the way she knew a hunter would dress his kill. They hung upside down, a long wooden pole running through their ankles. The boy. Jamie, opened his mouth and said, “I know how babies are made.”

  Rachel stood still and waited for this image to disappear. Fever, antidepressants, brandy, dreamland tea.

  The girl swung around on her pole and reached over and thrust her small hand into her brother’s mouth to shut him up, and told him, “You’re not supposed to tell her, you little fool, she’ll find out soon enough.” Her small white arm was ragged with festering sores. Her hand disappeared up to the wrist into Jamie’s mouth. He began making choking noises. his eyes bugging out, as his sister kept pushing her hand further down his throat.

  But then Rachel saw nothing hanging from the molding in the vanity. Fever dream. She rubbed her eyes.

  She was almost relieved, too tired to worry about her sanity, reassured that it was just a hallucination. And now, here’s another one. A man, naked from
the waist up, sweat glistening across his chest, his hands and arms dusted with gray plaster. Coming up from below. Is he really here?

  “Oh, Ted,” Rachel said, her knees about to give out, a headache thumping gently in her temples, the bitter licorice aftertaste of dreamland tea in her mouth.

  Ted smiled. She was sure it was a smile, but her fever twisted his smile into something carnivorous. He was slightly hunched over, too tall for the miniature passage. His hands were soaked with gray mud; he wiped them on his khakis.

  “Ted, what are you—I mean, thank God you’re here, I’m not feeling too…” Rachel stammered.

  “Some things have been happening.” He was smiling, it was a smile, she was sure it was a smile. He came towards her, his palms outward to show how well he’d wiped them clean, as if that mattered, and she could tell by the way he kept looking everywhere but at her that there was something dreadfully wrong, something he was afraid to admit to her. “It’s in this house, Rachel, something happening here, something to do with the Old Man, and Hugh, and with you.”

  Am I dreaming? Rachel leaned back against the door-jamb. No children hanging from rods. She felt hungry and weak and sleepy. Mrs. Deerfield’s words of admonishment came back to hen “Must watch what we put in our tummies, dear.”

  Ted came up beside her, still unable to look her in the eye. His arms snaked around her, catching her as she fell. Am I falling? “Here,” he whispered, “let’s get you to the window seat.” She closed her eyes as the room spun around her.

  Opening her eyes again, she was sitting up by the window. In the park, no one played, the swing sets were empty. “Hugh and I had a fight,” she said. She pressed her fingers against her robe, down by her stomach. “My tummy’s upset.”

  “I gathered, about the fight.” Ted was sitting beside her, his left hand on her right knee.

  His right hand on the place where her stomach hurt. Is he putting his arm around me?

  But it felt good, she needed someone’s arm around her, she needed a good strong hug.

  “Rachel, I think you should know what happened.”

  “Mmm?” She was so dizzy; she would get him to help her get back into bed. The thought of bed made her feel good. The thought of drifting down into sleep. The back of her head rested against the windowpane. The glass was warm, molten, curving around her ice-cold head.

  “Something’s happened, Rachel, and it’s this house. Hugh was raving.”

  “Hugh? When did you talk to—did he say—about house?”

  “Raving. What it was doing to the two of you, what the Old Man had done by giving it to you, how it was evil.”

  “Hugh?”

  “Rachel, he went crazy, Rachel, he went off the deep end, Rachel.”

  “Hugh? Crazy.” She let the word sink in, and she nodded dreamily.

  “The Old Man died.”

  She let Ted talk because she was feeling a little nauseated, just in the pit of her stomach.

  “He was drunk, Rachel. Hugh was stone dead drunk and he had this hammer.”

  The bones in her legs began aching, and she would’ve liked to massage her thighs to get the circulation going again but Ted’s snaking arm was in her way. The bones in her legs felt like they were trying to break free from her skin. Like they were ripping through her skin right then. But her bones stayed put. Bones didn’t rip through skin. They always stayed put. But they ached so much, they seemed so sore pressed up against her skin.

  “Rachel, he broke the door down at my place, he was roaring—”

  “Hammer?”

  “He killed my father, Rachel. I tried to stop him but he swung out at me with the hammer and I went and called the cops. But by that time the Old Man was dead, and Hugh was screaming at me to leave you alone because he said I was as bad as the Old Man, Rachel. Then he said he was going to come get you, get his wife if he had to take you kicking and screaming out of this house forever. He said it was his responsibility.”

  “Not Hugh.” Rachel shook the thought out of her head; Ted was being so silly. “I know Hugh.”

  The annoying chirp of the telephone came from down the hall.

  “The police,” Ted said. “I gave them your number. I should get it.”

  Rachel sucked air into her lungs. Shock was awakening her; her legs were so sore, but she managed to get up on her feet, leaning on Ted for support. “No,” she said, “I’ll get it.”

  She felt as if she were walking on air; her feet making the motions, but not quite touching the ground; Ted’s arms holding her up-But she made it to the phone. Not Hugh, I know Hugh inside and out, I know what he laughs about. I know what can make him cry, I know what his goddamn socks smell like, he’s all there in the blue of his eyes, he’s all up front, on the surface.

  But the booze. The depression. The fight. Kicking him out. Telling him to go to hell. That night, before the party, seeing the frustration and rage in his face as he took the sledgehammer and crowbar to the vanity wall.

  “I know Hugh,” she said, lifting the receiver. “Hello?”

  No sound. Rachel was about to hang up.

  Then, Hugh’s voice came on the line. “Scout?”

  Rachel covered the receiver with the palm of her hand.

  Ted said, “It’s him?”

  She nodded.

  “Dangerous,” he whispered in her ear and his breath was cool.

  I know Hugh backwards and forwards.

  “Scout?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I want to come home, Scout, I want to come get you.”

  Ted’s whisper was like a fly crawling in her ear. “He did it, Rachel, and he wants you next. I saw him.”

  “Hugh? Where are you?”

  “P Street—Rachel, listen, I don’t know what, but there’s something there, in the house, and I don’t want you there alone.”

  Ted whispered, “Tell him you’re going out.”

  Again she covered the receiver. “I can’t lie to him. He sounds like he’s been through hell.”

  “He wants to drag you there, too. I saw him hammer the Old Man just like he was a fucking nail. Say you’re going out.”

  She gasped into the phone, “Hugh? I’m going…out.”

  “Say it’s going to all come out in the wash.”

  “It’s going to all come out in the wash, Hugh, I’ll be fine.”

  Hugh hesitated before speaking again. “Is someone with you?”

  “No.”

  “Look, I’ll come get you. I love you, Scout. I’m so damn sorry about the way I’ve been all summer. Jesus, this whole year. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Rachel shivered, remembering the wild look in his eyes when he’d torn the vanity wall down. It had stung more than if he’d actually hit her. Just that look in his eyes. Madness.

  “Tell him you’ll meet him someplace.”

  “I’ll meet you. Hugh, I’ll meet you down at -” Oh, Christ, what’s the name of the bookstore he likes so much?

  “Scout? I’m just ten minutes’ walk. I’ll come get you.”

  “No—Hugh—KramerBooks, I’ll be at KramerBooks, I’m practically out the door now.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. Hugh…”

  “Scout?”

  “Nothing.” She hung up the phone.

  Ted squeezed his arm around her waist.

  She drew away from him instinctively. There was something about Ted as he stood there, something about his smell. He’d been drinking, she’d noticed before when he’d brought her into the turret room. But after what he’d apparently been through, anybody might knock back a shot or two. But there was something besides liquor on his breath.

  “You’re a terrific little liar, Rachel,” Ted said, winking at her as she tried to push him away. But his arms kept snaking around her, inside the robe, cold and damp on her skin. She had no energy, her limbs felt like jelly. His hands sliding up along her ribs, his thumbs twisting beneath her breasts as he poked and probed them, pinching her armpit
s, squeezing her. She felt the scream rise in her throat, but all that came out finally was a moan of fear. Ted reached up with one hand, still scraping her side, holding her to him, covering her mouth with the palm of his slimy hand. It tasted like mortar? Is this a dream?

  “Those who clamor,” he told her, “we’ve been listening to you for a while, Rachel.” Then in a high-pitched voice he said, “Howsaboutamonsefuck?”

  She struggled against his arms, her robe falling open. Just as she was about to kick him in the groin, her rubbery legs moving in too slow a motion, she saw a large rat poke its head through the zipper in his khakis. It leapt from between his legs and scampered off across the floor. Rachel reached up to Ted’s face as he brought his lips down to meet hers; she brought her fingers up to his eyes. Already her vision was going out of focus and sleep seemed to be drawing her back into its dark embrace.

  She felt her fingers slide into the soft pudding of his eyes, and when she looked again at his face, working hard to keep her own eyes open, she saw his eyes hanging like gummy strands of runny eggs from the tips of her fingers.

  2.

  Am I dreaming? She lay in the darkness of sleep.

  Can’t be happening, can’t be happening. Are-you-there-Hugh Adair?

  A woman’s voice drawing her up through sleep almost to consciousness. “I knew the dose should’ve been stronger.”

  Mrs. Deerfield’s voice. “You silly cow, if it had been any stronger she’d be dead now and where would that leave us?”