Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  “My sweet, my darling,” Mrs. Deerfield said, plucking the thing out of the chest cavity. The fetus was soaked with dark blood, its small pink tongue slurping noisily as if trying to nurse.

  Rachel felt across to the fallen mason jar. The fetus had stopped floundering in the earth, and Rachel touched the jar. A weapon. No strength, oh, God, I’ll never be able to do it. But I won’t die, I won’t die here like this, not like this, not in this nightmare. She felt as if she were having a heart attack as she tried to lift the jar but couldn’t. It was too much. I’m going to die. No, I won’t. A fragment of broken glass at the jar’s edge. She cut her finger across it, but barely felt the pain. Only weapon, the only weapon, broken glass.

  She clutched the shard of glass in her hand.

  Mrs. Deerfield turned back to Rachel. In her hands was the creature, its mitts sprouting claws that clacked together as if it were eager to crawl inside its new mother. The thing was small, barely larger than a fist, but it was so unspeakably perverted with its blue eyes and its wart-filled mouth with a small ridge of spiky teeth just beneath its tongue, its veins on the outside of its sallow body pulsing with just-drunk blood. Mrs. Deerfield brought it close up to Rachel’s face, and the thing said to Rachel with her father’s voice, “I’m so proud of you, Scout.”

  Like a streak of lightning, adrenaline pumped through her as she smelled the creature’s foul breath, and she brought her fist up, opening it, jabbing down into the soft flesh at the creature’s head. It cried out like a baby in pain. The fetus scrambled out of Mrs. Deerfield’s arms and landed on Rachel’s neck, snapping its mouth open and closed while it bawled, trying to reach up with its claws to pull the glass out.

  So you can be hurt. Good, at least I can die knowing I hurt you. Rachel closed her eyes, all energy drained. Let me die now, let me die, let me out of this body.

  The creature slid like gelatin off her neck, crawling around to her ear. “You’ll burn for this.” Now it spoke with Ted’s voice, and Rachel opened her eyes again. She felt its razor claws on the side of her face. “I’m gonna get inside you and eat my way out, and you’re gonna be alive for it, too, you’re gonna feel it, mother, you’re gonna feel it.”

  Mrs. Deerfield lifted the knife above Rachel’s stomach and said, “You bitch, what kind of mother are you, anyway?”

  A shaft of light cut through the flickering darkness.

  9.

  The arms and hands had fallen to the ground at Hugh’s feet; when he looked at them again, they were the rotted bodies of rats with hundreds of roaches chewing at their festering wounds.

  “Quick,” Mattie said, pressing forward.

  Hugh pulled at the remaining loose bricks in the wall, making a space just large enough to squeeze through.

  10.

  Mattie felt the chop-chop-chop of her heart as she crouched low, following the man into the crib. Nadine, be with me, child, make me live long enough to stop the house from screamin’. She could taste a blood memory in the back of her throat, her own child’s blood which she’d tasted that night so many years ago.

  11.

  As if the light that flooded the crib carried with it some source of power, Rachel felt the needle prick of feeling coursing through her arms, and even slightly in her legs. An almost welcome soreness soaked through her, and she began coughing. It’s air, there’s air in here now, I can breathe.

  Above her, Mrs. Deerfield plunged the coring knife down to open her stomach up; but Rachel rolled to the left, and the knife sank into the damp earth. Mrs. Deerfield, off balance, fell to her side, shrieking, knocking candles over. The creature scampered over Rachel’s belly; she felt its razor claws raking across her; but then it landed in the dirt and scuffled around making mewling noises.

  Then she saw it move back towards her, to her face.

  Rachel was looking directly into the eyes of the fetus. Its blue eyes scowled at her, and she almost felt sorry for it with the piece of glass stilt protruding from its scalp. Rachel crawled backwards, farther into a dark corner, away from the creature and Mrs. Deerfield.

  Mrs. Deerfield ignored her, turning in the direction of the shaft of light. And in the light, two blue shadows.

  “Now,” the creature growled at Rachel, its head shivering.

  “Now, mother, I will open you up.”

  Rachel gasped when she saw what was in its small claws.

  The coring knife that Mrs. Deerfield had dropped in the dirt.

  12.

  What Hugh saw when he bent down to go into the crib:

  First, a circle of jars and a hundred or more candles. And in each jar, a fetus moving in slow motion through a watery solution.

  But then each fetus began to grow, stretching out to the full size of the jars, and then the jars cracked as the fetuses grew larger, forming like clay into human flesh. On one side of him stood two children, a boy and a girl, which he could not possibly know were James and Emmie Standish. Their skin fell from their faces, their bodies ragged with scars. “Please help us find our mother,” the girl said. She reached out imploringly to Hugh. Another fetus had grown tall and wide, and was the Old Man. “Hugh,” he said, “you son-of-a-whore, why don’t you just let us have her, she was unfaithful to you, she fucked your brother.”

  And Ted was there, too, his head smashed in. “Yeah, Hughie, she seduced me, man, she was so damn hot for me I couldn’t resist, although, you know, I tried. I really tried.”

  “She's just a cooze like your whore friend,” the Old Man wheezed.

  Mattie stepped out from behind Hugh.

  “Nadine,” she said through clenched teeth. She reached into her trash bags and withdrew her daughter’s skull. She held it in front of her, and dropped it at the children’s feet. An invisible wind lifted the skull up.

  For a second, Hugh saw Mattie’s daughter standing there, naked, and then it was no girl at all, but a column of wasps forming a young woman’s body. It stepped towards the children, knocking over more candles. A column of fire tore up the wasp legs, and the whole body glowed with a blue yellow flame. The little boy backed away from the wasps, but the wasp arm reached out and flicked some of the burning insects onto his scalp. The fire spread from his hair down around his face and he screamed; his sister tried to put them out with her hands. The Old Man stepped forward and grabbed the sledgehammer from Hugh’s fingers, but Hugh tugged it back and swung it around against the Old Man’s chest.

  From behind the burning children, Mrs. Deerfield emerged.

  13.

  “Mambo whore, you are too weak, your heart,” Mrs. Deerfield said, lifting her hand to her own breast.

  Mattie felt the choppity-chop of the ax in her heart, and the pain was hot like the growing fire that surrounded them. She tried to call the wasps up, tried to call up the Magic Touch, but her energy was dissipating. Hugh was swinging his sledgehammer across the burning line of apparitions. Mattie knew she would die here. One last prayer, Nadine, one last prayer.

  “Your heart is breaking down, whore. I will slice it with my fingernail and swallow it while it still beats.” Mrs. Deerfield reached over and grabbed beneath Mattie’s trash bags, for the place where her heart beat.

  Getting weaker.

  She reached up with all her strength, bringing her trash bags down around Mrs. Deerfield’s face.

  Mrs. Deerfield laughed. “Can I die twice, then? Three times? Do you think that this flesh matters? I am the Housekeeper. I am here with those who clamor.”

  Mattie felt the woman’s fingers pressing into her skin, under her skin, along her ribs.

  One last prayer, Nadine.

  Choppity-chop-chop-chop.

  I will join you, daughter. I will be with you, but one… last…

  “Die now, whore,” Mrs. Deerfield said through the smothering trash bags that Mattie kept hooked around her head.

  Mrs. Deerfield plucked the beating heart from Mattie’s body and with her fingers squeezed it until it burst like ripe fruit.

  14.
>
  The fetus jabbed the coring knife into Rachel’s shoulder. “I’ll find a way to get inside you, mother, and then we will be together for a long time, another four months should do the trick.”

  Rachel shrieked as the searing pain went through her.

  The creature lifted the knife again with both its mitts. She reached up and grabbed it even while it sliced her hand.

  To her left she saw a wall of cool blue flame, and beyond it, shadows flickering.

  15.

  Mattie, dying, dropped her arms from around Mrs. Deerfield’s face, and the trash bags fell to the ground which writhed with flames.

  Mrs. Deerfield brought the dripping heart up to her mouth. She bit down on it.

  Mattie Peru’s corpse stood, quivering, staring.

  From Mattie’s mouth came Nadine’s voice.

  “Spirit cannot exist without flesh. It is your cage and I will free you. Housekeeper.”

  The heart in Mrs. Deerfield’s mouth burst again with life, becoming a nest of burning wasps, and they dropped down her throat, stinging and biting as they went chewing into her skin. Mrs. Deerfield’s cry of rage sounded like that of a tortured animal as the wasps ate through her.

  Within a few seconds, the insects had left nothing but smoldering bones.

  16.

  Rachel struggled with the creature. The coring knife flew out of her hand as she pulled it from the monster’s grasp. The creature began crawling down her breasts, towards her stomach. It felt cold and wet as it trailed down her body.

  “Rachel!” Hugh’s voice cut through the fire.

  “Mother.” The creature turned back to her. Its blue eyes were rimmed with red tears. Tears of blood. Rachel’s back was sore as if she’d been run over by a truck, but she pulled herself up and brought her hands down on the creature, wringing its neck. Its claws dug into her hands, but the thing was crying out like a baby, “Mama! Mama!”

  “No!” she keened.

  For just a moment, Rachel was lying in bed, holding her baby, a fully-developed sphere in her arms, and she was humming a lullaby to it, but it was crying and she didn’t know how to stop it from crying.

  “Rachel.” Hugh was leaning over her. He put his arms beneath her back, lifting her slightly.

  “Hugh?” She looked down at her hands. The thing had gotten away. Her hands were streaked with her own blood where it had cut her. “Oh, God, it’s still here, Hugh, it’s still…”

  But he was lifting her up, covering her with her own robe as he took her through the crib, dashing back through the wall of flame, and then out of that accursed place.

  She did not turn to see if the fetus with the blue eyes followed, but she thought she heard it crying in a corner as tongues of fire shot out of the crib, almost touching her.

  EPILOGUE

  THE ANSWERED PRAYER

  1.

  Hugh carried Rachel up through the house, and then back through the French doors to the patio. He kept her wrapped in her robe; his arms blistered with burns, but were blessedly numb with pain. He knew once the shock wore off he would be clenching his teeth in agony, remembering the sledgehammer slamming into his right arm. But there were worse things than physical pain. He took her through the back gate, leaning her up against the car. Where would they go? What would they run to? But in his mind, just one thought, those words, help Rachel. It was all he wanted to do. He unlocked her door and opening it, maneuvered her around and in. She held onto him, still feverish, still fighting to stay conscious. Then he went around to his side of the car and got in. He stuck the key into the ignition and turned it hard. Nothing. The car would not start.

  Rachel clutched his arm. “Hugh, look -” She pointed up to the second-story window. But there was nothing there. “I thought I saw something, I thought I saw that thing.”

  Hugh kissed her tear-streaked face. “It’s gone, we’re safe.”

  “Let’s get out of here, please,” she murmured.

  “Won’t start.” Hugh turned the key once, twice, cursing.

  “I know I saw it,” she said, “look.”

  Hugh glanced up to where she pointed, the French doors. For just a second he thought he saw a flash of movement, but it was red and yellow, and he realized the fire had spread to the upper story.

  “Our house,” Rachel gasped, but sounded like she was recoiling from the thought.

  Hugh finally got the car started, putting it in reverse. “Let it burn, let it just burn.”

  He backed quickly out of the alley.

  Rachel said, “Where are we -”

  “I want to get you to an emergency room first. Then…” But he didn’t know what to say next. He didn’t know what would come next.

  “Everything hurts. God, my arms, my legs.”

  “The burns aren’t bad.”

  “The house, the spirits in the house, wanted me, wanted to put that thing…”

  “They’re destroyed. Scout, no more fears.”

  “It was…” Rachel tried to find the word, but there was no word.

  “It was hell. Plain hell.” Hugh turned the car onto Connecticut Avenue. He would drive until they were at the hospital and he would carry her inside and he would do whatever he could to stop Rachel from hurting ever again.

  2.

  The fire in Draper House died of its own accord. It had spread to the second floor, riding the narrow staircase up from the crib through the vanity, and then consuming the wallpaper down the hallway and the drapes, until it finally came to the living room. The photographs that Hugh had taken years ago, of scenery and of a younger Rachel, were consumed in the spreading fire, along with the furniture, the plants. The walls blackened but did not fall. And there it had died as if the air outside the crib was not fine enough to keep it burning. Neighbors had called the fire department, who came and put out what was left of the flames.

  One fireman swore to his buddies that a dozen or more rats swarmed up from the downstairs, out into the alley, the lamplight shining on their backs. And what he saw one rat carrying between its jaws terrified him, for it looked like a tiny child, or a skinless animal that lived in the dark, a pink creature with blue eyes, its mouth opened in a scream while the rat shook it between its jaws.

  But the man had seen this through smoke and shadows and when he told his friends, they laughed at his imagination.

  3.

  Almost a year later, in the suburbs of northern Virginia, in a house that had been built in the 1970s and had no history of malevolence other than the rumor that the last owner had perhaps drunk just one beer too many at the local barbecues, Rachel would lie awake at night thinking she heard Mrs. Deerfield singing lullabies to the thing. And she would scream, because it still frightened her and she knew it would for a long time to come.

  “Scout?” Hugh reached over and hugged her close to him.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. Was it bad?”

  “Same old same old.”

  “Let’s Pretend, Scout, that we banished them, banished them forever. We sent them back to their cages, we threw the key away. We vanquished the foe.”

  “I’m still afraid.”

  “It comes and goes.”

  “I love you.”

  “Well, that’s news to me.”

  “What if we went back? Hugh?”

  “Never.”

  “Good. I never want to, either. I know it’s just a house. But there’s still the chance… it’s still there.”

  “No, it’s gone. And no one will ever live in that place again.”

  “I just wish my dreams weren’t so bad.”

  “Well, I can tell you a bedtime story, Scout. You and the lumpkin.” She felt his hand patting her stomach which had grown slightly in the past month. She knew that her baby would be healthy, that what was growing inside her was untouched by the abomination in Draper House. It just felt right. If she was sensitive at all to things, if she had any sixth sense about what was right and what was wrong, she knew her baby was
right.

  “So let’s hear it.” She put her hand over his as he rubbed her stomach gently.

  And his stories all began the same, which is why she liked them, and sometimes they made her cry because his stories were so much sweeter than the way the world could ever be again. He would say, “Let’s Pretend,” and his voice would be soft and his story would be hopeful. Then she would drift off into a peaceful sleep of sweet dreams for at least that night.

  4.

  From Diaries of an Innocent Age by Verena Standish:

  …One can never put such an event completely behind oneself. I carry the horror and the sadness within me even as I put pen to paper. But life takes over and years pass, and memories become less vivid. Their power to disturb loses some of its hold.

  Draper House exists still at the border of Winthrop Park in Washington. It remains as cold and hard as the stone from which it is made. It is my fervent prayer that this cursed house of evil shall stand cold and hard and empty until the day of judgment when it shall be cast into the flames…

  * * *

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