Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set Page 3

  As he was looking for the escaped frogs, he heard the scream.

  5

  Missy Welles and Joey Gardner heard it, too.

  They stood huddled together (to give Joey some credit in the social department, he'd managed to slip his arm around Missy's shoulder without resorting to the false yawn routine), behind the stone wall that defined one edge of the Feely property.

  It was definitely coming from the direction of the old barn.

  And they'd both seen Patty run into it after Hopfrog had fallen.

  Joey didn't think it was Patty's scream—she'd screamed often enough in her life for him to distinguish hers from anyone else's.

  It was a single scream, and was cut off quickly as if someone had clapped a hand over the mouth of the person screaming.

  Joey looked at Missy; Missy watched the lightening sky—a flock of starlings, startled by the sound, took off in a dark cloak towards the river. The morning was deep blue, as if the chilly wind had blown some of the color off House Mountain's flat blue top.

  6

  Hopfrog went towards the sound.

  It had come from the Feely barn, and he was wondering if it had been Patty, or maybe some animal hurt in there.

  He glanced at Feely's front door to make sure that the Old Man wasn't going to check the noises out. A light switched on in the second story—Old Man Feely was probably upstairs counting his money. They said in town that he was a miser who had found a Civil War treasure buried under his house and was hoarding it for judgment day.

  Pretty sure that Old Man Feely was occupied, Hopfrog walked around the side of the barn, to the back end of it—all the kids knew there were some loose boards back there you could swing to the side and squeeze through.

  Hopfrog noticed footprints in the mud—Patty's shoes.

  He waved to Missy and Joey, and whisper-shouted, "Come on, guys. It's Patty."

  He waited for his two friends to come over and then they went between the boards, into the old barn, not knowing that they were beginning the greatest and most terrifying adventure of their lives.

  For they heard Patty Glass's last cry; a shriek, really.

  And in that sound all of their fates were bound together and sealed and tied forever to their hometown of Colony, West Virginia.

  7

  "And that's the story about how Patty Glass disappeared, over twenty years ago," the man said to the boy.

  "But you're not done yet," the boy said. "A story can't end until it's all told."

  "Any good storyteller will warn you that a story's over when the teller tells all he knows. It doesn't really matter whether it's all told or not."

  "I don't get it, Dad," the boy said. "How'd she disappear?"

  The man shook his head. "Nobody knows. She just vanished. Those kids found one of her shoes—just like Cinderella. Only there wasn't any Patty in it. She was just gone."

  "Didn't they see anything in the barn?" the boy asked.

  The man looked out the window.

  The leaves were brilliant red and orange, but even so, he only saw a gray world out there, out where people lived and breathed. He didn't go out there much—at least not much more than he had to. It scared him—he hated admitting it even to himself—just the ordinary world, how people were with each other, the mysteries of everyday existence which he could not fathom. His son was his main connection to it, an emissary of life beyond this house, bringing in the smells and stories and triumphs of a child's world.

  Children were beginning to walk the streets in costumes of ghosts and goblins and witches and ghouls and pirates and heroes and princesses.

  He looked at his son—the boy, dressed as Batman, waiting for his mother to arrive to take him trick-or-treating.

  The man said, "They saw things in the barn, of course. But sometimes the mind plays tricks, don't you think? Like on Halloween? Tonight? Ghosts are out, demons, even."

  The boy shivered. "You're just trying to scare me."

  "I know, I know, and your mother will be furious with me, won't she?"

  The boy smiled. "I like getting scared. So, did Hopfrog and Joey and Missy see ghosts?"

  "Not exactly. What they saw was something less scary. It was a well."

  "Like a wishing well?"

  "Yup. In the center of the barn. Only strange thing was, there was this cross on top of it, like it was part of a church or something. Like someone had pulled it off a church and had stuck it on the well."

  "That's weird."

  "Sure is. And when Hopfrog was in the barn, he thought he heard someone talking down the well. He thought he heard Patty. But when he told people, and they went to the barn, there was nothing down there, nothing in the water at all. Just water. Lots of water."

  "No Patty?"

  "No Patty. That's why you kids shouldn't ever go out to the Feely place. It's not a good place to play at all."

  "Okay. Dad? Mom told me you used to be called Hopfrog when you were a kid, only once you lost your legs, you didn't like being called it anymore."

  His father grinned, remembering the insensitivity of youth. He drew his wheelchair back from the window and pushed himself over to be closer to his son. He reached out and gave him a hug, practically crinkling up the Batman cape permanently. "I want you to tell your mom I still love her, okay? She's still angry at me, but you can tell her that, right?"

  His son looked uncomfortable. "I guess so. And Dad? Can I ask you something else, please?"

  "Shoot."

  "If the Feely place is so bad, why don't they just burn it?"

  But his father, who was known as Homer Petersen, and lived in his late mother's house two blocks from Main Street in Colony, West Virginia, and was in his mid-thirties, had no answer to that.

  His mind was wandering now, not morbidly, as it had been in the past few weeks, but wondering what his other friend was doing now, the friend who had been smart enough to get the hell out of this place in time, before it had started crippling him, too.

  This place.

  These hundred acres of nightmares.

  The wind picked up outside. The man who had once upon a time been called Hopfrog shut his eyes and thought he heard a voice from the past whispering through the eaves of the old house.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BORN TO RUN

  1

  The same night that Homer Petersen was telling his son about Patty Glass's disappearance, Joe Gardner was in Baltimore. He was not at home with his wife and kids sorting through the Halloween loot of Snickers, Necco wafers, and candy corn in their renovated townhouse on Pratt Street. He was down at Fell's Point getting good and plowed on a fine local ale called Oxford Class. It had a golden texture to it, that's what Joe thought, and could be sipped or guzzled, whatever the mood.

  The bar was called Franklin's and had a big fat portrait of Ben Franklin holding a foaming mug, as if he'd been in just the other day to hoist a few. The place had an old tin ceiling with all kinds of fancy markings on it and the walls were red brick, built sometime in the last century, crumbling now, cracks between the bricks, cracks on the mahogany bar. Just like me, he thought, a few cracks showing through. Joe had promised his wife a year before that he wouldn't do this kind of thing anymore—go to a dive and get shit-faced, but Ben Franklin's was no ordinary dive, and when you get news like 1 got today, hell, it seems like the right thing to do. Besides, he rationalized, as he often did, I'm joining that fine tradition of writers who can't get through a crisis without a cold one.

  But I won't look at women, no sir, not me, that I have forsworn.

  He kept his eyes on Ben Franklin, or the chilly mug in his hands, or the bartender, who looked a bit like the Tenniel illustration of the Jabberwocky from Through the Looking-Glass—all gangly and long, with a lamprey-like face and a Fu Manchu mustache.

  "More?" the Jabberwock bartender asked.

  "I think four has done me in. Hey," Joe added.

  "Yeah?"

  "You got a mother?"

  "Ever
ybody's got a mother."

  "Not like my mother."

  "How old are you, buddy?"

  Joe had to think a minute. "Almost thirty-five."

  The bartender shook his head. "Get a life, my friend, get a life."

  Joe wanted to protest and say that he had a life, he wrote essays and stories and novels, but when he thought about it again, he realized it wasn't much of a life at all. "My mother's dying," he said. "She's dying. Leave it to her."

  The bartender moved away, not interested.

  "Damn her for dying," Joe said, and lifted his mug in a toast to old Ben. "She's dying and now I've got to go back there, Ben, for more than a day, Jesus, for maybe a week. A whole week in hell, Ben."

  A woman, a blond—he saw her hair peripherally—sat on the stool next to him.

  I am not going to look at you. And not just for the obvious reasons that I'm married and I shouldn't even be in here, but because you're going to look like her, I just know it. I will look at you with your blond hair, and instead see a woman with brown hair and deep almond eyes, because, lady, I am haunted, but only in the normal fucked-up way that guys are always haunted by their first loves. Men are all assholes, lady, don't you know that yet?

  He could tell that she wanted to speak with him, maybe just for a friendly chat, but he was scared of those friendly chats, because they could turn into something else, and he would just end up punishing himself if he spoke with her. He kept his eyes on Ben Franklin.

  When he was finished with his ale, he set the mug down, and swiveled out of the bar stool in the opposite direction from the woman. It was time to go home and sober up, get the kids ready, make sure he was ready, too, ready to face that memory that never seemed to die, no matter how many beers he drank, no matter how many nights he lay awake, listening to the sound of his own heartbeat and remembering the sound of her voice like he was a radio tuned only to her frequency.

  Tomorrow we leave, he thought, tomorrow we head for the armpit of the universe and look the devil in the face.

  Joe Gardner walked home to sober up in the icy wind that came up from the harbor, not minding the cold, not minding the early dark of autumn, knowing that his doom was somehow sealed.

  He bought a pack of cigarettes at Fitzpatrick's corner store and though he wasn't even a smoker, smoked half of it while he walked up seven more blocks to his home. The first thing his wife said when he walked through the door, observing the cigarette hanging from his mouth, was, "Don't you start up another bad habit on me."

  He stubbed the cigarette out in a saucer and shrugged. "Lung cancer, emphysema, stroke; nothing compared to dear old Mom."

  2

  After Aaron finally wound down from sorting through his candy, after both he and Hillary were quiet in their beds, Joe sat in front of the television and just stared at the screen. The show, Cops, was on, and a policeman was chasing down a man who had been growing marijuana in his backyard. Joe wanted to change the channel, because he usually watched the news, but he didn't even have the energy to pick up the remote. He felt a freeze in his muscles and bones. The thought of going to visit his mother paralyzed him. His wife sat beside him, resting her head on his shoulder.

  "Remember the hamster Aaron used to have?" she said.

  "Huh? Yeah. King Tut. Not just any hamster, but a long-haired blue hamster."

  "Right. Well, remember how Aaron neglected him for a couple of months? Fed him and everything, but didn't get him outside his cage to run around?"

  Joe nodded, and laughed. "Hamster paralysis."

  "That's right. That's what the vet called it. It didn't move so its body just gave up. Is that what you're going to be like when we go to see your mother?"

  Joe nestled his chin above her scalp. She smelled so good. He closed his eyes and inhaled; sweet and fresh. "Yes," he sighed. "I'll get hamster paralysis." He laughed, but he sounded like he'd been hollowed out.

  "No, you won't. Because you're not going for Joe."

  "I'm not? Well, I'm not going for her, either."

  "No, you're not. Guess who you're going for?"

  "I have no idea."

  "You're going for Aaron and Hillary, so they can finally meet their grandmother, before it's too late."

  Joe sighed, wishing he had another drink, but knowing it was better he didn't. "I guess I think too much about myself. All those bad years."

  "And it was a long time ago now."

  "Not to me. Feels like yesterday."

  After a few minutes of breathing her sweet aroma and the feeling of her body against his, he said, "It sure would go a long way to making me forget the past if we made love right about now. What do you think?"

  "Oh, I don't know. How about if we sat like this for a while longer? Then, maybe, we can see where it leads," she said.

  "Sounds good," he said, slipping both hands around her, feeling the comforting warmth; and until he went to sleep that night, it helped him forget the nagging feeling that if he ever set one foot in the town of Colony, West Virginia, again that it would be his doom. They did not make love that night, but it was all right. They went to bed, and, ignoring each other's snoring, fell asleep.

  He awoke in the middle of the night, sleepwalking, standing in the hallway of the townhouse, the last image of a dream in his head—

  a girl with berry-stained lips, holding a child in her hands, holding it up for him, as if offering him some of what she had tasted.

  3

  From the Journals of Joe Gardner / 1995:

  This morning, we go.

  Jesus, I do not want to, and not just because of my mother, but because of that other thing, that thing I did, that thing that every last person in the town knows about and probably still remembers. I'd say fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, but you and I know that nobody ever takes a joke in this life. Nobody laughs when you throw something in their face. Last time I went, I hid the whole time. But this time's going to be different. Damn it, I hate being an adult. All right, I'm a coward, I know it, I just don't want to go there, you can't make me. Please let some miracle happen and let us get down there and find that town has been wiped off the face of the earth—as it deserves to be. God—I will believe in you if you will do this for me—please, please.

  Don't make me go.

  (How can I expect some God to help me if I don't even believe in anything?)

  We'll be there by early evening. So close and so far away.

  Too damn close.

  It's funny how just the idea of going back home sometimes does things to you.

  4

  It was November, and he hadn't been back to his hometown in at least seven years, not since Hillary was born—and then, only for a day, without his wife and family, just to pay his respects after his father died. That was the story, anyway.

  Truth was, he had skipped his father's funeral, had made it about as far south as Alexandria, Virginia, and had spent the night at a motel off 395 drinking himself into a stupor rather than continue down to that hellhole. He hadn't even felt guilty about missing the funeral; he knew he was a bad son, the worst, but he could not bring himself to go home, as if there were an invisible barrier, a glass wall, keeping him out. He lied to his family, told them what a somber occasion it had been, how he had barely said two words to his mother, how the place was as ugly as he had remembered it.

  Joe reasoned that he hadn't been back because time went so fast after thirty; his wife knew it was because he didn't like to remember what had happened back then. Not the Patty Glass thing when he was a kid (he had never even spoken about that with anyone since), but when he was a little older.

  And now, he was almost there.

  Colony.

  In Fredericksburg, he'd stopped at a gas station for coffee and a fill up. While his family waited in the car, he went to use the restroom. It was a garden-variety pit of a restroom, which wasn't so awful, so he did his business, and then caught a glimpse of something in the mirror, something which shook him up in a way he would not be
able to explain.

  He had seen her, briefly, in his own face.

  Mother.

  In his eyes, as he was getting older, he saw the flecks of dark brown on cinnamon, the kind of stern, tense glance she had.

  It was as if the closer he got to her, the more she emerged from beneath his own flesh.

  I'm a grown man. What the hell is wrong with me?

  He washed his face off with the ice-cold water, and looked at his reflection in the mirror until she went away. Until it was just Joe, pale skin, a few imminent wrinkles around the eyes and maybe the forehead, his hair thinning in places he didn't like thinking about—but still Joe, and no one else.

  He didn't talk much the rest of the way down, and it seemed to take forever (of course, as Aaron pointed out, Joe had taken the longest route possible in his effort to avoid going home). Then, the signs started: Colony, West Virginia, 50 miles; Colony, 22 miles; Colony, 14 miles. It felt like he was counting down to a rocket launch.

  Joe took the long cut that went along the quarries, not far off the river. Trees were still bursting with the gold and orange of fall, shining and damp from a recent rain; the grass was dull, but dewy; the air, so clean it was almost unbreathable.

  "I forgot it's so pretty," his wife said. "The whole area. We haven't gotten out into the country in forever."

  Joe did his usual head-nod-and-rotate as if to say, pretty only goes so far.

  Aaron was sitting up in the backseat poking his fingers at his Game Boy, behaving fairly decently since he'd been warned that if he went into any kind of tantrum or mood, the Game Boy got the deep six. Hillary slept, her head propped up against the car window with a pillow. It had taken far too long to come down through the mountain roads after the urban and suburban sprawls of Baltimore, and then Northern Virginia. He was impressed that neither of his kids had put up any fuss.

  If anyone's done that, it's me.

  "How much farther?" Aaron asked, setting his Game Boy down for the first time since breakfast.