"Barker, Clive - The Great and Secret Show v1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive)

The parents met, and talked together. Between them they beat out the only scenario that made any sense. There had clearly been a pact of some kind made between the girls. They'd decidedЧfor some reason known only to themЧto become pregnant. Three of them had succeeded. Arleen had failed, and it had pitched what had always been a highly strung girl into the throes of a nervous breakdown. The problems that now had to be addressed were threefold. First, to locate the would-be fathers and then prosecute them for their sexual opportunism. Second, to terminate the pregnancies as quickly and safely as possible. Thirdly, to keep the whole business quiet so that the reputations of the three families would not suffer the same fate as that of the Farrells, whom the righteous inhabitants of the Grove now treated as pariahs.
In all three they failed. In the matter of the fathers simply because none of the girls, even under parental duress, would name the culprits. In the issue of aborting the babies, because again the children steadfastly refused to be browbeaten into giving up what they'd wasted no little sweat procuring. And finally, in their attempts to keep the whole sorry business under wraps, because scandal likes the light, and it only took one indiscreet doctor's receptionist to begin the journalists sniffing after fresh evidence of delinquency.
The story broke two days after the parents' meeting, and Palomo GroveЧwhich had been rocked by Arleen's disclosures, but not overturnedЧsustained an almost mortal blow.
The Mad Girl's Tale had made interesting reading for the UFO sighting and Cancer Cure crowd, but it was essentially a bust. These new developments, however, touched a much more sensitive nerve. Here were four families whose solid, well-heeled lives had been shattered by a pact made by their own daughters. Was there some kind of cult involved, the press demanded to know? Was the anonymous father conceivably the same man, a seducer of young women whose very namelessness left endless room for speculation. And what of the Farrell child, who'd first blown the whistle on what was being called the League of Virgins? Had she been driven to more extreme behavior than her friends because, as the Chronicle was the first to report, she was actually infertile? Or had the others yet to unburden themselves of their true excesses? This was a story that would run and run. It had everything: sex, possession, families in chaos, small-town bitchery, sex, insanity and sex. What was more, it could only get better from here.
As the pregnancies advanced the press could follow the progress. And with luck there'd be some startling payoff. The children would be all triplets, or black, or born dead.
Oh, the possibilities!

III
It was hushed at the center of the storm; hushed and still. The girls heard the howls and accusations heaped on them from parents, press and peers alike, but weren't much touched by them. The process that had begun in the lake continued on its own inevitable way, and they let it shape their minds as it had, and did, their bodies. They were calm as the lake was calm; their surface so placid the most violent attack upon it left not so much as a ripple.
Nor did they seek each other out during this time. Their interest in each other, and indeed in the outside world, dwindled to zero. All they cared to do was sit at home growing fuller, while controversy raged around them. That too, despite its early promise, dwindled as the months went by, and new scandals claimed the public's attention. But the damage to the Grove's equilibrium had been done. The League of Virgins had put the town on the Ventura County map in a fashion it would never have wished upon itself, but, given the fact, was determined to profit by. The Grove had more visitors that autumn than it had enjoyed since its creation, people determined to be able to boast that they'd visited that place; Crazy-ville; the place where girls made eyes at anything that moved if the Devil told them to.
There were other changes in the town, which were not so observable as the full bars and the bustling Mall. Behind closed doors the children of the Grove had to fight more vehemently for their privileges, as their parents, particularly the fathers of daughters, withdrew freedoms previously taken for granted. These domestic frays cracked several families, and broke some entirely. The alcohol intakes went up correspondingly; Marvin's Food and Drug did exceptional business in hard liquor during October and November, the demand taking off into the stratosphere over the Christmas period, when, in addition to the usual festivities, incidents of drunkenness, adultery, wife-beating and exhibitionism turned Pa-lomo Grove into a sinners' paradise.
With the public holidays, and their private woundings, over, several families decided to move out of the Grove altogether, and a subtle reorganization of the town's social structure began, as properties thought desirableЧsuch as those in the Crescents (now marred by the Farrells' presence)Чfell in value, and were bought up by individuals who could never have dreamt of living in that neighborhood the summer before.
So many consequences, from a battle in troubled waters.
That battle had not gone unwitnessed, of course. What William Witt had learned of secrecy in his short life as a voyeur proved invaluable as subsequent events unfolded. More than once he came close to telling somebody what he'd seen at the lake, but he resisted the temptation, knowing that the brief stardom he'd earn from it would have to be set against suspicion and possible punishment. Not only that; there was every chance he'd not even be believed. He kept the memory alive in his own head, however, by going back to where it had happened on a regular basis. In fact he'd returned there the day after it had all happened, to see if he could spot the occupants of the lake. But the water was already retreating. It had shrunk by perhaps a third overnight. After a week it had gone entirely, revealing a fissure in the ground which was evidently a point of access to the caves that ran beneath the town.
He wasn't the only visitor to the spot. Once Arleen had unburdened herself of what had happened there that afternoon, countless sightseers came looking for the spot. The more perceptive among them quickly recognized it: the water had left the grass yellowed and dusted with dried silt. One or two even attempted to gain access to the caves, but the fissure presented a virtually straight drop with no ready means of descent. After a few days of fame the spot was left to itself and to William's solitary visits. It gave him a strange satisfaction, going there, despite the fear he felt. A sense of complicity' with the caves and their secret, not to mention the erotic rrisson that came when he stood where he'd stood that day, and imagined again the nakedness of the bathers.
The fate of the girls didn't much interest him. He read about them once in a while, and heard them talked about, but out of sight for William was pretty much out of mind. There were better things to watch. With the town in disarray he had much to spy on: casual seductions and abject slavery; furies; beatings; bloody-nosed farewells. One day, he thought, IТll write all of this down. It'll be called Witt's Book, and everyone in it will know, when it's published, that their secrets all belong to me.
When, on the infrequent occasions he did think of the girls' present condition, it was thoughts of Arleen he favored, simply because she was in a hospital where he couldn't see her even if he wanted to, and his powerlessness, as for every voyeur, was a spur. She was sick in the head, he'd heard, and nobody quite knew why. She wanted men to come to her all the time, she wanted babies the way the others had babies, but she couldn't and that was why she was sick. His curiosity concerning her died, however, when he overheard somebody report that the girl had lost all trace of her glamour.
"She looks half dead" was the way he'd heard it put. "Drugged and dead."
After that, it was as if Arleen Farrell no longer existed, except as a beautiful vision, shedding her clothes on the edge of a silver lake. Of what that lake had done to her he cleansed his mind thoroughly.
Unfortunately the wombs of the quartet's remaining members could not cast the experience and its consequence out except as a bawling reality, which new stage in the humiliation of Palomo Grove began on April 2nd, when the first of the League of Virgins gave birth.
Howard Ralph Katz was born to his eighteen-year-old mother Trudi at 3:46 a.m., by cesarean section. He was frail, weighing a mere four pounds and two ounces when he first saw the light of the delivery room. A child, it was agreed, who resembled his mother, for which his grandparents were duly grateful given that they had no clue as to the father. Howard had Trudi's dark, deep-set eyes, and a spiral skull cap of brown hair, even at birth. Like his mother, who had also been premature, he had to fight for every breath during the first six days of his life, after which he strengthened quickly. On April 19th Trudi brought her son back to Palomo Grove, to nurse him in the place she knew best.
Two weeks after Howard Katz saw the light, the second of the League of Virgins gave birth. This time there was something more for the press to elaborate on than the production of a sickly baby boy. Joyce McGuire gave birth to twins, one of each, born within a minute of each other in a perfectly uncomplicated fashion. She named them Jo-Beth and Tommy-Ray, names she'd chosen (though she would never admit this, not to the end of her days) because they had two fathers: one in Randy Krentzman, one in the lake. Three, if she counted their Father in Heaven, though she feared he'd long passed her over in favor of more compatible souls.
Just over a week after the birth of the McGuire twins Carolyn also produced twins, boy and girl, but the boy was delivered dead. The girl, who was big-boned and strong, was named Linda. With her birth the saga of the League of Vir-gins seemed to have reached its natural conclusion. The funeral of Carolyn's other child drew a small audience, but otherwise the four families were left alone. Too much alone in fact. Friends ceased to call; acquaintances denied ever having known them. The story of the League of Virgins had besmirched Palomo Grove's good name, and despite the profit the town had earned from the scandal there was now a general desire to forget that the incident had ever occurred.
Pained by the rejection they sensed from every side the Katz family made plans to leave the Grove and return to Alan Katz's home city, Chicago. They sold their home in late June to an out-of-towner who got a bargain, a fine property and a reputation in one fell swoop. The Katz family were gone two weeks later.
It proved to be good timing. Had they delayed their departure by a few more days they would have been caught up in the last tragedy of the League's story. On the evening of July 26th the Hotchkiss family went out for a short while, leaving Carolyn at home with baby Linda. They stayed out longer than they intended, and it was well after midnight, and therefore the 27th, when they got back. Carolyn had celebrated the anniversary of her swim by smothering her daughter and taking her own life. She had left a suicide note, which explained, with the same chilling detachment the girl had used to talk of the San Andreas Fault, that Arleen Farrell's story had been true all along. They had gone swimming. They had been attacked. To this day she did not know what by, but she had sensed its presence in her, and in the child, ever since, and it was evil. That was why she had smothered Linda. That was why she was now going to slit her wrists. Don't judge me too harshly, she asked. I never wanted to hurt anybody in my life.
The letter was interpreted by the parents thus: that the girls had indeed been attacked and raped by somebody, and for reasons of their own had kept the identity of the culprit or culprits to themselves. With Carolyn dead, Arleen insane and Trudi gone to Chicago, it fell upon Joyce McGuire to tell the whole truth, without excision or addition, and to lay the story of the League of Virgins to rest.
At first, she refused. She couldn't remember anything about that day, she claimed. The trauma had wiped the memory from her mind. Neither Hotchkiss or Farrell were content with that, however. They kept applying the pressure, through Joyce's father. Dick McGuire was not a strong man, either in spirit or body, and his Church was wholly unsupportive in the matter, siding with the non-Mormons against the girl. The truth had to be told.
At last, to keep the browbeaters from doing any more damage to her father than they already had, Joyce told. It made a strange scene. The six parents, plus Pastor John, whc was the spiritual leader of the Mormon community in the Grove and its surroundings, were sitting in the McGuires dining room listening to the pale, thin girl whose hands went first to one cradle then to the other as she rocked her children to sleep telling, as she rocked, of their conception. First she warned her audience that they weren't going to like what she was about to tell. Then she justified her warning with the telling. She gave them the whole story. The walk; the lake; the swim; the things that had fought over their bodies in the water; their escape; her passion for Randy KrentzmanЧ whose family had been one of those to leave the Grove months before, presumably because he'd made a quiet confession of his own; the desire she'd shared with all the girls to get pregnant as efficiently as possibleЧ
"So Randy Krentzman was responsible for them all?" Carolyn's father said.
"Him?" she said. "He wasn't capable."
"So who was?"
"You promised to tell the whole story," the Pastor reminded her.
"So I am," she replied. "As far as I know it. Randy Krentzman was my choice. We all know how Arleen went about it. I'm sure Carolyn found somebody different. And Trudi too. The fathers weren't important, you see. They were just men."
"Are you saying the Devil is in you, child?" the Pastor asked.
"No."
"The children, then?"
"No. No." She rocked both cradles now, one with each hand. "Jo-Beth and Tommy-Ray aren't possessed. At least not the way you mean. They just aren't Randy's children. Maybe they've got some of his good looks..." she allowed herself a tiny smile. "...I'd like that," she said. "Because he was so very handsome. But the spirit that made them is in the lake."
"There is no lake," Arleen's father pointed out.
"There was that day. And maybe there will be again, if it rains hard enough."
"Not if I can help it."
Whether he entirely believed Joyce's story or not Farrell was as good as his word. He and Hotchkiss rapidly raised sufficient donations from around town to have the entrance to the caves sealed up. Most of the contributors signed a check simply to get Farrell off their doorstep. Since his princess had lost her mind he had all the conversational skill of a ticking bomb.
In October, a few days short of fifteen months after the girls had first gone down to the water, the fissure was blocked with concrete. They would go there again, but not for many years.
Until then, the children of Palomo Grove could play in peace.

PART THREE:
FREE SPIRITS
I
Of the hundreds of erotic magazines and films which William Witt purchased as he grew to manhood over the next seventeen years, first by mail order then later taking trips into Los Angeles for that express purpose, his favorites were always those in which he was able to glimpse a life behind the camera. Sometimes the photographerЧequipment and allЧcould be seen reflected in a mirror behind the performers. Sometimes the hand of a technician, or a flufferЧsomeone hired to keep the stars aroused between shotsЧwould be caught on the edge of the frame, like the limb of a lover just exiled from the bed.

Such obvious errors were relatively rare. More frequentЧand to William's mind far more tellingЧwere subtler signs of the reality behind the scene he was witnessing. The times when a performer, offered a multitude of sins and not certain which hole to pleasure next, glanced off camera for instruction; or when a leg was speedily shifted because the power behind the lens had yelled that it obscured the field of action.