AUGUST 22, 2023 – At 6:30 that Friday and according to plan, I rode with Cliff to his house in Pompton Lakes for dinner and an overnight stay. It was an evening I will never forget, and an occasion on which I would gain further and surprising insight into this Holman tenant turned unlikely Holman friend.
My amazement began as we pulled up to the house itself. Secluded on a wooded hillside overlooking a lake, it was Tudor style but with architectural originality. The main section had a gable roof, with steep slopes. Various wings extended out from the center, with rooflines at shallower pitches. Covered with gray-painted, cedar shakes, the house looked elegant and spacious, but not ostentatious. Leading up to the entrance was a beautiful walkway of slate in four of five colors. I stepped inside to a showcase of taste. I was dumbfounded. It was not the style I had imagined for a former rock star who now wore a dangling skull earring and made his living from Halloween horror, rented costumes, and super-caffeinated promotions.
My first reaction was that Beth, who has superb tastes when it comes to antiques, interior design and décor, would assign the very highest mark to Cliff’s house. The flooring was four-inch, restored, pine planking, and the living room, with a large fireplace and vaulted ceiling, was nicely appointed with a combination of rustic antiques, formal furniture, and fine art. The rest of the house was nicely finished and furnished, as well. Every corner was neat as a pin. In the basement was a fully-appointed, climate-controlled, well-stocked wine cellar. The entire house was all in marked contrast to the physical and psychological crap that had surrounded me the past few days at Holman Central. Cliff beamed proudly as I showered him with compliments.
“This house is my relief valve and my refuge,” he said. “When I get sick and tired of all the bullshit I have to deal with in my work, I retreat to my house. It represents a complete change of pace and place, a change of scenery, a change of focus.”
“I guess!” was all I could say. I was awestruck.
Cliff’s then girlfriend—now his wife—Jeanette, was every bit as beautiful and elegant as the house. She greeted me warmly and made a favorable impression from the outset and reflected exceptionally well on Cliff.
Jeanette had prepared a dinner of game hen, wild rice and fresh greens, a meal of simple refinement, which, I realized, symbolized Cliff’s personality and character as well as Janette’s. Yes, behind the rock ‘n roll stardom, the high school hockey star, the costume man, the horror guy, the party man, the natural comedian, the wheeler-dealer, the man of decision and decisiveness, the guy with long, shaggy hair and the little skull dangling from his ear, was a man of simple and unaffected grace. I wished then and there that my sisters could see this side of Cliff, whose unlikely friendship with our eccentric uncle, was so kind and unassuming. Sadly, my periodic reports of Cliff’s unusual generosity of spirit had caused Nina and Elsa, particularly, to question his motives.
We enjoyed a lively conversation over dinner. I learned that Jeanette had met UB a number of times, and though she thought he was very quirky, she found him endearing too. Like UB, she was a cat person, and she appreciated his youthful energy, his intellect and broad range of interests.
After dessert, Cliff leaned back in his chair and announced to Jeanette that after we cleared the dishes, he and I would be going for a walk to enjoy a couple of Nicaraguan cigars. “As long as you’re smoking them outside, I can enjoy the fact that you’ll be enjoying them,” she said with a twinkle in her eyes.
“They’re powerful cigars, but they need to be powerful, because I’ve got things to talk to Eric about that are pretty damn powerful,” he said, with his big smile.
“Yeah, now that you mention it, Cliff,” I said, “here I’ve been in New Jersey for three days running, and I have yet to hear what you couldn’t tell me over the phone.”
“Ah ha! Tonight you will hear everything,” he said. “And I do mean everything.”
“Now you’re making me curious,” said Jeanette, as she rose from the table and lifted her plate. “Can I go for a walk too?”
“Not unless you’re willing to smoke a Nicaraguan,” Cliff said with a laugh. “But no, you can’t. What I have to tell Eric I can’t tell you, Jeanette.”
“Not even me?” she said.
“No,” came the reply. “You’d be . . . oh forget it, Jeanette. No one but Eric gets to hear what I’m going to tell.”
“Well,” I said, “Now I can see that you’re not only the master of horror, but you’re the master of suspense.
“The two go hand-in-hand,” said Cliff. “But in this case, if I’m the master of suspense, I ain’t the master of horror.”
“No? Then who is the master of horror?”
“Let’s get going,” said Cliff, ignoring my question.
After closing the door behind us, Cliff reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out two Nicaraguans and handed one to me. Cliff, I could readily see, had far more experience with cigars than I did. Observing proper cigar etiquette, Cliff first struck a match for my cigar. I sucked on the stogie, coughed and spluttered but failed to get the tobacco to burn. It took several matches and a fair amount of coughing to launch the Nicaraguan. Cliff got his underway silently, with a single match and an impressive, ceremonious puff of smoke.
“We’ll walk down to the bottom of the hill then back around to the lake,” Cliff said, after we blew out a few more breaths of smoke. It was still very mild outside despite the advent of fall, and we strolled at a leisurely pace. I commented on how pleasant I found Jeanette to be, what a fine meal the three of us had just enjoyed, and what a splendid house Cliff had and what an unlikely contrast it was from all the chaos inside the Holman buildings. I could tell that my compliments greatly pleased Cliff, and I was glad they did.
In five minutes or so, our path led to a low-lying pier on the edge of the quiet lake behind Cliff’s house. We walked to the end and admired the moon reflecting in the dark, placid waters, as we quietly (I had learned to pace myself) drew on our Nicaraguans. Eventually Cliff turned and gestured toward a simple bench that was anchored to the back of the pier. “Have a seat, Eric,” he said, gravely, “because you’re gonna want to be sitting down when you hear what I have to tell you, what I couldn’t tell you over the phone, what I couldn’t tell you in my office, what I couldn’t tell you anywhere else but here.”
I sat down, and nervously, took a deeper draw on my cigar than I had intended. I coughed. Cliff, meanwhile, maintained his stance on the edge of the pier. He was silhouetted against the moonlight, and I watched anxiously as a cloud of cigar smoke rose above his head. What information about UB was he about to impart? I wondered. And why the dramatic prelude? Finally, he tossed the cigar butt into the lake and turned toward me.
“Let me tell you about the night of the fire,” he said. He then took a seat on the opposite end of the bench and stared out across the water in front of us. “It was about two in the morning when I got the call. It was your uncle.” Cliff’s reference to UB as ‘your uncle’ suggested a subliminal desire to distance himself from my uncle.
“‘The house is on fire. You better come down here,’ he said. So I hopped in the van and drove to Rutherford. By the time I got there it was a regular horror show. Flames leaping out of the top of the house, fire engines everywhere, huge lights trained on the house, people standing everywhere, watching the place burn. I walked around looking for Bruce; looked all over for him but couldn’t find him.
“Finally I spotted him standing just outside the shadow of the band shell in the park across the street from the inferno. He didn’t notice me. As I approached, I noticed another man talking to him. The man was standing in the shadow, and I couldn’t get a good look at him. He was talking to Uncle Bruce, but I couldn’t make out the words. I saw Uncle Bruce’s face, though, and you know how when he’s under stress his lips are pressed together and his mouth twitches? That’s what was he was doing. Eric. He looked scared.
“Then I knew he was scared shitless.” Cliff stood up suddenly took a deep breath and sat down again before exhaling.
“How did you know he was scared shitless?”
Cliff rose again and took a couple of steps away to the edge of the pier and faced the lake. He then turned back toward me, grunted and said, “I saw his pants go dark.”
“Huh?”
“Eric, I saw Uncle Bruce wet his pants.”
“What? What happened?” I said, incapable of speculation.
“I waited for the other guy to walk away. Then I hurried up to Uncle Bruce to ask him what the hell that was all about; who the guy was; what he’d told Bruce. For a second or two he just stood there, crotch drenched and his face as white as any ghost costume rented by Fun Ghoul.
[Redacted]
. . . “So that’s why he was so fucking scared,” said Cliff. “He hasn’t mentioned it since, and I really think he was scared so shitless he’ll never want to talk to me or anyone else about it ever again.”
A robust “HO-LEE shit!” was all I could muster in response.
* * *
It took me forever to get to sleep that night, as I pondered all that Cliff had revealed to me, and when I finally did nod off, my dreams were a series of dark scenes dominated by UB fighting for his life against flame-throwing monsters. Not since my first visit to 42 Lincoln that summer of 1957 had I dreamt about monsters.
* * *
The next morning—Saturday—after an early breakfast, Cliff drove me back to Rutherford. We filled the half-hour drive with expressions of mutual disbelief over the facts Cliff had revealed to me the night before.
UB was already on hand by the time we pulled into the driveway between the burned-out house and the Holman warehouses. According to previously laid plans, UB and I would drive up to Hamburg, where we would rendezvous with Jenny, who would take the train up from New York, and Nina, who would take Amtrak down from Boston.
Cliff greeted UB as if what had been revealed to me the night before was nothing more than Cliff’s description of a bad dream. I managed to follow suit, and when UB responded with a smile and a hearty “Good morning!” I wondered if he could be so out of touch with reality as not to realize that by now I knew what he had told Cliff on the night of the fire.
I pulled my suitcase out of Cliff’s van and carried it up to UB’s (formerly Grandpa’s) 1984 burgundy Cadillac sedan. UB looked at the suitcase, then opened the trunk, but it was already overstuffed with newspapers, magazines, containers and just plain crap. He closed the lid before anything could escape. I opened one of the back doors, and out slid a month’s worth of The New York Times. Boxes, gadgets, a soiled ski jacket, a crumpled trench coat, rolls of paper towels, cracker boxes, garden seed catalogs, a K-Mart bag with several thermometer packages sticking out of the top, and a jumble of other things rested on the seat and filled the floor space. Plenty more occupied the front passenger side of the car.
“Here,” UB said. “We’ll take some of that stuff out.” He then scooped up the papers that had fallen onto the ground, grabbed a few more from the back seat and carried them off toward one of the garages. He returned with a grocery cart—a vestige of the old A & P store that used to occupy the property Grandpa had owned across the street from the warehouses—transferred another load of papers and other junk into the cart, and pushed it back to the garage. There was now space for a passenger and my modest-size suitcase, which I shoved onto the back seat.
UB then stepped in front of me, raised his ring of a thousand keys and said, “Here. You drive.” Surprised, I accepted them. Uncle Bruce ceding control over something? He must be out of his mind, I joked to myself, amused by the irony.
We said good-bye to Cliff and climbed into what seemed like an old, unkempt cargo plane of questionable airworthiness. At least the gas tank had enough fuel, I figured, to get us past the Tappan Zee Bridge on our way to Connecticut.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
