Douglas Clegg
 Purity
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  PART ONE Summer Begins 
  
  Chapter One Who I am
  1
  These are the things I know:
  Outerbridge Island has briny water running beneath its rocks, a subterranean series of 
narrow channels between the Sound and the Atlantic.
  You can see the entrances to these channels on the northern side of the island at low 
tide. These channels feed into the Great Salt Pond on the westerly side of the island 
before it empties into the sea. It was said that once-upon-a-time, a Dutch trading ship 
smashed up against the rocks, and local pirates fed upon the treasures found within the 
hold of the ship. The treasure, it is said, was buried in the narrow caverns. To add to 
the chill of this tale, it was also said that the pirates fed upon the flesh of the 
survivors of the wreck for days.
  I’ve actually swum into the caverns at times. I’m slender enough, and in good enough 
shape to maneuver in the darkness of the water, but I never found treasure, nor did I 
emerge in the Great Salt Pond by following the channels within that part of the island. I 
needed air, after all.
  If you want something badly enough, there are ways to get it.
  This doesn’t mean that they are traditional means. It doesn’t mean that pain is not 
involved. It doesn’t mean that the cost may not overwhelm the need. It just means there 
are ways to get what you really want in this world.
  If one has a conscience, one can be driven mad. Therefore, a conscience is a key to 
madness. Everyone is a potential madman. Everyone. The sweetest boy in the world can be 
driven to the most irrational of acts. The girl who has the world at her feet, likewise, 
could be driven to some act of desperation and tragedy.
  And, in many ways, we want the irrational and the tragic and the desperate, because 
they bring meaning and life back into our existences.
  Another fact: My mother prizes three things above all others:
  The rose garden which my father planted for her before I was born. It runs in spirals 
along the bluffs and the small hillock behind our cottage. There are fourteen varieties 
of roses, with hues ranging from pale peach to blood red.
  Her koi pond, which is really the Montgomery’s koi pond, but it sits on our side of the 
property. It is largish for a pond, and narrow, nearly a reflecting pool. It was built 
deep for the harsh winters — the koi can survive a thick layer of ice as long as they can 
bury themselves down in the silt. My father covers the pool with a plastic tarp to 
further protect the fish.
  And lastly, my mother prizes the gun.
  My maternal grandfather had a small pistol that had been given to him by his mother. It 
was a small Colt pistol — what my grandfather called a vest pistol, but which I thought 
of as a Saturday Night Special. It had mother-of-
  pearl grips, and a clip that could not be removed from it. My grandfather had given my 
mother the pistol in the early years of her marriage for when my father would beat her. 
My father never beat my mother, but my grandfather would apparently not believe it. The 
pistol is useless, I heard my mother once say. Never been fired. I could barely shoot a 
cat with it, she joked. Someday, she told me, when she was weepy and bitter about life, 
she would go to Boston and sell it to a collector and take the money and go far, far 
away. When I first discovered my true god and his nature, I took the pistol.
  Final fact:
  Faith plays into all this. One must have faith that one can do what one sets out to do. 
One must have the courage of one’s convictions. All the world's history teaches us this.
  For me, it is that god I discovered.
  I call it Dagon, although its name is unknown to me. It came from the sea, and I held 
it captive, briefly. I am its priest.
  And Dagon, in a twisted and true way, upholds what I stand for.
  One must stand for something.
  For me, it is the force of love.
  The undertow of love.
  But that sounds romantic, and I’m not a romantic at all.
  I’ve been called a lot of things since the day I was born; never romantic.
  Schemer. Athlete. Brain. Manipulator. User. Common. Handsome.
  Shallow. Arrogant. Mad. Sociopath. Cold eyes.
  All by my mother.
  Jenna Montgomery once told me I had the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen on a boy.
  I had to catch my breath when she told me that.
  2
  Years ago, I came upon the god during a storm of late November, a frozen, bitter storm, 
in which I had gotten caught down at the caverns, taking a dinghy out to look for the 
famous buried pirate treasure. I was twelve and lonely, and when I saw the god thrust in 
between a rock and a hard place, as it were, I knew immediately who and what it was, and 
how I should please it. I read in my father’s bible that Dagon was the god of the 
Philistines; the Fish-
  God. I found other books, too, with titles like The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Dagon 
that further told of the god and its worshippers and what was needed to feed the god.
  Some may say it is just an abominable statue, a cheap and even grotesque trinket of 
some distant bazaar, brought by sailors or perhaps even the pirates. It is green with 
age, and made wholly of stone. Its eyes are merely garnet; its tail and fins carved with 
some exquisite artistry.
  But when I bled a seagull over the cold eyes of the little god, while the storm raged 
around me, I felt a prayer had been answered.
  I breathed easier then.
  3
  Breathing is essential to survival, and although this seems like a given, we know — 
scientifically — that it is not. Most of the problems of life are like that: simple, 
obvious, graspable, yet shrouded in a secret.
  If one can breathe well — through any crisis, any exertion — then one will survive.
  It is those who stop breathing who have let go of their wills to live.
  I am what people in this world call a sociopath, although the idea of killing someone 
has never interested me. A sociopath is not necessarily a killer, and to assume this is 
to play a dangerous game. Just as not all famous people are rich, not all sociopaths are 
Jeffrey Dahmer. If Jeffrey was one at all. You must know this about me if you’re going to