Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

ONE

The night was almost over by the time the two cars bearing Eppstadt's little expeditionary force made their way up the winding road that led into Coldheart Canyon. The sky was just a little lighter in the east, though the clouds were thick, so it would be a sluggish dawn, without an ounce of the drama which had marked the hours of darkness. In the depths of the Canyon itself, the day never truly dawned properly at all. There was a peculiar density to the shadows between the trees today; as though the night lingered there, in scraps and rags. Day-blooming flowers would fail to show themselves, even at the height of noon; while plants that would normally offer sight and scent of themselves only after dark remained awake through the daylight hours.

None of this was noticed by Eppstadt or the others in his party; they were not the sort of people who noticed things to which so little value could be readily attached. But they knew something was amiss, even so, from the moment they stepped out of their vehicles. They proceeded toward the house exchanging anxious looks, their steps reluctant. Even Eppstadt, who had been so vocal about seeing the Canyon when they'd all been down in Malibu, plainly wished he'd not talked himself into this. Had he been on his own he would undoubtedly have retreated. But he could scarcely do so now, with so many people watching. He could either hope that something alarming (though inconsequential) happened soon, and he was obliged to call a general retreat in the interest of the company, or that they'd get into the house, make a cursory examination of the place, then agree that this was a matter best left with the police, and get the hell out.

The feeling he had, walking into the house, was the same feeling he sometimes got going onto a darkened soundstage. A sense of anticipation hung in the air. The only question was: what was the drama that was going to be played out here? A continuation of the farce he'd been so unwillingly dragged into on the beach? He didn't think so. The stage was set here for some other order of spectacle, and he didn't particularly want to be a part of it.

In all his years running a studio he'd never green-lit a horror movie, or anything with that kind of supernatural edge. He didn't like them. On the one hand, he thought they were contemptible rubbish; and on the other, they made his flesh creep. They unnerved him with their reports from some irrational place in the psyche; a place he had fled from all his life. The Canyon knew that place, he sensed. No, he knew. There were probably subjects for a hundred horror movies here, God help him.

"Weird, huh?" Joe remarked to him.

Eppstadt was glad he'd brought the kid along. Though Eppstadt didn't have a queer bone in his body there was still something comforting about having a big-boned, Midwestern dumb-fuck like Joe on the team.

"What are we looking for, anyhow?" Joe asked as Maxine led the way into the house.

“Anything out of the ordinary," Eppstadt replied.

"We don't have any right to be here," Maxine reminded him. 'And if Todd is dead, the police aren't going to be very happy that we touched stuff."

"I get it, Maxine," he said. "We'll be careful."

"Big place," Joe said, wandering into the lounge. "Great for parties."

"Let's get some lights on in this place, shall we?" Eppstadt said. He'd no sooner spoken than Sawyer found the master panel, and flipped on every one of the thirty switches before him. Room after dazzling room was revealed, detail after glorious detail.

Jerry had seen the dream palace countless times over the years, but for some reason, even in its early days when the paint was fresh and the gilding perfect, he'd never seen the house put on a show quite like this. It was almost as if the old place knew it didn't have long to live and—knowing its span was short—was making the best of the hours remaining to it.

"The woman on the beach," Eppstadt said. "She built this place?"

"Yes. Her name was Katya Lupi and—"

"I know who she was," Eppstadt replied. "I've seen some of her movies. Trash. Kitsch trash."

It was impossible, of course, that the woman who'd built this Spanish mausoleum was the same individual who'd escorted Todd Pickett into the surf. That woman might have been her grandchild, Eppstadt supposed, at a stretch; a great-grandchild more likely.

He was about to correct Brahms on his generational details when a chorus of yelping coyotes erupted across the Canyon. Eppstadt knew what coyotes sounded like, of course. He had plenty of friends who lived in the Hills, and considered the animals harmless scavengers, digging through their trash and occasionally dining on a pet cat. But there was something about the noise they were making now, as the sun came up, that made his stomach twitch and his skin crawl. It was like a soundtrack of one of the horror movies he'd never green-lit.

And then, just as suddenly as the chorus of coyotes had erupted, it ceased. There were three seconds of total silence.

Then everything began to shake. The walls, the chandelier, the ancient floorboards beneath their feet.

"Earthquake!" Sawyer yelled. He grabbed hold of Maxine's arm. She screeched and ran for the kitchen door.

"Outside!" she shrieked. "We're all safer outside!"

She could move fast when she needed to. She dragged Sawyer after her, down to the back door. Jerry tried to follow, but the shaking in the ground had become a roll, and he missed his handhold.

Joe, Midwestern boy that he was, had never experienced an earthquake before. He just stood on the pitching ground repeating the name of his savior over and over and over again, in perfect sincerity.

It's going to stop any minute, Eppstadt thought (he'd lived through many of these, big and small), but this one kept going, escalating. The floor was undulating in front of him. If he'd seen it in dailies he would have fired the physical effects guy for creating something that looked so phony. Solid matter like wood and nails simply didn't move that way. It was ludicrous.

But still it escalated, and Joe's calls to his savior became shouts:

"Christ! Christ! Christ! Christ!"

"When's it going to stop?" Jerry gasped.

He'd given up trying to rise. He just lay on the ground while the rattling and the rolling continued unabated.

There was a crash from an adjacent room, as something was thrown over. And then, from further off, a whole succession of further crashes, as shelves came unseated, and their contents were scattered. A short length of plaster molding came down from the ceiling and smashed on the ground a foot from where Eppstadt was standing, its shards spreading in all directions. He looked up, in case there was more to come. A fine rain of plaster-dust was descending, stinging his eyes. Meanwhile, the quake continued to make the house creak and crack on all sides, Eppstadt's semi-blinded condition only making the event seem all the more apocalyptic. He reached toward Joe, who was hoarse from reciting his one-word prayer, and caught hold of him.

"What's that noise?" the kid yelled over the din.

It seemed like a particularly witless question in the midst of such a cacophony, but interestingly, Eppstadt grasped exactly what the kid was talking about.

There was one sound, among the terrifying orchestration of groans and crashes from all over the house, that was deeper than all the others, and seemed to be coming from directly beneath them. It sounded like two titanic sets of teeth grinding together, grinding so hard they were destroying themselves in the process.

"I don't know what it is," admitted Eppstadt. Tears were pouring from his eyes, washing them clear of the plaster-dust.

"Well I want it to fucking stop," Joe said with nice Midwestern directness.

He'd no sooner spoken than the noise in the earth started to die away, and moments later the rest of the din and motion followed.

"It's over . . ." Jerry sobbed.

He'd spoken too soon. There was one last, short jolt in the ground, which brought a further series of crashes from around the house, and from below what sounded like a door being thrown open so violently it cracked its back against the wall.

Only then did the noises and the deep-earth motion finally subside and die away. What was left, from far off, was the sound of car alarms.

"Everybody okay?" Eppstadt said.

"I'll never get used to those damn things," Jerry said.

"That was a big one," Eppstadt said. "6.5 at least."

"And it went on, and on . . ."

"I think we should just get the hell out of here," Joe said.

"Before we go anywhere," Eppstadt said, venturing into the kitchen, "we wait for any aftershocks. We're safer inside than out there right now."

"How do you figure that?" Joe said, following Eppstadt into the kitchen.

It was chaos. None of the shelves had come off the walls, but they'd been shaken so violently they'd deposited their contents on the tiled floor. A cabinet holding booze had been shaken down, and several of the bottles broken, filling the air with the sharp tang of mingled liquors. Eppstadt went to the refrigerator—which had been thrown open by the quake, and had half its contents danced off the shelves—and found a can of Coke. He cracked it carefully, letting its excitability fizz away by degrees, then poured it as though this sickly soda were a hundred-year-old brandy, and drank.

"Better," he said.

"I'll take one of those," Joe remarked.

"What color do I look?"

Scowling, Joe kicked his way through the fractured crockery to the refrigerator, and got himself a Coke.

"What the hell happened to Maxine?" Eppstadt wondered.

"She went out back with Sawyer," Joe said, averting his face from a fan of erupting Coke.

Eppstadt went out into a passageway that led down to an open door, kicking a few pieces of fallen plaster out of the way as he went.

"Maxine!" he called. "Are you okay?"

There was no reply.

Without waiting for anyone to join him, he headed down to the back door. There was more plaster dust underfoot, and several large cracks in the walls and ceiling. Unlike other areas of the house this portion looked less solid to his eye, and very much less elegant. A hurried later addition, he guessed, and probably more vulnerable to shocks than the older parts of the house. He called out for Maxine again, but again there was no reply forthcoming. He wasn't surprised. The area just outside the door looked squalid; large masses of rotted vegetable matter covered the walkway on the other side of the threshold, giving off a sickly stench. The foliage overhanging the area was so thick that the area was practically benighted.

He went to the threshold, intending to call for Maxine again, but before he could do so he heard the sound of low, sibilant laughter. Since childhood he'd always been certain that laughter heard in his vicinity was laughter heard at his expense, and even though his therapist had worked hard for sixteen years to dissuade him of this neurosis, it lingered. He narrowed his eyes, trying to make sense of the shadows beneath the trees; dividing form from apparition. Obviously, the laughter had a source, perhaps more than one. He just couldn't make it out.

"Stop that," he ordered.

But the laughter continued, which enraged him. They were laughing at him, he was certain of it. Who else would they be laughing at? Bastards.

He stepped over the threshold, ready to sue. The air was cold and clammy. This wasn't a very pleasant house, he'd decided very quickly, and this was a particularly unpleasant corner of it. But the laughter continued, and he couldn't turn his back on it, not until he'd silenced it.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded. "This is private property. You hear me? You shouldn't even—"

He stopped now because there, in the shadow of a humongous Bird of Paradise tree, he made out a human form. No, two. No, three. He could barely see their features, but he could feel the imprint of their stares upon him.

And then more laughter, mocking his protests.

"I'm warning you," he snapped, as though he were talking to children. "Get away from here. Go on! Get away!"

But instead of stopping, the addled laughter grew louder still, and its owners decided to step out from under the shade of the Bird of Paradise. Eppstadt could see them more clearly now. They were indeed trespassers, he guessed, who'd been up here partying the night away. One of them, a very lovely young woman (she couldn't have been more than seventeen, to judge by the tautness of her skin), was bare-breasted, her brunette hair wet and pressed to her skull. He vaguely thought he knew her; that perhaps as a child actress she'd been in a movie he'd produced over at Paramount, or during his earlier time at Fox. She was certainly developing into a beautiful woman. But there was something about the way she stepped out of the shadows—her head sinking down, as though she might at any moment drop to the ground and imitate some animal or other— that distressed him. He didn't want her near him, even with her tight skin, her lovely nubs of nipples, her pouty lips. There was too much hunger in her eyes, and even if he wasn't the focus of that appetite, he didn't want to be caught between such a mindless hunger and its object of desire, whatever it might be.

And then there were the others, still lurking close to the tree behind her. Wait, there were more than two. There was a host of others, whose gaze he now felt on him. They were everywhere out here, in this uncertain dawn. He could see the foliage moving where some of them had slunk, their naked bellies flat on the ground. And they were up in the branches too; rotted blossoms came down to add to the muck that slickened the Mexican pavers underfoot.

Eppstadt took a tentative backward step, regretting that he'd ever stepped out of the house. No, not just that. At that moment he was regretting the whole process of events that had brought him to this damned house in the first place. Going to Maxine's asinine party; having that witless argument with Pickett; then the interrogation of Jerry Brahms and the choice to come up here. Stupid, all of it.

He took a second backward step. As he did so, the eyes of the exhibitionist girl who'd first appeared became exceptionally bright, as though something in her head had caught fire. Then, without warning, she broke into a sudden run, racing at Eppstadt. He turned back toward the door, and in the instant that he did so he saw a dozen—no, two dozen—figures who'd been standing camouflaged in the murk break their cover and join her in her dash for the door.

He was a step from reaching the threshold when the young bitch caught hold of his arm.

"Please—" she said. Her fingers dug deep into the fat where healthier men had biceps.

"Let me go."

"Don't go in," she said.

She pulled him back toward her, her strength uncanny. He reached out and grabbed the doorjamb, thinking as he did so that he'd got through the last twenty-five years of his life without anyone laying an inappropriate hand upon him, and here he was in the midst of his second such indignity in the space of twenty-four hours.

The woman still had fierce hold of him, and she wasn't about to let him go.

"Stay out here," she implored.

He flailed away from her. His Armani shirt tore, and he seized the moment to wriggle free. From the corner of his eye he saw a lot of faces, eyes incandescent, converging on the spot.

Terror made him swifter than he'd been in three decades. He leapt over the threshold, and once he got inside, he turned on a quarter, throwing all his weight against the door. It slammed closed. He fumbled with the lock, expecting to feel instant pressure exerted from the other side.

But there was none. Despite the fact that the trespassers could have pushed the door open (smashed it open, lock and all, if they'd so chosen) they didn't. The girl simply called to him through the door, her voice well-modulated, like that of someone who'd been to a high-grade finishing school:

"You should be careful," she said, in an eerie sing-song. "This house is going to come down. Do you hear me, mister? It's coming down."

He heard; he heard loud and clear. But he didn't reply. He simply bolted the door, still mystified as to why they hadn't attempted to break in, and ran up the passageway back to the kitchen. Before he reached the door Joe rounded the corner, coming from the opposite direction, gun in hand.

"Where the hell were you?" Eppstadt demanded.

"I was just about to ask you the same—"

"We're under siege."

"From what?"

"There are crazy people out there. A lot of crazy, fucking people."

"Where?"

"Right outside that door!"

He pointed back down the passageway. There was nothing visible through the glass panel. They'd retreated in four or five seconds, taking refuge in the murk.

"Trust me," Eppstadt said, "there's twenty or thirty people waiting on the other side of that door. One of them tried to drag me out there with them." He proffered his torn shirt and bloodied arm as proof. "She was probably rabid. I should get shots."

"I don't hear anybody," Joe said.

"They're out there. Trust me."

He went back to the kitchen, with Joe on his heels.

Jerry was running water into the sink, and splashing it on his temple.

Joe went straight to the window to see if he could verify Eppstadt's story, while Eppstadt snatched a handful of water to douse his own wound.

"The line's down, by the way," Jerry said.

"I've got my portable," Eppstadt said.

"They're not working either," Joe said. "The earthquake's taken out the whole system."

"Did you see Maxine or Sawyer out there?" Jerry said.

"I never got out there, Brahms. There are people—"

"Yes I know."

"Wait. Turn off the water."

"I haven't finished washing."

"I said: turn it off."

Brahms reluctantly obeyed. As the last of the water ran off down the pipes, another cluster of noises became audible, rising from the bowels of the house.

"It sounds like somebody left a television on down there," Joe said, splendidly simple-minded.

Eppstadt went to the door that led into the turret. "That's no television," he said.

"Well what the hell else would it be?" Joe said. "I can hear horses, and wind. There's no wind today."

It was true. There was no wind. But somewhere it was howling like the soundtrack on Lawrence of Arabia.

"You'll find this place gets crowded after a while," Jerry said matter-of-factly. He patted dry the wound on his face. "We shouldn't be here," he reiterated.

"Who are they out there?" Eppstadt said.

"Old movie stars mainly. A few of Katya's lovers."

Eppstadt shook his head. "These weren't old. And several of them were women."

"She liked women," Jerry said, "on occasion. Especially if she could play her little games with them."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Joe said.

"Katya Lupi, who built this house—"

"Once and for all," Eppstadt said, "these were not Katya Lupi's lovers. They were young. One of them, at least, looked no more than sixteen or seventeen."

"She liked them very young. And they liked her. Especially when she'd taken them down there." He pointed to the turret door through which the sounds of storm-winds were still coming. "It's another world down there, you see. And they'd be addicted, after that. They'd do anything for her, just to get another taste of it."

"I don't get it," Joe said.

"Better you don't," Jerry replied. "Just leave now, while you still can. The earthquake threw the door open down there. That's why you can hear all the noise."

"You said it was coming from some other place?" Joe said.

"Yes. The Devil's Country."

"What?"

"That's what Katya used to call it. The Devil's Country."

Joe glanced at Eppstadt, looking for some confirmation that all this was nonsense. But Eppstadt was staring out of the window, still haunted by the hungry faces he'd met on the threshold. Much as he would have liked to laugh off what Jerry Brahms was saying, his instincts were telling him to be more cautious.

"Suppose there is some kind of door down there . . ." he said.

"There is, believe me."

"All right. Say I believe you. And maybe the earthquake did open it up. Shouldn't somebody go down there and close it?"

"That would certainly make sense."

"Joe?"

"Aw shit. Why me?"

"Because you're the one who kept telling us how good you are with a gun. Anyway, it's obvious Jerry's in no state to go."

"What about you?"

"Joe," Eppstadt said. "You're talking to the Head of Paramount."

"So? That doesn't mean a whole heap right now, does it?"

"No, but it will when we get back to the real world." He stared at Joe, with an odd little smile on his face. "You don't want to be a waiter all your life, do you?"

"No. Of course not."

"You came to Hollywood to act, am I right?"

"I'm really good."

"I'm sure you are. Do you have any idea how much help I could be to you?"

"If I go down there—?"

"And close the door."

"Then you make me a movie star?"

"There are no guarantees in this town, Joe. But put it this way. You've got a better chance of being the next Brad Pitt—"

"I see myself more as an Ed Norton."

"Okay. Ed Norton. You stand a better chance of being the next Ed Norton if you've got the Head of Paramount on your side. You understand?"

Joe looked past Eppstadt at the doorway that led to the turret. The noise of the storm had not abated a jot. If anything the wind had become louder, slamming the door against a wall. If it had just been the whine of the wind coming from below, no doubt Joe's ambitions would have had him halfway down the stairs by now. But there were other sounds being carried on the back of the wind, some easy to interpret, others not so easy. He could hear the screech of agitated birds, which was not too distressing. But there were other species giving voice below: and he could put a name to none of them.

"Well, Joe?" Eppstadt said. "You want to close that door? Or do you want to serve canapés for the rest of your life."

"Fuck."

"You've got a gun, Joe. Where's your balls?"

"You promise you'll get me a part? Not some stinking little walk-on?"

"I promise ... to do my best for you."

Joe looked over at Jerry. "Do you know what's down there?"

"Just don't look" was Jerry's advice. "Close the door and come back up. Don't look into the room, even if it seems really amazing."

"Why?"

"Because it is amazing. And once you've looked you're going to want to go on looking."

"And if something comes out after me?"

"Shoot it."

"There," said Eppstadt. "Satisfied?"

Joe turned the proposition over in his head for a few more seconds, weighing the gun in his hand as he did so. "I've been in this fucking town two, almost three, years. Haven't even got an agent."

"Looks like this is your lucky day," Eppstadt said.

"Better be," Joe replied.

He drew a deep breath, and went out into the hallway. Eppstadt smiled reassuringly at him as he went by, but his features weren't made for reassurance. In fact at the sight of Eppstadt's crooked smile, Joe almost changed his mind. Then, thinking perhaps of what his life had been like so far—the casual contempt heaped on waiters by the famous—he went out to the head of the stairs and looked down. Reassuringly, the door had stopped slamming quite so hard. Joe took a deep breath, then he headed down the flight.

Eppstadt watched him go. Then he went back to the window.

"The people out there . . ." he said to Jerry.

"What about them?"

"Will they have harmed Maxine?"

"I doubt it. They don't want blood. They just want to get back into the house."

"Why didn't they just push past me?"

"There's some kind of trap at the door that keeps them out."

"I got in and out without any problem."

"Well, you're alive, aren't you?"

"What?"

"You heard what I said."

"Don't start with the superstitious crap, Brahms. I'm not in the mood."

"Neither am I," Jerry said. "I wish I were anywhere but here, right now."

"I thought this was your dream palace?"

"If Katya were here, it would be a different matter."

"You don't really think that woman on the beach was Katya Lupi, do you?"

"I know it was her for a fact. I drove her down to Malibu myself."

"What?"

Jerry shrugged. "Playing Cupid."

"Katya Lupi and Todd Pickett? Crazy. It's all crazy."

"Why? Because you refuse to believe in ghosts?"

"Oh, I didn't say that," Eppstadt replied, somewhat cautiously. "I didn't say I didn't believe. I've been to Gettysburg and felt the presence of the dead. But a battlefield is one thing—"

"And an old Hollywood dream palace is another? Why? People suffered here, believe me. A few even took their own lives. I don't know why I'm telling you. You know how people suffer here. You cause half of it. This miserable town's awash with envy and anger. You know how cruel LA makes people. How hungry."

The word rang a bell. Eppstadt thought of the face of the woman at the back of the house. The appetite in her eyes.

"They might not be the kind of ghosts you think you hear moaning at Gettysburg," Jerry went on. "But believe me, they are very dead and they are very desperate. So the sooner we find Maxine and Sawyer and get out of here the better for all of us."

"Oh dear God," Eppstadt said softly.

"What?"

"I'm starting to believe you."

"Then we've made some progress, I suppose."

"Why didn't you tell me all this before we came up here?"

"Would it have stopped you coming?"

"No."

"You see? You needed to see for yourself."

"Well, I've seen," Eppstadt said. "And you're right. As soon as Joe's closed the door, we'll all go out and find Maxine and Sawyer. You're sure those things—"

"Use the word, Eppstadt."

"I don't want to."

"For God's sake, it's just a word."

"All right... ghosts. Are you sure they won't come after us? They looked vicious."

"They want to get into the house. It's as I said: that's all they care about. They want to get back into the Devil's Country."

"Do you know why?"

"I've half a notion, but I don't fancy sharing it with you. Shall we not waste time standing around trying to guess what the dead want?" He returned his gaze to the expanse of green outside the window.

"Well all of us know sooner than we care to."