Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

SEVEN

It wasn't difficult for Todd to find Eppstadt. Unlike his first visit to this little corner of Hell, when his eyes had taken some time to become used to the elaborate fiction that the tiles were creating for him, this time everything was warmed up and ready to go. He looked through the door and there it was, in all its glory, from the spectacle of the eclipse overhead to a single serrated blade of grass bent beneath the toe of his shoe, along which a little black beetle was making its way.

And standing in the midst of all this, looking as appropriate as a hard-on in the Vatican, was Eppstadt. He'd obviously had some problems while he was here. The man who'd been several times cited as the "best-dressed man in Los Angeles" was looking in need of a tailor. His shirt was torn and severely stained with what looked like blood, his face was covered in sweat, and his hair—which he obsessively combed over the bald patch (where the hair plugs hadn't taken)—had fallen forward, exposing an area of shiny pink scalp, and giving him a ridiculous fringe.

"You!" he said, pointing directly at Todd. "You fucking lunatic! You did this deliberately! And now people are dead, Pickett. Real people. Dead because of your stupid games."

"Hey, hey, slow down. Who's dead?"

"Oh, as if you give a damn! You trick us all into following you into this. . . this. . . obscenity . . ."

Todd looked around as Eppstadt ranted. Obscenity? He saw no obscenity. Given the shortness of his acquaintance with this place he had certainly felt a lot of different things about it. He'd been enchanted here, he'd been so terrified that he'd thought his heart would burst, he'd been absurdly aroused and as close to death as he ever wanted to get. But obscene? No. The Devil's Country was simply the ultimate E-Ticket Ride.

"If you don't like it," he said to Eppstadt, "why the hell did you come in here?"

"To help Joe. And now he's dead."

"What happened to him?"

Eppstadt glanced over his shoulder, dropping his voice to a whisper. "There's a child around here. Only it's not a child. He's a goat."

"So he's the Devil's kid?"

"Don't start with that Devil shit. I never made one of those movies—"

"This isn't a movie, Eppstadt."

"No, you're quite right. It isn't a movie. It's a fucking—"

"Obscenity. Yeah, so you said."

"How can you be so casual?" Eppstadt said, taking a stride toward Todd. "I just saw somebody sliced to death."

"What?"

"The goat-boy did it. Just opened up Joe's throat. And it's your fault."

Eppstadt's stride had picked up speed. He was getting ready to do something stupid, Todd sensed; his terror had become a capacity for violence. And even though there'd been times (that lunch, that long-ago lunch, over rare tuna) when Todd had wanted to beat the crap out of Eppstadt, this was neither the time nor the place.

"You want to see what you caused?" Eppstadt said.

"Not particularly."

"Well you're going to."

He caught hold of the front of Todd's T-shirt.

"Let go of me, Eppstadt."

Eppstadt ignored him. He just turned and hauled Todd after him, the volatile mixture of his fear and rage making him impossible to resist. Todd didn't even try. Katya had given him a lesson in how to behave here. You kept quiet, or you drew attention to yourself. And somehow—it was something about the way the wind seemed to be blowing from all quarters at once, something about the way the grass seethed at his feet and the trees churned like thunderheads—he thought it wasn't just Eppstadt who was in a state of agitation. This whole painted world was stirred up.

By now the hunters' dogs probably had their scent, and the Duke was on his way.

"Just chill," Todd said to Eppstadt. "I'm not going to fight you. If you want me to see something then I'll come look. Just stop pulling on me, will you?"

Eppstadt let him go. His lower lip was quivering, as though he was about to burst into tears, which for Todd's money was worth the price of admission.

"You follow me," Eppstadt said. "I'll show you something."

"Keep your voice down. There are people around here you don't want to have coming after you."

"I met one of them already," Eppstadt said, walking on toward a small group of trees. "And I never want to see anything like it again."

"So let's get out of here."

"No. I want you to see. I want you to take full responsibility for what happened here."

"I didn't make this place," Todd said.

"But you knew it was here. You and your little lover. I'm putting the picture together now. Don't worry. I've got it all."

"Somehow I doubt that."

Eppstadt was searching the ground now, his step more cautious, as though he was afraid of treading on something.

"What are you looking for?"

He glanced back at Todd. "Joe," he said. And then, returning his gaze to the ground, he pointed. "There," he said.

"What?"

"There. Go look. Go on."

"Who was he?" Todd said, staring down at the maimed body in the dirt, its throat gaping.

"His name was Joe Something-or-Other, and he was a waiter at Maxine's party. That's all I know."

"And the goat-kid did this to him?"

"Yeah."

"Why, for Christ's sake?"

"Amusement would be my closest guess."

Todd passed a clammy hand over his face. "Okay. I've see him now. Can we get the hell out of here and find Maxine?"

"Maxine?"

"Yeah. She went outside with Sawyer—"

"I know."

"And now Sawyer's dead."

"Christ. We're being picked off like flies. Who killed him?"

"Some ... animal. Only it wasn't any kind of animal I ever saw before."

"All right, I'm coming," Eppstadt said. "But you listen to me, Pickett. If we survive this, you've got a fuck of a lot to answer for."

"Oh, like you don't."

"Me? What the hell do I have to do with this?"

"I'll tell you."

"I'm listening."

"I wouldn't be here nor would you or Maxine or any other poor fuck—" He glanced at Joe's corpse. "If you hadn't sounded off at the beach. Or—if you really want to go back to the start of things—how about a certain conversation we had, during which you suggested I get my face fixed?"

"Oh, that."

"Yes that."

"I was wrong. You should never have done it. It was a bad call."

"That was life. My flesh and—" He froze, for something had emerged from the undergrowth: a beast that was a vague relative of a lizard, but shorter, squatter, its back end having, instead of a long and serpentine tail, an outgrowth of two or three hundred pale, bulbous tumors. It went directly to the remains of Joe.

"No, no, no," Eppstadt said quietly. Then suddenly, running at the creature the way he might at a dog who'd come sniffing at his gate. "Get away!" he yelled. "For God's sake, get away!"

The lizard threw the yellow-blue gaze of one of its eyes up in Eppstadt's direction, was unimpressed, and returned to sniffing around the sliced-open neck. It flicked the wound with its tongue.

"Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus," Eppstadt gasped.

He picked up a rock and threw it at the animal, striking its leathery hide. Again, the cold, reptilian assessment, and this time the creature opened its throat and let out a threatening hiss.

Todd caught hold of Eppstadt, wrapping his arms around him from behind, to keep him from getting any more belligerent with the animal. They were lucky the beast was so interested in the remains of Joe, he knew; otherwise it would have turned on them.

The lizard averted its gaze from Eppstadt again, and started to tear at the raw meat around Joe's neck so that Joe's head was thrown back and forth as it secured itself a mouthful.

Eppstadt was no longer attempting to free himself from Todd's bear-hug, so Todd let his hold slip a little, at which point he turned on Todd, slamming the heel of his hand against Todd's shoulder.

"That should have been you!" Eppstadt said, following the first blow with a second, twice as strong.

Todd let him rant. Over Eppstadt's shoulder he saw the lizard retreating into the undergrowth from which it had emerged, dragging the remains of Waiter Joe after him.

"You hear me, Pickett?"

"Yeah, I hear you," Todd said wearily.

"That's all you're good for: lizard food. Lizard! Food!" The blows were coming faster and harder now. It was only a matter of time before Todd hit him back, and they both knew it. Knew it and wanted it. No more innuendo; no more lawyers; just fisticuffs in the mud.

"All right," Todd said, bitch-slapping Eppstadt for the fun of it. "I get it." He struck him again, harder. "You want to fight?" A third blow, harder still, which split Eppstadt's lip. Blood ran from his mouth.

And then suddenly the two of them were at it, not exchanging clean, neat blows the way they did in the movies but knotted up together in a jumble of gouges and kicks; years of anger and competition emptying in a few chaotic seconds. They could not have chosen a less perfect place or time to settle a personal score if they'd looked a lifetime, but this wasn't about making sensible decisions. This was about bringing the other sonofabitch down. As it was they both went down, having wrestled their way into muddy terrain. Their feet slid from under them and down they went, locked together, like two boys.

Tammy saw them fall.

"Oh no," she said, half to herself. "Not here. Don't do it here."

"I wouldn't go any closer if I were you," Brahms advised her.

"Well you're not me," Tammy said, and without waiting for any further response she pressed on over the uneven ground toward the two men in the mud. There were sounds of birds overhead, and she glanced up at the sky as she walked toward the men. It was spectacularly beautiful, and for a moment her thoughts were entirely claimed by the piled cumulus and the partially-blinded sun. The darkness of the heavens between the clouds was profound enough that the brightest of the stars could be seen, set in velvet gray.

When she looked back at Todd and Eppstadt, they were almost indistinguishable from one another physically—both liberally coated in mud. But it was still clear which one was Eppstadt. He was letting out a virtually seamless monologue about Todd. The general sense of which was that Todd was a vapid, over-paid, talentless sonofabitch. Furthermore, when all this insanity was over he, Eppstadt, was going to make certain that everybody knew that Todd had caused the death of a number of innocent people with his arrogance.

As Tammy got closer to the fight it became evident to Tammy that this wasn't going to end quickly or easily. Neither man was going to be talked down from his fury; it had escalated too far. She could only hope they exhausted each other quickly, before they attracted unwanted attention.

There seemed little hope of that. Though they'd fought to their feet again, it was becoming harder and harder for either man to land a solid blow in this slippery environment. Finally Eppstadt swung wide and went down in the mud, falling heavily. He struggled to get up, the heels of his hands sliding in the mud, but before he could succeed, Todd clambered on top of him, and straddled him, his hands at the man's throat. There was no fight left in Eppstadt. All he could do was gasp and shake his head.

"You fuckhead," Todd said. "None of this would have happened ... if you . . . had made my fucking movie."

Eppstadt had by now recovered enough energy to speak. "I wouldn't put you in a movie if my fucking life depended on it."

At which point, Tammy made her presence known. "Todd?"

It was Eppstadt who looked up first. "Oh Jesus," he said. "I wondered when you were going to show your fat ass."

Tammy wasn't in the mood for long speeches. "Leave the shithead in the mud, Todd," she said, "and let's just get out of here."

Todd grinned through his mask of mud; the megawatt smile. "It would be my pleasure."

He got to his feet and stepped away. Eppstadt pulled his rather ungainly bulk to his knees. He had lost one of his choice Italian shoes in the melee, and now began to search for it. In fact, it had been flung wide of the mud, close to where Tammy was standing.

"Looking for this?" she said.

"Yes," he glared, beckoning with his fingers.

She tossed it in the thorn bushes.

"Cunt."

"Faggot."

"No. I am many things but a bugger I am not. Right, Brahms?"

"Don't bring me into this," Jerry said. "I just want us all out of here."

"We're coming, Jerry!" Todd said, not looking at him. "You go on and take Tammy."

"Not without you," she said.

"Oh, how touching," Eppstadt said. "The fat girl is loyal to the end, even though she doesn't have a hope in hell of getting a fuck out of it."

Tammy had kept her fury limited to that one casual toss of the Italian shoe, but now it erupted; all her fury toward Eppstadt and his kind. The Mister-High-and-Mightys who thought that fat fan-girls were less than shit.

"You are such scum!" she said. "You nasty-minded tiny-peckered little piece of excrement!"

She approached him as she yelled, but after the fight with Todd the last thing Eppstadt wanted was this woman laying her hands on him.

"Keep her away from me, Jerry," he demanded, raising his hands, palms out. As he did so he retreated toward the copse of trees. "Jerry? You hear me?"

"Leave him, Tammy."

"Well, he's scum."

"And tell her to cover herself up," Eppstadt fired back. "The sight of her cellulite makes me gag."

Jerry had caught hold of Tammy's arm.

Luckily for him, Tammy had suddenly lost interest in all this score-settling. She was studying a group of horsemen who were following a winding road that would eventually bring them, she quickly realized, to this very spot. "Todd . . ." she said.

"Yes, I saw."

"We have visitors."

Duke Goga, of course, along with his entourage.

They had plenty of time to get to the door, Tammy reckoned. The hunters were still some distance away, and it didn't seem that they'd yet spotted the interlopers. Jerry was already on his way to the exit. Todd had found some clean water to wash his wounds but he could be up and gone in a couple of seconds.

Eppstadt was the exception. He'd gone into the thorn-thicket to fetch his Italian shoe, and as he did so, something moved among the mass of thorny branches off to the left of him.

He stopped reaching for his shoe, and studied the shadows. Whatever it was seemed to have become snagged in there, because it shook itself. Then it let out a kind of mewling sound and shook itself again, this time more violently. The maneuver worked, however. Freed of the thicket it stumbled out into view. It was the goat-boy. He started to pull thorns out of his flesh, the pain of it making him weep, softly, to himself.

Eppstadt knew what this creature was capable of from his previous encounter and he had no desire to draw the attention of the beast. He gave up on his shoe and set his eyes on the door. Jerry Brahms was right: it was time they got the hell out of here.

The goat-boy had stopped weeping now, and for some reason had fixed his gaze upon Tammy. Or more particularly, upon her breasts. There was no equivocation in his stare; no attempt to pretend he was looking elsewhere. He simply stared lovingly at the upper part of Tammy's torso, and licked his lips.

Tammy had heard the boy's sobbing complaints, and was staring at him. So was Todd.

"Come on, Tammy," Todd said.

Tammy let her gaze go from the boy to the approaching hunters. Plainly they'd also heard the sound of the child's wails because they'd picked up their speed and were approaching at a hard gallop.

Tammy looked back at Lucifer's child, in all his goaty glory. His tears had dried now, and he was less interested in picking thorns out of his flesh. They'd done some damage, she saw; little rivulets of dark red blood ran down his limbs from the places where he'd been pierced. There was one spot that looked particularly tender, deep in the groove of his groin. He worked the thorn out a little, but not once did he take his eyes off the objects of his present devotion. He didn't even glance over at the horsemen, though he must have heard their approach. He obviously knew how to out-maneuver them. He'd been doing it for centuries. He had a warren of hidey-holes to tuck himself away.

Tammy glanced up at the sky: at the moon locked in its unnatural position in front of the sun. Then she looked around at the landscape which that half-clouded light illuminated: the road and the approaching horsemen, the cluster of boulders where Todd was standing, stripped of his torn T-shirt, doing his best to lift handfuls of clean water up to his wounded face.

The goat-boy would be gone in a moment, Tammy knew. And when it was gone the Hunt would, as Zeffer had told her, continue in the same weary way it had been going for centuries.

Perhaps it was time to bring the whole sorry thing to an end, once and for all: to see if she, little Tammy Lauper from Sacramento, couldn't deliver the Devil's child back into the hands of the Duke, who could then return him to its mother, and bring an end to this long, weary chase.

She knew of only one, desperate method by which she might do this. She didn't waste time enacting it. She unbuttoned her torn blouse, starting at the top. She had every jot of the goat-boy's attention from the moment her fingers touched the first button. He forgot about removing thorns from his flesh. He simply watched.

"Like them?" she said to him so softly she was certain nobody would hear.

The goat-boy heard her, as she knew he would. He had an animal's ears.

By way of reply he nodded; very slowly, indeed almost reverentially.

There were two buttons remaining. Two buttons, and her blouse would fall open, and he'd have a feast of her, hanging in front of his eyes. She stopped unbuttoning. He made a little growl in his throat. The smile suddenly went from his face. Perhaps she was imagining it, but there seemed to be a flicker of fire in his eyes.

She stopped her teasing and put her hands back up to the first of the remaining buttons. He rewarded her with a little smile, which showed her a detail she'd missed until now. His teeth, though small, were all sharpened to a fine point. He had the smile of a piranha. She literally felt the flesh around her nipple tighten up at the prospect of those needles coming anywhere near her.

She chanced a quick look in the direction of the horsemen, but they had disappeared from sight for a time. The road that was bringing them here had wound into an expanse of pine forest. She looked back at the goat-boy. He was tapping his left foot, which appendage boasted a nail that would not have shamed a raptor. Plainly he was just a little anxious about the proximity of the Duke and his men: he did not wish to be caught. But just as plainly he was not going to leave. Not yet; not until he'd seen what Tammy had to offer.

He pointed at her. Made a little waggling motion with his forefinger. "Show me," he said.

She smiled at him, but she didn't move to oblige.

"Show," he said again.

She continued to smile at him, all the while assessing how many strides of his flat little feet it would take for him to reach her, should he take it into his head to run. He could be on her in five strides, she guessed. Four if he pushed it.

She slipped one of the two buttons out of its hole. The blouse fell open a little, giving him a peek at her left nipple. She flashed, suddenly, on some hot summer's day in her fourteenth year, when she'd crept into her parents' room in the middle of the afternoon, and played striptease in the mirror. She had more to boast about than any of the other girls in her class. Bigger breasts, and hair down between her legs. Her life would have been a lot happier if her breasts had stopped growing that day. But they'd had a long way to go. By the time she was fifteen she was like a young Shelley Winters; and it just got worse from there.

Strange how things came round. How something that had become a source of shame for her was now, out of nowhere, redeemed. She let her fingers slip down to the last button, knowing that the goat-boy's gaze would go with them, and she would have a chance, however slim, to look up past him and see whether the horsemen had emerged from the forest.

The news was bad. There was no sign of the Duke and his men. Had they perhaps taken a wrong turning in the forest? Surely not. Surely they knew this entire territory, after so many years of riding it.

"Show me your tits," the goat-boy demanded.

As he spoke he lifted his left leg and struck a stone with his raptor claw.

A bright spark leapt from the place and landed on a tuft of gray grass, where it erupted into a little fire. It had too little fuel to keep it sustained for long, but in the five or six seconds that it took for the cycle of spark, fire and extinction to play out Tammy heard the sound of the Duke's horses, and from the corner of her eye saw them emerging from between the trees.

The goat-boy narrowed his eyes to golden slits. The corners of his mouth turned down, showing the lower row of monstrous teeth.

"Show me," he said again.

Plainly he wasn't going to be toyed with any longer. He wanted to see what she had, and he wanted to see them now.

She didn't pretend that the horsemen's proximity was not of interest to her. What was the use? Everybody was in on this ridiculous game, the goat-boy included. He dropped his head a little, which should have been a sign for Tammy as to what he would do next, but she was too busy thinking about how long the Duke would take to get off his horse to realize that the goat-boy was making a run at her. And by the time she did realize, he was already halfway there, and there was nothing between her bare breasts and his hands, his mouth, his teeth, but a prayer.