Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

NINE

It wasn't really a choice, given their circumstances.

They had to make a run for it, and the way Tammy looked at it, the sooner they did so the better for everybody. The angel could afford to play a waiting game, she assumed. Did it need nourishment? Probably not. Did it sleep or take private little moments in which to defecate? Again, probably not. It could most likely afford to lay siege to the house for days, weeks, even months, until its victims had no strength left to outwit it or outmaneuver it.

Maxine had gone to the guest bathroom to wash her ashen face. She didn't look much better when she got back. She was still pale and shaking. But in her usual straightforward manner she demanded that everyone agree to what was being contemplated here, in words of one or, at most, two syllables.

"Let's all get this straight," she said. "The thing outside is definitely an angel. That is to say, an agent of some divine power. Yes?"

"Yes," Todd said. He was sitting at the top of the stairs, only partially visible in the light from the dining room, which was the only light that now worked.

"And why's it here? Exactly. Just for the record."

"We know why it's here, Maxine," Tammy said.

"No, let's just be very clear about this. Because it seems to me we are playing with fire. This thing, this light—"

"It wants my soul," Todd said. "Is that plain enough for you?"

"And you," Maxine said, glancing at Tammy to see how she was responding to all this, "are blithely suggesting we try to outrun it?"

"Yes."

"You're crazy."

Before Tammy could reply, Todd put in a final plea. "If we fail, we fail. But at least let's give it a try."

"Frankly, I realize I'm outvoted on this, but I think this is insanity," Maxine said. "If you really believe in your immortal soul, Todd, why the hell aren't you letting this divine agent come and get you?"

"I'm not saying I don't believe in my soul. I do. I swear I do. But you know me: I've never trusted agents," he said, chuckling. "Joke. Maxine, lighten up. It was a joke."

Maxine was not amused.

"Suppose it's the real thing," she said. "Suppose it's God, looking at us. At you."

"Maybe it is. But then again, maybe it isn't. This Canyon's always been full of deceits and illusions."

"And you think that's what it is?"

"I don't know. I just don't trust it. I'd prefer to stick around here a little longer than go off with it."

"Here? You want to stay in this dump? Todd, it's not going to be standing for more than another week."

"So maybe I'll set off across America, I don't know. I just got more living to do. Even though I'm dead."

"And suppose we're pissing off higher powers?" Maxine said. "Have you thought about that?"

"You mean God? If God really wants me, He'll find a way to get me. Right? He's God. But if He doesn't... if I can slip off and enjoy myself for a few years . . ."

Maxine threw a troubled glance at Tammy. "And you go along with all this?"

"If Todd doesn't feel—"

"You were the one saying prayers out there."

"Let me finish. If Todd doesn't feel he's lived his full life, it's his choice."

"The point is: you've had all the life you're going to get," Maxine said to him. Then to Tammy, "We're talking to a dead man. Something we would not be doing outside Coldheart Canyon."

"Things are different here . . ." Todd murmured, remembering what Katya had told him.

"Damn right they are," Maxine said. "But the rules of this place end somewhere north of Sunset. And it's only because of the power that was once in this house that you're getting a chance to play this damn-fool game with God."

"A game with God," Tammy said, so quietly Maxine barely heard what she'd said.

"What?"

"I was just saying: a game with God. I didn't think you'd care about something like that. Aren't you an atheist?"

"Once, I might have—"

Todd stood up. "Hush. Hush."

The women stopped talking. Todd looked up toward the vault of the turret, with its holes that showed the night sky.

"Stay very still," he said.

As he spoke, the light came over the top of the turret, its motion eerily smooth and silent. Three beams of its silvery luminescence came in through holes in the roof. They slid over the walls, like spotlights looking for a star to illuminate. For a moment the entity seemed to settle directly on top of the turret, and one of the beams of light went all the way down the stairwell to scrutinize the debris at the bottom. Then, after a moment's perusal, it began to move off again, at the same glacial speed.

Only when it had gone completely did anybody speak again. It was Maxine who piped up first.

"Why doesn't it just come in and get you?" she said. "That's what I can't figure out. I mean, it's just a body of light. It can go anywhere it chooses, I would have thought. Under the door. Down through that hole"—she pointed up to the turret. "It's not like the house is burglar-proof."

Tammy had been thinking about that very question. "I think maybe this place makes it nervous," she said. "That's my theory, for what it's worth. All the evil this house has seen."

"I don't think angels are afraid of anything," Maxine said.

"Then maybe it's just repulsed. I mean, it's like a dog, right, sniffing out souls? Its senses are really acute. Think how this place must stink. Especially down there." She glanced down the stairwell, where the angel's light had lingered for a moment before moving on. "The Devil's Country was down there. People suffered, died, horrible deaths. If I was an angel, I'd stay out."

"If you were an angel, my love," Maxine said, "God would be in a lot of trouble."

This won a laugh out of Tammy. "All right, you've heard my theories—"

"I think you're both right," Todd said. "If the light wanted to come inside the house it could. It did once, remember? But I think between my not wanting to go and the smell of what this house has seen, it's probably figured it'll wait. Sooner or later the house is going to start falling down. And then I'll come out and it'll have me."

"That's why we should surprise it," Tammy said. "Go now, while it's least expecting anyone to leave."

"You don't know what it's expecting," Maxine put in. "It could be listening to every damn word we say, as far as you can tell."

"Well I'm going to try for it," Todd said, pushing his gun into his trousers, muzzle to muzzle. "If you don't want to come, that's fine. Maybe you could just divert it somehow. Give me a chance to get to the car."

"No, we're going," Tammy said, speaking on behalf of Maxine, whose response to this was a surrendering shrug.

"It is preposterous," she pointed out however. "Who the hell ever outran an angel?"

"How do we know?" Todd said. "Maybe people do it all the time."

They stood together at the door and listened for twenty, twenty-five minutes, seeing if there was some pattern to the motion of the light. In that time it went up onto the roof twice, and made half a circuit of the house, but then seemed to give up for no particular reason. It made no sound. Nor did its light at any point seem to alter in intensity. It was—perhaps predictably—constant and patient, like a hunter sitting by a burrow, knowing that sooner or later its occupant must show its nose.

About nine-fifteen or so, Tammy went up to the master bedroom to scan the view across the Canyon and down toward Century City. She'd scoured the kitchen for dried goods and tinned goods that had survived either the ghosts' rampages or the passage of time and had found many tins had been punctured, and the food inside was rotten; but she collected up a few cans of edible stuff: baked beans, peaches, hot dogs in brine. And then, after some digging around, found an opener, and made up a plate of unlikely gastronomic bed-fellows; and took them upstairs to the balcony.

The Canyon had gone pin-drop quiet. If she hadn't already known they had an agent of Creation's Maker in their vicinity, the spooked silence of every cicada, coyote and night bird would have confirmed the fact. It was eerie, standing there, watching the dark hollow of the Canyon, and the few stars that were visible above it, and listening to the empty dark. She could hear the click of the fork against her teeth, the noise of her throat as it swallowed the beans and bites of hot dog.

"I used to love hot dogs," came a voice from the dark room behind her. It was Todd. "You know, ordinary food. I never really got a taste for the more sophisticated stuff."

"You want some of this?" she asked him, glancing round as she proffered the plate.

"No thanks," he said. "I haven't really got an appetite anymore."

"Maybe ghosts aren't supposed to eat."

"Yeah that's what I figured," he replied, coming out onto the balcony. Then, "Do you think they fuck? Because if they don't I'm going to have to find some other way to get this down." He glanced down at the lump beneath his bath-towel.

"Cold showers."

"Yeah." He chuckled. "Everything comes full circle, doesn't it? Cold hot dogs for you. Cold showers for me. Nothing really changes."

"I don't know," she said. "This isn't normal for me. Conversations with— if you'll excuse the phrase—dead movie stars in million-dollar houses..."

"—with an angel waiting on the front doorstep—"

"Right."

She'd finished her ad hoc meal, and went back into the bedroom to set the plate down. While she was doing so she heard Todd call her name, very softly.

She went back out onto the balcony.

"What is it?"

"Look."

She looked, following the direction of his gaze. There was a glow of light in the densely-forested cleft of the Canyon. It looked as though it had settled in the fork of a tree.

"I guess Raphael must have got bored."

"Is that his name? Raphael?"

"I don't know. It's just the only angel's name I know. Angels aren't my strong point. His real name's probably Marigold. The point is: it's wandered off. We should go while we've got the opportunity. It may not stay down there very long."

"Right. I'll go and find Maxine."

"Wait," Todd said, catching hold of her arm. "Just one thing before you go."

"What's that?"

"I want your honest opinion . . ."

"On what?"

"Do you think she's right? Am I screwing with my immortal soul, trying to escape this thing?"

"You know, I was wondering about that when I was eating my hot dogs. My Aunt Jessica was a church-lady all her life. She used to go and arrange the flowers on the altar three times a week. And she used to say: God sees everything. This was when I was a little girl and she thought I'd been naughty. God sees everything, she'd say, wagging her finger. So you can't ever hide from Him. I think He can hear us right now. And at least she would have believed He could."

"And you?"

"Who knows? I used to believe her. And I suppose there's a little part of me that still thinks wherever I am, whatever I'm doing—good, bad or indifferent—God's got His eye on me. Or Her eye."

"So . . ."

"So if He doesn't want something to happen He can stop it."

"Oh, we're back to that. If God doesn't want me to get out of here, He'll make sure I don't."

"Right."

Todd allowed a little smile to creep onto his face. He looked like a mischievous six-year-old. "So what do we think when we see that . . ." He nodded to the light in the distance. "Isn't it like it's looking the other way?"

Now Tammy smiled.

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe God's saying: I'll give you a chance. Just this once."

Todd leaned forward and kissed Tammy on the cheek. "Oh I like that," he said. "Just this once."

"It's just a theory."

"It's all I need right now."

"So you want to go?"

He paused a moment and studied the light in the Canyon below. The angel had apparently paused down there, either to contemplate the loveliness of Creation, or to fall asleep for a while. Whatever the reason, it was no longer moving.

"If we're going to go," Todd said, "this is the time. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

"I'll go get dressed."

• • •

They found Maxine (who had in turn found a bottle of vodka, and had drunk a third of it on an empty stomach, which wasn't perhaps good for her state of mind, but what the hell? It was done). Tammy explained to her what she and Todd had seen from the balcony, and that it was time to try to make a getaway. Pleasantly lubricated by the vodka, Maxine was ready for an escape; in fact she was first to the door, bottle in hand, remarking that the sooner they were all out of this fucking house the better for everyone.

Tammy led the way, clutching Maxine's car-keys tightly in her palm, to keep their merest tinkle from reaching the ears of the angel. The Canyon was now completely dark. Even the few stars that had been lit overhead earlier were now covered by cloud, as though—Tammy thought—the angel had extinguished them. It was the kind of notion she wouldn't have given room to on any other night but this, in any other place but this; but who knew where the bounds of possibility lay tonight? It was ridiculous, in a way, to imagine that an angel could blow out stars. But wasn't it equally bizarre that there should be a dead man walking in her footsteps, planning to outrun Heaven? Incident by incident, wonder by wonder, her adventures in the Canyon had escalated in outlandishness; as though in preparation for this night's excesses. First the ghosts and their children; then the Devil's Country; now this.

They moved without mishap to the gate; paused there to be sure the coast was clear and then moved on—again without incident—out into the street. Nobody said a word.

If the silence of the natural world had been uncanny from the balcony, it was ten times stranger now they were out on the road, where there would usually be a chirping carpet laid out all around them, and trilling songs in the darkened canopy. But here, now, nothing. It made what was already strange enough, stranger still. It was as though every living thing, from the most ferocious coyote to the tiniest flea, was intimidated into silence and stillness by the scale of power in their midst. The only things foolish enough to move were these three human beings, stumbling through the darkness.

All was going well until Tammy caught her foot in a pothole and fell sideways. Todd was there to catch her, but he wasn't quick enough to stop the short cry of alarm that escaped her as she slipped. It was the loudest thing that had been heard in the Canyon in a long while; its echo coming back off the opposite wall.

She silently mouthed the word damn; then, taking a deep breath, she went to the car, adrenaline making her a little more efficient than she might have been otherwise, and opened the door. The car announced that there was a door open with an irritating little ping, ping, ping. Well, hell, it scarcely mattered now. They were committed to this. The angel was already pricking up its ears, no doubt.

"Get in," she hissed.

Todd ducked into the back. Maxine opened the passenger door and slid in with something less than grace. Then she slammed the door so hard it was probably audible in Santa Barbara.

"Sorry," she slurred. "Force of habit."

Todd leaned over from the back seat and put his hand on Tammy's shoulder.

"Give it all you've got," he said.

"I'll do what I can," she said, and slipped the key into the ignition.

Even as she was instructing her fingers to turn the key, the moon came out above Coldheart Canyon. Except, of course, that it wasn't the moon, it was the messenger of God, roused from its meditations, and climbing a silent ladder into the dark air over their heads.

"Fuck and double fuck," Todd said.

It moved straight toward the house, and—perhaps because the evening was a little damp, and the marine layer had come in off the ocean—it had collected around it a cloak of mist. Now, instead of simply being a light, it looked like a cloud with a white fire burning at its core; trailing a tail like a comet.

Tammy wasn't intimidated. She turned on the car engine. It roared, reassuringly loud.

"Handbrake!" Maxine said. "Handbrake!"

"I've got it," Tammy said. She took off the handbrake, and put the vehicle into gear. Then she slammed her foot down, and they took off.

"Todd!" she yelled over her shoulder. "I want you to keep an eye on that sonofabitch for me."

Todd was already doing just that, peering out of the back window. "It's still above the house," he reported. "Maybe it thinks we're still in there."

"I don't think it's that dumb somehow," Maxine said.

Tammy drove the car up the street, and around two wide curves, before she found a place where it was possible to turn round. It was a squealing, messy five- or six-point turn in the narrow street, and the last maneuver delivered the back end of the car into the shrubbery. No matter. Tammy hauled the wheel round and accelerated. Todd went to the other side of the back seat, and looked out.

"Huh," he said.

"What?"

"The damn thing still hasn't moved."

"Maybe it's lost interest," Tammy said.

It was a forlorn hope, of course, scarcely worth voicing. But every moment the thing failed to come after them was blessed.

"By the way," she said, as she turned the first wide corner south of the house, "I got a little taste of what that thing does to you, Todd—"

"You mean the memories?"

"Yeah."

"Did it freak you out?"

"No. It was just sort of banal, really. It has a memory of my Aunt Jessica—"

"It's coming."

"Oh shit!"

Tammy glanced in her rearview mirror: nothing. Looked over her shoulder: nothing.

"I don't see it!"

"It's after us."

"I don't see it!"

She caught a glimpse of Todd's face in the mirror, his eyes turned directly upward; and she knew where it was. The next moment there was a light on the road all around the car, as though a police helicopter had appeared over the ridge with a spotlight, and caught them in it.

There was a turn up ahead. She took it at sixty-five miles an hour, wheels shrieking, and for a moment the cloud overshot the road, and she was driving in near-darkness. Losing the light so suddenly left her utterly disoriented and she took the next curve, which came fifteen yards after the previous one, so tightly that the left-hand side of the car was clawed by twigs and branches. Todd whooped.

"Hell, woman! You're quite a driver! Why didn't you tell me?"

"You never asked!" Tammy said, steering the car back into the middle of the road.

"We could have gone drag-racing together. I always wanted to find a woman I could go drag-racing with."

"Now you tell me."

Another curve came up, as tight as the one before. But this time she took it without any problem. They were halfway down the hill by now, and Tammy was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, they were going to reach Sunset Boulevard without their pursuer catching up with them.

"If we do get to Sunset," she said, "what happens then? Do you think the damn thing will give up?"

She'd no sooner spoken than the light reappeared on the street ahead of them. It was no longer hovering in the air above the street but had descended to block the road from one side to the other.

Tammy slammed on the brakes, but as she did so a sliver of the angel's light came through the windshield to meet her mind, its freight familiar from their previous encounter. The road ahead of her was instantly erased, replaced with the fagade of the house on Monarch Street. She heard Maxine, somewhere to her right, let out a yell of panic, and then felt her reaching over to wrest control of the car from her. There was a brief, chaotic moment when Tammy's panic overwhelmed the angel's gift of memory, and she saw, to her horror, that the car had swerved off the road and was speeding into the dense thicket that grew between the trees. The image lasted for a moment only. Then it was gone, the approaching trees, Maxine's fumbling hands, her curses: all of it erased.

In its place, Tammy was standing at the door of her Aunt Jessica's house, in the dappled sunlight, and Aunt Jessica was telling her that her papa had gone down to the fire station—

The car struck a tree, and the windshield smashed, but Aunt Jessica smiled on. They hit another tree, and another, though Tammy saw none of it. She didn't hear the splinter of wood, or the shrieks from Maxine. Nor did she hear the din of tearing metal as a door was torn off. Her foot was still jammed on the brakes but they didn't seem to be slowing the vehicle's momentum. What eventually brought the car to a halt was a boulder, which lifted it up and threw it over onto its left side.

At the instant of impact the angel's vision faltered again, and Tammy saw the world as it really was—a blur of tumbling trees and raining glass. She saw her arms in front of her, her white-knuckled hands still seizing the wheel. She saw blood on her fingers, and then a little storm of shredded leaves coming in through the broken window, their sweetness reminding her, even in the midst of this chaos, of quieter times. Mown lawns on a Sunday afternoon; grass in her hair when she'd been play-wrestling with Sandra Moses from next door. Pieces of green memory, which flickered into her mind's eye between the tumbling view through the windshield and the last, brief appearance of Aunt Jessica's doorstep.

She knew it was the last because this time, as the car came to a halt, and Tammy slumped in her seat, her consciousness decided to forsake the pain of her broken bones (of which there were many) or the sound of Maxine's screaming (of which there was much) and just go away into the reassuring gloom of Aunt Jessica's house.

"Why did you not come when I called?" Aunt Jessica demanded. Kindly though she was, she didn't like to be disobeyed.

Tammy looked at the woman through her eleven-year-old's eyes, and fumbled for an answer to the old lady's question. But nothing she could say to Aunt Jessica would make any sense, now would it? Canyon, car, angel, crash. How could she possibly understand?

Anyway, Aunt Jessica didn't really want an answer. She had her niece inside the house where she wanted her, and that was all that was really important. Tammy walked down the hallway, into this brown comfortable memory, and let Aunt Jessica close the door behind her, so that the screaming and the raining glass and the world turned upside down could be forgotten, and she could go wash her hands before sitting down to a plate of Aunt Jessica's special meatloaf.