Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

  He found his way back down to the big house without difficulty. Marco heard him in the Gaming Room, heavy-footed as ever, and came to see what all the noise was about.

  "You okay?"

  "That's all you ever ask. Am I okay? Yes. I'm better than okay."

  "Good. Only I heard from Maxine—"

  "Fuck Maxine."

  "So it doesn't bother you?"

  "No. We had a good run together. Now it's over."

  He picked up the switch from the mantelpiece.

  "What the hell is that?"

  "What does it look like?"

  He beat the air two or three times. The switch was beautifully balanced; he could imagine learning how to use it with considerable cunning. Perhaps she would let him stroke her body with it.

  Marco studied him in silence for a few moments; then he said: "You never told me why you took your bandages off. Were they too tight?"

  "I didn't take them off. She took them off."

  "Who's 'she'?"

  "The woman who owns this house. Katya Lupescu."

  "I'm sorry, you've lost me."

  Todd smiled. "No more explanations," he said. "You'll meet her later. I gotta go."

  He left Marco standing at the door with a befuddled expression on his face, and headed out into the light again, climbing the slope toward Katya's house, aware that he was behaving like a man who'd just been given a new lease on life.

  He didn't call her name as he entered this time. He simply made his way through the rooms of fake relics.

  The sound of running water came from the room adjacent to the bedroom. Apparently, Katya was still running her bath.

  He paused and looked around the bedroom. There were several enormous posters on the wall, which he had not noticed until now. Framed posters: one-sheets for movies, many decades old to judge by the stylized graphics and the yellowing of the paper they were printed on. The same image dominated all seven posters: that of a woman's face. She was represented in two of them as a waif, a child-woman lost in a predatory world. But in the others she'd matured beyond the orphan, and these were the images that reminded him of the woman he'd met last night— an exquisite femme fatale glowering from the frames as she planned her next act of anarchy. There was, of course, no question who the woman was. Her name was on the posters, big and bold. The Sorrows of Frederick, starring Katya Lupi. The Devil's Bride, starring Katya Lupi. She Is Destruction, starring Katya Lupi.

  What the hell was he to make of this new piece of evidence? Of course it was possible that Katya had paid to have seven posters representing fictitious films printed on aged paper and framed to look like objects of antiquity, but it wasn't very likely. Was it possible this Katya Lupi—who bore such a resemblance to the Katya he knew—was hardly the same woman at all but a granddaughter, with an uncanny resemblance to her older relative? It was a more plausible solution than any other he could think of. Certainly the flawless woman he'd seen naked minutes before, her face without so much as a wrinkle upon it, could not be the woman who'd starred in these movies. There had to be some other explanation.

  He was about to call out and announce his presence when he heard a soft intake of breath echoing off the bathroom walls. He went quietly to the door, and glanced in. In a large, old-fashioned ceramic bath, half-filled with water, lay Katya, her legs spread, her hips lifted clear of the water so that he could see how her fingers slid inside her. Her eyes were closed.

  Not for the first time this afternoon, Todd could feel the head of his dick tapping out the rhythm of his pulse against the inside of his pants. But he had no desire to interrupt Katya's game. He was perfectly happy to watch her: her face in ecstasy, her breasts clearing from the water as her body arched, her legs lifted up and straddling the sides of the bath. The mysteries of who she was and how she came to be here suddenly seemed absurdly irrelevant. What the hell did it matter? Look at her!

  "Did you bring it?"

  He'd had his eyes on her cunt; but when he looked back up at her face she was staring at him, her expression fierce with need.

  "The Teroarea. Did you bring it?"

  He was mortified with embarrassment, but plainly she couldn't have cared less. She had other priorities.

  "Yes," he said, showing her the switch. "I brought it."

  "So use it."

  "What?"

  She lifted her hips even higher, spreading her legs to give him a full view of her sex. It was ripened by her own touches; but also, he knew, from the anticipation of his return.

  "Touch it," she said. "Lightly."

  His target stood proud of its hood, presented for his delectation.

  "Please," she begged.

  He took four steps to the bottom of the bath, keeping his eyes fixed upon her. He felt the weight of the switch in his hand. He'd never done anything remotely like this before, but something about the way her body was contorted to offer her sex up to him lent him confidence.

  "Are you ready?"

  "Just do it!"

  He lifted the Terror. Her clitoris looked as hard and as red as a ruby. He lay the switch on it with a short little stab that made her sob.

  "Again!" she demanded immediately.

  The ruby was already a little redder.

  "Again!" she said.

  He struck her again, twice, three times, four and five and six, while every muscle in her body went rigid so as to be his perfect target.

  "More?" he said.

  There were tears on her face, but she simply growled at him between gritted teeth. He took it to mean yes, and went to work again, until the sweat was running from his face, and down his back, his breath was rough with exertion. But she would not let him stop. Her gaze, her sneer, her offered body spoke the same demand, and he dutifully answered it, over and over and over and—

  Suddenly her eyes rolled up in her head. Her mouth opened. He could barely make sense of the words, they were so thick with feeling.

  "Again." Her pupils had almost gone from sight. "Once."

  He lifted the Terror, which for all its litheness, its lightness, suddenly felt brutal in his aching hand. Her body had started to shake. He was shaking too, now. But the Terror had its own imperative. Down it came once more.

  She let out a cry that sounded more like something a bird would utter than a woman. Then her limbs lost their solidity, and her legs slipped gracefully off the sides of the bath. A tiny plume of crimson tinted the water.

  He dropped the switch and retreated to the door, in a kind of childish terror at what he'd done; and at how much it had aroused him. Katya's eyes had closed. The expression on her face was one of childish contentment; an infant sleeping in the arms of innocence.

  He slid down the doorframe into a squatting position, and there, exhausted by the intensity of the previous minutes, he must have briefly fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes again the water was still moving, but Katya had vacated the tub. Vacated the bathroom too, in fact. He didn't have to get up to find her. He merely had to swing his head round, to see that she was sitting on the edge of the bed, her legs open, looking at her reflection in the long oval mirror. The expression of contentment had not left her face; but now there was a little smile on her lips too.

  She had a wide repertoire of smiles, he thought; or at least it seemed he'd seen a lot in the short time they'd known one another. There was her teasing smile, her mischievous smile, her dark smile, her dry smile. This one had a little of everything in it. She knew he was watching her, so there was something of her performance smile in it. But it certainly wasn't phony. How fake could someone be when she'd just let her body lead her into such extremes? Surely he was one of a rare order of men: those to whom she'd given herself in that profound way. He thought of the tinted blood rising up between her legs, and felt a peculiar mingling of retroactive alarm (what had he been doing, risking her most tender anatomy with nothing but the look on her face to guide him?) and exhilaration that they'd come through it together: their first shared insanity. Whoev
er she was, trespasser, lunatic, stalker, star, all other possible definitions paled before this: she was the woman who had taught him how insignificant the flesh between his legs was when it came to the pleasuring of certain women.

  "Come here," she said.

  He pushed himself up off the doorframe and went over to her. "Let me see," she said, unbuckling his pants.

  "I came . . ."

  "I know."

  His trousers were massively too big, which was the way he liked to wear them. As soon as his belt was unbuckled, they fell down. He was afraid his dick would make a sorry show by now, shriveled up in a crinkled skin of dried semen. But no. His erection had been so furiously hard it remained quite impressive, even though it was sodden. He could not imagine any other woman with whom he'd had sex taking such guileless pleasure in the perusal of his quarter-hard dick. Nor would any of those women have leaned forward, as Katya now did, and kissed it.

  "May I look at you?" he said.

  She assumed he didn't mean her face. She spread her legs. He hoisted his pants back up and went down on his knees.

  "Does it hurt?" he said.

  "Yes," she said. She put her hand on the back of his head, gently pressing him toward her body. "Look inside me," she said. "Don't be afraid. You did it. See what you did?"

  He could see without opening her up. Her whole pubic region was puffy and inflamed.

  "Go on, look," she said. "Enjoy what you did."

  He gently parted her labia, which were sticky beneath his fingertips. Not blood, not sweat. Just the natural juices of an aroused body.

  "You see?" she said, pressing his fingers deeper into her. She was like a furnace in there. "You've got thoughts going round in your head you never imagined having. Am I right?"

  He replied by gently scooping her juices out on his fingers and putting them deep into his mouth.

  "You want to lick me out?"

  He shook his head.

  "I'm afraid I'd draw more blood."

  "Maybe I'd like that."

  "Give me time."

  She took his fingers out of his mouth and replaced them with her tongue.

  "You're right," she said, when they'd finished kissing. "We've got all the time in the world."

  She stood up. He stayed where he was, at her feet, still not quite believing they'd come so far so fast.

  "It isn't a dream," she said, reading his doubts as she'd read so many other thoughts of his in the last twenty-four hours. "Sometimes it seems that way, but that's just the Canyon."

  He held on to her leg for a moment, kissing the inside of her thigh.

  "We were going to walk, remember?" she said.

  "You still want to?"

  "Oh yes. I'd love to. It's a perfect night for introductions."

  PART FIVE

  Desire

  ONE

  The Canyon had once been a kind of Eden for Zeffer; its bowers had been places of comfort, an escape from a world that was growing too tawdry too quickly for his taste. But that was many, many years ago. Now he hated his sometime paradise. It was a place of confinement and punishment; a lush hell, made all the more agonizing because he knew that just beyond the perimeters his mistress Katya had set were streets that he'd once driven around like a lord. The passage of years had transformed them, of course; probably out of all recognition. Seven decades was a long time. And if he climbed the southern flank of the Canyon, and stood on the ridge—which was on the very limits of his proscribed domain— then he could see the towers of what looked to him like a city within a city, where in his day there had been little more than a dirt road and some sagebrush. They had owned land down there, he and Katya, once upon a time. Probably the lawyers had taken their profits and died by now. But then he couldn't remember signing papers over to any other authority, so it was just possible that if someone were to question who owned the land on which that gleaming city stood, the paper trail would lead back to Katya Lupescu and Willem Matthias Zeffer.

  There had been a time when Katya had been quite acquisitive: she'd been rich, and the land had been cheap, so she'd had him buy large plots of it, hundreds of acres in fact, as an investment. She'd got the idea from Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who had also made large purchases, saying, with considerable foresight, that as long as there was a hunger for people to be distracted from their unhappiness, there would be a need for this New World of theirs, this Hollywoodland. It followed, then, that the ground on which that New World was built would only grow in value.

  Many times Zeffer had been tempted to leave the Canyon and venture down the hill to discover what it all looked like now, but he didn't dare. Katya had told him plainly what the consequences would be if he ever tried to leave. There would be no way back for him. She would see to it that he was torn limb from limb by those among the haunters of these hills who were loyal to her; the creatures she referred to as los niños: the children.

  He didn't doubt that she would enforce the edict. She knew what power she held, and how to keep it. His death would be a fine lesson for those among the clans here who were less than loyal, and muttered their unrest in the ears of coyotes, and plotted the undoing of their mistress. They called her by many names, in many languages, being men and women who had come from all over the world, and now, in this strange afterlife, were returning to the tongue they knew best. To some she was La Catin, the Bitch; to others she was simply the Duchess of Sorrows. But none of these name-callers dared confront her. Whatever they whispered, whatever they plotted, they were too afraid of what they would lose if they went up against her and failed to win the day. Not only did they hope for her clemency at some time in the future, but they prayed with all their hearts that they'd be let back into the house, so that they could once more venture down the stairs into the Devil's Country, where they had once tasted something that was in their blood now permanently and could not be satisfied except by more of the same.

  He understood their hunger. He shared it. And if she would let him back into the house then all the agonies of this half-life of his would be erased; all pain forgotten, all need dispatched. But Willem had few hopes of such clemency. Katya was crazy. She always had been, of course; indeed in earlier times it had been part of her glamour. Wasn't that part of what had made her so incredible to watch up there on the screen? A gleam of madness always lit up the eyes of her characters, whatever she was playing. Her innocents were crazy with their sinlessness; just as the vamps she played later were maddened by their sin. Of all the names that she was called, it was Cesar Romero's nickname that suited her best, La Puta Enojada, the Mad Bitch. That was the name Zeffer used when he talked about her. Katya, La Puta Enojada. But bitch or no, mad or no, she had the reins, and that was that. She was not going to wither anytime soon, thanks to the machinations of that damnable room; nor was she likely to get up one morning and vacate her Canyon. She was just as afraid of the world beyond its perimeters as he was. In truth, for all her bombast and her brutality, it was fear that shaped her life.

  Fear of living, fear of dying. Fear of staying, fear of going. Fear of remembering, and yes, fear of forgetting.

  But every now and again, even in this despairing paradise, there would come a glimpse of hope; a hint of a chance that things might finally change for the better. Such hints and glimpses usually appeared in the form of interlopers; people whose unplanned presence in the Canyon had the potential to subtly change the balance of power in La Puta Enojada's feudal realm.

  There had been perhaps a dozen such opportunities during the time in which Zeffer had been a prisoner of the Canyon, all in their way dangers to the status quo, and all carefully managed by Katya, so as to prevent the destruction of her autocracy. The most notable, until now, had been the appearance of a runaway child, one Jerry Brahms, who had fled his minders into the Canyon, ignorant of the mysteries he was treading among. He'd almost brought her down, that one, coming into the house without anyone's realizing he was there, and getting his fingers into places they had no busin
ess being. Opening doors; letting the ghosts sniff the Hunt. The fact that he was a child had made her indulgent of his mistakes. Rather than have him killed, Katya had let him live; brought him to her bosom, in fact.

  It was an act of trust that had served her well as the years had passed. Brahms the boy had became Brahms the man, and his loyalty had remained unwavering. Zeffer had never entirely understood what had happened between them, but he had his suspicions. Katya had shown Brahms pleasures that had marked him as hers forever. That meant, most likely, that she had taken him down to see the Hunt. Once you'd walked in the Devil's Country, smelled its ancient air, you belonged to that place, in some unspeakable way. It owned you. He didn't need to look any further than his own body for evidence of this. Since Katya had forbidden him to enter the house—keeping him from close proximity to the tiles— he had started to look and feel his true age. His hair had turned white, his bones and joints ached perpetually. Why was he surprised? Nobody lived forever. Not movie goddesses, nor the men who served them. And certainly not houses, however much rapture they contained. Every façade cracked, finally; and crumbled; and went away to dust. It was only a question of time.

  Which thought brought him back to the newest trespasser in their sealed world: the most promising opportunity for an undoing of long-held certainties he'd seen in many years. She was a strong one, this big-boned, big-breasted woman with her unhappy eyes. She was trouble, thank God. Under the right circumstances a woman like that could do all kinds of mischief. If, of course, she was still alive. She'd been snatched away by los niños, the corrupt children of the Canyon, offspring of unsavory couplings between animals and ghosts. Zeffer had witnessed such intercourse many times over the years; vile marriages between ghost women and coyotes; ghost men and deer, or dogs; even once, a woman and a bird. Somehow, such consummations were often fruitful, though the birthings were not anything he could have imagined until he laid eyes on them. The animals who produced infants this way almost always died in the process; every now and again he would come upon one of their rotted carcasses on the hillside, and he'd know that another hybrid had been added to that unholy tribe. The revenant women who allowed such congress (some of them famous in their day, reduced in their frustration and madness to mating with wild animals), these women seemed to show no signs of trauma when the birth was over, their bodies being less than flesh and more than ether; malleable, mendable. But that was not to say their matings were without consequence. These ghosts were also the wildest, in his experience; the most prone to sudden violence. The beast had got into them in more ways than one. They were touched by a kind of rabidity, which was in distressing contrast to what remained of their elegance. Their glossy skins were pulled tight over something feral; and their beauty could not conceal it. Women who had once been household names—paragons of elegance and sophistication—walking on all fours, their gait crabbed, their speed uncanny; baring their perfect teeth in the thicket and yelping like coyotes who'd just come upon a fresh kill.