Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

  "No," she told him. "In my opinion it would be a very good idea."

  "And they won't hurt me?"

  "They won't hurt you."

  "You promise?"

  She looked into his eyes, brown into gold. "I promise they won't hurt you."

  "All right," he said, lifting his arms up and putting them round her neck. "It's time we put an end to this. But first you have to kiss me."

  "According to who?"

  "According to me."

  She kissed his grizzled lips. And as she did so, he leapt out of her arms, as though he'd been slick with butter; a jump that carried him three or four feet above her head.

  "Prindeți-l!" the Duke yelled.

  His men weren't about to come so close to their quarry and lose him again. They each caught hold of an arm and leg of the child, and carried him, squealing more like a pig than a goat, to the wooden crate.

  Before they could get him safely locked away, however, there came a shout from Eppstadt. "Where are you going with that thing?" he demanded.

  "They're taking it away," Todd explained.

  "Oh, no they're not. Absolutely not. I saw it commit murder. I want to see it tried in a court of law."

  He started toward the two men who had taken hold of the creature. The Duke, sword drawn, instantly came to stand between them.

  Tammy, meanwhile, even before she'd buttoned herself up, was ready to add her own voice to the argument. "Don't you interfere," she told Eppstadt. "You'll fuck up everything."

  "Are you crazy? Well, yes, why am I asking? Of course you're crazy. Letting that thing suck on you that way. You obscene woman."

  "Just do it!" Todd urged the men, hoping his miming of the boy's imprisonment would help the men understand his meaning.

  It did. While the Duke held Eppstadt at swordpoint, his men put the goat-boy into the crate, the wooden bars of which were decorated with small iron icons, hammered into the timber. Whatever their meaning, they did the trick. Though Qwaftzefoni was easily strong enough to shake the crate apart he did not so much as lay his hands on the bars, but sat passively in his little prison, awaiting the next stage of the proceeding.

  The Duke issued a new round of orders, and the men lifted the crate onto the back of one of the horses, and started to secure it there.

  While they did so the Duke made a short, but apparently deeply sincere, speech to Tammy, thanking her, she assumed, for her part in this dangerous enterprise. All the while he kept an eye on Eppstadt, and with his sword ready should the man attempt to interfere. Eppstadt was obviously equally aware that the Duke meant business, even if he didn't understand the exchange, because he kept his hands raised throughout, and his mouth shut.

  Todd, meanwhile, stood watching the sky. There was, it seemed, a subtle change in the configuration of the heavens. The moon was very slowly moving off the face of the sun.

  Suddenly, there was a shriek from one of the Duke's men. The goat-boy had found a place where his hand and arm could fit through the bars without touching the icons, and using a moment of the man's distraction, had reached out and was digging his short-fingered hand into the meat around the man's eye. He had firm hold of it; firm enough to shake the man back and forth like a puppet. Blood gushed from the place, splashing against the goat-boy's palm and running down his victim's face.

  The horse on which the crate was set reared up in panic, and the crate, which had not yet been firmly fixed to the saddle, slid off. The creature did not let go of his victim. He hung on to the man's face as the crate crashed to the ground. It did not break open, as no doubt the goat-boy had hoped; and in a fit of frustration he started to tear the man's flesh open still further.

  The Duke was swift. He came to the place in two strides and with a single swing of his sword separated the goat-boy's hand from his wrist. The creature let out a sickening, shrill wail.

  Tammy—who'd watched all this in a state of horrified disbelief (how could this cruel monster be the same childish thing she'd had sucking on her moments ago?)—now covered her ears against the noise of both victims, man and boy. Though she'd muted the scene she couldn't take her eyes off it: the hunter, dropping to his knees with the child's hand still fixed in his face like some foul parasite; the goat-boy in his crate, stanching his stump with his other hand; the Duke, wiping the blood off his blade—

  There was a short moment of calm as the goat-boy's sobs became subdued and the wounded man, having pulled the hooked finger out of his flesh, covered his wound with a cloth, to slow the flow of blood.

  The calm lasted no more than twenty seconds. It was broken by a grinding sound in the earth, as though a machine made of stone and iron was on the move down there.

  "What fresh hell is this?" Jerry murmured.

  Tammy's eyes were on the crate, and its contents. The goat-boy had given up all his complaints, and was peering between the bars with his mouth open and slack. He knew exactly what was about to happen.

  "Earthquake?" Eppstadt said.

  "No," Tammy replied, reading the look on the goat-boy's face. "Lilith."

  PART NINE

  The Queen of Hell

  ONE

  The ground opened up as though it were going to bring forth some fantastic spring: red shoots, as fine as needles, appeared in their tens of thousands, pierced the ground. A V-shaped crack, each side perhaps twenty feet in length, then erupted into the burgeoning ground, the apex no more than a yard from the spot where the goat-boy's crate sat.

  The steady reverberation of immense machinery increased, and it now became apparent what purpose this machine had, for an opening appeared in the earth, resembling the upper part of some vast reptilian snout. The red needles continued to grow, in both size and number, especially around the lip; and at a certain point, when they were perhaps a foot tall, or taller, they produced hosts of tiny purple-black flowers, which gave off a scent no one in the vicinity (except, of course, Qwaftzefoni) was familiar with. It was pungent, like a spice, but there was nothing about it which would ever have persuaded a cook to use it: the smell, and thus presumably the taste, was so powerful that it would have overwhelmed even the most robust dish. It made everyone feel faintly nauseated by its forcefulness. Eppstadt, who had the weakest stomach, actually threw up.

  By the time he'd done with his retching the extraordinary growth-cycle of the plant had carried it past its peak, however. The small black blossoms were in sudden decay, their petals losing their color. And now, in its autumnal mode, the odor of the plant changed. What had been an almost unbearable stench a minute before became transformed by the process of corruption, its foulness entirely evaporated.

  What remained was a scent that somehow conspired with the souls of everyone present to put them in mind of some sweet memory: something lost; something sacrificed; something taken by time or circumstance. Nor, though their bodies were held in the embrace of these feelings, could they have named them. The scent was too subtle in its workings to be pinned to any one memory. All that mattered was the state of utter vulnerability in which it left everyone. By the time the Hell's Mouth had opened, and Lilith herself had stepped out of its long, sharp shadows, her flora had enraptured the souls of everyone who stood before her. Whatever they saw from now on, whatever they said and did, was colored by the way the scent of her strange garden had touched them.

  Was she beautiful? Well, perhaps. The scent was beautiful, so it seemed she—who was shaped by the scent, as if her body were carved from perfumed smoke—was surely beautiful too, though a more logical assessment might have pointed out how curiously made her face was, close in color and texture to the blossoms in their corrupted phase.

  Her voice, that same less dreamy assessor might have said, was unmusical, and her dress, despite its great size and elaboration (tiny, incomprehensible motifs hand-sewn in neat rows, millions of times), more proof of obsession, even of madness, than of beauty.

  Even allowing that there can be not one good and reliable report of Lilith, the Devil's wife, some
things may still be clearly said of her. She was happy, for one. She laughed with almost indecent glee at the sight of her caged child, though she plainly saw that he was missing a hand. And her manner, when dealing with the Duke, was nothing short of exquisite.

  "You've suffered much for your crime against my household," she said, speaking in cultured English, which—by some little miracle of her making—he understood. "Do you have any idea how many years have passed since you first began to hunt for that idiot child of mine?" She stabbed a finger at the creature in the crate, who started to moan and complain, until she shushed him by slapping the bars.

  The Duke replied that no, he did not know.

  "Well, perhaps it's best you don't," Lilith told him. "But what you should know, because it will shape what happens when I have taken this imp of mine back, is that your natural life-span—your three score years and ten—was over centuries ago."

  The Duke looked puzzled at this; and then aghast, as he realized the consequences of what she was telling him: that he and his men had hidden their lives away in this fruitless Hunt; around and around and around, chasing a baby who'd put on perhaps two years in the period of the pursuit.

  "My father?" he said. "My brother?"

  "All dead," Lilith said, with some little show of sympathy. "All that you knew and remembered has gone."

  The Duke's face remained unchanged, but tears filled up his eyes and then spilled down his cheeks.

  "Men and your hunts," Lilith went on, addressing, it seemed, some larger error in the Duke's sex. "If you hadn't been out killing healthy stags and boars in the first place, you could have married and lived and loved. But"—she shrugged—"we do as our instincts dictate, yes? And yours brought you here. To the very edge of your own grave."

  She was telling him, it seemed, that he'd run out of life and now, after all the sacrifices of his Hunt, his reward would be death: pure, simple and comfortless.

  "Let me have my child then," she said. "Then we'll have this wretched business over and done with."

  It was at this point that Eppstadt spoke up once more. He'd had a twitching little smile on his face for a while, the reason for which was simple enough: this latest spectacle (the earth opening up, the flowers, the scent that toyed with memory) had finally convinced him that one of his earlier explanations for all of this was most likely the correct one. He was lying unconscious somewhere in the house (probably having been struck by a falling object during the earthquake) and was fantasizing this whole absurd scene. He very seldom felt as self-willed in dreams as he felt in this one; indeed, he seldom dreamed at all; or at least remembered his dreams. But now that he had this nonsense in his grasp, he wasn't ready to let it go just yet. Ever the negotiator, he stepped forward and put out his hand, to prevent the Duke passing over the child.

  "I don't suggest you do that just yet," he said, not sure whether the man understood him or not, though the gesture was clear enough. "The moment you hand over the brat, you're dead. You understand?"

  "Don't do this, Eppstadt," Todd advised.

  "Why the hell not? It's just a dream—"

  "It's not a dream," Jerry said. "It's real. Everything down here is as—"

  "Oh Christ, Brahms, shut up. You know what I'm going to do when I'm finished sorting this out? I'm going to kick your faggot ass." He grinned, obviously hugely satisfied to be so politically incorrect.

  "You're going to regret this," Todd said. "Jerry's right."

  "How can he be right?" Eppstadt said, his voice dripping contempt. "Look at this place! How can any of this fucking idiocy be real? It's all going on in my head! And I bet you thought I had the dull little mind of a business school executive!"

  "Eppstadt," Todd said. "This is not going on in your mind."

  Eppstadt made the donkey-bray buzz that accompanied the wrong answer on a quiz show. He was riding high on his newfound comprehension of his situation. "Wrong, baby. Fuck! So very, very wrong. Can I say something, while we've got this moment, and it's my dream so I'll fucking say it anyway? You are a terrible actor. I mean, we would get the dailies in at Paramount and we would howl, I mean we would fucking howl, at some of the takes. Tears pouring down our faces while you attempted to emote."

  "You are such a cunt."

  "That I am. And you're a millionaire many times over because I persuaded a bunch of losers who wouldn't know a crass commercial decision from a hole in their asses to pay you an obscene amount of money to parade your God-given attributes." He turned to Lilith, who had been watching this outburst as though amused by the cavorting of an antic dog. "Sorry. There I go mentioning the G-word. Probably doesn't sit well with you?"

  "God?" Lilith said. "No. God sits perfectly well with me."

  Eppstadt was clearly about to make some boorish reply to this but Lilith ignored him.

  She let out a rhythmical whistle, and up from the dark throat of the earth came two women, bald and bare-breasted. At the sight of either faces or breasts, perhaps both, the goat-boy in the crate started to get voluble again, wailing and chattering.

  "This is the end, then," Lilith said to the Duke. "I'm taking him. Do you have any final words?"

  The Duke shook his head, and raised his sword—jabbing it in Epp-stadt's direction in order to persuade him to stay out of these proceedings. Eppstadt stood his ground, until the point of the Duke's sword pierced his mud-caked shirt. Then he yelped and duly stepped back to prevent worse coming his way.

  "Hurt, did it?" Jerry said.

  "Shut the fuck up," Eppstadt snapped.

  He made no further attempt to agent the exchange between Lilith and the Duke, however. The crate was unbolted, and Lilith reached in, grabbing her one-handed offspring by his dick and balls.

  "Take him, ladies," she said to the women, and in a most unmotherly fashion she threw him into the arms of her maidservants, who seized him between them and carried him off down the slope and into the darkness.

  "So it finishes," Lilith said to the Duke.

  She turned on her heel, catching hold of her insanely embroidered garment, and lifting it up to clear her step. Then she glanced back. "Did you have children?" she asked the Duke.

  He shook his head.

  "Then you'll lie with those who went before you but not with any that came after. That's good. It would be mournful to meet your children in the grave tonight." She inclined her head. "Farewell then, my lord. It seems to me you've earned your rest."

  She had said all she intended to say, and again made to depart, but Eppstadt wasn't quite done.

  "You're good," he said. "I mean, real gravitas. I don't see that a lot. And you're beautiful. You know, it's usually one or the other. Tits or brains. But you've got both. I almost wish I wasn't dreaming."

  Lilith gave him a stare which would have sent wiser men running. But Eppstadt, still believing himself the master of his own dream, was not going to be cowed by any of its cast.

  "Have I met you somewhere before?" he said. "I have, haven't I? I'm conjuring you up from a memory."

  "Oh don't do this," Todd murmured.

  "Don't what?" Eppstadt snapped.

  "Play. Not here. Not now."

  "It's my sand-box. I'll play if I want to. But the rest of you can get the fuck out! That means you, faggot, and her—" He pointed at Tammy. "And you, Pickett. Out! Go on! I want you out!"

  For some reason, Todd looked to Lilith for permission to depart. She nodded, first at Todd, then at Tammy, finally at Jerry.

  "Are you sure you don't want to make a graceful exit?" Todd said to Eppstadt.

  "Fuck you."

  Jerry had already turned his back on the Hell's Mouth, and was heading back toward the threshold. Tammy had also turned, but had halted, caught by the sight of the Duke and his two men, who were lying on the ground at the edge of the trees. How they had got there—what instinct had driven them to lie down like this—she didn't know.

  Their bodies were already in advanced states of corruption, even though they were still alive and the
y were gazing up at the slowly-changing sky, their faces cleansed of any expression of resentment or need or pain. They seemed perfectly resigned to their decease, as though after all these years trapped in a circle they could not break, they were simply grateful to be leaving it. So there they lay, maggots at their nostrils, beetles at their ears, their sight drowning in pools of rot.

  She didn't watch to the end. She wasn't that brave. Instead she turned away and followed Jerry to the door.

  As she came to his side he said: "Look."

  "I saw."

  "No, not there," Jerry said. "That's too sad for words. Look up. It's almost over."

  TWO

  So it was.

  The sun was now over halfway uncovered, and with every passing moment the landscape it had lit with so miserly a light for the better part of four hundred years was growing brighter. The thinnest clouds—those most susceptible to heat—had already evaporated. Now the cumulus were in retreat, showing a bank of blue through which clusters of falling stars came blazing down, as though to celebrate the passing of the Hunt. Some of the braver beasts in this extraordinary landscape—creatures that had lived contentedly in the perpetual twilight but were curious to see what change the sun would bring—were venturing out of their dens and caves and squinting up at the spectacle overhead. A lion blessed with wings strong enough to carry it aloft rose from its imperial seat among the branches of a Noahic oak, as though to challenge the sun itself. It was instantly overcome by the incandescence that filled the heavens, and tumbled back to earth, shedding feathers the size of swords.

  Jerry saw the lesson clearly enough. "It's all going to change very quickly now," he said.

  There was indeed a general sense of panic in the landscape. Every species that had learned to prosper in the silver-dim light was in a sudden terror, fearful that whatever the sun was shedding—light, heat or both— it would be their undoing. In every corner of this painted world, creatures were scuttling and scampering, fighting over the merest sliver of shadow. It was not just the lion that had been brought down. Several flocks of birds, confounded by the sudden blaze, panicked in mid-flight, and descended in squawking confusion. On the roads, wild dogs went noonday crazy, and set on one another's throats in bursts of overheated rage; the air was suddenly populated with myriad tiny gnats and dragonflies, which rose from the grass in such swarming abundance they could only have been born that moment, their eggs cracked by the abrupt rise in temperature. And where there were flies, of course, there were fly-catchers. Rodents leapt up out of the grass to feed on the sudden bounty. Lizards and snakes swarmed underfoot.