Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

"Six or seven. No, more. Nine, ten times. Sometimes it just waits in the garden. Sometimes it sits on the roof, like it is now. And then once it was in the pool."

  "There's no water in the pool."

  "No, I know. It was lying at the bottom, not moving."

  "And you couldn't see any shape in it?"

  "No, no shape. I mean, do angels even have shapes?"

  "An angel? That's what you think it is?"

  "I'm pretty sure. I mean, it came to get me. And I am dead. So that's why it's hanging around. And it almost had me once—"

  "What happened?"

  "I looked at it. And my head started to fill up with all these memories. Things I hadn't thought about for years and years, literally. Me and Donnie as kids. Cincinnati. Nothing important. Just things you might think of in a daydream. And it said to me—"

  "Wait. It speaks? This thing speaks?"

  "Yes. It speaks."

  "What sex is it?"

  "I don't know. Sometimes it sounds more like a guy . . ." He shrugged. "I don't know."

  "I'm sorry. I interrupted you. What did it say?"

  "Oh. It said: all this is waiting for you."

  " All this,' meaning what?"

  "All the memories, I suppose. My past. People. Places. Smells. You know how sometimes you wake up from a dream and it's been so real, so strong, everything in the real world seems a bit unconvincing for the first half-hour? Well, it was like that after I saw the memories. Nothing was quite real."

  "So why the hell are you fighting it? It doesn't want to hurt you."

  "I'll tell you why I'm fighting. Because it's a one-way street, Tammy. I go with the light, there's no way back."

  "And is being here so wonderful?"

  "Now don't—"

  "I mean it."

  "Don't argue with me," he said. "I've thought about this a lot. Believe me. It's all I've thought about."

  "So what do you want to do?"

  "I want you to stay right here with me until the damn thing goes away. It won't try any tricks if you're here."

  "You mean giving you the memories?"

  "It's got others. Once it appeared on the lawn looking like Patricia, my mother. I knew it wasn't really her, but it's crafty that way. You know, she was telling me to come with her, and for just a few seconds—"

  "It had you fooled?"

  "Yeah. Not for long, but. . . yeah."

  At this juncture there was a rapping sound on the door. Todd jumped.

  "It's only Maxine," Tammy said, getting up, and turning from Todd. He caught hold of the jeans she was carrying, not because he wanted to wear them but to stop her escaping him.

  "Don't answer it," he said. "Please stay here with me. I'm begging you, stay: please."

  She held her breath for a moment, listening for the presence on the roof. It was no longer audible. Had the creature—whatever it was—simply departed, or was it still squatting up there, biding its time? Or—a third possibility, just as plausible as the other two—was she falling for some fictional fear that Todd, in his confused, post-mortem state, had simply created out of thin air? Was she just hearing birds on the roof, skittering around, and letting his imagination work her up into a frenzy about it?

  "Put your jeans on," she said to him, letting go of them.

  "Tammy. Listen to me—"

  "I am listening," she said, crossing to the door of the bedroom. "Put your jeans on."

  She heard the rapping sound again. This time she thought perhaps she'd been wrong. It wasn't Maxine at all. It was somebody outside the house beating on the front door.

  She went to the bedroom door and cautiously opened it. She was in time to see Maxine retreating across the hallway from the front door.

  "What is it?" she whispered. Maxine looked up at her; by the expression on her face something had unsettled her. "I heard this knocking.

  Went to the door. And, Tammy, there was a light out there, shining in through the cracks in the door."

  "So he's not having delusions," Tammy said.

  She headed downstairs to comfort Maxine. As she did so she reported what she'd just heard Todd tell her. "Todd said there was something out there waiting for him. That's his turn of phrase: waiting for him. Apparently it sits on the roof a lot." She put her hand on Maxine's trembling shoulder. "Are you okay?"

  "I am now. It just freaked me out."

  "So you didn't open the door?"

  "Well you can't open it, can you? It's cracked. But it's not much protection."

  "Stay here."

  So saying, Tammy crossed the hallway, gingerly slid through the broken door and stepped out onto the doorstep.

  "Oh Jesus, be careful," Maxine murmured.

  "There's nothing," she said.

  "Are you sure?"

  Maxine stepped out through the cracked door and they stood together on the step.

  The last light of the afternoon had by now died away; but the moon had risen and was shedding its brightness through the trees to the right of the front door.

  "Well, at least it's a beautiful evening," Maxine remarked, staring up at the light coming between the branches.

  Tammy's thoughts were elsewhere. She stepped out of the house and onto the pathway. Then she turned around, running her gaze back and forth along the roof, looking for some sign, any sign whatsoever, of the creature that had made the noise up there. As far as she could see, the roof was completely deserted.

  "Nothing," she said to herself.

  She glanced back at Maxine, who was still staring up at the moon. She was alarmed to see that the sight of the moonlight seemed to have brought Maxine to tears.

  "What's wrong?" she said.

  Maxine didn't reply. She simply stared slackly up at the tree.

  A few leaves fluttered down from the branches where the moonlight was sourced, and to Tammy's amazement the light began to slowly descend.

  "Oh fuck," Tammy said very softly, realizing that this was not the moon.

  Todd had been right. There was some entity here, its outer form consisting of raw light, its core unreadable. Whatever it looked like, it apparently had eyes, because it could see them clearly; Tammy had no doubt of that. She felt its scrutiny upon her. Not just upon her, in fact, in her. She was entirely transparent to it; or so she felt.

  And as its study pierced her, she felt it ignite other images in her mind's eye. The house on Monarch Street where she was born appeared in front of her, its presence not insistent enough to blot out the world in which she was standing, but co-existing with it, neither sight seeming to sit uncomfortably beside the other. The door of the Monarch Street house opened, and her Aunt Jessica, her father's sister, came out onto the stoop. Aunt Jessica, of all people, whom she hadn't thought about in a very long time. Jessica the spinster aunt, smiling in the sunshine, and beckoning to her out of the past.

  Not just beckoning, speaking.

  "Your papa's at the fire station," she said. "Come on in now, Tammy. Come on in now."

  She'd not liked Aunt Jessica over-much, nor had she had any great fear of her father. The fact that Aunt Jessica was there on the stoop was unremarkable; she used to come over for supper on every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, often taking care of Tammy and her brothers when Tammy's parents went out to see a movie or go dancing, which they'd liked to do. Even the line about Papa being at the fire station carried no especial weight. Papa was always at the fire station for one thing or another, because he wasn't just a fireman, he was the union organizer, and a fierce advocate for better pay and conditions. So there had always been meetings and discussions, besides his diurnal duties.

  In short, the memory carried no particular measure of significance, except for the fact that it was a memory of hers, and that somehow this creature—angel or whatever it was—had got into her head to set it in motion. Was its purpose that of distraction? Perhaps so; being so perfectly commonplace. Tammy could slip into its embrace without protest, because it evoked neither great joy nor great regret. It was jus
t the past, there in front of her: momentarily real.

  She thought of what Todd had said, about how the angel had appeared as his mother. Somehow the way Todd had described the process it had sounded altogether more sinister than this: more like a trap for his soul.

  "Tammy?"

  "Yes, I see it," she said to Maxine.

  "What do you see?" Maxine said.

  "It's just my Aunt Jessica—"

  "Well if I were you I'd look away," Maxine advised. Tammy didn't see why it was so important that she look away.

  "I'm okay, just watching," she said.

  But Maxine had taken hold of her arm, and was gripping it so hard that it hurt. She wanted to turn and tell the woman to let go of her, but it was easier said than done. The image of the clapboard house on Monarch Street had in fact caught her up in its little loop. It was like a short length of film, running round and round.

  The door would open, Aunt Jessica would beckon and speak her three lines:

  "Your papa's at the fire station. Come on in now, Tammy. Come on in now."

  Then she'd beckon again and turn round to step back into the house. The door would close. The dappled sunlight, falling through the branches of the old sycamore just to the right of number 38 Monarch Street, would move a little as a gust of summer wind passed through its huge, heavy branches. Then, after a beat, the door would open once again, and Auntie Jessica would reappear on the stoop with exactly the same smile on her face, exactly the same lines to speak.

  "Look away," Maxine said again, this time more urgently.

  The urgency got through to Tammy. Maybe I should do as she says, she thought; maybe this little picture-show isn't as innocent as it seems. Maybe I'm going to be stuck in this loop with the door and Jessica and the shadows coming through the sycamore forever.

  A little spasm of panic rose in her. She made a conscious effort to avert her eyes, thinking of what Todd had said. But her mind's eye had become glued to the scene the angel had conjured, and she couldn't shake herself free of it. She forced herself to close her eyes but the loop was still there behind her eyelids. Indeed it carried more force there because it had nothing to compete with. She began to shake.

  "Help me . . ." she murmured to Maxine.

  But there was no answer forthcoming.

  "Maxine?"

  There were beads of brightness in the image she could see in her mind's eye, and they were getting stronger. In spite of her panicked state, Tammy didn't have any difficulty figuring out what they signified. The angel was getting closer to her. It was using the cover of the looped memory to approach her, until she was within reach of it.

  "Maxine!" she yelled. "Where the hell are you?"

  In her mind's eye, the green door on Monarch Street was opening for perhaps the eleventh or twelfth time: smiling Aunt Jessica appearing to beckon and speak—

  "Maxine?"

  "Your papa's at the fire station—"

  "Maxine!"

  She'd gone; that was the bitter truth of it. Seeing the angel approaching, and unable to pull Tammy out of its path, she'd done the sensible, self-protecting thing. She'd retreated.

  The light in the scene on Monarch Street was getting brighter with every passing moment. She could feel its corrosive energies on her skin. What would the angel's luminescence do to her if it touched her? Cook her marrow in her bones? Boil away all her blood? Oh, God in Heaven. This wasn't a game: it was life or death. She had to find something to break the loop, before the light of the angelic projector got so hot it cremated her.

  There was to be no help from Maxine, that was clear; so she was left with Todd. Where had he been the last time she'd seen him? Her thoughts were now so chaotic she couldn't even remember that.

  No, wait; he'd been upstairs, hadn't he? She couldn't picture him (the loop was too demanding, the brightness too sickeningly strong: it overwhelmed every other image in her head, real or imagined) but she remembered that he'd been up in the master bedroom.

  Oh, and he'd been naked. She remembered that too. Todd the naked ghost, slapping his hard dick around as though it were a toy that he'd suddenly discovered was unbreakable. For a moment the image of Jessica on the doorstep juddered, as though the sprockets had become caught in the gate for a moment. Her mind had found a tool to thrust into the mechanism. Actually, Todd's tool, bobbing at his groin, giving her its slit-eyed gaze.

  Yes! She could almost see it—

  Aunt Jessica's smiling image juddered a second time, then the brightness behind the picture started to press through her eyes, burning away the pupils, making her look momentarily demonic.

  "Yoyo yoyo you-your-Papas-as-as-as-atat-atat-atat-the-the-the-the—"

  The woman was jerking round like a puppet being manipulated by someone in the early stages of a grand mal. The loop flipped back, and she was beckoning again, with the first syllable of her speech caught on her tongue.

  Tammy ignored it. She had Todd's beautiful rod in her mind's eye, and it was strong enough to break the angel's back.

  "Go away" she told Aunt Jessica.

  "Yo-yo-yo-yo—"

  "I said: Go away!"

  There it was now: Todd's erection, clear as day. She made an intellectual assessment of it, to give solidity to the memory. It was a good eight inches long, circumcised, with a slight left-hand drift.

  The light behind Aunt Jessica grew blindingly bright, burning away not only the old lady's figure, but the stoop and the summer tree. The image of Todd's manhood was getting stronger all the time, as though Tammy's pulse beats were feeding it blood; fattening it, glorifying it.

  The angel's brilliance still made her skin itch, but she had the better of it now. Two, three more seconds and Monarch Street had disappeared completely, overtaken by the image of Todd's manhood.

  "Maxine!" she yelled again.

  There was still no reply. She put her head down, so when she opened her eyes she would be staring at the ground, not at the angel's light. She half-expected to see Maxine sprawled on the ground at her feet, overcome by the angel's power. But no. There was nothing below her but the cracked pathway that led from the front door.

  She turned on her heel and lifted her gaze a little. The front door was open; the light the angel shed washed the entire scene before her, taking its color out, and throwing Tammy's shadow up against the wall.

  She felt a perverse imperative to glance back over her shoulder; to put the weapon she'd summoned to the test one more time. But she turned herself away from such nonsense, and stumbled back the way she and Maxine had come just a little while before.

  Even before she reached the steps she heard Maxine sobbing inside. Enraged that she'd been left to face the enemy alone, but at least grateful that Maxine was alive, she climbed the steps, pushed the cracked front door closed as far as it would go, and went back into the house.

  Maxine was sitting on the stairs, shaking.

  On the floor above, Todd had just emerged from the master bedroom. He'd put on the jeans Tammy had fetched for him, and he was carrying a large gun.

  "It won't do you any good," Tammy said, slamming the door behind her.

  "I'm sorry," Maxine said. "I left you out there."

  "So I noticed."

  "I was yelling for you to come, but you wouldn't move. And that thing was just getting closer and closer."

  "It wants me. It doesn't want you two."

  "Well then," Tammy said, staring at the front of Todd's straining jeans and giving up a silent prayer to the efficacy of their contents. "We have two options. We either give you to the angel, and let it take you wherever the hell it intends to take you—"

  "Oh God no. Please. I don't want to go with that thing. I'd rather die."

  "Stop waving the gun around and listen to me, Todd. I said we had two options."

  "What's the other one?"

  "We make a run for it."

  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?"