Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

brains spattered on the stone where he laid his head.

Otherwise, the landscape was empty of human occupants.

There were plenty of birds in the air, struggling against the increasingly violent gusts to reach the safety of their roosts; and small animals, rabbits and the like, scampering through the whipping grass to find some place of safety. Eppstadt was no nature-boy, but he knew enough to be certain that when rabbits were making for their bolt-holes, it was time for human beings to get out of harm's way.

'We've got to go,' he said to Joe. 'You've done all you can.'

'Not yet!' Joe yelled. The wind was strong enough to make even the heavy branches of the tree sway. Dead leaves were shaken down all around.

'For God's sake, Joe. What the fuck is wrong with you?'

He took a step up the ladder and caught hold of Joe's belt. Then he tugged. 'You're coming, or I'm going without you.'

'Then go—' Joe began to say. He didn't finish because at that instant the ladder, which was presently bearing the weight of Eppstadt, Joe the Samaritan, and the crucified man, broke.

Eppstadt was closest to the ground, so he sustained the least damage. He simply fell back on the sharp stones in which the copse and its briar thicket were rooted. He scrambled to his feet to find out what had happened to the other two men. Both had fallen among the thorns, the crucified man spread-eagled on top of Joe. Only now were the man's wounds fully displayed. Besides the peckings around his eyes, there were far deeper wounds— certainly not made by birds—in his chest. Somebody had had some fun with him before he was nailed up there, cutting star-patterns around his nipples.

Joe struggled to get himself out from under the man, but his flailing only served to catch him in the thorns.

'Help me,' he said, throwing his hand back over his head toward Eppstadt. 'Quickly. I'm being pricked to death here!'

Eppstadt approached the thicket and was about to take hold of Joe's hand when two of the largest wounds on the crucified man's chest gaped, and the flat black heads of two snakes, each ten times the size of the serpent that had slipped out of his throat, pressed their blood-soaked snouts out of the layers of flesh and yellow fat, and came slithering out of his torso. One of them trailed a multitude of what Eppstadt took to be eggs, suspended in a jellied mass of semi-translucent phlegm.

Eppstadt stepped away from the thicket, and from Joe. The serpents crisscrossed as they emerged, their beady white eyes seeking out some new warm place to nest.

'Are you going to help me or not?' Joe said.

Eppstadt simply shook his head.

'Eppstadt!' Joe wept. 'For God's sake get me out.'

Eppstadt had no intention of getting any closer to the snakes than he already was: but the goat-boy had no such scruples. He pushed past Eppstadt and grabbed hold of Joe's outstretched hand. His strength, like his member, was out of all proportion to his size. One good haul, and he had Joe halfway freed from the thorn bushes. Joe screamed as his back was scored by the thorns, which had been pressed deep into his flesh by the weight of the man on top of him.

'Ah now, shut up!' the goat-boy yelled over Joe's complaints. Hanging out of the thicket, poor Joe looked half-dead. The pain had made him vomit, and it was running from the side of his mouth. His demands had become pitiful sobs in the space of a few seconds. Horrified though he was—and guilty too (he'd come down here to help Joe; and now look at him)—Eppstadt still couldn't bring himself to intervene. Not with the snakes raising their heads from the body in which they'd nested, still eager for another victim.

Ignoring Joe's weak protests, the goat-boy pulled on him a second time, and then a third, which was the charm. Joe fell free of the thicket, landing heavily on his pierced back. Sheer agony lent him the strength to throw himself over onto his stomach. His back was nearly naked; the violence of the goat-boy's haulings had torn open his shirt. He lay face down in the dirt, retching again.

'That'll teach you,' the goat-boy said. 'Playing with crinimals! You should get some of your own!'

While he was addressing Joe in this witless fashion, Eppstadt chanced to look up at the man still sprawled on the bed of thorns. The two snakes had slithered over his chest and were now entwined around his neck. He was too close to death to even register this last assault. He simply lay there, eyelids fluttering over sightless eyes, while the life was throttled out of him.

'See that?' the goat-boy said. 'So much for you and your tricks. Now I lost my toy and your little friend is dead. Why couldn't you stay out of it, huh? He was mine!' The boy's fury had him jumping up and down now. 'Mine! Mine! Mine!'

And suddenly he was up on Joe's back, dancing a tarantella on the mess of thorns and wounds and blood. 'Mine! Mine! Mine!'

It was a show of petulance; no more nor less. Joe rolled over and threw the boy off. Then he started to get to his feet. But before he could do so, the goat-boy came at him, his step still reminiscent of some peculiar little dance.

'Get up!' Eppstadt yelled to Joe, not certain what the goat-boy was up to, but certain it was mischief. 'Quickly!'

Despite his agonized state, Joe started to push himself off his knees. As he did so the goat-boy made a high slashing kick. Joe's hand went up to his neck, and he fell back in the dirt.

The foot which had struck Joe was the one with the long middle nail, and what had looked to Eppstadt like a glancing blow had in fact slashed open Joe's windpipe.

Both Joe's hands were at his neck now, as blood and air escaped his throat. He turned his gaze toward Eppstadt for a moment, as though the Head of Paramount might know why Joe was lying in the dirt of a place he couldn't even name while his last breath whined out between his fingers.

Then the look of incomprehension went out of his eyes, to be replaced with a blank stare. His hands dropped away from his neck. The whining sound died away, and he rolled forward. All the while the goat-boy went on dancing, out of pure pleasure.

Eppstadt didn't move. He was afraid to draw the murderer's attention. But then the boy seemed to take it into his half-witted head to go find some other plaything, and without looking back at Eppstadt again, he ran off, leaving Joe dead in the dirt and the man who'd come to save him alone in the darkening air.

SIX

Tammy had come into the house cautiously, not at all certain what she was going to find. In fact what she found was Jerry Brahms. He was standing in the hallway, looking down the stairwell, his face ashen—except where it was bloody from his fall—his hands trembling. Before he could get a word out of his mouth there came a din of shrieks from below.

'Who's down there?' Tammy asked Jerry.

'Some boy we came up here with from Maxine's party. A waiter. And Eppstadt. And God knows what else.'

'Where's Maxine?'

'She's outside. She fled into the back yard when the earthquake hit.'

There were more noises from below, and then a rush of wind, coming up the stairwell. Tammy peered down into the darkness. There was somebody down at the very bottom, lying on the floor. She studied the figure. It moved.

'Wait a minute,' she said, half to herself, 'that's Zeffer!'

It was. It was Zeffer. And he was alive. There was blood all over him, but he was definitely alive. She went to the top of the stairs. He'd heard her call his name, and his shining eyes had found her; were fixed on her. She started down the stairs.

'I wouldn't go down there . . .' Brahms warned her.

'I know,' she replied. 'But that's a friend of mine.'

She glanced up at Brahms as she took her second step. There was a look of mild astonishment on his face,