Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

tatters of his trousers. The collected scent of the blossoms all but made him swoon. He toppled backward, and sprawled in the shoots that were waiting for him, like a death-bed welcoming him into its final comfort.

'What the hell happened to Eppstadt?' Todd said, looking back.

The brightening day had put a layer of haze between the Hell's Mouth and the door that led up into the house. The details of Eppstadt's condition were impossible to fathom. All they could see was that for some reason the man was lying back among flowers.

'I thought he was in trouble a few moments ago,' Jerry said. 'He seemed to be crying out.'

'He's not crying out now,' Tammy said. 'Looks like he's taking a nap.'

'Crazy . . .' Todd said.

'Well leave him to it, I say,' Jerry remarked. 'If he wants to stay, that's his damn business.'

There was no argument from the other two.

'After you,' Jerry said, stepping aside to let Tammy cross the threshold. He followed quickly after her, with Todd on his heels.

Todd glanced back one last time at the transforming landscape. The ships had disappeared from the horizon, as though some long-awaited wind had finally come and filled their sails, and borne them off to new destinations. The little gathering of houses beside the river, with its two bridges, had been eroded by light, and even the snaking shape of the river itself was on its way to extinction. Though he'd doubted the tale Zeffer had told him it seemed now that it was true. This had been a prison painted to hold the Duke. Now that his Hunt was over and the Devil's child had been returned, the place no longer had any reason to exist.

Age was catching up with it. The heat of its painted sun was undoing it, image by image, tile by tile.

'Eppstadt?' he yelled. 'Are you coming?'

But the man in the long grass didn't move, so Todd let him lie there. Eppstadt had always been a man who did what he wanted to do, and to hell with other people's opinions.

Sprawled on the ground, Eppstadt heard Todd's call, and half-thought of returning it, but he could no longer move. Several shoots had entered the base of his skull, piercing his spinal column, and he was paralyzed.

The greenery pushing up through his brain, erasing his memories as they climbed, had not yet removed every last shred of intelligence. He realized that this was the end of him. He could feel the first insinuations of shoots at the back of his throat, and an itching presence behind his eyes, where they were soon to emerge and flower, but it concerned him far less than it might have done had he imagined this sitting in his office.

It wasn't the kind of death he'd had in mind when he thought of such things, but then his life hadn't been as he'd expected it to be either. He'd wanted to paint, as a young man. But he'd had not the least talent. A professor for the Art School had remarked that he'd never met a man with a poorer sense of aesthetics. What would they have thought now, those critics who'd so roundly condemned him, if they'd been here to see? Wouldn't they have said he was passing away prettily, with his head full of shoots and color and his eyes . . .

He never finished the thought.

One of Lilith's flowers blossomed inside his skull, and a sudden, massive hemorrhage stopped dead every thought Eppstadt was entertaining, or would ever entertain again.

Indifferent to his death, the plants continued to press up through his flesh, blossoming and blossoming, until from a little distance he was barely recognizable as a man at all: merely a shape in the dirt, a log perhaps, where the flowers had grown with particular vigor, hungry to make the most of the sun now that it was shining so brightly.

FOUR

Tammy knew there was trouble brewing the moment she set eyes on Katya. The woman was smiling down at them beatifically, but there was no warmth or welcome in her eyes; only anger and suspicion.

'What happened?' she said, straining for lightness.

'It's over,' Todd told her, coming up the stairs, his hand extended toward her in a placatory manner. No doubt he also read the signs in the woman's eyes, and didn't trust what he saw there.

'Come on,' he said, laying his palm against her waist in a subtle attempt to change her direction.

'No,' she said, gently pressing past him so as to go down the stairs. 'I want to see.'

'There's nothing to see,' Jerry said.

She didn't bother to sweeten her expression for Brahms. He was her servant; nothing more nor less. 'What do you mean: there's nothing to see?'

'It's all gone,' he said, his tone tinged with melancholy, as though he were gently breaking the news of a death to her.

'It can't be gone,' Katya snapped, pushing on past Jerry and Tammy and heading down the stairs. 'The Hunt goes on forever. How could Goga ever catch the Devil's child?' She turned at the bottom of the stairs, her voice strident. 'How could any man ever catch the Devil's child?'

'It wasn't a man,' Tammy piped up. 'It was me.'

Katya's face was a picture of disbelief. Obviously if the idea of a man bringing the Hunt to an end wasn't farcical enough, the notion that a woman—especially one she held in such plain contempt—had done so, was beyond the bounds of reason.

'That's not possible,' she said, departing from the bottom of the stairs and heading along the passageway.

She was out of Tammy's view now; but everyone could hear Katya's bare feet on the floor, and the doorhandle being turned—

'No!'

The word was almost a shriek.

Jerry caught hold of Tammy's elbow. 'I think you should get out of here—'

'No! No! No!'

'—that room was the reason she stayed young.'

Now it made sense, Tammy thought.

That was why Jerry had sounded as though he were announcing a death: it was Katya's demise he was announcing. Denied her chamber of eternal youth, what would happen to her? If this was a movie, she'd probably come hobbling back along the passageway with the toll of years already overtaking her, her body cracking and bending, her beauty withering away.

But this wasn't a movie. The woman who strode back into view at the bottom of the stairs showed no sign of weakening or withering: at least not yet.

'That bitch!' she yelled, pointing at Tammy. 'I want her killed. Todd? You hear me? I want her dead!'

Tammy looked up the stairs to where Todd was standing. It was impossible to read the expression on his face.

Meanwhile Katya ranted on. 'She's spoiled everything! Everything!'

'It had to end eventually,' Todd said.

As Todd spoke Tammy felt the pressure of Jerry's hand on her arm, subtly encouraging her to head on up the stairs while there was still time to do so. She didn't wait for a second prompt. She began to ascend, keeping her eyes fixed on Todd's face. What was he thinking?

Look at me, she willed him. It's me, it's your Tammy. Look at me.

He didn't, which was a bad sign. It would be easier to obey Katya if he didn't think of Tammy as a real human being; didn't look into her eyes; didn't see her fear.

'Don't let her go!' Katya said.

She was coming up the stairs now, taking them slowly, her pace casual.

Todd just stood there, and for once Tammy was glad of his passivity. She slipped by him without being apprehended, and headed on to the top of the stairs.