Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

'Why only two? Quickly.'

'Because you were the hero.'

'Right answer. And heroes don't die. Ever, right?'

'I wouldn't say ever. Sometimes it's the perfect ending.'

'For example?'

'A Tale of Two Cities.'

'That's old. Anyway, don't quibble. The point is: I don't care about what the light wants. I'm the hero.'

'Oh, I get where this is headed.'

'I'm not going, Maxine.'

'Suppose it wants to take you somewhere better?'

'Like where?'

'I don't know . . .'

'Say it. Go on. You see . .. you can't even say it.'

'I can say it. Heaven. The afterlife.'

'Is that where you believe it wants me to go?'

'I don't know where it wants you to go, Todd.'

'And I'm never going to find out because I'm not going to go. I'm the hero. I don't have to go. Right?'

What could she say to this? He had the idea so very firmly fixed in his head that it wasn't going to be easily dislodged.

'I suppose if you put it that way,' she said, 'you don't have to go anywhere you don't want to.'

He put his heel behind a small portion of dirt and pushed it off the edge of the bed. It rattled as it rained down on the bare boards.

'It's all bullshit anyway,' he said.

'What's bullshit?'

'Movies. I should have done something more useful with my life. Donnie was right.'

'Donnie?'

'Yes.' He suddenly looked hard at her. 'Donnie was real, wasn't he? He was my brother. Tell me I didn't dream him.'

'No, you didn't dream him.'

'Oh good. He was the best soul I ever met in my life. Sorry, but he was.'

'No, he was your brother. It's good you love him.'

'Hmm.' A silence; a long silence. Then: 'Life would be shit if I'd just dreamed him.'

EIGHT

At the bottom of the stairs Tammy discovered that the entire sub-structure of the house—the floor once occupied by the Devil's Country—was now reduced to heaps of rubble, with a few support pillars here and there, which were presumably the only things keeping the house from collapsing upon itself completely. Seeing the tenuous state of things, Tammy was tempted to go straight back upstairs to warn Maxine, but then she figured that there was probably no tearing urgency. The house had managed to stay upright in the weeks since the ghosts had wreaked this havoc, and wasn't likely to collapse in the next five minutes: she would risk looking around for a little while, just to be sure she'd understood as much of this mystery as was comprehensible before she turned her back on it forever.

The last few steps of the stairway had been torn away by the revenants' assault, but there was a heap of its own rubble directly beneath it, so it wasn't much of a leap for her. Even so, she landed awkwardly, and slid gracelessly down the side of the heap, puncturing her ankles and calves on the corners of the shattered tiles.

She stumbled away from the bottom of the stairs and through the doorway, the naked framework of which was still standing, surprisingly enough, though the walls to the right and left of it were virtually demolished, and the ceiling brought down, exposing a network of pipes and cables. There was very little light, beyond the patch in which she stood, which had leaked in from the turret. Otherwise, it was murky in every direction. She strayed a little distance from the doorway, taking care not to hobble herself on a larger piece of masonry, and careful too not to lose her bearings.

Every now and again something on a higher floor would creak or grind, or somewhere in the darkness around her she'd hear a patter of dry plaster-dust. Then the creaking would stop, the pattering would stop, and her heart would pick up its normal rhythm again.

Of one thing she was pretty certain: there were no ghosts here. They'd wreaked their comprehensive havoc and gone on their melancholy way, leaving the house to creak and settle and eventually, when it could no longer support its own weight, collapse.

She'd seen enough. She moved back to the doorway and returned through it to the stairs, climbing over the rubble onto the lowest step. The staircase swayed ominously as she heaved herself onto it, and she saw that it had become disconnected from the wall a few feet up and was therefore 'floating,' a fact she had failed to grasp during her descent. She ascended with a good deal more caution and reached the relatively solid ground at the top of the stairs with an inwardly spoken word of thanks.

The door to the master bedroom was open, she saw. A moment later, Maxine emerged and beckoned her to come up.

'Todd's here and he wants to see you,' she explained.

'Is he all right?' Tammy asked, fully realizing, even as she said this, that it was a damn-fool question to ask about a man who'd been recently murdered.

By way of reply Maxine made a strange face, as though she didn't have the least clue what the man in the master bedroom was up to.

'You should just come up and see for yourself,' she said.

As they crossed on the stairs Maxine took the opportunity to whisper: 'I hope to hell you can make more sense of him than I could.'

'Hello, Tammy.'

Todd was lying in the bed, with a pile of dirt covering his lower half. There was dirt on the floor too; and on his hands.

'You're a mess,' she remarked brightly.

'I've been playing in the mud.'

'Can I open the drapes a little, or put on a lamp? It's really gloomy in here.'

'Put on a lamp if you really must.'

She went to the table in the corner and switched on the antiquated lamp, doing so tentatively given her problem with the electricity on the lower floor. Then she went to look out of the narrow gap between the drapes. Maxine had been right; the evening was coming on quickly. Already the opposite side of the Canyon was purple- gray, and the sky above it had lost all its warmth. There were no stars yet, but the moon was rising in the north- eastern corner of the Canyon.

'Don't look out there,' Todd said.

'Why not?'

'Just close the drapes. Please.'

She obviously wasn't quite quick enough for him, because he sprang out of bed, scattering dirt far and wide. His sudden movement startled her a little. It wasn't that she was afraid of him exactly; but if death emphasized people's natural propensities, as it seemed it did, then there was a good chance he'd be wilder in death than he had been alive. He took the drape from her hand—snatched it, almost—and pulled it closed.

'I don't want to see what's out there,' he said. 'And neither do you.'

She looked down at his groin. How could she help herself? He was as hard as any man she'd laid eyes on, his dick moving even though he was standing still, bobbing to the rhythm of his pulse.

It would be ridiculous, she thought, not to mention it. Like his standing there with a pig under his arm, and making no reference to that.