Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

'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.'