Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

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?'

'I don't know. I just don't trust it. I'd prefer to stick around here a little longer than go off with it.'

'Here? You want to stay in this dump? Todd, it's not going to be standing for more than another week.'

'So maybe I'll set off across America, I don't know. I just got more living to do. Even though I'm dead.'

'And suppose we're pissing off higher powers?' Maxine said. 'Have you thought about that?'

'You mean God? If God really wants me, He'll find a way to get me. Right? He's God. But if He doesn't... if I can slip off and enjoy myself for a few years . . .'

Maxine threw a troubled glance at Tammy. 'And you go along with all this?'

'If Todd doesn't feel—'

'You were the one saying prayers out there.'

'Let me finish. If Todd doesn't feel he's lived his full life, it's his choice.'

'The point is: you've had all the life you're going to get,' Maxine said to him. Then to Tammy, 'We're talking to a dead man. Something we would not be doing outside Coldheart Canyon.'

'Things are different here . . .' Todd murmured, remembering what Katya had told him.

'Damn right they are,' Maxine said. 'But the rules of this place end somewhere north of Sunset. And it's only because of the power that was once in this house that you're getting a chance to play this damn-fool game with God.'

'A game with God,' Tammy said, so quietly Maxine barely heard what she'd said.

'What?'

'I was just saying: a game with God. I didn't think you'd care about something like that. Aren't you an atheist?'

'Once, I might have—'

Todd stood up. 'Hush. Hush.'

The women stopped talking. Todd looked up toward the vault of the turret, with its holes that showed the night sky.

'Stay very still,' he said.

As he spoke, the light came over the top of the turret, its motion eerily smooth and silent. Three beams of its silvery luminescence came in through holes in the roof. They slid over the walls, like spotlights looking for a star to illuminate. For a moment the entity seemed to settle directly on top of the turret, and one of the beams of light went all the way down the stairwell to scrutinize the debris at the bottom. Then, after a moment's perusal, it began to move off again, at the same glacial speed.

Only when it had gone completely did anybody speak again. It was Maxine who piped up first.

'Why doesn't it just come in and get you?' she said. 'That's what I can't figure out. I mean, it's just a body of light. It can go anywhere it chooses, I would have thought. Under the door. Down through that hole'—she pointed up to the turret. 'It's not like the house is burglar-proof.'

Tammy had been thinking about that very question. 'I think maybe this place makes it nervous,' she said. 'That's my theory, for what it's worth. All the evil this house has seen.'

'I don't think angels are afraid of anything,' Maxine said.

'Then maybe it's just repulsed. I mean, it's like a dog, right, sniffing out souls? Its senses are really acute. Think how this place must stink. Especially down there.' She glanced down the stairwell, where the angel's light had lingered for a moment before moving on. 'The Devil's Country was down there. People suffered, died, horrible deaths. If I was an angel, I'd stay out.'

'If you were an angel, my love,' Maxine said, 'God would be in a lot of trouble.'

This won a laugh out of Tammy. 'All right, you've heard my theories—'

'I think you're both right,' Todd said. 'If the light wanted to come inside the house it could. It did once, remember? But I think between my not wanting to go and the smell of what this house has seen, it's probably figured it'll wait. Sooner or later the house is going to start falling down. And then I'll come out and it'll have me.'

'That's why we should surprise it,' Tammy said. 'Go now, while it's least expecting anyone to leave.'

'You don't know what it's expecting,' Maxine put in. 'It could be listening to every damn word we say, as far as you can tell.'

'Well I'm going to try for it,' Todd said, pushing his gun into his trousers, muzzle to muzzle. 'If you don't want to come, that's fine. Maybe you could just divert it somehow. Give me a chance to get to the car.'

'No, we're going,' Tammy said, speaking on behalf of Maxine, whose response to this was a surrendering shrug.

'It is preposterous,' she pointed out however. 'Who the hell ever outran an angel?'

'How do we know?' Todd said. 'Maybe people do it all the time.'

They stood together at the door and listened for twenty, twenty-five minutes, seeing if there was some pattern to the motion of the light. In that time it went up onto the roof twice, and made half a circuit of the house, but then seemed to give up for no particular reason. It made no sound. Nor did its light at any point seem to alter in intensity. It was—perhaps predictably—constant and patient, like a hunter sitting by a burrow, knowing that sooner or later its occupant must show its nose.

About nine-fifteen or so, Tammy went up to the master bedroom to scan the view across the Canyon and down toward Century City. She'd scoured the kitchen for dried goods and tinned goods that had survived either the