Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

ghosts' rampages or the passage of time and had found many tins had been punctured, and the food inside was rotten; but she collected up a few cans of edible stuff: baked beans, peaches, hot dogs in brine. And then, after some digging around, found an opener, and made up a plate of unlikely gastronomic bed-fellows; and took them upstairs to the balcony.

The Canyon had gone pin-drop quiet. If she hadn't already known they had an agent of Creation's Maker in their vicinity, the spooked silence of every cicada, coyote and night bird would have confirmed the fact. It was eerie, standing there, watching the dark hollow of the Canyon, and the few stars that were visible above it, and listening to the empty dark. She could hear the click of the fork against her teeth, the noise of her throat as it swallowed the beans and bites of hot dog.

'I used to love hot dogs,' came a voice from the dark room behind her. It was Todd. 'You know, ordinary food. I never really got a taste for the more sophisticated stuff.'

'You want some of this?' she asked him, glancing round as she proffered the plate.

'No thanks,' he said. 'I haven't really got an appetite anymore.'

'Maybe ghosts aren't supposed to eat.'

'Yeah that's what I figured,' he replied, coming out onto the balcony. Then, 'Do you think they fuck? Because if they don't I'm going to have to find some other way to get this down.' He glanced down at the lump beneath his bath-towel.

'Cold showers.'

'Yeah.' He chuckled. 'Everything comes full circle, doesn't it? Cold hot dogs for you. Cold showers for me. Nothing really changes.'

'I don't know,' she said. 'This isn't normal for me. Conversations with— if you'll excuse the phrase— dead movie stars in million-dollar houses...'

'—with an angel waiting on the front doorstep—'

'Right.'

She'd finished her ad hoc meal, and went back into the bedroom to set the plate down. While she was doing so she heard Todd call her name, very softly.

She went back out onto the balcony.

'What is it?'

'Look.'

She looked, following the direction of his gaze. There was a glow of light in the densely-forested cleft of the Canyon. It looked as though it had settled in the fork of a tree.

'I guess Raphael must have got bored.'

'Is that his name? Raphael?'

'I don't know. It's just the only angel's name I know. Angels aren't my strong point. His real name's probably Marigold. The point is: it's wandered off. We should go while we've got the opportunity. It may not stay down there very long.'

'Right. I'll go and find Maxine.'

'Wait,' Todd said, catching hold of her arm. 'Just one thing before you go.'

'What's that?'

'I want your honest opinion . . .'

'On what?'

'Do you think she's right? Am I screwing with my immortal soul, trying to escape this thing?'

'You know, I was wondering about that when I was eating my hot dogs. My Aunt Jessica was a church-lady all her life. She used to go and arrange the flowers on the altar three times a week. And she used to say: God sees everything. This was when I was a little girl and she thought I'd been naughty. God sees everything, she'd say, wagging her finger. So you can't ever hide from Him. I think He can hear us right now. And at least she would have believed He could.'

'And you?'

'Who knows? I used to believe her. And I suppose there's a little part of me that still thinks wherever I am, whatever I'm doing—good, bad or indifferent—God's got His eye on me. Or Her eye.'

'So . . .'

'So if He doesn't want something to happen He can stop it.'

'Oh, we're back to that. If God doesn't want me to get out of here, He'll make sure I don't.'

'Right.'

Todd allowed a little smile to creep onto his face. He looked like a mischievous six-year-old. 'So what do we think when we see that . . .' He nodded to the light in the distance. 'Isn't it like it's looking the other way?'

Now Tammy smiled.

'Maybe,' she said. 'Maybe God's saying: I'll give you a chance. Just this once.'

Todd leaned forward and kissed Tammy on the cheek. 'Oh I like that,' he said. 'Just this once.'

'It's just a theory.'

'It's all I need right now.'

'So you want to go?'

He paused a moment and studied the light in the Canyon below. The angel had apparently paused down there, either to contemplate the loveliness of Creation, or to fall asleep for a while. Whatever the reason, it was no longer moving.

'If we're going to go,' Todd said, 'this is the time. Agreed?'

'Agreed.'

'I'll go get dressed.'

•  •  •

They found Maxine (who had in turn found a bottle of vodka, and had drunk a third of it on an empty stomach, which wasn't perhaps good for her state of mind, but what the hell? It was done). Tammy explained to her what she and Todd had seen from the balcony, and that it was time to try to make a getaway. Pleasantly lubricated by the vodka, Maxine was ready for an escape; in fact she was first to the door, bottle in hand, remarking that the sooner they were all out of this fucking house the better for everyone.

Tammy led the way, clutching Maxine's car-keys tightly in her palm, to keep their merest tinkle from reaching the ears of the angel. The Canyon was now completely dark. Even the few stars that had been lit overhead earlier were now covered by cloud, as though—Tammy thought—the angel had extinguished them. It was the kind of notion she wouldn't have given room to on any other night but this, in any other place but this; but who knew where the bounds of possibility lay tonight? It was ridiculous, in a way, to imagine that an angel could blow out stars. But wasn't it equally bizarre that there should be a dead man walking in her footsteps, planning to outrun Heaven? Incident by incident, wonder by wonder, her adventures in the Canyon had escalated in outlandishness; as though in preparation for this night's excesses. First the ghosts and their children; then the Devil's Country; now this.

They moved without mishap to the gate; paused there to be sure the coast was clear and then moved on— again without incident—out into the street. Nobody said a word.

If the silence of the natural world had been uncanny from the balcony, it was ten times stranger now they were out on the road, where there would usually be a chirping carpet laid out all around them, and trilling songs in the darkened canopy. But here, now, nothing. It made what was already strange enough, stranger still. It was as though every living thing, from the most ferocious coyote to the tiniest flea, was intimidated into silence and stillness by the scale of power in their midst. The only things foolish enough to move were these three human beings, stumbling through the darkness.

All was going well until Tammy caught her foot in a pothole and fell sideways. Todd was there to catch her, but he wasn't quick enough to stop the short cry of alarm that escaped her as she slipped. It was the loudest thing that had been heard in the Canyon in a long while; its echo coming back off the opposite wall.

She silently mouthed the word damn; then, taking a deep breath, she went to the car, adrenaline making her a little more efficient than she might have been otherwise, and opened the door. The car announced that there was a door open with an irritating little ping, ping, ping. Well, hell,