Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

'I should go outside,' she said.

'You are outside,' the man replied.

As he spoke to her she felt the room lurch sideways—the table, the mantelpiece, the canary in his cage.

'Oh no—' she said. 'What's happening?'

'It's all right,' the man said, softly.

'Auntie!' she called.

'No, honey. I'm not your auntie. It's Todd. Now spit. You've got dirt in your mouth.'

The world lurched again, only this time there was somebody's arms to catch her, and she opened her eyes to see the face of the handsomest man in the world looking down at her. He was smiling.

'There you are,' he said. 'Oh thank God. I thought I'd lost you.'

As the last morsels of Aunt Jessica's peach cobbler melted away she remembered where she was and how she'd got here. The angel on the road, the trees, the car overturning and glass shattering.

'Where's Maxine?'

'She's fine. She went to get help. But she's been away a long time so I had to drag you out of there myself. It took a little doing. But I did some bandaging. There was a first aid kit in the trunk. I got the bleeding to stop.'

'I was eating peach cobbler.'

'You were hallucinating is what you were doing.'

'Only there was dirt in it.' She spat, with as much gusto as she could manage. It made her body hurt to do it, though. Her stomach, her head. She winced.

'You did good,' Todd said. 'Maxine got out with scrapes.'

'It was pure luck,' she said. 'I was driving too fast, and that damn angel got in my way.' She dropped her voice. 'Did it leave?'

Todd shook his head, and directed her attention up at the tree where the angelic presence still sat. It was quite composed now. It had made its arrangements, and it was waiting.

'I'm afraid it's going to want me to go with it very soon,' he said. 'I promised I'd go.'

'You did? You didn't try and make a run for it?'

'How could I? You were in there, hurt. I couldn't just run out on you.'

'But you might have escaped.'

'Ha. You know, I think I did,' he said.

'I don't understand.'

'Oh ... not quite the way I thought I was going to. But I escaped being a selfish fuck-up.' He looked into her eyes. 'You think I would have had an angel come to fetch me before I met you? No way. It would have been straight down to Hell for Todd Pickett.'

He was making a joke of it, of course; but there was something here that came from his heart. She could see it in his eyes, which still continued to stare deep into hers. 'I want to thank you,' he said, leaning down and kissing her cheek. 'Maybe next time round it'll be our turn, eh?'

'Our turn?'

'Yeah. You and me, born next-door to one another. And we'll know.'

'I want you to stop this now,' she told him gently. There were tears blurring her vision, and she didn't like that. He'd be gone soon enough, and she wanted to have him in focus for as long as possible.

He looked up. 'Uh-oh. I hear the cavalry,' he said. Tammy could hear them too. Sirens coming up from the bottom of the hill. 'Sounds like I should make my exit,' Todd said. The sirens were getting louder. 'Damn. Do they have to come so quick?' There were tears in his eyes now, dropping onto Tammy's cheek. 'Shit, Tammy. I don't want to go.'

'Yes, you do,' she said. She fumbled for his hand, and finding it, squeezed it. 'You've had a good time. You know you have.'

'Yeah. Oh yeah. I've had a great time.'

'Better than most.'

'True enough.'

The light was descending from the tree, and for the first time—either because the angel was close to finishing its business, or because Tammy herself was hovering on the edge of life—she saw the contents of the light more clearly. There was no attempt to confuse her with memories now; no Monarch Street, no Aunt Jessica at the door. There was a human shape, neither male nor female, standing in the light, and for a moment, as it came to stand behind Todd, she thought it was Todd—or some other face of his, some gentle, eternal face that no camera would ever capture, nor words would ever show.

He stroked her face with the back of his fingers, and then he stood up.

'Next time,' he murmured.

'Yeah.'

Then his smile, that trademark smile of his which had made Tammy weak with infatuation when she'd first seen it, dimmed a little; its departure not signifying sadness, only the appearance of a certain ease in him, which his smile had concealed all these years. He didn't need to try so hard any longer. He didn't need to charm or please.

She tried to catch his eye one last time—to have one last piece of him, even now. But he was already looking away; looking at where he was really headed.

She heard him speak one last time, and there was such happiness in his voice, she began to cry like a baby.

'Dempsey?' he said. 'Here, boy! Here!'

She turned her head toward the light, thinking she might glimpse him even now, but as she did so, she heard—or thought she heard—the angel utter a word of its own; a seamless word, like a ribbon wrapped around everything she'd ever dreamed of knowing or being. It wasn't loud, but it erased the sound of the sirens, for which she was grateful; then it moved off up into the darkness of the Canyon.

Knowing she was safe in the hands of those who would take care of her, and one, Maxine, who loved her, she followed the ribbon of the word up the flanks of Coldheart Canyon, skimming the darkened earth.

And as the woman and the word passed over the ground together, the creatures of the Canyon forgot their fear. They began to make music again; cicadas in the grass, night-birds in the trees; and on the ridge, the coyotes, yapping fit to burst. Not because they had a kill, but because they had life.

EPILOGUE

And So, Love

ONE

Although every medical expert who paraded by Tammy's bed in the next many weeks—bone-specialists and skull-specialists, gastroenterologists and just good old-fashioned nurses—invariably pronounced the opinion that she was a 'very lucky woman to be alive' there were many painful days and nights in that time of slow, slow recovery when she did not feel remotely lucky.

Quite the reverse. There were times, especially at night, when she thought she was as far from unmended as she'd been when Todd had first pulled her out of the car. Why else did she hurt so much? They gave her painkillers of course, in mind-befuddling amounts, but even when she'd just taken the pills or been given the injection, and the first rush of immunity from pain was upon her, she could still feel the agony pacing up and down just beyond the perimeter of her nerves' inured state, waiting for a crack to appear in the wall so that it could get back in and hurt her again.

She was in the Intensive Care Unit at Cedars-Sinai for the first seventy-two hours, but as soon as she was deemed fit to be removed from the ICU, her insurance company demanded she be taken to the LA County Hospital, where she could be looked after at fifty percent of the price. She was in no state to defend herself, of course, and would undoubtedly have been transferred had Maxine not stepped in and made her presence felt. Maxine was close