Coldheart Canyon (76 page)

Meanwhile, she was alone in the house. Just under three weeks after her return to Sacramento, Arnie had announced that he was moving out in order to move in with Maureen Ginnis, a bottle-blonde who worked as a dispatcher at the FedEx offices at the airport. In a way, Tammy was glad.

CC[348-676] 9/10/01 2:29 PM Page 576

576

CLIVE BARKER

She knew Maureen a little, and she was a nice woman; a better match for Arnie than Tammy had ever been. And having the house to herself—knowing that when she got up in the morning she didn’t need to see anybody or speak to anybody if she didn’t want to (and there were days, sometimes four or five in a row, when her mood fell into a kind of trough, and she was so sluggish she could barely keep her eyes open; then others when she would turn on the television and some stupid quiz show would make her bawl like a baby)—made the craziness she felt itching inside her a little easier to cope with, because she didn’t have to conceal it from anyone. She could just take the phone off the hook, lock the doors, draw the drapes and act like a crazy lady.

She got a bad cold a couple of weeks after Arnie left, and bought up a cabinetful of over-the-counter cold, flu, congestion and expectorant medications. They usually made her feel so dopey that she avoided taking them, but in her present situation it scarcely mattered if she felt half-comatose.

Having bought the medicines she dosed herself to the gills with cure-all syrups the color of fancy French liqueurs, and went to bed in the middle of the afternoon to sweat it out. It was a bad move. She woke about one in the morning from a dream in which she’d been lying in bed with the goat-boy clamped to her breast, suckling noisily. She could smell the meaty sweetness of her breast-milk as it seeped from the corner of his hairy mouth, and heard the long middle nail of his foot catching on the comforter as he jerked around in animal bliss.

With the weird logic of dreams she had very reasonably told Qwaftzefoni that she felt feverish and he would have to stop. She had pulled him off her breast with some difficulty, only to discover that he had hold of her hand, the sharp nail of his thumb pressed hard against the pulsing vein in her wrist as though threatening to pop it at a moment’s notice. Then he had guided her palm down to the clammy place beneath the curve of his stomach, where his prodigiously veined prick stuck out from folds of infant fat. She felt a row of tiny objects down the underside of his shaft.

“They’re black pearls,” he said, before she asked the question. “They’ll increase your pleasure.”

CC[348-676] 9/10/01 2:29 PM Page 577

COLDHEART CANYON

577

In her fever-dream, she barely had time to register what the little bastard was proposing before he was climbing up onto her, her tit spurting in his fist as he milked her, her screams going for nothing. In the hellish heat of the room the spilled milk went bad in a heartbeat, souring on the sheets. It stank as if they’d been soaked in vomit, the stench rising around her with physical weight, as though it might smother her.

She had begged for the goat-boy to leave her alone, but he clutched her hand so tightly she was afraid he’d break the bones if she didn’t obey him.

So she had taken hold of his pearl-lined ding-a-ling and proceeded to jerk it.

“You want it over with quickly?” he had said to her.

“Yes . . .” she had sobbed, hoping he’d let her go. Men knew how to do it better than women anyway. Arnie had always turned up his nose at the offer of a hand-job. “You never do it right. I’d prefer to do it myself.” But there were no easy get-outs here.

“Then stay still!” the goat-boy had said, flipping over backward, still keeping his grip on her fountaining breast, but relinquishing the enforced masturbation for a grosser game. He was straddling her head now, his thick little legs just long enough to raise the cushy divide of his ass six or seven inches above her nose. The coarse hair on his goaty legs pricked her face. It thickened around his buttocks, and he’d long since given up trying to clean it. The stench made her gag.

“Open your mouth. Put out your tongue.”

She could bear it no longer. She reached up and grabbed his balls hard, throwing the little fuck forward, so that he was sprawled on the milk-soaked bed. Then she lifted his tail and started to beat his ass with her palm, for all the world like a mother chiding a monstrous child. He started to sob, and shit, the groove of his buttocks filling up with the turd he would have dumped on her face if he’d had the chance. She was past caring about how dirty her hands were. She just kept beating the little fucker, until he had no more tears left, and he was reduced to hiccups.

No, the hiccups weren’t his, they were hers.

Her eyes fluttered open. The fever had broken, and she was alone in a bed that was damp with all the sweat she’d shed, but otherwise sweet-

CC[348-676] 9/10/01 2:29 PM Page 578

578

CLIVE BARKER

smelling. The cretinous horror she’d brought from the Devil’s Country was gone; shit, hair and all.

She got up out of bed and flushed all the medicines down the toilet, determined to let the flu pass from her system of its own accord. She was crazy enough, without the aid of medication.

CC[348-676] 9/10/01 2:29 PM Page 579

“Jerry.”

“Tammy. My
dear
. Whatever happened to you? I wondered when you were going to call.”

“You could have called me.”

“Well, to be perfectly honest,” he said, “I didn’t want to trouble you.

Unlike me, you’ve got a life to live.”

“Well, actually, Arnie left me.”

“Oh, I am sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s for the best.”

“You mean it?”

“I mean it. We weren’t meant for one another. It just took us a long time to find out. What about you?”

“Well, since we made the news I’ve been invited out to a few more fancy dinners than I used to be. People are curious. So they wine me and dine me and then they casually interrogate me. I don’t mind, really. I’ve met a lot of people, mostly young men, who have a faintly morbid interest in what went on up in the Canyon, which they pass off as an interest in me. I play along. I mean, why not? At my age, you don’t argue. Interest is interest.”

“And what do you tell them?”

“Oh, bits and pieces. I’ve got quite adept at figuring out who can take what. You know, the ones who say
tell me everything
are the ones who go clammy when they’re told—”

“Everything?”

CC[348-676] 9/10/01 2:29 PM Page 580

580

CLIVE BARKER

“No. Never everything. I don’t think anybody I’ve met is ready for everything.”

“So how do people respond?”

“Well, they’re usually ready for something fairly wild. If they sought me out in the first place it’s because they know
something
. They’ve heard some rumor. Some little piece of gossip. So it keeps the conversation interesting. Now: you. What about you? Have you been sharing our adventures with anybody?”

“No.”

“Nobody?”

“No. Not really.”

“You should, you know. You can’t keep it all bottled up. It’s not healthy.”

“Jerry, I live in Rio Linda, Sacramento, not Hollywood. If I started spouting off about going to the Devil’s Country my neighbors would probably never talk to me again.”

“Would you care? Be honest.”

“Probably not.”

“What about Rooney?”

“Who?” Tammy frowned.

“Rooney. The detective who interviewed us, remember? Over and over.”

“His name was Rooney? I thought it was Peltzer.”

“No, that’s one of Maxine’s lawyers, Lester Peltzer.”

“Okay. So Peltzer’s a lawyer, and Rooney’s who?”

“You haven’t heard from him? He’s the Detective at the Beverly Hills Police Department who first talked to us. Have you been checking your messages?”

She hadn’t but she said she had.

“Strange,” Jerry said. “Because he’s called me six or seven times, pressing me for details. Then I called the Department, replying to one of his calls, and you know what? He was fired two weeks ago.”

“So why’s he calling you?”

“I think the sonofabitch is writing a book.”

CC[348-676] 9/10/01 2:29 PM Page 581

COLDHEART CANYON

581

“About what happened to us?”

“I guess we’ll find that out when it’s published.”

“He can do that?”

“Maybe he’ll change the names. I don’t know.”

“But it’s
our
story. He can’t go round telling our story.”

“Maybe we should all talk to Peltzer and see if we can stop him.”

“Oh God,” Tammy said softly. “Life used to be so simple.”

“Are you having a hard time?” Jerry said.

“Yeah. I guess. No, what am I saying? I’m having a horrible time. Really bad dreams.”

“Is that it? Dreams? Or is there more?”

She thought about her reply for a moment, wondering if she should share the problems she’d been having with him. But what was the point?

Though they’d been through hell together she didn’t really know him all that well. How did she know he wasn’t planning to write a book too? So she said: “You know all things considered, I’m doing just fine.”

“Well that’s good,” Jerry said, sounding genuinely pleased. “Have the reporters stopped bothering you?”

“Oh I still get the occasional journalist on the doorstep, but I had one of those little spy-hole things put in the door, and if I think he looks like a reporter then I just don’t open the door.”

“Just as long as you’re not a prisoner in your own house.”

“Oh Lord, no,” she lied.

“Good.”

“Well . . . I should let you go. I’ve got a thousand—”

“One other thing.”

“Yes.”

“This is going to sound a little wacko.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“But I wanted to tell you about it. Just . . . for old times’ sake, I suppose.”

“I’m listening.”

“You know we never really discussed what happened to us in the house.”

CC[348-676] 9/10/01 2:29 PM Page 582

582

CLIVE BARKER

“No. Well I figured we all
knew
—”

“I didn’t really mean what happened to
everybody
. I meant you and me, down in that room. You know that there was a lot of
power
in those tiles.

Visiting the Devil’s Country kept Katya looking perfect all those years . . .”

“What are you getting at?”

“As I said, it’s going to sound wacko, but I guess we’re both used to that by now, yes?” He took a deep breath. “You see, I had cancer; inoperable.

The doctors gave me nine months to a year to live. That was December of last year. Christmas Eve, actually.”

“God, Jerry, I’m so sorry.”

“No, Tammy, you’re not listening. I said, I
had
a tumor.”

“What?”

“It’s gone.”

“Completely?”

“Every detectable trace. Gone. The doctors can’t believe it. They’ve done the scan five times to be absolutely sure. And now—finally—they are absolutely sure. Jerry Brahms’s tumor has disappeared, and according to them that simply can’t happen. Ever.”

“But it has.”

“It has.”

“And you think it’s got something to do with us being in the room?”

“Put it this way: I went
into
that house with a malignant tumor, and when I came out again the tumor had gone. What can you say about a thing like that? It’s either a coincidence or it’s a miracle.”

“And you think it’s a miracle?”

“You know what?” He paused. “Now I
am
going to sound wacko, but I prefer to think of it as Katya’s last present to me.”

“She didn’t seem the gift-giving type.”

“You only saw the darkness, Tammy. There was another side to her. I think there always is, don’t you? There’s always some light in the darkness, somewhere.”

“Is there?” Tammy replied. “I guess I’m still looking.”

CC[348-676] 9/10/01 2:29 PM Page 583

F O U R

Tammy desperately wanted to believe that she had indeed profited somehow from the madness-inducing journey she’d taken through the wilds of Coldheart Canyon. She didn’t need anything as monumental as Jerry’s healed tumor; just some modest sign to prove to her that, despite all the death and the suffering she’d witnessed, some palpable good had come of it.

Every waking hour her thoughts circled on what she’d experienced, looking for some sign of hope. Not miracles, just hope. A light in the darkness; a reason to live. But the more she searched, the more absurd the search seemed to be.

Common sense told her she should venture out into the world and start trying to live a normal life again. Perhaps if she joined a couple of women’s clubs, or maybe even tried to find herself a lover—anything to change her focus; get her out of her head and back into a normal way of thinking. But she always found some reason to put off anything too adventurous. It was almost as though she’d used up her capacity for adventure during her time in the Canyon. Her trips into the dangerous territory over her front doorstep became briefer and briefer by the day.

She started to get panicky when she got into her car, and the panic escalated so quickly that by the time she got to the end of the block she often had to turn round and head straight back home again. Going to the market had become impossible; she took to ordering essential food-stuffs by phone, and when the supplies arrived she’d make the exchange with the CC[348-676] 9/10/01 2:29 PM Page 584

584

CLIVE BARKER

delivery guy as short as possible. She’d just take the stuff, pass over the money, and close the door, often not even waiting for the change.

She realized that this odd behavior was beginning to get her a reputation around the neighborhood. More than once she peeped out between the closed drapes and saw that people were lingering outside her house, some on the sidewalk, some in cars, pointing or staring. She’d become, she supposed, the local eccentric; the woman who’d come back from the wilds of Hollywood in a state of mental derangement.

All of this, of course, only added to her spiraling sense of anxiety, mingled with more than a touch of paranoia. If she answered the door to the delivery boy and caught sight of somebody in the street outside she naturally assumed the passer-by was spying on her. At night she heard noises on the roof and woke more than once certain that one of Katya’s
los niños
had found its way to Rio Linda and was scrambling over the eaves, trying to get down to her bedroom window.