Coldheart Canyon (83 page)

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.

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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!
”

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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.

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“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.”

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N I N E

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?”

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“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.”

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“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.”

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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 out-ran an angel?”

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

•

•

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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.