Darkroom (19 page)

‘They warned me that you had a tendency to over-dramatize, Jim.'

Jim rubbed out
phantoms
.

When he arrived home that night, Tibbles was waiting for him, sitting on Vinnie's uncle's shoes. Her eyes reflected yellow in the darkness.

‘Hi, TT. How was your day? I'll bet you didn't have some pompous vice-principal in a Jessica Fletcher wig telling you that you were outdated and socially demeaning. Damn these goddamn shoes, I have to throw them away! And damn all these goddamn hats!'

Tibbles mewed and clung around his ankles. ‘What? You're not hungry? Come on, I left you plenty. You're thirsty? Well, you're not the only one.'

He walked directly through to the kitchen. He took the milk carton out of the fridge and filled up Tibbles's bowl. Then he opened a can of beer and went back into the living room. ‘You should see this woman. Raananah Washington. She looks like Aretha Franklin and talks like Fidel Castro.'

He switched on the table lamps one by one. He was just about to take a swig of beer when he looked up and saw the painting of Robert H. Vane hanging over the fireplace.

He felt as if a cold eel had slithered all the way down his back, inside his shirt, and then down between his legs. He stood in front of the painting, staring at it, in the same way that Tibbles had stared at it. Shocked, numb, unable to think.

Slowly he approached it. It was the same painting, no question about it. There was the same chip on the right-hand side of the frame, and the initials G.S.W. in the corner. But this time there was no feasible way to explain how it might have returned to its place on the wall. Julia wouldn't have brought it all the way back from the auction house without calling him first. Even if she
had,
and even if Mr Mariti had let her into his apartment, which he wouldn't have done, she certainly wouldn't have bothered to re-hang it.

He eased himself down on his shabby throne. Tibbles climbed up on to his lap and sniffed at his necktie. She could probably smell years of moussaka. He stroked her, and tugged at her patchy fur.

Up above the fireplace, Robert H. Vane stood with his head still covered by his black cloth, his skull-like ring gleaming on his finger. Jim could only imagine what his face looked like underneath his cloth. Triumphant? Sneering? Or did he look as stony-eyed as his self-portrait; a man who observed human life but never joined in?

The doorbell buzzed. He lowered Tibbles on to the floor and went to answer it. Eleanor was standing outside, wearing a long black roll-neck sweater and black pointy boots.

‘Jim … I hope I'm not disturbing you. I just had to check.'

‘Check? Check what?'

She looked around the room. ‘I heard some terrible bumping and banging in your apartment. I thought you were moving some furniture or something. I rang your doorbell but I couldn't get an answer. I was going to let myself in, but then the banging stopped. I watched your door for a while, in case it was burglars, but nobody came out.'

Jim said, ‘What time was this?'

‘I don't know. Three o'clock this afternoon, round about then.'

He nodded toward the painting. ‘It was Mr Vane, I expect. Hanging himself back on the wall.'

‘Oh my God,' said Eleanor.

‘I took it down to the auction house on Rodeo Drive this morning. My friend Julia Fox took a look at it, and told me that she could probably sell it for me. I walked away and left it. But here it is, back again.'

Eleanor approached the painting, her hand pressed against her mouth.

‘Still,' said Jim. ‘Rodeo Drive is only about seven miles from here. Some cats and dogs walk hundreds of miles to get back to their owners. Seven miles is nothing.'

‘This is nothing to laugh about,' said Eleanor.

‘Who's laughing? I can't get rid of the damned thing, can I?'

‘You won't be able to.'

‘Oh, no? I'm going to take it straight down to the basement, break it up, and shove it in the boiler. Let's see if it can hang itself back up again after that.'

‘Jim, seriously, I wouldn't advise you to try. He almost killed you last night, didn't he?'

‘It's not a “he,” Eleanor! It's nothing but a goddamned painting!'

‘You don't understand,' said Eleanor. But Jim stalked through to the kitchen, took a carving knife out of the wood block next to the sink, and stalked back in again.

‘Jim, please, this is only going to make things worse!'

‘It's a painting, Eleanor, that's all!'

‘You know that's not true! You've seen it for yourself! It's a painting with a man's soul in it!'

Jim dragged his chair over to the fireplace, balanced on it, and raised the carving knife so that the point was directly over the black cloth that covered Robert H. Vane's head.

‘Jim!
Don't!
'

Jim plunged the knife into the painting. At that instant he was blinded by a devastating flash of blue-white light. A blast of heat hurled him backward off the chair, so that he toppled against the couch and collided with one of the side tables, sending a lamp crashing on to the floor.

He lay on his back, scorched and winded and unable to see. Eleanor knelt down beside him and lifted his head up.

‘Jim, are you OK?'

‘Can't see,' he whispered. His lips felt puffed-up to three times their normal size. ‘Can't breathe.'

E
leanor helped Jim to climb back on to his feet. He had jarred his back against the arm of the couch, and bruised his left shoulder against the floor. His face felt burning hot, and he could smell smoldering hair. Eleanor guided him over to one of the basketwork chairs so that he could sit down. All he could see was a dancing after-image of the cloth that covered Robert H. Vane's head, in lurid orange.

‘You want a drink?' Eleanor asked him.

He nodded, and she placed the can of beer into his hand. He took three icy-cold swallows, and then he had to stop because it made his palate ache.

‘Can you see anything yet?'

He coughed and shook his head. He couldn't help thinking of the poem ‘“Butch” Weldy' by Edgar Lee Masters, about a man who had been caught in a gasoline explosion, and whose eyes were ‘burned crisp as a couple of eggs.'

‘Your eyebrows,' said Eleanor, gently stroking his forehead.

‘What about them?'

‘Gone, I'm afraid. The front of your hair's looking a little spiky, too.'

‘Jesus.' He stretched the sides of his eyes with his fingertips. Gradually, to his relief, his peripheral vision began to edge back. Off to his extreme left he could see part of the couch, and one of the cushions, and off to his extreme right he could see the door frame, and Eleanor's hair.

‘I did warn you,' said Eleanor. ‘This is a
very
powerful spirit we're dealing with here. A totally evil one, too.'

Jim felt his eyebrows. Eleanor was right: there was nothing left of them but prickly stubble. He turned toward her and blinked, and then he blinked again, and at last he could dimly see her face.

‘My sight's coming back, thank God.'

‘You didn't get the full flash. Vane couldn't lift up the cloth over his head, because you stuck your knife into it. That's what saved you.'

‘What do you mean he couldn't lift it up? Eleanor, that isn't a real man, and that isn't a real cloth. That's a
painting
.'

‘Well, it is and it isn't.'

She was silent for a while, as if she were trying to decide what to say to him. In the end, Jim said, ‘You know a whole lot more about this than you're telling me, don't you?'

‘I only know what Raymond Boschetto told me.'

‘You mean Vinnie Boschetto's uncle? I thought you hardly ever spoke to him.'

Eleanor drew back her hair with her hand. ‘I didn't. But the only reason I'm living in this building is because they wanted me close at hand, if Raymond ever needed my help. You don't think that I could possibly afford to live here if they hadn't?'

‘Who are “they”?'

‘The Benandanti. The people who own this building.'

‘So why would Raymond Boschetto have needed your help?'

‘Because I'm a sensitive. Because I can communicate with presences.'

‘Any presence in particular?'

‘Of course. Robert H. Vane. Raymond Boschetto was trying to find a way to do what you've been trying to do.' She nodded her head toward the painting. ‘Get rid of
that
.'

‘I see. Obviously he didn't succeed.'

‘No,' said Eleanor. ‘Raymond tried to dispose of the painting dozens of times. He told me that he took it on the
Mauretania
once and threw it into the ocean, mid-Atlantic. Another time he drove it out to Death Valley. But it always came back. However, he
did
discover how to keep Vane's spirit trapped inside it, so that Vane couldn't get out.'

‘How did he do that?'

‘He wouldn't tell me. He couldn't trust anybody, even me. He thought that if I knew, Vane's spirit might enter my mind and persuade me to set him free. Before he found out how to keep him trapped, Vane's spirit was always climbing out of the painting, especially at night – the way he climbed out last night and set fire to your bed.'

‘Why didn't you tell me this before? For Christ's sake, I could have been cremated in my sleep! I could have been nothing but ashes and bones and –' he held up his right hand – ‘my old fraternity ring!'

‘I'm sorry,' said Eleanor. ‘We knew that your ability to sense the presence of evil spirits was very highly developed. We guessed, rightly, that the painting would disturb you, and that you would want to get rid of it as soon as you could. But wrongly, we guessed that you might have the strength to dispose of it forever. You can understand that we didn't want to tell you any more than we had to, in case you came under Robert H. Vane's influence, and decided to help him.'

‘Help him? Help him to do what?'

Eleanor didn't answer. Jim closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips against his eyelids. He could still see orange blodges, as well as a dancing pattern of green diamonds.

‘Are you all right?' Eleanor asked him.

‘Sure. I think so. Half-barbecued and half-blind, but I'll survive.'

‘Jim, I can't tell you very much more. I don't
know
very much more.'

‘All right – but how come Vane can still be trapped inside this painting, after all these years? He should be long dead.'

‘Dead, yes. Of course he's dead. But he's not at rest.'

‘I don't get it.'

‘Oh, come on. You must have seen hundreds of wandering souls – people who still have unfinished business in the real world, or who can't believe that they're really dead. How many religions believe that you can't pass over to the other side unless your entire body has been buried or cremated? That's why some Native American tribes used to cut off their victims' heads and take them away, isn't it? So that they could never go to the happy hunting ground.'

‘Robert H. Vane didn't have his head cut off.'

‘I know. But if you want to find peace when you die, your soul has to be complete, as well as your body. The good side of your soul, and the evil side, too, they have to be together. That's why Robert H. Vane has never been able to rest. His good side is lying in a cemetery someplace, although we don't know where. But his
dark
side is still trapped inside this painting. He carries on doing what he was charged to do, when he was alive, and he won't hesitate to kill anybody who tries to stop him. He believes that he's on a divine mission.'

Jim looked up at the painting. His carving knife was still sticking out of Robert H. Vane's head and casting a triangular shadow, like the pointer on a sundial. ‘So what is this divine mission?'

‘To capture the evil side of people's souls, so that the world will be a better place.'

‘And who told him to do this?'

‘The Benandanti.'

‘But those are the same people who want him dead.'

Eleanor nodded. ‘They didn't realize that Vane's mission would go so disastrously wrong, and that capturing the evil side of people's souls would cause such death and calamity. They're desperate to have him destroyed. They've been desperate for over a hundred and fifty years.'

Jim picked up his can of beer and took another swallow. He couldn't take his eyes off the painting. He had found it unsettling from the moment that he had first seen it, but now he found it totally frightening, as if it were a bomb that could explode at any moment.

‘So who
are
the Benandanti?' he asked.

‘They're a secret society. They started off in northern Italy in the fifteenth century, as a fertility cult, worshiping the goddess Diana. Their name means “those who go well” or “good walkers.” What we would call do-gooders. They were always incredibly secretive, and what little we know about them comes from the Inquisition, who tortured the Benandanti because they believed that they were witches.

‘The Inquisition were right, in a way. The Benandanti do use magic. But it's white magic, and they are sworn to root out evil, no matter where it appears. They wage a never-ending war against the forces of darkness – night after night, week after week, year after year.'

‘I'm amazed I've never heard of them before.'

‘They're a secret society, that's why, and they don't exactly advertise themselves. All the same, Jim, they're the only true guardians of the spirit plane. They make sure that all of us are healthy, and fertile, and prosperous.'

‘All of us? I don't think so. You're talking to somebody who suffers from chronic hay fever, has no children, and is practically flat broke.'

Eleanor smiled. ‘You don't know how bad things could be if the Benandanti weren't fighting on our side.'