Garden of Evil (31 page)

Ricky was clambering down the drainpipe, too, making blowing noises like a horse.

‘Jesus, can't stop!' he panted, and the sole of his sneaker hit Jim on the top of the head. Jim pulled himself sideways and jumped over the balcony railing, landing on Nadine's sunlounger and toppling it sideways. He hadn't even managed to get up off the tiles before Ricky fell on top of him. The two of them lay sprawled there for a moment, trying to get their breath back.

The sliding door to Ricky and Nadine's apartment was already half open, so they stepped inside. It was a quarter of seven now, and beginning to grow dark, and the living room was gloomy. The kitchen door was ajar and through the Venetian blinds they could see the white-robed figures who were crowded on the landing outside. Some of them had rags or scarves tied around their heads, others had tall pointed hoods like Klansmen. None of them were moving or making a sound, just waiting.

Ricky sniffed and said, ‘How in the name of hell are we going to get away from those creeps?'

‘Let's think about that later, after we've given Nadine her shot.'

‘But you don't have the faintest fuckin' idea, do you?'

‘No, Ricky, I don't, and if that's your way of implying that this is all my fault, then, yes, it is, and if I thought that it would help if I went out there and gave myself up to them, then I would. But, quite honestly, I think it would only make things worse.'

Ricky slapped Jim's shoulder and said, ‘Aw, come on, Jim. I'm not really blaming you. Most of us do things in life with good intentions that turn out to be shit.'

‘We don't all do things that end up with hundreds of people getting killed and half of Los Angeles burning down.'

‘Don't you worry, buddy. Sometimes we do things worse than that. My old man, he was assistant flight engineer on Bockscar, the day they dropped the A-bomb on Nagasaki.' He popped his fingers and said, ‘Seventy thousand people killed, just like that – men, women and little kids.'

He crossed over to the hallway and opened the bathroom door. There was no window in the first-floor bathroom so he had to switch on the light. Jim waited for him in the center of the living room, looking at some of his paintings and his sculptures. The scratty red parakeet was still sitting on its perch, and when he came up close to its bars it made a harsh and hostile noise in its throat and screeched out, ‘
Silence
!'

‘Oh, get stuffed!' Jim told it.

Ricky opened the bathroom door a little wider as he came out, and it was then that the light fell for the briefest of moments on the painting of The Storyteller, still standing on its easel.

To Jim's surprise, it no longer looked like Ba'al, with its horns and its gray gleaming skin, but he recognized the new face at once. It was an elderly man, with a neat white beard. His expression was serious, but there was something in his eyes which was both sympathetic and knowing. It was Father Michael, the same priest that Jim had tried to contact with no success when he was upstairs in his bedroom.

Jim approached the portrait slowly and stared at it. The eyes looked back at him with infinite compassion. However much Ricky grumbled or cussed or smoked, he was a brilliant painter. But how on earth had he managed to paint such an exact likeness of Father Michael? So far as Jim knew, Ricky had never met Father Michael, and he was long dead now.

He reached out and touched the painting with his fingertips. The paint was still sticky, so Ricky must have painted it only a few hours ago.

Ricky switched off the bathroom light and came over with a bottle of insulin and a hypodermic. ‘Here we go,' he said. ‘Now let's try to shin back up that fuckin' drainpipe!'

Jim pointed to The Storyteller with his thumb. ‘When did you paint this? It's so weird. It's an exact likeness of the dead priest I was trying to contact.'

Ricky squinted at the painting and said, ‘Never.'

‘What do you mean, “never”? It's here, I'm looking at it. The oil-paint's still fresh.'

‘I never painted that, man. I never saw that old geezer before in my life. The last time I looked at that portrait, it was that devil guy.'

This is the only way open
, said Father Michael.

Ricky turned to Jim and said, ‘What?'

This is the only way open. They forgot that they had used this painting so that Ba'al could begin to make his reappearance. They remembered the smoke, they remembered the paintings in the classroom, they remembered the television and the door to the spirit world. But they forgot The Storyteller.

‘Did you say that?' said Ricky.

Jim was staring at the painting of Father Michael in disbelief. Spirits had talked to him scores of times, both benign and malevolent, but they were mostly inside his own head. He had heard the wind blowing and birds singing in landscape paintings, and the sound of the ocean in seascapes; but he had never been talked to, out loud, by anybody's portrait.

You can defeat Sammael
, said Father Michael. His voice echoed, as if he were speaking inside an empty room, and in a way he was.
There is a way.

‘Shit, man, I don't believe this,' said Ricky. ‘Are you ventriloquiserating or something?'

Jim slowly shook his head, still staring at Father Michael. ‘It's the painting, Ricky. It's the painting that's talking to us. Your Storyteller.'

‘Aw, come on, Jim. You're putting me on. You're throwing your voice like that Achmed the Dead Terrorist guy. Look – let's go. We don't have time for this. We need to get this shot back to Nadine.'

‘Ricky, I'm serious. Father Michael is talking to me through your painting because it's the only way that he can do it.'

‘Father Michael,' said Ricky, with exaggerated skepticism.

‘That's right, Father Michael. The priest who came to talk to us after my dad committed suicide.'

‘Your dead dad who is now upstairs alive.'

‘That's right. And that's the whole point. Life and death have been turned upside down.'

You have to make the ultimate sacrifice, Jim. That is the only way.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Jesus,' said Ricky, in despair. ‘He's talkin' to himself now, for Christ's sake!'

You have to give up your Paradise. You have to give up the people you so desperately wanted to come back to life.

‘You mean my father? And Bethany?'

When people die, Jim, they are dead. The only immortality is in heaven or hell. People cannot come back and walk the earth as if they were still alive. It is against all nature. It is against the will of God.

‘Hey, what about me?' said Ricky. ‘
I
was dead, too, wasn't I? And so was Santana. You can't give
me
up, man. I don't want to be fuckin' dead. Not again.'

Father Michael said,
You know on whose behalf I am speaking, don't you, Jim? You cannot look upon His face, but you can hear His voice through me. He has seen the work of Ba'al and of Sammael, and of the serpent, too. He gave the children of Eve the chance to show their devotion to Him by resisting temptation. But again the fruit of the tree of knowledge proved irresistible.

Again the blandishments of Ba'al proved too alluring for you to show self-restraint and consideration for others.

You have seen the result – the dead children of Lilith have risen from the grave as a great and murderous multitude, and are taking out their bitterness on the living children of Eve. Many hundreds are already dead, and countless more will die before Ba'al has taken them all down to his dominion, in hell.

‘But what can I do?' said Jim. ‘I started it. I allowed it to happen. How can I stop it?'

You must give up your Paradise and renounce your gift.

‘What?'

You must renounce your gift to see spirits, and demons, and other manifestations, and you must renounce it for ever, for the rest of your life.

‘What good will that do?'

The children of Lilith can only continue to walk the earth as long as you have the gift to see them – just like the people you have brought back to life. Ba'al gave you the power to bring them back, but power is meaningless without vision.

‘Jim,' said Ricky. ‘Do you believe this shit? Whoever this is, he wants me dead again, man, and you're not going to do that to me, are you? And – look – we have to get this insulin up to Nadine. We can't waste any more time talking to a goddamned
painting
. It's insane!'

Take your thirteen disciples and have them hold hands in a circle as they did before. Have them recite this incantation three times, Ba'al be gone, Sammael be gone, Lilith be gone. Then say, may my eyes be closed to the world of spirits for ever.

‘And that's it? All of those dead-alive people will disappear?'

They will return to the graves from which you summoned them, yes.

‘But what about all of those people that they've torn to pieces?'

The dead must remain dead, except only for the grace of God.

‘But what if I can't decide what to do? You're asking me to sacrifice my daughter! You're asking me to sacrifice my father! You're asking me to sacrifice my friend!'

If you do nothing, your loved ones will
stay alive for as long as they can escape the children of Lilith. But the whole world will be visited by the greatest human disaster ever known
.

‘But how can that be my responsibility? How can that be up to me? I'm only a goddamned English teacher, not a god!'

You are the only one who can see spirits. You are the only one who can talk to the dead. You are the only one who can make bargains with demons. That is your gift, and your curse.

‘I didn't ask for it, though, did I?

Great musicians never ask for their talent. Neither do artists, nor scientists, nor writers. But whether you want it or not, every gift comes with the responsibility to use it wisely. A great gift, used selfishly, can cause catastrophe.

‘I've had enough of this,' growled Ricky. ‘You do whatever you like, Jim, but I'm not going to be lectured by one of my own fuckin' pictures, even if I didn't paint it.'

‘All right,' said Jim. ‘I'm coming.'

He looked back at the portrait of Father Michael and already he could see that it was beginning to change. The oil paint was thinning, and beginning to slide down the canvas, so Father Michael's face appeared to sag at first, and then to melt.

For a fraction of a nanosecond, Jim saw another face appear underneath it. A pale, ethereal face, quite oval, with the strangest olive-green eyes. It vanished instantly, but Jim stood in front of the easel, stunned, feeling as if he had been Tasered.

He thought,
I have seen God.

In the corner, the red parakeet clawed noisily from side to side on its perch and screeched out, ‘
Silence
!'

‘Come on, Jim,' Ricky urged him.

‘Yeah, sure. Sorry.'

As he stepped out on to the balcony he took one last look back at the painting, but it had no face at all, only a brownish-gray smear of undercoat, waiting for the face of The Storyteller.

Climbing the drainpipe back up to Jim's apartment was a whole lot harder than climbing down, and it took them several attempts before they managed it, heaving and grunting and sliding halfway down again. DaJon Johnson and Al Alvarez leaned over to grab their shirts and drag them back on to the balcony.

Once he had rolled over the balcony railing, Ricky immediately went through to the bedroom to give Nadine her insulin injection.

Bethany came up to Jim and hugged him and said, ‘Daddy – you're amazing!' and his father clapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Well, done, son! That was some climb!'

Jim gave them both a quick hug and then said, ‘Give me a minute. I just want to make sure that Nadine's OK.'

He went into the bedroom. Nadine was propped up on two pillows, and she had much more color in her cheeks. She gave Jim a weak smile as he came across to the bed.

Ricky was sitting beside her, smoking one of his skinny Peruvian joints. ‘Thanks, Jim. You saved Nadine's life, no question.'

He offered the joint to Jim, but Jim shook his head.

‘I'm sorry, Nadine,' he told her. ‘Ricky and I have to talk.'

‘That's OK. I need to get some sleep now, anyhow.'

Out in the hallway, with the bedroom door closed, Ricky said, ‘I know what this is all about, Jim, and I know what I have to do. Of course I don't want to die, but what choice is there? Thousands more people getting killed? Or just me and Bethany and Santana and your dad – and your dad's been dead for more than thirty years already.'

‘Ricky – you know that I can't ask you do this.'

‘Too fuckin' right you can't. My dad had nightmares all his life about Nagasaki. Nobody asked of them Jap civilians whether
they
were willing to die or not. You know that Captain Chuck Sweeney dropped the bomb two-and-a-half clicks away from the intended dropping point, which meant that nearly half of the city was protected by the hills? That's where the famous phrase, “You fucked up, didn't you, Chuck!” came from. But my dad always used to wonder if Captain Sweeney did it on purpose.'

Jim leaned against the wall. He could see himself in the mirror opposite, unshaven, with his hair all scruffed up and bags under his eyes. His pale blue denim shirt had gray and brown skid marks on it from climbing up and down the drainpipe. He thought:
look at me. I can't believe I'm holding the fate of the entire planet in my hands. It just doesn't seem possible.

Ricky said, ‘You won't tell Bethany, will you, or your dad, or Santana? It's better if they don't know, believe me.'

Jim's eyes filled up with tears. ‘I don't want to lose you, Ricky. I don't want to lose any of you.'