Clive Barker - Coldheart Canyon

"I thought I recognized her."

"Her name's Katya Lupi."

"Yes?" The name rang a bell, but Tammy still couldn't name any of the movies this woman had been in.

"Was she very famous?"

"Very. She's up there with Pickford and Swanson and Theda Bara. Or she was."

"She's dead?"

"No, no. Just forgotten. At least that's my impression. I don't get out into the world any more, but I sense that the name Katya Lupi doesn't mean very much."

"You'd be right."

"Well, she's lucky. She still has her little dominion here in Coldheart Canyon."

"Coldheart?"

"That's what they called the place. She was such a heart-breaker, you see. She took so many lovers -- especially in the early years -- and when she was done with them, she just threw them aside."

"Were you one of them?"

Zeffer smiled. "I shared her bed, a little, when I first brought her to America. But she got tired of me very quickly."

"What then?"

"I had other uses, so she kept me around. But a lot of the men who loved her took her rejection badly. Three committed suicide with bullets. A number of others with alcohol. Some of them stayed here, where they could be close to her. Including me. It's foolish really, because there's no way back into her affection."

"Why would you want to be ... back, I mean?" Tammy said. "She must be very old by now."

"Oh time hasn't staled her infinite variety, as the Bard has it. She's still beautiful."

Tammy didn't want to challenge the man, given that he was plainly besotted with this Lupi woman, but the idol of his heart must be approaching a hundred years of age by now. It was hard to imagine how any of her beauty remained.

"Well, I guess I should be getting along." Tammy said.

She gently pressed past Zeffer, who put up no resistance, and stepped out of the cage onto the walkway. It was so quiet she could hear her stomach rumble. Her Westwood breakfast seemed very remote now; as did the little diner where she'd eaten it.

Zeffer came after her, out into the open air, and she saw him clearly for the first time. He had been extremely handsome once, she thought; but his face was a mess. He looked as though he'd been attacked; punched repeatedly. Raw in places, pale and powdery in others, he had the appearance of a man who had suffered intensely, and kept the suffering inside, where it continued to take its toll. She couldn't make quite so hurried an attempt to abandon him now that she'd seen him plainly. He seemed to read her equivocation, and suggested that she stay.

"Are you really in such a hurry?" He looked around him as he spoke; he seemed to be reading the peculiar stillness in the air.

"Perhaps we could walk together a ways. It isn't always safe up here."

Before she could ask him what he meant by this he turned his back to the door of the cage and picked up a large stick that was set there. The way he wielded it suggested he'd used it as a weapon in the past, and had some expectation of doing so again now.

"Animals?" she said.

He looked at her with those sorrowful gray eyes of his. "Sometimes animals, yes. Sometimes worse."

"I don't understand."

"Perhaps, with respect, it would be better not to try," he advised. The stillness seemed to be deepening around them, the absence of sound becoming heavier, if that were possible. She didn't need any further encouragement from Zeffer to stay close to him. Whatever this stillness hid, she didn't want to face it alone. "Just take it from me that Coldheart Canyon has some less-than-pretty occupants."

Something behind the cages drew Zeffer's attention. Tammy followed the direction of his gaze. "What were the cages for?" she asked him.

"Katya went through a phase of collecting exotic animals. We had a little zoo here. A white tiger from India, though he didn't live very long. Later, there was a rhinoceros. That also perished."

"Wasn't that cruel? Keeping them here, I mean? The cages look so small."

"Yes, of course it was cruel. She's a cruel woman, and I was cruel for doing her bidding. I have no doubt of that. I was probably unspeakably cruel, in my casual way. But it takes the experience of living like an animal -- " he glanced back at the cage " -- to realize the misery they must have suffered."

Tammy watched him scrutinizing the shrubbery on the far side of the cages.

"What's out there?" she said. "Is it animals that -- "

"Come here," Zeffer said, his voice suddenly dropping to an urgent whisper. "Quickly."

Though she still saw nothing in the shrubbery, she did as she was told.

As she did so there was a blast of icy air down the narrow channel between the cages, and she saw several forms -- human forms, but distorted, as though they were in a wind-tunnel, their mouths blown into a dark circle lined with needle teeth, their eyes squeezed into dots -- come racing towards her.

"Don't you dare!" she heard Zeffer yell at her side, and saw him raise his stick. If he landed a blow she didn't see it. The breath was knocked from her as two of her attackers threw themselves upon her.

One of them put a hand over her face. A spasm of energy passed through her bone and brain, erupting behind her eyes. It was more than her mind could take. She saw a white light, like the light that floods a cinema screen when the film breaks.

The cold went away in the same instant: sounds and sights and all the feelings they composed, gone.

The last thing she heard, dying away, was Willem Zeffer's voice yelling: "Damn you all!"

Then he too was gone.

In the passageway in front of Katya's long-abandoned menagerie, Willem Zeffer watched as the forces that had broken cover carried Tammy Lauper away into their own horrid corners of the Canyon, leaving him -- as he had been left so often in this godless place -- helpless and bereft.

He threw the stick down on the ground, his eyes stinging with tears. Then the strength ran out of him completely, and he went down on his knees at the threshold of his hovel, cursing Katya. She wasn't the only one to blame, of course. He had his own part to play in this tragic melodrama, as he'd admitted moments before. But he still wanted Katya damned for what she'd done, as he was damned: for the death of tigers and rhinoceros, and the murder of innocent women.

ONE

Three days after Tammy had pursued Marco Caputo up Sunset Boulevard and into the mysterious arms of Coldheart Canyon was Oscar Night: the Night of Nights, the Show of Shows, when billions of people across the world turned their eyes on Tinseltown and Tinseltown did a pirouette and a curtsey and pretended it was a lady not a five-buck whore.

Todd had known from the start that there was no chance of his attending the ceremony. Though he could now see that his wounded face was indeed healing properly, it was plain that he was in no condition to step into the limelight anytime soon. He had briefly considered hiring one of the great makeup men of the city to disguise the worst of the discoloration, but Maxine quickly dissuaded him. Such a plan would require them to share their secret with somebody else (this in itself was risky: makeup personnel were legendary gossips) and there was always the chance that, however good the cover-up was, the illusion of perfection would be spoiled under the blaze of so many lights. All it required was one lucky photographer to catch a crack in the painted mask, and all their hard work would be undone. The rumor-mill would grind into motion again.

"Anyway," she reminded him, "You loathe the Oscars."

This was indeed true. The spectacle of self-congratulation had always sickened him. The ghastly parade of nervous smiles as everyone traipsed into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the shrill laughter, the sweaty glances. Then, once everyone was inside, the circus itself. The lame jokes, the gushing speeches, the tears, the ego. There was always a minute or two of choreographed mawkishness, when the Academy carted out some antiquated star and gave them a last chance to flicker. Occasionally, when the taste level plummeted further than usual, the Academy chose some poor soul who'd already been stricken by a stroke or was in the early stages of Alzheimer's. There'd be a selection of clips from the poor victim's great pictures, then, fumbling and bewildered, he or she would be led out to stand alone on the stage while the audience rose to applaud them, and you could see in their eyes that this was some kind of Hell: to have their finest moments thrown up on a screen -- their faces strong and shining -- and then have the spotlight show the world what age and disease had done to them.