"Coldheart Canyon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive)

PART SIX. THE DEVIL'S COUNTRY

ONE

Todd knew the mechanics of illusion passably well. He'd always enjoyed watching the special effects guys at work, or the stuntmen with their rigs; and now there was a new generation of illusionists who worked with tools that the old matte painters and model-makers of an earlier time could not even have imagined. He'd been in a couple of pictures in which he'd played entire scenes against blank green screens, which were later replaced with landscapes which only existed in the ticking minds of computers.

But the illusions at work in this room of Katya's were of another order entirely. There was a force at work here that was both incredibly powerful and old; even venerable. It did not require electricity to fuel it, nor equations to encode it. The walls held it, with possessive caution, beguiling him by increments.

At first he could make virtually no sense of the images. It simply seemed that the walls were heavily stained. Then, as his eyes became accustomed to reading the surface, he realized he was looking at tiles, and that what he'd taken to be stains were in fact pictures, painted and baked into the ceramic. He was standing in a representation of an immense landscape, which looked more realistic the longer he looked at it. There were vast expanses of dense forests; there were stretches of sun-drenched rock; there were steep cliff-walls, their crannies nested by fearless birds; there were rivulets that became streams, in turn converging into glittering rivers, which wound their way towards the horizon, dividing into silver-fringed deltas before they finally found the sea. Such was the elaboration of the painting that it would take many hours of study, perhaps even days, to hope to discover everything that the painters had rendered. And that would only have been the case if the pictures had been static, which, as he was now astonished to see, was not the case.

There were little flickers of motion all around him. A gust of wind shook the tangle of a thicket; one of those fearless birds wheeled away from the cliff-face, three hunting dogs sniffed their way through the undergrowth, noses to the ground. "Katya ... ?" Todd said.

There was no reply from behind him (where he thought she'd last been standing); so he looked back. She wasn't there. Nor was the door through which he'd stepped to come into this new world. There was just more landscape: more trees, more rocks, more birds, wheeling.

The motion multiplied with every flicker of his gaze. There were ripples on the rivulets and streams, there were clouds over the sea, being hurried along by the same wind that filled the sails of the ships that moved below. There were men, too, all around. Riders, moving through the forest; some solitary, some in groups of three or four; one procession of five horses mounted by richly attired men, parading solemnly between the trees. And fishermen on the banks of the streams; and on little boats, bobbing around the sandbars at the delta; and in one place, inexplicably, two men laid out naked on a rock, and in another, far more explicable, another pair hanging from a tree, while their lynchers sat in the shade of the old tree they'd put to such guilty use, and looked out at the rest of the world as they shared a flagon of beer.

Again he looked around for Katya, but she wasn't to be seen. But she'd said she'd be close by, even if -- as now -- he couldn't see her. The room, he began to understand, had control of his eyes. He found his gaze repeatedly led away from where she might be, led skyward, to gawk at some passing birds (there were tiles on the vaulted roof, he saw; he could hear the squeak of the bird's wings as they passed overhead); led into the forest, where animals he could not name moved as if in some secret ceremony, and others fought; and others lay dead; and still others were being born. (Though like did not spring from like in this world. In one spot an animal the size and shape of a tiger was giving birth to half a dozen white lizards; in another a hen the size of a horse was retreating from her eggs in panic, seeing that they'd cracked open and were spilling huge blue flies.)

And still he kept looking. And still he kept seeing, and though there were horrors here, to be sure, nothing in him made him want to leave off his seeing.

There was a curious calm upon his soul; a kind of dreamy indifference to his own situation. If he'd reasoned this out perhaps he would have concluded that he wasn't afraid because none of this could possibly be real. But he did not reason it out. He was beyond reasoning at that moment. Beyond anything, indeed, but witnessing. He had become a living instrument; a flesh-and-blood camera, recording this wonderland. He kept turning on his heel, counter-clockwise, as sights caught his attention off to his left; and left again; and left again.

Everything here had a miraculous shine to it, as though whatever divinity had made it had an army of workers at His or Her command, perpetually polishing the world. Every leaf on every tree had its gloss; every hair on every mammal and every scale on every reptile had its sheen; every particle of dirt, down to the shit from the flea-infested backside of a boar, had a glamour all of its own. A rat sniffing in the carcass of a gored hound came away with drops of corruption on its whiskers as enchanting as a lover's eyes. The earth at his feet (yes, there were tiles there too, painted with as much love as forest or cloud) was a surfeit of glories: a worm his heel had half-killed was lovely in its knotted agonies.

Nothing was inconsequential here. Except perhaps, Todd Pickett. And if that was the case, then he wasn't about to dispute the point. He would not wish anything here other than the way it was, including -- for the first time in his life -- himself.

This thought -- that he was finally at peace with himself -- came over him like a breaking wave, cooling a long and exhausting fever. If he was nothing here, he thought, except the eyes with which these strangenesses could be glorified, then that suited him fine. And if in the end the witnessing burned him up, and made an end to him, that was fine too; perfectly fine, to die here, watching this shining world. It would hear no complaint from him.

"You like it?"

Ah, there was Katya. Off to his right, a little distance, staring up at the glamorous sky.

He followed her gaze, and saw something he'd missed until now: the sun was three-quarters eclipsed by the moon. That was why the light was so peculiar here; it was the light of a world in permanent semi-darkness; a murk which had inspired everything that lived here to catch its own particular fire. To snatch every last gleam of light out of the air and magnify it; to be its own exquisite advertisement.

"Yes," he said to her, hearing something very close to tears in his voice. "I like it very much."

"Not everybody does, of course," she said, glancing over at him. "Some I brought here were so afraid that they ran. And of course, that's not a very smart thing to do here."

"Why not?"

She wandered over to him, assessing him as she did so, as though to see if he was telling the truth, and that he really liked what he saw. Apparently satisfied, she laid a light kiss on his cheek: it almost felt as though she was congratulating him. Coming here had been a test, he realized; and he'd passed.

"You see over there, just beyond the hill? The deep forest there?"

"Yes."

"Then you also see the horsemen coming through the trees?"

"They're the reason we shouldn't run?"

"They are."

"Why?"

"They're hunters. The Duke Goga, who leads them, counts all these lands as his own."

"They're getting closer."

"Yes they are."

"How is that possible?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean: how is it possible that they're getting closer to us? They're in the walls."

"Is that what you think?" she said, coming closer to him. "Is that what you really believe?"

He stood still for a moment, and listened to his heart. What did his heart tell him? The wind gusted, cold against his face. It was not a Californian wind. Overhead, the sun remained eclipsed, though he knew there was no possible way to see the sky from this deep a place in the house.

"I'm in another world."

"Good," she said.

"And it's real."

"Again, good. And does it trouble you, to be in the middle of such a mystery?"

"No," he said. "I don't know why and I'm not sure I care."

She put her arms around him, holding him tighter than she'd held until now, and looked deep into his eyes, looking deeper than she'd ever looked. "It doesn't matter, my love. Whether it's in my head, or your head, or the head of God -- "

" -- or the Devil?"

" -- or the Devil. It doesn't matter. Not to us." She spoke the last three words as a near whisper, close to his ear. He kissed her. He realized now how cannily she'd led him -- teasing him with outlandish visions-ghosts and ungodly pleasures, slowly deconstructing his beliefs about what was real and what was not. All in preparation for this wonder of wonders.

"Nothing matters to us, huh?" he said between kisses.

"We're above it all," she said. As she spoke she put her hand down between his legs. He was like a rock.

"You want to make love to me?"

"Of course I do."

"You want to go back up to bed?"

"No. I want to do it right here." He pointed to the hard ground at their feet.

Again, she laughed. This new-found fire in him seemed to entertain her. She lifted up her dress, so that he could have sight of her. She was naked.

"Lie down," he told her.

She did so without a second instruction, lifting and parting her legs as she lay at his feet, so that he should have full disclosure of her. She ran her hand over herself. Into the groove, and out again, wet, to touch her anus. He could hear the rhythm of the hunters' horses in the ground underfoot. Duke Goga and his party were getting closer. Todd glanced up towards the trees. He could no longer see the men: the forest had become too deep. But they were nearby.

No matter. He could watch the hunters another day. Right now he had sport of his own. He unbuttoned his pants and let his dick spring out. Katya sat up instantly and took it in her hand, rubbing it. "So big."

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. He liked the fact that she said it, and there was an appetite for it in her eyes, the likes of which he'd never seen on a woman's face before. She started to pull on his cock, not to pleasure him, simply to bring him down to her; into her.

He went down on his knees between her legs. Such was the lightness of her dress that it could be lifted up almost to her neck, to expose her belly and breasts. He put his face down against her flat stomach, licking her navel then going up to her breasts. It had always been a fantasy of his to wash a woman with his tongue, every inch of her, from the corners of her eyes, to the cleft of her buttocks, simply to be her servant, bathing her with his tongue. This was the woman he would realize that fantasy with, he knew. This was the woman he would realize every fantasy with, and hers was the body with which he could play freely, doing anything his heart desired; anything.

That was the only word of this sexual delirium that escaped him: " ... anything."

But she seemed to know what it meant because she raised his face from her breasts, and smiled at him. "Yes, I know," she said. "Anything you want. And for me -- "

"Anything you want."

"Yes."

She took hold of the collar of his shirt, and drew his face closer to hers. They kissed, while she moved beneath him, seeming not to care about the hard dirt against her naked buttocks, her naked back. He had his hands either side of her, to support himself. But that was all he needed to do. She was perfectly capable of doing the rest. She lifted her hips a little and caught the head of his cock between her labia, then, sighing, she delivered herself up and upon it in one sweet motion.

Now she put her arms around his neck, and let out a most extraordinary sigh: a sound of complete abandonment.

Todd looked down at her face with something that began to feel like helpless adoration. The polishers who'd put a shine on everything in this strange world must have saved their best labors for her. The down on her cheek, the dark curve of her lashes, the fabulous hierarchy of lilacs and blues and turquoise in her eyes, all were perfect. She was almost unbearably beautiful: his eyes stung at the sight of her.

"I love you," he said.

The words came out with such ease that they were said before he had chance to spoil them by making a performance out of them.

Of course he'd said it before, plenty of times (too many times, in truth) but never like this. It sounded, for the first time, simple. Simple and true. She raised her head from the ground, until her lips were almost touching his.

"I love you too," she whispered.

"Yes?"

"You know I do. You're the one I've waited for, Todd. All these years. I've been patient, because I knew you'd come."

She pressed her hips up towards him, sheathing him completely. Then, still holding onto him, she began to pull herself off him a little way, just until the head of his dick was about to find the air, then smothering it again, down to the root.

There was a heavy reverberation in the ground. Todd could feel it through his palms.

"The hunters ... " he said.

"Yes," she said, as though this was of little consequence. "Goga's close. We should stay very still until he's passed by."

She drew Todd down on top of her. He couldn't see the huntsmen yet, but the noise was getting louder nevertheless. The reverberations made the little shards of rock around her head, decorated with tiny fragments of fossil, dance.

Finally, they came into view, rising over the crest of a hill some twenty-five or thirty yards from where they lay, locked together.

There were five of them in the Duke's party, and they looked as though they'd been riding for a very long time. Their horses shone with sweat, and the men -- all of whom were dressed in tattered tunics -- showed signs of extreme fatigue. But even their exhaustion had a kind of livid beauty to it. Their skin was as bright, or brighter, than the bone that it concealed; their eyes, which were sunk deep in their sockets, had a fevered brilliance in them. Todd wasn't surprised they looked so harried, given the orders of beast he'd glimpsed here. Yes, there were wild pigs and stags, but there were other kinds of creature, far less easily categorized; things that looked as though the Devil had had a hand in their design. Lethal quarry, no doubt. Indeed there were signs that the party had been recently attacked. One of the horses had a number of deep gashes on its rump, and its rider had dearly suffered in the encounter. His left arm hung limply, and a large dark bloodstain had spread from a place under his arm across a third of his upper body. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in pain, his eyelids drooping.

Even if Katya hadn't named the leader, it would have been clear to Todd that he was of a higher social standing than his companions, his horse a more finely bred animal than those the others rode, its mane and tail braided. As for the man himself, he was almost as beautifully coifed as his mount, his full, dark beard well-shaped, his long hair a good deal cleaner than that of his companions. But these cosmetic polishes aside, he was in no better shape than his fellow riders. His eyes were sunk deep into his skull and his body, for all the upright position he held in his saddle, was full of little tics, as though he were uncomfortable in his own skin. In his left hand he held the reins of his horse. His right rested on the golden pommel of his sword, ready to unsheathe the blade in a heartbeat.

Todd had never played in a medieval movie -- his face was far too contemporary, and his acting skills too rudimentary for an audience to believe him as anything but a modern man. But he'd seen his share of epics: the kind Heston had made in the fifties and early sixties: all rhetoric and pose-striking. The men approaching them looked nothing like the well-fed heroes of those epics. Their bodies were wizened, their looks so intense they looked more like escaped lunatics than hunters.

Goga raised his right hand (which was missing two fingers) and with a silent gesture slowed the advance of the party. The men -- sensing their leader's apprehension -- proceeded to scan the landscape around them, looking for some sign of their enemy, whoever, or whatever, it was.

Todd stayed very still, just as Katya had instructed. Had these men been gun-slingers, he would have described them as trigger-happy. Plainly they were nervous and exhausted; not men to meddle with.

But even as he lay there, barely daring to breathe, he felt Katya reach down between his legs and proceed to stroke his balls. He gave her an astonished look, which she returned with a mischievous little smile. She stroked him back to full erection, and then subtly maneuvered her body so that he was once again fully sheathed by her. The sensation felt even more extraordinary than it had a few minutes before. Without seeming to move her hips she contrived to make waves of motion move up and down her channel, massaging him.

All the while, the horsemen approached, and the closer they came the more desperate they looked. These were men who apparently lived in a constant state of fear, to judge by their expressions. One of the Duke's four followers, the oldest and the most scarred, mumbled a prayer to himself as he rode, and in his hand he clutched a plain wooden cross, which more than once he kissed, for comfort's sake.

Todd was somewhere between ecstasy and panic. He didn't dare move, even if he'd wanted to. Katya, meanwhile was free to play havoc with his nerve-endings. He didn't move his hips; he didn't need to. She had all the moves. Her internal manipulations were becoming more elaborate all the time, driving him closer and closer to losing control.

Todd had always been a noisy lover; sometimes embarrassingly so. (A memorable night with a girlfriend in a suite at the Chateau Marmont had been brought to a premature halt when the manager had called up his room to regretfully report that the guests in an adjacent suite couldn't sleep for all his moans.) Now the best he could do was bite his lip until he tasted blood, and will himself not to let a sound escape him.

The horsemen were so close now that he did not dare move his head to look at them. But he could just see them from the corner of his eye. The Duke gave an order, in Romanian: "Stai! N-auzi ceva?" The men brought their horses to a halt, the Duke no more than four yards from where Todd and Katya lay on the ground. Had it not been for the fact that the eclipse rendered the light here so deceptive, the pair would surely have been seen, and dispatched: a single blade skewering them both in an instant. But as far as Todd's limited vision could tell, the men were looking further afield for their quarry, scanning the distant landscape rather than the ground yards from their horses' hooves.

There was another exclamation from the Duke, and this time a response from one of his men. Todd had the impression that they were listening for something. He listened along with them. What could he hear? Nothing out of the ordinary. The cry of birds, wheeling overhead; the coarse breathing and snorting of the horses; the slap of the reins against their massive necks. And closer by, the breathing of the woman beneath him; and -- a smaller sound still -- the rhythmical click of a beetle as it made its clockwork way over the small stones close to his hand. In his mind's eye all of this around the tender place where their bodies met: the bird and the horse and the stones and the beetle, orbiting his pleasure.

He saw her smile beneath him, and with the tiniest contraction of her vulva she brought him to the point of no return. There was a flash of brightness in his head, which momentarily washed everything out. She came back out of the fog to meet him with her eyes half-closed, her pupils so full beneath them that they seemed to edge out the whites. Then her lids fluttered closed completely and he started to spurt into her. He could not have stopped crying out if his life had depended on it. No; it did. And still he let out a sob of relief --

There was a shout. The Duke was issuing an order. It made no sense to Todd, but he looked up anyway, as his body continued its spastic motion, emptying itself into her. The man who'd dismounted was now striding towards them, unleashing his sword.

The Duke spoke again:

"Cine sunt acesti oameni?"

He obviously wanted to know who the hell these people were, because by way of reply there were shrugs from the other men. The last spasm passed through Todd's body, and with it went the idiot sense of his own inviolability. The bliss was gone. He was empty, and mortal again.

The man with the sword put his boot into Todd's side. It was a hard kick, and threw him off Katya. He rolled over in the dirt, which got a laugh from the youngest of the men, seeing the lovers wetly parted thus.

The Duke was issuing further orders, and in response another of the riders dismounted, his sword drawn. Todd spat out a mouthful of earth, and made an attempt to push his rapidly wilting erection back into his pants before it became a target. Katya was still lying on the ground (though she too had managed to cover her nakedness); the first of the men who'd dismounted was standing over her, his sword dropped so that its point hung no more than two or three inches above her pale, slender neck

The first word out of Todd's mouth was: "Please ... "

The nobleman was looking at him with a strange expression on his face: part amusement, part suspicion.

"I don't know if you can understand me," Todd said to him. "But we meant no harm."

He glanced down at Katya, who was staring up at the blade.

"He doesn't know what you're saying," she said. "Let me try." She spoke now in the language of the lord. "Doamne, eu si prietenul meu suntem vizitatori prin locurile astea. N-am sttut ca este proprietatea domniei tale."

Todd looked and listened, wondering what the hell she was saying. But her explanation, whatever it was, didn't seem to be making any great change in their circumstances. The sword was still at her throat, while the second horseman was now within two or three yards of Todd, waving his own blade around in a highly menacing fashion.

Todd glanced up at the Duke again. The trace of amusement Todd had thought he'd seen there had gone. There was only suspicion now. It crossed Todd's mind that perhaps it had been an error for Katya to speak in the man's tongue; that perhaps she'd only deepened his belief that these lovers were more than over-heated trespassers.

He felt a prick in the middle of his chest. The cold point of the sword was pressed into his skin. A small pool of blood was already coming from the spot, spreading through the weave of his shirt.

Katya had stopped talking for a moment -- Todd thought perhaps she realized she was doing more harm than good -- but now she began again, making whatever pleas she could.

The man on the braided horse raised his hand.

"Liniste," he said.

He'd obviously told her to shut the hell up, because that was exactly what she did.

There was a sound on the wind; and it instantly had all of the nobleman's attention. Somewhere not so far away a baby was crying: a mournful wail of a sound, that -- though it was surely human -- reminded Todd of the noise the coyotes would make some nights in the Canyon.

After a few moments of listening; the Duke let out a stream of orders: "Lasati-i! Pe cai! Ala-i copilul!"

The two men who'd been threatening Katya and Todd sheathed their swords and returned to their mounts. The baby's cry seemed to falter for a moment, and Todd feared it would fade completely and the swordsmen would return to their threats, but then the infant seemed to find a new seam of grief to mine, and the wail rose up again, more plaintive then ever.

The men were exchanging more urgent words; and pointing in the direction from which the sound was coming.

"Este acolol Grabiti-va!"

"In padure! Copilul este #238;n padure!"

Katya and Todd were summarily forgotten. The horsemen were by now all re-mounted, and the Duke was already galloping away, leaving his weary company to follow in his dust.

Todd felt a curious sense of betrayal; the kind felt when a story takes an unanticipated turn. That he should have come into this half-eclipsed world and been made to bleed at the point of a sword seemed absolutely apt. That the man who'd threatened him had ridden away to pursue a crying baby did not.

"What the hell is going on?" he said as he bent to help Katya up off the ground.

"They heard Qwaftzefoni, the Devil's child," she said.

"Who?"

She looked back in the direction of the riders. They were already halfway to the line of densely packed trees from which the pitiful summons had seemed to come, receding into the quarter-light as though being steadily erased.

"It's a long story," she said. "I heard it first when I was a child ... and it used to frighten me ... "

"Yes?" he said.

"Oh yes."

"Well," Todd said, a little impatiently, "are you going to tell me?"

"I don't know if it'll frighten you."

He wiped the blood from the middle of his chest with the heel of his hand. There was a deep nick in his chest, which instantly welled with blood again.

"Tell me anyway," he said.

TWO

Though it had been Zeffer who'd offered the explanation of what lay down in the guts of the house, Tammy opened the conversation with a question that had been niggling at her since she'd first come into this place. She returned to the kitchen table, where she'd been eating her cherry pie, sat down and said: "What are you afraid of?"

"I told you twice, three times: I shouldn't be in here. She'll be angry."

"That doesn't answer the question. Katya's just a woman, for God's sake. Let her be angry!"

"You don't know what she can be like."

"Why don't you try telling me? Then maybe I'll understand."

"Tell you," he said flatly, as though the request was impossible. "How can I tell you what this place has seen? What I was? What she was?"

"Try."

"I don't know how," he said, his voice getting weaker, syllable on syllable, until she seemed sure it would crack and break. He sat down at the table opposite her, but he said nothing.

"All right," Tammy said. "Let me give you a hand." She thought for a moment. Then she said: "Start with the house. Tell me why it was built. Why you're in it. Why she's in it."

"Back then we did everything together."

"Who is she?"

"I'll tell you who she was: she was Katya Lupi, a great star. One of the greatest, some would once have said. And in its day this house was one of the most famous houses in Los Angeles. One of the great dream palaces."

"And the rest of the Canyon is hers too?"

"Oh yes, it's all hers. Coldheart Canyon. That's what they called it. She had a reputation, you see, for being a chilly bitch." He smiled, though there was more rue in the expression than humor. "It was deserved."

"And the things out there?"

"Which things?"

"Which things?" Tammy said, a little impatiently. "The freaks. The things that attacked me."

"Those? Those are the children of the dead."

"You say these things so casually. The children of the dead. Believe it or not, the dead don't have kids in Sacramento. They just rot away quietly."

"Well it's different here."

"Willem, I don't care how different it is: the dead can't have children."

"You saw them. Believe your eyes."

Tammy shook her head. Not in disbelief, rather in frustration. How could it be that the rules of the world worked one way in one place, and so very differently in another?

"The truth is: I don't know," Zeffer said, answering her unspoken question. "Over the years the ghosts have mated with the animals, and the results are those things. Maybe the dead are closer to the condition of animals. I don't know. I only know it's real. I've seen them. You've seen them. They're hybrids. Sometimes there's a kind of beauty in them. But mostly ... ugly as sin."

"All right. So I buy the hybrids. But why here? Is it her!"

"In a roundabout way, I suppose ... " He mused for a moment, and then -- apparently with great effort, as though since they'd come into the house a lifetime of suffering had caught up with him -- he got to his feet. He went to the sink, and turned on the faucet, running the water hard. Then, cupping his hand, he took some up to his lips and drank noisily. This done, he turned off the faucet and looked over his shoulder at her.

"I know in my heart you deserve to know everything, after all you've been through. You've earned the truth." He turned fully to her. "But before I tell you, let me say I'm not sure I understand any of this much more than you do."

"Well I understand nothing," Tammy said.

He nodded. "Well, then. How do I start this? Ah. Yes. Romania." He put his hand up to his face, and wiped some water off his lower lip. "Katya was born Katya Lupescu in Romania. A tiny village called Ravbac. And in the summer of 1921, just after we'd built this house, I went back with her to her homeland, because her mother was sick and was not expected to live more than another year."

"She'd been brought up in utter poverty. Abuse and poverty. But now she was a great star, coming home, and it was extraordinary really, to see how she had transformed herself. From these beginnings to the woman she'd become.

"Anyway, there was a fortress close to the village where Katya was born, and it was run by the Order of St. Teodor, who made it their business to protect the place. When we arrived, Katya and myself had both been given a tour, but she wasn't very interested in the old fortress and priests with halitosis. Neither was I, frankly, but I wanted to leave her with her family to talk over old times, so I went back to the Goga Fortress a second day. The monk who took me round made it dear that the Order had fallen on hard times, and the brothers needed to sell off what they could. Tapestries, chairs, tables: it was all up for sale.

"Frankly, I didn't care for much of it, and I was about to leave.

"Then he said: let me show you something special, really special. And I thought: what the hell? Ten more minutes. And he took me down several flights of stairs into a room the likes of which I'd never seen before."

"What was in there?"

"It was decorated with tiles -- thousands of tiles -- and they were all painted, so when you walked into the room it was almost as though -- no; it was as though you were walking into another world." He paused, contemplating the memory of this; awed by it still, after all these years.

"What kind of a world?" Tammy asked him.

"A world that was both very real and completely invented. It had space for sky and sea and birds and rabbits. But it also had a little pinch of Hell in the mix, just to make things more interesting for the men who lived in that world."

"What men?"

"Well, one man in particular. His name was Duke Goga. And he was there in the walls, on a hunt that would last until the end of time."

"The man on the horse," Katya said, "was the Duke."

"I got that," Todd said.

"He lived a long time ago. I'm not sure of exactly when. When you're a little child you don't listen to those kind of details. It's the story you remember. And the story was this:"

"One day in autumn the Duke went out hunting, which he did all the time -- it was his favorite thing to do -- and he saw what he thought was a goat, trapped in a briar-thicket. So he got off his horse, telling his men that he wanted to kill this animal himself. He hated goats, having been attacked by one and badly hurt as a baby He still had scars on his face from that attack, and they ached in the cold weather, all of which served to keep his hatred of goats alive. Perhaps it was a petty thing, this hatred; but sometimes little things can be the unmaking of us. There's no doubt that Goga would not have pursued his goat as far as he did had he not been injured as a child. And then -- to make matters worse -- as he approached the animal history virtually repeated itself. The animal reared up, striking the Duke with its blackhoof and cracking his nose. The goat then ran off."

"Goga was furious, beside himself with fury! To have been mistreated by a goat twice! He got straight back on his horse, blood pouring from his broken nose, and went after the animal, riding hard through the forest to catch up with it. His entourage went with him, because they were bound to follow the Duke wherever he went. But they were beginning to suspect that there was something strange about where they were headed and that it would be better for them all if they just turned round and rode back to the Fortress."

"But Goga wouldn't do that?"

"Of course not. He was determined to chase down the animal that had struck him. He wanted revenge on the thing. He wanted to stick his sword through it, and cut out its heart and eat it raw. That was the kind of rage he was in.

"So he kept riding. And his men, out of loyalty, kept following, further and further from the Fortress and the paths they knew, into the depths of the forest. Steadily even the Duke began to realize that what his men were whispering was right: there were creatures here, lurking about, the likes of which God had not made. He could see things between the trees that didn't belong in any of the bestiaries he had in the Fortress. Strange, ungodly creatures."

As Katya told her story, Todd glanced at the dark mass of trees into which Goga and his men had just ridden. Was that the Deep Wood she had just described? Surely it was. The same horsemen. The same trees. In other words, he was standing in the middle of Katya's story.

"So ... the Duke kept riding, and riding, driving his poor horse as he followed the leaping goat deeper and deeper into the forest, until they were in a place where there were certain no human being had ever ventured before. By now, all the men, even the most loyal, the bravest of them, were begging the Duke to let them turn back. The air was bitter and sulfurous, and in the ground beneath the horses' hooves the men could hear the sound of people sobbing, as though living souls had been buried alive in the black, smoking dirt.

"But the Duke would not be moved from his ambition. 'What kind of hunters do you call yourselves?' he said to his men, 'If you won't go after a goat? Where's your faith in God? There's no danger to us here, if our hearts are pure.'"

"So on they went, the men quietly offering up prayers for the safety of their souls as they rode.

"And eventually, after a long chase, their quarry came in sight again. The goat was standing in a grove of trees so old they had been planted before the Flood, in the tangled roots of which grew mushrooms that gave off the smell of dead flesh. The Duke got off his horse, drew his sword and approached the goat.

"'Whatever thing you are,' he said to the animal, 'breathe your last.'"

"Nice line," Todd remarked.

"The animal reared up, as though it was going to strike the Duke with its hoof a third time, but Goga didn't give it the opportunity. He quickly drove his sword up into the belly of the animal."

"As soon as it felt the sword entering its flesh the goat opened its mouth and let out a pitiful wail ... "

Katya paused here, watching Todd, waiting for him to put the pieces together.

"Oh Christ," he said. "Like a baby?"

"Exactly like a baby. And hearing this pitiful human sound escaping the animal, Goga pulled his sword from the goat's body, because he knew something unholy was in the air. Have you ever seen an animal slaughtered?"

"No."

"Well there's a lot of blood. A lot more than you think there's going to be."

"It was like that now?"

"Yes. The goat was thrashing around in a pool of red, its back legs kicking up the wet dirt, so that it spattered Goga and his men. And as it did so, it started to change."

"Into what?"

Katya smiled the smile of a storyteller who had her audience hooked by some unexpected change of direction.

"Into a little child," she said. "A boy, a naked little boy, with a nub of a tail and yellow eyes and goat's ears. So now the Duke is looking down at this goat-boy, twitching in the mud made of dirt and blood, and the superstitious terror which his men had felt finally seizes hold of him too. He starts to speak a prayer.

"T-tal Nostru care ne esti in Ceruri, sfin easca-se numele Tu. Fie Imprtia Ta, fac-se voia Ta, precum #238;n cer ala si pe pament."

Todd listened to the unfamiliar words, knowing in the cadence that what Katya was reciting was not just any prayer; it was the Lord's Prayer.

"P#226;inea noastr? cea de toate zilele dane-o nouz azi si ne iarti noua greselile noastre."

He scanned the landscape as he heard the prayer repeated; nothing had changed since he'd first set eyes on the place. The light of the eclipse held everything in suspension: the trees, the ships, the lynchers at their tree.

The rush of pleasure he'd experienced when he first arrived had diminished somewhere in the midst of Katya's tale-telling. In its place there was now a profound unease. He wanted to stop her telling her story, but what reason could he give that didn't sound cowardly?

So she continued.

"The Duke retreated, leaving his sword stuck deep in the body of the goat-boy. He intended to climb back onto his horse and ride away, but his steed had already bolted in terror. He called to one of his men to dismount, so that he might have the man's horse, but before the fellow could obey the rock beneath their feet began to shake violently, and a great chasm opened up in the ground in front of them."

"The men knew what they were witnessing. This was the very mouth of Hell, gaping in the earth beneath their feet. It was thirty, forty feet wide, and the roots of those ancient trees lined it like the veins of a skinned body. Smoke rose up out of the maw, stinking of every foul thing imaginable, and a good deal that was not. It was such a bitter stench that the Duke and his men began to weep like children."

"Half-blinded by his own tears, and without a horse, Goga had no choice but to stay where he was, on the lip of the Hell's Mouth, close to where his victim lay. He tore his gloves from his hands and did his best to clear the tears from his eyes."

"As he did so he saw somebody coming up out of the earth. It was a woman, he saw; with hair so long it trailed the ground fully six feet behind her. She was naked, except for a necklace of white fleas with eyes that burned like fires in their tiny heads. Thousands of them, moving back and forth around the woman's neck and up over her face, busy about the business of prettifying her."

"She was not looking at the Duke. Her black-red eyes, which had neither lashes nor brows, were on the goat-boy. In the time it had taken for the mouth of Hell to open, the last of the boy's life had poured out of him. Now the child's corpse lay still in the wet dirt."

"'You killed my child,' the woman said as she emerged from the infernal mouth. 'My beautiful Qwaftzefoni. Look at him. Barely a boy. He was perfect. He was my joy. How could you do such a heartless thing?'"

"At that moment one of the horsemen behind the Duke attempted to make an escape, spurring his horse. But the goat-boy's mother raised her hand and at her instruction a gust of wind came up out of the depths of Hell, so strong that it drew her hair around her and forward, like a thousand filament fingers pointing towards the escaping man. He didn't get very far. The wind she'd summoned was filled with barbs; like the vicious seedlings of ten thousand flowers. They spiraled as they flew, and they caught the Duke's man in a whirling of tiny hooks. Blinded by the assault, the man toppled from his horse, and attempted to outrun the barbs. But they were fastened onto him, and their motion continued, circling his body, so that the man's flesh was unraveled like a ball of red twine. He screamed as the first circling took off his skin, and redoubled his shrieks when a second cloud of barbs caught his naked muscle, and repeated the terrible cycle. Having drawn off a length of the man's tissue, they described a descending spiral around him, leaving the victim clear for a third and fourth assault. His bone was showing now; his screams had ceased. He dropped to his knees and fell forward in his own shreddings, dead."

"Overhead carrion birds circled, ready to gorge themselves as soon as the body was abandoned."

"'This man is the lucky one amongst you,' the woman said to the Duke. 'He has escaped lightly. The rest of you will suffer long and hard for what you have done today.'"

"She looked down at the goat-boy's corpse, her hair crawling around her heels to fondly touch the body of the child."

"The Duke fell to his knees, knotting his hands together to make his plea. 'Lady,' he said to her, in his native tongue. "This was an accident. I believed the boy to be an animal. He was running from me in the form of a goat.'"

"'That is his father's chosen form, on certain nights,' the woman replied. Goga knew, of course, what was signified by this. Only the Devil himself took the form of a goat. The woman was telling him that she was Lilith, the Devil's wife, and that the child he had killed was the Devil's own offspring. To say this was not good news was an understatement. The Duke concealed his terror as best he could, but it was terror he felt. To be standing on the lip of Hell, accused of the crime before him, was a terrifying prospect. His soul would be forfeit, he feared. All he could do was repeat what he'd said: 'I took the boy to be a goat. This was a grievous error on my part, and I regret it with all my heart -- '"

"The woman raised her hand to silence him."

"'My husband has seventy-seven children by me. Qwaftzefoni was his favorite. What am I supposed to tell him when he calls for his beloved boy, and the child does not come as he used to?'"

"The Duke had barely any spittle in his throat. But he used what little he had to reply. 'I don't know what you will say.'"

"'You know who my husband is, don't you? And don't insult me by pretending innocence.'"

"'I think he is the Devil, ma'am,' the Duke Goga replied."

"That he is," the woman said, 'And I am Lilith, his first wife. So now, what do you think your life is worth?'"

"Goga mused on this for a moment. Then he said: 'Christ save my soul. I fear my life is worth nothing.'"

"So," said Zeffer, "Goga's Hunt was painted on every wall of this room.

Not just the walls. The ceiling, too. And the floor. Every inch of the place was covered with the genius of painter and tile-maker. It was astonishing. And I thought -- "

"You'd give this astonishing thing to the woman you idolized."

"Yes. That's exactly what I thought. After all, it was utterly unique. Something strange and wonderful. But that wasn't the only reason I wanted to buy it, now I look back. The place had a power over me. I felt stronger when I was in that room. I felt more alive. It was a trick, of course. The room wanted me to liberate it -- "

"How can a room want anything?" Tammy said. "It's just four walls."

"Believe me, this was no ordinary room," Zeffer said. He lowered his voice, as though the house itself might be listening to him. "It was commissioned, I believe, by a woman known as the Lady Lilith. The Devil's wife."

This was a different order of information entirely, and it left Tammy speechless. In her experience so far, she'd found the Canyon a repository of grotesqueries, no doubt; but they'd all been derived from the human, however muddied the route. But the Devil? That was another story; deeper than anything she'd encountered so far. And yet perhaps his presence or the echo of his presence, was not so inappropriate. Wasn't he sometimes called the Father of Lies? If he and his works belonged anywhere, Hollywood was probably as good a place as any.

"Did you have any idea what you were buying?" she said to Zeffer.

"I had a very vague notion, but I didn't really believe it. Father Sandru had talked about a woman who'd occupied the Fortress for several years while the room was made."

"And you think this woman was Lilith?"

"I believe it was," Zeffer said. "She made a place to trap the Duke in, you see."

"No, I don't see,"

"The Duke had killed her beloved child. She wanted revenge, and she wanted it to be a long, agonizing revenge."

"But it had been an accident -- an honest error on the Duke's part -- and she knew the law would not allow her to take the soul of a man who killed her child."

"Why would she care about the law?"

"It wasn't our human law she cared about. It was God's law, which governs Earth, Heaven and Hell. She knew that if she was going to make the Duke and his men suffer as she wished to make them suffer, she would have to find some secret place, where God would not think to look. A world within a world, where the Duke would have to hunt forever, and never be allowed to rest ... "

Now Tammy began to understand. "The room," she murmured.

"Was her solution. And if you think about it, it's a piece of genius. She moved into the Fortress, claiming that she was a distant cousin of the missing Duke -- "

"And where was he?"

"Anybody's guess. Maybe she held him in his own dungeons, until the hunting grounds were ready for him."

"Then she brought tile-makers from all over Europe -- Dutch, Portuguese, Belgians, even a few Englishmen -- and painters, again, from every place of excellence -- and they worked for six months, night and day, to create what awaits you downstairs. It would look like the Duke's hunting grounds -- at least superficially. There would be forests and rivers and, somewhere at the horizon, there'd be the sea. But she would play God in this world. She'd put creatures into it that she had conjured up from her own personal menagerie: monsters that the painters in her employ would render with meticulous care. And then she'd take the souls of the Duke and his men -- still living, so that she remained within the law -- and she'd put them into the work, so that it would be a prison for them. There they would ride under a permanent eclipse, in a constant state of terror, barely daring to sleep for fear one of her terrible beasts would take them. Of course that's not all that's on the walls down there. Her influence invaded the minds of the men who worked for her, and every filthy, forbidden thing they'd ever dreamed of setting down they were given the freedom to create."

"Nothing was taboo. They took their own little revenges as they painted: particularly on women. Some of the things they painted still shock me after all these years."

"Are you certain all of this is true?"

"No. It's mostly theory. I pieced it together from what I researched. Certainly Duke Goga and several of his men went missing during an eclipse on April 19th, 1681. The body of one of them was found stripped of its skin. That's also documented. The rest of the party were never found. The Duke had lost his wife and children to the plague so there was no natural successor. He had three brothers, however, and-again, this is a matter of documented history -- they gathered the following September, almost six months to the day after the Duke's disappearance, to divide their elder brother's spoils. It was a mistake to do so. That was the night the Lady Lilith took occupancy of the Goga Fortress."

"She killed them?"

"No. They all left of their own free will, saying they wanted no part of owning the Fortress or the land, but were giving it over to this mysterious cousin, in their brother's name. They signed a document to that effect, and left. All three were dead within a year, by their own hand."

"And nobody was suspicious?"

"I'm sure a lot of people were suspicious. But Lilith -- or whoever she was -- now occupied the Fortress. She had money, and apparently she was quite liberal with it. Local merchants got rich, local dignitaries were rather charmed by her, if the reports are to be believed -- "

"Where did you find all these reports?"

"I bought most of the paperwork relating to the Fortress from the Fathers. They didn't want it. I doubt they even knew what most of it was. And to tell the truth a lot of it was rather dull. The price of pigs' carcasses; the cost of having a roof made rain-proof ... the usual domestic business."

"So Lilith was quite the little house-maker?"

"I think she was. Indeed I believe she intended to have the Fortress as a place she could call her own. Somewhere her husband wouldn't come; couldn't come, perhaps. I found a draft of a letter which I believe she wrote, to him -- "

"To the Devil?" Tammy replied, scarcely believing she was giving the idea the least credence.

"To her husband," Zeffer replied obliquely, "whoever he was." He tapped his pocket. "I have it, here. You want to hear it?"

"Is it in English?"

"No. In Latin." He reached into his jacket and took out a piece of much-folded paper. It was mottled with age. "Take a look for yourself," he said.

"I don't read Latin."

"Look anyway. Just to say you once held a letter written by the Devil's wife. Go on, take it. It won't bite."

Tammy reached out and took the paper from Zeffer's hand. None of this was proof, of course. But it was more than a simple fabrication, that much was clear. And hadn't she seen enough in her time in the Canyon to be certain that whatever was at work here was nothing she could explain by the rules she'd been taught in school?

She opened the letter. The hand it had been written in was exquisite; the ink, though it had faded somewhat, still kept an uncanny luster, as though there were motes of mother-of-pearl in it. She scanned it, all the way down to the immaculate and elaborate Lilith that decorated the bottom portion of the page.

"So," she said, handing it back, her fingers trembling slightly. "What does it say?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes."

Zeffer began translating it without looking at the words. Plainly he had the contents by heart.

"Husband, she writes, I am finding myself at ease in the Fortress Goga, and I believe will remain here until our son is found -- "

"So she didn't tell him?"

"Apparently not." Zeffer scanned the page briefly. "She talks a little about the work she's doing on the Fortress ... it's all very matter-of-fact ... then she says: Do not come, husband, for you will find no welcome in my bed. If there is some peace to be made between us I cannot imagine it being soon, given your violations of your oath. I do not believe you have loved me in many years, and would prefer you did not insult me by pretending otherwise."

"Huh."

Whatever the source of the letter, its sentiments were easily understood. Tammy herself might have penned such a letter -- in a simpler style, perhaps; and a little more viciously -- on more than one occasion. God knows, Arnie had violated his own vows to her several times, shamelessly.

Zeffer folded the letter up. "So, you can make what you want of all this. Personally I think it's the real thing. I believe this woman was Lilith, and that she stayed in the Fortress to work on her revenge, where neither God nor her husband would come and bother her. Certainly somebody created that room, and it was somebody who had powers that go far beyond anything we understand."

"What happened when she was finished?" Tammy asked.

"She packed up and disappeared. Got bored perhaps. Went back to her husband. Or found a lover of her own. The point is, she left the Fortress with the room still intact. And with Goga and his men still in it."

"And that's what you bought?"

"That's what I bought. Of course it took a little time to realize it, but I purchased a little piece of Hell's own handiwork. And let me tell you -- to make light of all this for a moment -- it was Hell to move. There were thirty three thousand, two hundred and sixty-eight tiles. They all had to be removed, cleaned, numbered, packed away, shipped and then put up again in exactly the same order that they'd been assembled in. I timed it so that the work could be done while Katya was off on a world tour, publicizing one of her pictures."

"It must have driven you half crazy ... "

"I kept thinking about how much pleasure Katya would derive from the room when it was finished. I was oblivious to the human cost. I just wanted Katya to be astonished; and then, to look at me -- who'd given her this gift -- with new eyes. I wanted her to be so grateful, so happy, she'd fling herself into my arms and say I'll marry you. That's what I wanted."

"But that's not the way it turned out?"

"No, of course not."

"What happened? Did she dislike the room?"

"No, she understood the room from the beginning, and the room understood her. She started to take people down there, to show the place off. Her special friends. The ones who were obsessed with her. And there were plenty of those. Men and women both. They'd disappear down there for a few hours -- "

"These were people she was having sex with?"

"Yes."

"You said both men and women?"

"Preferably together. That's what she liked best. A little of both."

"And did everybody know?"

"About her tastes? Of course. Nobody cared. It was rather chic at the time. For women anyway. The nancy-boys like Navarro and Valentino, they had to cover it up. But Katya didn't care what people thought. Especially once she had the room."

"It changed her?"

"It changed everyone who went into it, myself included. It changed our flesh. It changed our spirits."

"How?"

"All you have to do is look at me to see how I changed. I was born in 1893. But I don't look it. That's because of the room. It has energies, you see, painted into the tiles. I believe it's Lilith's magic, in the tiles. She used her infernal skills to lock the Duke and his men and all those animals into the illusion: that's strong magic. The monks knew that. But they had the good sense to keep their distance from the place."

"So did everyone who went down there stay young?"

"Oh no. By no means. It affected everyone a little differently. Some people simply couldn't take it. They went in for a minute, and they were out again in a heartbeat."

"Why?"

"It's the Devil's Country, Tammy. Believe me, it is."

Tammy shook her head, not knowing what to believe. "So some people left, because they thought the Devil was in there?"

"That's right. But most people felt some extra burst of energy when they went in the room. Maybe they felt a little younger, a little stronger, a little more beautiful."

"And what was the price of it all?"

"Good question," he said. "The fact is, everyone's paid a different price. Some people went crazy, because of what they saw in there. A few committed suicide. Most ... went on living, feeling a little better about themselves. For a while at least. Then the effect would wear off, and they'd need to come back for another fix ...

"I knew a number of opium addicts in my life. One of them was a Russian designer, Anatole Vasilinsky. Ever heard of him?" Tammy shook her head. "No real reason why you should. He worked for the Ballet Russes, under Diaghilev. A brilliant man. But completely enslaved to 'The Poppy' as he used to call it. He came to the house, only once, and of course Katya showed him the room. I remember the look on his face when he came out. He looked like a man who'd just seen his own death. He was stricken; clammy-white, shaking. 'I must never come here again,' he said. 'I don't have enough room in my life for two addictions. It would be the death of me.'"

"That's what the room was, of course: an addiction. It addicted the flesh, by making you feel stronger, sleeker. It addicted the spirit, by giving you visions so vivid they were more real than real. And it addicted the soul, because you didn't want any other kind of comfort, once you'd been in the room. Prayer was no use to you, laughter was no use to you, friends, ideals, ambitions ... they all seemed inconsequential in that perpetual twilight. When you were here, you thought all the time about being there."

Again Tammy shook her head. There was so much here to try and make sense of. Her mind was reeling.

"Do you see now why you must leave, and forget about Todd? He's seen the room. That's where she took him."

"Are you sure?"

"He's down there right now," Zeffer said. "I guarantee it. Where else would she take him?"

Tammy got up from the table. The food had done her good. Though she still felt a little light-headed, she was considerably stronger.

"There's nothing heroic about sacrificing yourself for him," Zeffer pointed out. "He wouldn't do it for you."

"I know that."

Zeffer followed her to the kitchen door. "So don't. Leave, while you can. Tammy, I beg you. Leave. I'll lead you out of the Canyon and you can go home."

"Home," Tammy said. The word, the idea, seemed hollow, valueless.

There was no home for her after this. Or if there was, it wasn't the one she'd had. Arnie, the little house in Sacramento. How could she even think of going back to that?

"I have to find Todd," she said. "That's what I came here to do." Without waiting for Zeffer to lead her or escort her, she left the kitchen and went to the top of the stairs. He called after her. Another attempt at persuasion, no doubt; or some more fancy story-telling. But she ignored him this time, and started down the stairs.

THREE

Katya had a little more of her story still to tell.

"'My life is worth nothing,' the Duke had told the Devil's wife. He, who had led armies, and triumphed in his crusades against the infidel; now found his life was at an end. And why? Because he chased and killed what he took to be a goat?"

"'It was an accident!' he said, his fury at the injustice of this suddenly getting the better of him. 'I demand to be seen by some higher judge than you.'"

"'There is only one higher,' Lilith replied. 'And that's my husband.'"

"The Duke met her cold gaze, the profundity of his terror paradoxically making him brave."

"'There is a God in Heaven,' he said."

"'Is there now?' said Lilith. 'Are you certain? I saw him only once, the day He made me. Since then He has never shown his face. This is the Devil's Country, Goga. My Lord Lucifer rules here. Or in his absence, me. I doubt your God will stretch out his hand to save your soul.'"

"'Then I shall ride out of here,' the Duke replied."

"'You saw what happened to your comrade. I'll do the same to you, before you reach your horse. I'll have you wailing like a baby at my feet.'"

"Goga wasn't a stupid man. He knew there was no use in contradicting the woman. He'd already seen one of his men horribly slaughtered by her. He would surely follow if he attempted to escape. All he could do was throw himself upon Lilith's mercy."

"He went down on his knees, and composing himself as best he could, he addressed her:"

"'Please, gentle lady, listen to me.'"

"I'm listening.'"

"'I have lost children of my own, all six of them dead by the plague. And my wife the same way. I know the pain you are suffering, and I'm sick that I was its cause. But what's done is done. I made a mistake, that I bitterly regret. But how can I take it back? Had I known I was on your husband's land I would not even have hunted here.'"

"Lilith looked at him for a long while, assessing the worth of his appeal. "'Well, hereafter, my lord,' she said finally, 'it is my pleasure that you and your men will hunt here always.'"

"Another bitter breath up out of Hell to accompany these words. The woman's long hair rose up around her body, a few of its strands grazing Goga's upturned face."

"'Get back on your horses, hunters,' Lilith said. 'Return to your hunt. There are boar in the thicket, waiting to be driven out. There are birds in the trees, ready to be shot while they sing. Kill them at will, as it pleases you to do so. There will be no charge for your sport.'"

"The Duke was astonished to hear this mild invitation, after all that had just taken place, and thinking perhaps his plea for clemency had carried some weight with Lilith, he very slowly got to his feet, thanking her."

"'It's most kind of you,' he said, 'to invite me to hunt. And perhaps another day I will come back here and accept your invitation. But today my heart is heavy -- '"

"'As well it might be,'" the woman replied. "'So I think instead I will return to the Fortress and -- '"

"'No,' she said, raising her hand. 'You will not return to the fortress. You will hunt.'"

"'I could not, madam. Really, I could not.'"

"'Sir,' she replied, with a little inclination of her head. 'You misunderstood me. You have no choice. You will hunt, and you will go on hunting, until you find my son a second time, and bring him back to me.'"

"'I don't understand.'"

"'A second time.'"

"She pointed to the corpse of the goat-child, which lay in its cooling blood. Her hair drifted over the sprawled cadaver, lightly touching the boy's chest and stomach and private parts. Much to the Duke's astonishment the child responded to his mother's caresses. As the hair touched his chest his lungs drew a little breath, and his penis -- which was disproportionately large for one his age -- grew steely."

"'Take your sword out of him,' Lilith instructed the Duke."

"But the Duke was too terrified at this scene of infernal resurrection to go near the boy. He kept his distance, filling his breeches in fear."

"'You men are all the same!' Lilith said contemptuously. "'You find it easy enough to drive the sword in, but when it comes to taking it out you can't bring yourself to do it.'"

"She stepped into the puddle of her son's blood, and reached to take hold of the sword. The boy's eyes flickered open as he felt his mother's hand upon the pommel. Then he lifted his hands and caught hold of the blade with his bare palms, almost as though he were attempting to keep her from extracting it. Still she pulled, and it slowly came out of him."

"'Slowly, mama,' the goat-boy said, his tone almost lascivious. 'It hurts mightily.'"

"'Does it, child?' Lilith said, twisting the blade in the wound as though to perversely increase her child's distress. He threw back his head, still looking at her from the bottom of his eyes, his lips drawn back from his little, pointed teeth. And this?' she said, turning the blade the other way. 'Does this bring you agony?'"

"'Yes, Mama!'"

"She twisted it the other way. And this?'"

"Finally, it was too much for the child. He let out a hissing sound, and spat from his erection several spouts of semens. Its sharp stink made the Duke's eyes sting."

"Lilith waited until the boy had finished ejaculating, then she drew out the sword. The goat-boy sank back on the wet earth, with a look of satisfaction on his face."

"'Thank you, mama,' he said, as though well pleasured by what had just happened.

"The wound on his belly was already closing up, the Duke saw. It was as though it were being knitted by agile and invisible fingers. So too the wounds on his hands, incurred when he had seized the blade. In a matter of perhaps half a minute the goat-boy was whole again."

"So if the child wasn't dead," Todd said, "why was the Duke guilty of murdering him?"

Katya shook her head. "He'd committed the crime. The fact that the boy was an immortal was academic. He'd murdered the child, and had to be punished for it."

Todd's gaze went again to the trees where the Duke and his men had disappeared, picturing the look of hope that had appeared on the men's faces when they'd heard the sound of the child's cries. Now all that made sense. No wonder they'd ridden off so eagerly. They were still hoping to find the boy, and earn their release from the Devil's Country.

A wave of claustrophobia came up over Todd. This was not the limitless landscape it had first appeared to be: it was a prison, and he wanted to be free of it. He turned, and turned again, looking for some crack in the illusion, however small. But he could find none. Despite the immensity of the vistas in all directions, and the height of heavens above him, he might as well have been locked in a cell.

His breath had quickened; his hands were suddenly clammy. "Which way's the door?" he asked Katya.

"You want to leave? Now?"

"Yes, now."

"It's just a story," she said.

"No it's not. I saw the Duke. We both saw him."

"It's all part of the show," Katya said, with a dismissive little shrug. "Calm down. There's no harm going to come to us. I've been down here hundreds of times and nothing ever happened to me."

"You saw the Duke here before?"

"Sometimes. Never as close as we saw today, but there are always hunters."

"Well ask yourself: why are there always hunters? Why is there always an eclipse?"

"I don't know. Why do you always do the same thing in a movie every time it runs -- "

"So things are exactly the same, every time you come here, like a movie?"

"Not exactly the same, no. But the sun's always like that: three-quarters covered. And the trees, the rocks ... even the ships out there." She pointed to the ships. "It's always the same ships. They never seem to get very far."

"So it's not like a movie," Todd said. "It's more like time's been frozen."

She nodded. "I suppose it is," she said. "Frozen in the walls."

"I don't see any walls."

"They're there," Katya said, "it's just a question of where to look. How to look. Trust me."

"You want me to trust you," Todd said, "then get me out of here."

"I thought you were enjoying yourself."

"The pleasure went out of it a while back," Todd said. He grabbed her arm, hard. "Come on," he said. "I want to get out."

She shook herself free of him. "Don't touch me that way," she said, her expression suddenly fierce. "I don't like it." She pointed past him, over his right shoulder. "The door's over there."

He looked back He could see no sign of an opening. Just more of the Devil's Country.

And now, to make matters worse, he once again heard the sound of hooves.

"Oh Christ ... "

He glanced back towards the trees. The Duke and his men were riding towards them, empty-handed.

"They're coming back to interrogate us," Todd said. "Katya! Did you hear me? We need to get the hell out of here."

Katya had seen the horsemen, but she didn't seem overly unnerved. She watched them approaching without moving. Todd, meanwhile, made his way in the general direction of the door; or at least where she had indicated it stood. He scanned the place, looking for some fragment -- the corner of the doorframe, the handle, the keyhole -- to help him locate it. But there was nothing.

Having no other choice he simply walked across the stony ground, his hands extended in front of him. After proceeding perhaps six strides, the empty air in front of him suddenly became solid, and his hands flattened against cold, hard tile. The instant he made contact, the illusion of the painters' trompe l'oeil was broken. He could not believe he had been so easily deceived. What had looked like infinite, penetrable reality two strides before now looked absurdly fake: stylish marks on pieces of antiquated tile, plastered on a wall. How could his eyes have been misled for an instant?

Then he looked back over his shoulder, to call Katya over, and the illusion in which she stood was still completely intact -- the expanse of open ground between where they stood and the galloping horsemen apparently a quarter mile or more, the trees beyond them twice that, the sky limitless above. Illusion, he told himself, all illusion. But it meant nothing in the face of the trick before him, which refused to bow to his doubt. He gave up trying to make it concede, and instead turned back to the wall. His hands were still upon it, the tiles still laid out under his palms. Which direction did the door lie in?

"Right or left?" he called to Katya.

"What?"

"The door! Is it to the right or left?"

She took her eyes off the riders, and scanned the wall he was clinging to. "Left," she said, casually.

"Hurry then -- "

"They didn't find the child."

"Forget about them!" he told her.

If she was attempting to impress him with her fearlessness she was doing a poor job. He was simply irritated. She'd shown him the way the room worked for God's sake; now it was time to get out.

"Come on!" he cried.

As he called to her he moved along the wall, a step to his left, then another step, keeping his palms flat to the tiles every inch of the way, as though defying them to play some new trick or other. But it seemed that as long as he had his hands on the tiles -- as long as he could keep uppermost in his mind the idea that this was a painted world, it could not start its trickeries afresh. And on the third, or was it fourth? step along the wall his extended hand found the door-jamb. He breathed out a little sigh of relief. The door-jamb was right there under his hand. He moved his palm over it onto the door itself which, like the jamb, was tiled so that there was no break in the illusion. He fumbled for the handle, found it and tried to turn it.

On the other side, Tammy had found her way along the passageway and chosen that precise moment to turn the handle in the opposite direction.

"Oh Jesus -- " Todd said. "It's locked."

"You hear that?" Tammy gasped. "That's Todd? Todd!"

"Yeah it's me. Who's this?"

"Tammy. It's Tammy Lauper. Are you turning the handle?"

"Yeah."

"Well let go of it. Let me try."

Todd let go. Tammy turned the handle. Before she opened the door she glanced back at Zeffer. He was still one flight up the stairs, staring out of the window.

"The dead ... " she heard him say.

"What about them?"

"They're all around the house. I've never seen them this close before. They know there are people passing back and forth through the door, that's why."

"Do I open the door? Todd's on the other side."

"Are you sure it's Todd?"

"Yes it's Todd."

Hearing his name called, Todd impatiently yelled from the other side. "Yes, it's me. And Katya. Will you please open the fucking door?"

Tammy's hands were sweaty, and her muscles weary; the handle slid through her palm. "I can't open it. You try."

Todd struggled with the handle from his side, but what had seemed as though it was going to be the easiest part of the procedure (opening the door) was proving the most intractable. It was almost as though the room didn't want him to leave; as though it wanted to hold on to him for as long as possible, to exercise the greatest amount of influence over him; to addict him, second by second, sight by sight.

He glanced back over his shoulder. Katya was staring up at the sky, moving her hands down over her body, as though she was luxuriating in the curious luminosity of this enraptured world. For a moment he imagined her naked, cradled in the heavenly luminescence, but he caught himself in the midst of the fantasy. It was surely just another of the room's tricks to keep him from departing. The damn place probably had a thousand such sleights-of-mind: sexual, philosophical, murderous.

He closed his eyes hard against the seductions of the Country and put his head against the door. The tile was clammy; like a living thing. "Tammy?" he said. "Are you still here?"

"Yes?"

"When I count three, I want you to push. Got it?"

"Got it."

"Okay. Ready?"

"Ready."

"One. Two. Three!"

She pushed. He pulled. And the door fell open, presenting Todd with one of the odder juxtapositions he'd witnessed in his life. In the hallway on the other side of the door stood a woman who looked as though she'd gone several rounds with a heavy-weight boxer. There were bloody scratches on her face, neck and arms; her hair and clothes were in disarray. In her eyes she had a distinctly panicked look.

He recognized her instantly. She was the leader of his Fan Club, a woman called Tammy Lauper. Yes! The missing Tammy Lauper! How the hell had she got up here? Never mind. She was here, thank God.

"I thought something terrible had happened to you," Lauper said.

"Give it time," he quipped.

Behind him, he heard the horsemen approaching. He glanced around, calling again to Katya.

"Hurry up, will you?"

When he returned his gaze to Tammy it was clear that she'd taken in, as best her disbelief would allow, the incredible sight over his shoulder. Her eyes were wide with astonishment, her jaw slack.

"So this is what it looks like."

"Yes," he said to her. "This is it."

Tammy threw a look back at a stooped, older man standing on the stairs behind her. He looked almost incapacitated with fear. But unlike Tammy, whose expression was that of someone who had never seen anything like this before, it was Todd's sense that her companion knew exactly what he was seeing, and would have liked nothing better than to have turned right there and fled.

Then Todd heard Katya calling from behind him, naming the man.

"Zeffer," she said, the word freezing the man where he stood.

"Katya ... " he said, inclining his head.

Katya came up behind Todd, pressing him aside in order to cross over the threshold. She pointed at the trespasser as she did so.

"I told you never to come back into this house!" she yelled at Zeffer. "Didn't I?"

He flinched at this, though it was difficult to believe she posed much physical threat to him.

She summoned him down the stairs. "Come here," she said. "You worthless piece of shit! I said: come here!"

Before he could obey her, Tammy intervened. "It's not his fault," she said. "I was the one who asked him to bring me down here."

Katya have her a look of complete contempt; as though anything she might have to contribute to the conversation was worthless.

"Whoever the hell you are," she said, "this is none of your business."

She pushed Tammy aside and reached out to catch hold of Zeffer. He had dutifully approached at her summons, but now avoided her grasp. She came after him anyway, striking his chest with the back of her hand, a solid blow; and another; and another. As she struck him she said: "I told you to stay outside, didn't I?"

The blows were relatively light, but they carried strength out of all proportion to their size. They knocked the breath out of him, for one thing, and she'd come back with a second blow before he'd drawn breath from the first, which quickly weakened him. Tammy was horrified, but she didn't want to interfere, in case she simply made the matter worse. Nor was her attention entirely devoted to the sight of Todd, or to the assault upon Zeffer. Her gaze was increasingly claimed by the sight visible through the open door. It was astonishing. Despite the fact that Zeffer had told her the place was an illusion, her eyes and her mind were wholly enamoured by what she saw: the rolling forest, the rocks with their thickets of thorn bushes, the delta and the distant sea. It all looked so real. And what was that?

Some creature that looked like a feathered lizard, its coxcomb yellow and black, scuttled into view, and out again.

It halted, seeming to look back through the door at her: a beast that belonged in some book of medieval monsters than in such proximity to her.

She glanced back at Zeffer, who was still being lectured by Katya. With the door open, and the visions beyond presented to her, she saw no reason not to step over the threshold, just for a moment, and see the place more plainly. After all, she was protected against its beguilements. She knew it was a beautiful lie, and as long as she remembered that, then it couldn't do her any harm, could it?

The only thing in the landscape that was real was Todd, and it was to him that she now went, crossing the dirt and the windblown grass to go to him. The feathered reptile lowered its coxcomb as she crossed the ground, and slunk away, disappearing into a crack between two boulders. But Todd wasn't watching animal-life. He had his eyes on several horsemen who were approaching along a road that wound through a dense stand of trees. They were approaching at speed, kicking up clods of earth as they came. Were they real, Tammy wondered, or just part of the landscape? She wasn't sure, nor was she particularly eager to put the question to the test.

Yet with every passing second she was standing in this world the more she felt the power of the room to unknit her doubts. She felt its influence seeping through her sight and her skin into her mind and marrow. Her head grew giddy, as though she'd downed two or three glasses of wine in quick succession.

It wasn't an unpleasant sensation by any means, especially given the extreme discomfort of the last few hours. She felt almost comforted by the room; as though it understood how she'd suffered of late, and was ready to soothe her hurts and humiliations away. It would distract her with its beauty and its strangeness; if she would only trust it for a while.

"Tammy ... " she heard Zeffer say behind her. His voice was weak, and the effect his summons had on her was inconsequential. She didn't even acknowledge it. She just let her eyes graze contentedly on the scene before her; the trees, the horsemen, the road, the rocks.

Soon, she knew, the riders would make a turn in that road, and it would be interesting to see how their image changed when they were no longer moving in profile, but were coming towards her.

She glanced back over her shoulder. It wasn't far to the door: just a few yards. Her eyes didn't even focus on whatever was going on in the passageway. It seemed very remote from her at that moment.

She looked back towards the horsemen. They had turned the corner in the road, and were now coming directly towards the spot where Todd and she stood. It was the oddest visual spectacle she'd ever witnessed, to see them growing larger as they approached, like illustrations emerging from a book. The landscape around them seemed to both recede and advance at the same moment as they approached, its motion throwing them forward as the ground beneath their horses drew back like a retreating wave. It was an utterly bewildering spectacle, but its paradoxical beauty enthralled her. All thought of Zeffer's summons, or indeed his safety, were forgotten: it was as though she was watching a piece of film for the first time, not knowing how the mechanism worked upon her. She felt Todd throw her a sideways glance. "Time to go," he said.

The earth beneath their feet reverberated as the horsemen approached. They'd be at the door in thirty or forty seconds. "Come on," he said.

"Yes ... " she murmured. "I'm coming."

She didn't move. It wasn't until Todd caught hold of her arm and pulled her back towards the door that she eventually obeyed the instruction and went. Even then she kept looking back over her shoulder, astonished. "I don't believe what I'm seeing," she said.

"It's all real. Trust me on that," he said. "They can do you harm." They had reached the threshold now, and she reluctantly allowed herself to be coaxed back over it and into the passageway. She was amazed at the speed with which the room had caught her attention; made itself the center of her thoughts.

Even now, it was still difficult to focus her attention on anything but the scene beyond the door, but finally she dragged her eyes away from the approaching horsemen and sought out Zeffer.

He had fallen to his knees three or four yards from the door, putting up no defense against Katya's assault.

"I told you, didn't I?" she said, slapping his head. "I never wanted to see you in this house ever again. You understand me? Ever again."

"I'm sorry," he said, his head bowed. "I just brought -- "

"I don't care who you brought. This house is forbidden to you."

"Yes ... I know."

His acquiescence did nothing to placate her. The reverse, in fact: it seemed to inflame her. She kicked him. "You revolt me," she said.

He bent over, as though to present a smaller target to her. She pushed him, hard, and he fell. She moved in to kick him again, aiming for his face, but at that moment Tammy saw what she was about to do, and let out a cry of protest.

"Leave him alone!" she said.

Katya turned. "What?"

"You heard me. Leave him alone!"

Katya's beauty was disfigured by the naked contempt on her face. She was breathing heavily, and her face was flushed.

"I'll do what it suits me to do in my own house," she said, her lip curling. "And no fat, ugly bitch like you is going to tell me otherwise."

Tammy knew plenty about Katya Lupi by now, of course; her intimidating reputation went before her. But at that moment, seeing Zeffer lying on the floor, and hearing what the woman had just said, any trace of intimidation was burned away by a blaze of anger. Even the glories of the Devil's Country were forgotten at that moment.

She walked straight towards Katya and pushed her hard, laying her hands against the bitch's little breasts to do so. Katya was clearly not used to being manhandled. She came back at Tammy in an instant.

"Don't you dare touch me!" she shrieked. Then she back-handed Tammy; a clean, wide strike.

Tammy fell back, the metallic tang of blood in her mouth. There were three sickening heartbeats when she feared the force of Katya's blow was going to knock her unconscious. Darkness pulsed at the corners of her vision. But she was determined not to be floored by one blow, even if it did have something more than ordinary human force behind it, as she suspected it did.

She reached out for something to steady her, and her hand found the door-jamb. As she caught hold of it, she glanced back over her shoulder, remembering her proximity to the strange beauty of the Devil's Country. But the power of the room's illusion had been momentarily knocked from her head. The walls were simply covered in tiles now. There were trees and rocks and a painted river on those tiles, but none of it was so finely rendered that it could have been mistaken for reality. The only part of the scene before her that was real was Todd, who was still lingering at the threshold. Apparently he could see what Tammy could not because at that moment he threw himself over the threshold like a man in fear of something coming close on his heels. He caught hold of the doorhandle, and started to pull the door closed, but as he did so Katya came back into view and blocked the door with her foot.

"Don't close it!" she told Todd.

Todd obeyed her. He let go of the handle. The door struck Katya's leg and bounced open again.

Now the machinations of the room began to work on Tammy afresh. The gloomy air seethed, and the shapes of four horsemen appeared out of the murk, still riding towards the door.

The leader -- the Duke, Tammy thought, this is the Duke -- pulled hard on the reins to slow his mount. The animal made a din, as though its primitive gaze was failing to make sense of what it was ahead of it. Rather than advance any further it came to a panicked halt, throwing up clods of dirt as it did so. Goga jumped from the saddle, shouting a number of incomprehensible orders back at his men, who had also brought their animals to a stop. They proceeded to dismount. There were whispers of superstitious doubt between the men: plainly whatever they were witnessing (the door, the passageway) they could make little or no sense of it. That fact didn't slow their advance, however. They dutifully followed their leader towards the door, swords drawn.

By now Tammy had recovered sufficiently to grab hold of Todd's arm and pull him back from the threshold.

"Come away," she urged him.

He looked round at her. She was probably more familiar with his face, and with his limited palette of expressions, than she was with her own. But she'd never seen the look of stupefaction he wore right now. The veins at his temples were throbbing, his mouth was slack; his blood-shot eyes seemed to have difficulty focusing on her.

She tugged harder on his arm, in the hope of shaking him out of his stupor. Behind him she could see the horsemen approaching the door, their step more cautious now that they were almost at the threshold. Having stopped the door from being closed Katya had stepped away from it, leaving Todd the closest of them all to the horsemen. So close, in fact, that had the Duke so chosen, he could have lunged from where he stood, and killed Todd with a single stroke.

He did not do so, however. He hung back from the door, eyeing it with suspicion and awe. Though none of the light from the hallway seemed to illuminate the world on the other side of the doorway, Tammy could see the man's face quite clearly: his severely angular features, his long, braided beard, black shot through with streaks of gray; his dark, heavy-lidded eyes. He was by no means as beautiful as Todd had once been, but there was a gravitas in his physiognomy which Todd's corn-fed charm could never have approached. No doubt he was responsible for all manner of crimes -- in such a landscape as he'd ridden who would not lay claim to their share of felonies? -- but in that moment, in the midst of a dark journey of her own, Tammy would have instinctively preferred the eloquence of this face for company than Todd's easy beauty.

Indeed, if she had ever been in love with Todd Pickett -- which by many definitions she had -- she fell out of love with him at that moment, comparing his face with that of Duke Goga, and finding it wanting.

That was not to say that she didn't want Todd safe from this place; from the house and all its inhabitants, especially Katya. So she hauled on his arm again, yelling for him to get away from the door, and this time her message got through to him.

Todd retreated, and as he did so Katya caught hold of Zeffer by the hair and lifted him up. Tammy was too concerned with reclaiming Todd from the threshold to do anything to save Zeffer. And Zeffer in turn did nothing to save himself. He simply let the woman he had adored pick him up, and with the same nearly supernatural strength Tammy herself had felt just moments before, Katya pitched Zeffer through the open door.

The horsemen were waiting on the other side, swords at the ready.

Only now, as he stumbled across the ground before them, did Zeffer raise his arms to protect himself against the swordsmen. Whether the Duke took this harmless motion as some attempt at aggression, and reacted to protect himself, or whether he simply wanted to do harm Tammy would never know. The Duke lifted his sword and brought it down in a great swooping arc that cut through the meat of Zeffer's right hand, taking off all four of his fingers, and the top half of his thumb. Blood spurted out from the wounds, and Zeffer let out a cry that was one part disbelief to two of agony. He stared at his maimed hand for a moment, then he turned from his mutilator and stumbled back towards the door.

For an instant, he lifted his eyes, and his eyes met Tammy's. They had a moment only to look at one another. Then Duke Goga came at Zeffer again and drove his sword through the middle of his back.

There was a terrible cracking sound, as the blade cracked Zeffer's breastbone and then the point emerged from the middle of his chest.

Zeffer threw back his head, and caught hold of the edge of the door with his unmaimed hand. He had his eyes fixed on Tammy as he did so, as though he was drawing the power to do whatever he was planning to do from her. There was a long moment when in fact he did nothing; only teetered on the threshold, his eyelids growing lazy. Then-summoning one last Herculean effort of will-he gave Tammy a tiny smile and closed the door in her face.

It was like being woken from a dream. One moment Tammy had been staring into Zeffer's stricken face, while the men closed in on him from behind, and the sky seethed overhead. The next the door had shut this terrible vision out, and she was back in the little hallway with Todd at her side.

The sight of Zeffer's execution had momentarily distracted Katya from any further mischief. She was simply staring at the door as though she could see through it to the horror on the other side.

Tammy didn't give her a chance to snap out of the trance. She started up the stairs, pulling Todd after her.

"Christ ... " Todd muttered to himself. "Christ oh Christ oh Christ ... "

Five stairs up, Tammy chanced a backward glance, but Katya was still standing in front of the door.

What was she thinking, Tammy wondered. What have I done? Did a woman like that ever think 'what have I done'? With Zeffer gone, she would be alone in Coldheart Canyon. Alone with the dead. Not a pretty prospect.

Perhaps she was regretting. Just a little.

And while she regretted, (if regretting was what she was doing) Tammy continued to haul Todd after her up the stairs.

Six steps now; seven, eight, nine.

Now the escapees were on the half-landing. Through the window off to their left Tammy could see the sight that had held Zeffer's attention just minutes before: the occupants of Coldheart Canyon pressing against the glass.

Why didn't they simply break in, she wondered? They weren't, after all, insubstantial. They had weight, they had force. If they wanted to get in so badly, why didn't they simply break the glass or splinter the doors?

The question went from her head the next instant, driven out by a wail of demand from below.

"Todd?"

It was Katya, of course. She had finally stirred from her fugue state and was coming up the stairs after them. Speaking in her sweetest voice. Her come-hither voice.

"Todd, where are you going?"

Tammy felt nauseous. Katya could still do them harm. She still had power over Todd and she knew it. That was why she put on that little girl questioning voice.

"Todd?" Katya said again. "Wait, darling."

If she let go of him, Tammy guessed, he would obey Katya's request. And then they'd be lost. Katya would never let him go. She'd kill him rather than let him escape her a second time.

There wasn't much advice Tammy could give to Todd except: "Don't look back."

He glanced at her, his expression plaintive. It made her feel as though she were leading a child rather than a grown man.

"We can't just leave her here," he said.

"After what she just did!"

"Don't listen to her," Katya said, her voice suddenly a siren-song, the little-girl lightness erased in favor of something more velvety. "She just wants you for herself."

Todd frowned.

"You can't leave me, Todd."

And then more softly still: "I won't let you leave me."

"Just remember what she did down there," Tammy said to Todd.

"Zeffer was a nuisance," Katya said. She was getting closer, Tammy knew; her voice had dropped to a sultry murmur. "I never loved him, Todd. You know that. He hung around causing trouble. Listen to me. You don't want to go with this woman. Look at her, then look at me. See what a choice you're making."

Tammy half-expected Todd to obey Katya's instruction. But Todd simply studied the stairs as they climbed, which under the circumstances was a minor triumph. Perhaps he still had the will-power in him to resist Katya, Tammy thought. He wasn't her object yet.

Even so the murdering bitch wasn't ready to give up.

"Todd?" Katya said, now casual, as though none of this was of any great significance. "Will you turn round for a moment? Just for a moment? Please. I want to see your face before you go. That's not asking much, now is it? Just one more time. I can't bear it. Please. Todd ... I ... can't ... bear it."

Oh Lord, Tammy thought, she's turning on the tears. She knew how potent a well-timed flood of tears could be. Her sister had always been very quick to turn on the waterworks when she wanted something; and it had usually done the trick.

"Please, my love ... "

It was almost believable; the words catching in her throat, the soft sob.

" ... don't go. I won't be able to live without you."

They were still a few strides from the front door. Then, once they were out, they had to get along the pathway and onto the street. Somehow she doubted Katya's power extended far beyond the limits of the house. The Canyon might have been hers once upon a time, but she'd lost control of it in the decades since her heyday. Now it belonged to the ghosts and the animals, and the bestial offspring of both.

Still coaxing Todd after her, Tammy made her way across the hallway to the front door.

Behind them, Katya kept up her tearful appeals: declarations of love, interspersed with sobs. Then more appeals for him to turn around and look at her.

"You don't want to go," she called to Todd, "you know you don't. Especially with her. Lord, Todd, look at her. You really want that?"

Finally, Tammy snapped. "How the hell do you know what he wants, bitch?" she said, turning to look round at the woman on their heels.

"Because we're soul-mates," Katya said.

Her eyes were swollen and red, Tammy noted with some satisfaction, and there were tears pouring down her face. Her mascara was running down her pale cheeks in two black rivulets. "He knows it's true," Katya went on. "We've suffered the same way. Haven't we, Todd? Remember how you said it was like I was reading your mind? And I said it was because we were the same, deep down? Remember that?"

"Ignore her," Tammy said. They were no more than three strides from the front door.

But Katya -- realizing she was close to losing -- had one last trick up her sleeve. One final power-play. "If you step out of this house," she said to Todd, "then it's over between us. Do you understand me? If you stay -- oh, if you stay, my darling -- then I'm yours. I'm yours body and soul -- I mean it: body and soul. But if you go it'll be as though you never existed."

Finally, something she said carried enough weight to stop Todd in his tracks.

"Ignore her," Tammy said. "Please."

"You know I can do that," Katya went on.

Todd turned, and looked back at her, which was exactly what Tammy was praying he wouldn't do. Katya was standing in the darkness close to the top of the stairs but the shadows did not conceal the fierce brilliance of her stare. Her eyes seemed to flicker in the murk, as though there were flames behind them.

Now she had succeeded in making him look at her again, she softened her tone. She certainly had quite a repertoire, Tammy thought. First demands, then pleas and siren-songs; then tears and threats. Now what?

"I know what you're thinking ... " she said.

Ah, mind reading.

" ... you're thinking that you've got a life out there. And it's calling you back"

Tammy was puzzled. This sounded like a self-defeating argument. "You're thinking you want to be back in the spotlight, where you belong ... "

While Katya talked, Tammy made a momentous decision. She let go of Todd's hand. She'd done all that she could. If after all this Todd decided that he wanted to turn back and give himself to the wretched woman, then there was nothing more Tammy could do about it. He was a lost cause.

She crossed swiftly to the front door, and opened it. The first tug was a little difficult. Then the door swung open easily, majestically. There were no ghosts on the threshold, only the refreshing night air, sweetened by the scent of night-blooming jasmine.

Behind her, in the house, Katya was finishing her argument. "The fact is," she said, "there's nothing out there for you now. Do you understand me, Todd? There's nothing."

Tammy stepped out onto the front steps. She looked back at Todd, in time to catch a look of pitiful confusion on his face. He literally didn't know which way to turn.

"Don't look at me," Tammy said to him. "It's your choice."

His expression became still more pained. That wasn't what he wanted to hear.

"Look, you're a grown man," Tammy said. "If you want to stay with her, knowing what she's capable of, then you stay. I hope you'll be very happy together."

"Todd ... " Katya murmured.

She stepped out of the shadows now, choosing her moment, as ever, beautifully. The demonic Katya, the woman who'd thrashed Zeffer then thrown him to Goga, had vanished completely. In her place was a sad, gentle woman -- or the appearance of such -- who opened her arms to Todd like a loving mother.

"Come back to me," she said.

He made the tiniest nod of his head and Tammy's heart sank.

He started to turn his back on the door, but as he did so there was a sudden and furious eruption of noise from the depths of the house. Somebody in the Devil's Country was beating on the door: a furious tattoo.

It came at the perfect moment. At the sound from below Todd seemed to snap out of his mesmerized state and instead of heading for Katya's open arms he began to retreat towards the door.

"You know what?" he said to Katya. "I can't take this place any longer. I'm sorry. I've got to get out."

Katya flew at him, her arms outstretched, her eyes wide. "No!" she cried. "I want you here!"

It was more than Todd could take. He backed away from her and stumbled out over the step.

"Finally," Tammy said.

He grabbed hold of her hand. "Get me the fuck out of here," he said.

This time there was no hesitation in his voice, no turning back. They ran to the gate and out into the street, not stopping for a moment. Tammy slammed the gate loudly, not so much because she felt it would keep the bitch from following, but because it made the point to the entire Canyon that they were indeed out of the house and away.

"My car's up the road," she told Todd, though of course it was now three days since she'd left it, and there was no guarantee it would still be sitting there. And the keys; what about the keys? Had she left them in the ignition? She thought she had; but she was by no means certain. So much had happened to her in the intervening time; she had no clear memory of what she'd done with the keys.

"I'm assuming you're going to come with me?" she said to Todd. He looked at her blankly. "To the car," she said, for emphasis.

"Yes."

"It's up the street."

"Yes. I heard you."

"Well, shall we go then?"

He nodded, but he didn't move. His gaze had drifted back to the house. Leaving him to stare, Tammy set off up the road to where she'd left the car. There was neither moon nor stars in the sky; just a blanket of amber-tinted cloud. She soon lost sight of Todd as she headed up the benighted road. Memories of her night-journey through the place, with all its attendant miseries and hallucinations, rose up before her, but she told herself to put them out of her head. She was going to be out of this damn Canyon in a few minutes, long before it got back into her mind again, and started its tricks.

The car, when she reached it, was unlocked. She opened the door and slipped into the driver's seat, fumbling for the ignition. Yes! The keys were there. "Thank you, God," she said, with a late show of piety.

She turned on the engine, and switched on the headlights. They lit up the whole street ahead. She put the car into gear and brought the car roaring around the corner. Todd had wandered out into the middle of the road, and she could have ploughed into him (which would have made an ignominious end to the night's adventures) had he not stepped out of her way. But at least the distracted look had gone from his face. When he got into the car there was a new and welcome urgency about his manner. "We're out of here," he said.

"I thought for a moment that you were planning to stay."

"No ... I was just thinking ... about what a fool I'd been."

"Well stop thinking for a while," Tammy said. "It'll slow us down." She put her foot down and they sped off down the winding street. About halfway down the Canyon he said: "Do you think she's going to come after us?"

"No," Tammy said. "I don't think her pride would let her."

She had no sooner spoken than something sprang into the glare of the headlights. Todd let out a yelp of surprise, but Tammy knew in a heartbeat what it was: one of the hybrids she'd encountered on the slopes. It was ugly, even by the standards of its malformed breed: a loping, pasty thing with the flesh missing from the lower half of its face, exposing a sickly rictus.

Tammy made no attempt to avoid striking the beast. Instead she drove straight into it. The moment before it was struck the thing opened its lipless mouth horribly wide, as though it thought it might scare the vehicle off. Then the front of the car struck it, and its body rolled up onto the hood, momentarily sprawling over the windshield. For a few seconds, Tammy was driving blind, with the face of the beast grotesquely plastered against the glass. Then one of her more suicidal swerves threw the thing off, leaving just a smudge of its pale yellow fluids on the glass.

Very quietly Todd said: "What the fuck was that?"

"I'll tell you some other time," Tammy said. And leaving the explanation there she proceeded down the winding road in uncontested silence, bringing them finally to some anonymous but lamplit street, and so, out of the entrails of Coldheart Canyon, and back into the City of Angels.