Darkroom

by Graham Masterton

  Jim put down his book, wiped his hands, and opened the envelope. Inside was a 10 × 8 picture of the suspect Hayward Mitchell had seen entering the Tubbs’ beach-house. Now, however, the suspect had a white face and dark hair, and Jim was startled to see who it was. The artist’s impression was slightly too long in the face, and his eyebrows were too heavy, but there was no doubt at all that it was Brad Moorcock.

  ‘Unbelievable, isn’t it?’ said Lieutenant Harris. He popped his fingers. ‘I recognized him just like that.’

  Jim handed the picture back. He was surprised, and more than a little sorry. From what he had seen of Brad, he had seemed like a regular, decent young man. ‘Brad came up to me in the corridor only yesterday to tell me how regretful he was.’

  ‘Well, now you know why, don’t you?’

  Jim stood up and brushed the crumbs off his pants. ‘What are you going to do now? Arrest him?’

  ‘I don’t have any choice.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Jim told him.

  Lieutenant Harris beckoned to the two officers in the squad car, and together they walked toward the college entrance. Lieutenant Harris said, ‘I still can’t work out how you knew this picture was the wrong way round. Black instead of white.’

  Jim couldn’t tell him about Robert H. Vane. Instead, he said, ‘Reverse thinking, Lieutenant. Sometimes, if you can look at a problem the other way around, the answer is staring you right in the face.’

  First they went to see Dr Ehrlichman. Even before she knew what they wanted, Mrs Frogg stood up and said, ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen. The principal is very tied up.’

  ‘In that case, you’ll have to untie him,’ said Lieutenant Harris. ‘We’ve come to arrest one of your students on suspicion of first-degree murder. Brad Moorcock.’

  Mrs Frogg’s eyes bulged. She hurried into Dr Ehrlichman’s office, and almost immediately Dr Ehrlichman emerged, flustered and obviously shocked. ‘There must be some mistake, Lieutenant. Brad Moorcock is captain of our football team.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. Just because a student excels at sport, that doesn’t give him carte blanche to kill people.’

  Dr Ehrlichman accompanied them to the gym, tutting and shaking his head and making little puffing noises. Brad Moorcock was there with five of his friends, practicing basketball passes. The gym resounded with squeaky echoes, and shouts of ‘Give me the ball, you moron!’

  Lieutenant Harris walked directly up to Brad and said, ‘Brad Moorcock, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murdering Bobby Tubbs and Sara Miller.’

  The gym immediately fell silent. Brad stared at Lieutenant Harris in disbelief. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me, son. You have the right to remain silent, but anything you do say—’

  ‘I didn’t kill anybody! This is crazy!’

  Jim went up to him. ‘Somebody saw you down at the beach, Brad.’

  ‘How could anybody see me? I wasn’t there! I was at home that night!’

  ‘If you can prove it, fine,’ said Lieutenant Harris. ‘Meanwhile, you need to come down to headquarters.’

  ‘I wasn’t there! And why would I kill them?’

  ‘Maybe you were sore because Sara dumped you. Maybe you didn’t like the idea of her dating anybody else.’

  Brad turned to Jim in desperation. ‘OK, I treated her bad. But I admitted it, didn’t I? I took advantage of her. But I never would have hurt her. Never. I wouldn’t hurt anybody.’

  ‘Save it,’ said Lieutenant Harris. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the gymnasium doors, and the two officers escorted Brad away.

  ‘This is very distressing,’ said Dr Ehrlichman. He gave Jim a meaningful look and loudly blew his nose. ‘I had hoped that West Grove had finally refurbished its reputation.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting that this has anything to do with me?’ Jim asked him.

  ‘Of course not, Mr Rook. However … it does seem as if you’re dogged by unusually persistent ill luck.’

  Lieutenant Harris laid his hand on Jim’s shoulder. ‘Believe me, Principal. I see it every day, every place I look, twenty-four seven. The whole world is dogged by unusually persistent ill luck.’

  When Lieutenant Harris and Dr Ehrlichman had left, Jim turned to Brad Moorcock’s friends. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing we can do but wait and see.’

  ‘Did he really kill Bobby and Sara?’ asked a tall black boy with a lightning flash shaved into his hair.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jim. ‘Some wino on the beach saw a young man entering the beach house just before Bobby and Sara got burned – and judging by his description it could have been Brad. But what happened that night … it was all very outré.’

  ‘Outré?’

  ‘That means weird. But I’m not supposed to tell you anything more. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s outré,’ said a stocky boy with ginger hair. ‘It’s the way that Brad’s been acting for the past three weeks.’

  ‘Oh, yes? What makes you say that?’

  ‘He hasn’t been normal, that’s all.’

  All five boys nodded in agreement. The ginger-haired boy said, ‘Don’t get me wrong or nothing. Brad can be a great guy, and he’s a terrific captain of football. But he was always throwing his weight around and making sure that everybody knew what an all-round amazing dude he is, especially when it came to girls.’

  ‘So, what’s changed?’

  ‘He’s kept his yap shut for a change. He’s been modest, even. He’s stopped flicking people on the ass with a wet sports towel and generally acting like a dork. You wouldn’t have thought he was the same guy. Like today – he always used to hog the ball when he played basketball, and slam people right in the face with it, and think that was hilarious. But not any more.’

  ‘And he’s been like this for how long? Three weeks?’

  ‘That’s right. We met him on the beach, three Saturdays back, and he was horsing around the way he always does, kicking sand and pulling people’s shorts down and half-drowning them in the ocean. But when he came to college on Monday, he was totally changed.’

  A boy with a black buzzcut and a hoarse, adenoidal voice said, ‘We first noticed it when Ollerkin got into trouble in the pool.’

  ‘Ollerkin?’

  ‘If you’d met Ollerkin, sir, you wouldn’t need to ask. Like, if somebody from another planet wanted to know what a dweeb was, you’d only have to point to Ollerkin.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘We were walking past the pool and Ollerkin was coughing and spluttering in the water and waving his arms and calling out “help!” Brad dived in, fully dressed, with his sneakers on and everything. At first I thought he was going to push Ollerkin under the water. That’s the kind of thing he would have done before. But he supported the guy’s head, and he swam with him right to the side of the pool and helped him out. We just stared at each other, like, duh.’

  ‘And he’s been like that ever since?’

  The five boys nodded.

  ‘The trouble was, we didn’t like to make fun of him in case he was kidding us along. Believe me, Brad’s the kind of guy who wouldn’t hesitate to empty a whole can of wood preservative over your head, or crap in your lunchbox. Well, he used to be. But for three weeks he’s been acting like a pussy.’

  Jim took off his glasses. ‘Do any of you know if anything happened to him that particular weekend? Anything out of the ordinary?’

  ‘What, like God spoke in his ear and told him to get his shit together, or he’d never get to heaven?’

  ‘Exactly that.’

  They looked at each other, but they all shook their heads. Jim said, ‘All right. Thanks. You’re all coming to the funeral tomorrow, I expect?’

  He was cleaning the chalkboard at the end of the day when a short black woman in a bright-pink pants suit came into the classroom on clicky-heeled shoes. She had a flat face but a very bouffant wig, like a bronze chrysanthemum.

  ‘So this is pandemonium,’ sh
e said, in a voice as dry as crushed crackers.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘This is the class that all of the decibels come from.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Special Class II. They can be a little exuberant, but they’re pretty well behaved, considering their various difficulties.’

  The woman came forward and held out her hand. Her nails were like bronze claws, to match her wig. ‘Raananah Washington. Your new vice-principal.’

  ‘Jim Rook. That’s an interesting name, Raananah.’

  ‘It’s biblical, Jim. It means “unspoiled”.’

  ‘Unspoiled. I’ll remember that.’

  Raananah Washington looked at the chalkboard, where Jim had rubbed off everything except the word phantoms.

  ‘So, today you’ve been teaching your special students about ghosts?’

  ‘No. We’ve been discussing what makes human beings human. That’s from a poem by Robinson Jeffers: “They have hunted the phantoms and missed the house. It is not good to forget over what gulfs the spirit of the beauty of humanity, the petal of a lost flower blown seaward by the night-wind, floats to its quietness.”’

  ‘And they understand that, your special students?’

  ‘They understand about being human, yes.’

  ‘Good. Because it’s my personal feeling that special classes like this are not the way to draw disadvantaged students into the educational community.’

  Jim had been just about to erase phantoms, but now he hesitated. ‘Um … what exactly do you mean by that?’ he asked her.

  She circled around the classroom in her clicky shoes, like an over-trained circus pony. ‘My personal feeling is that special students should intermingle with the rest of the college. Special classes such as these are educationally segregationist, socially demeaning and have a negative effect on young people with learning difficulties.’

  Jim left phantoms and lowered his eraser. ‘I’ll tell you what does have a negative effect on young people with learning difficulties, Raananah – sitting in a class with other students who can read and write ten times better than they can. In my experience they very quickly give up trying to compete, because they feel humiliated, and then they’re lost to us forever.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jim. I think that remedial classes are patronizing and outdated. And what are you teaching them? Robinson Jeffers? A white male poet who died in 1948?’

  ‘Shakespeare was a white male poet who died in 1616. I teach him, too.’

  ‘There’s no need for sarcasm, Jim. I just want to put you on notice that I plan to close down all of West Grove’s remedial classes and welcome their students into the educational mainstream.’

  ‘Well, thanks for the warning, Raananah. Maybe I can put you on notice that if you do that, all of my students will still be semi-illiterate when they leave college. Because of that, they will justifiably feel cheated by the education system and ostracized by society as a whole. They will become anti-social, welfare-dependent, and a high percentage of them will turn to drugs and crime as the only way they can make a living. Not only that, they will bring up the next generation of children the same way.’

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

  Jim rubbed out phantoms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Check? Check what?’

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

  Jim said, ‘What time was this?’

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

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

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Eleanor.

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘You won’t be able to.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Jim! Don’t!’

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

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

  ‘Jim, are you OK?’

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

  Twelve

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

  ‘You want a drink?’ Eleanor asked him.

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

  ‘Can you see anything yet?’

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

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

  ‘What about them?’

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

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

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

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