Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

by Clive Barker

  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: “Lăsaţi-i! Pe cai! Ăla-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 than ever.

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

  "Este acolo! Grăbiţi-va!"

  "In padure! Copilul este in 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 were 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. In 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 Saint 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 the 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 clear 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 ano
ther 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 exactly when. When you're a little child you don't listen to those kinds 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 black hoof 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 they 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.

  "Tătal Nostru care ne ești in Ceruri, sfinpeasca-se numele Tău. Fie Impărătia Ta, facă-se voia Ta, precum in cer așa si pe pămant."

  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.

  "Pâinea noastră cea de toate zilele dăne-o nouă azi si ne iartă nouă greselile noaștre."

  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 toward 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 shred-dings, dead.

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

  " 'This man is the lucky one among 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.