Darkroom (24 page)

Special Class II looked at each other uneasily. ‘Isn't that kind of illegal?' asked Sue-Marie.

‘Robert H. Vane has been dead for a hundred and fifty years. How's he going to make a complaint?'

‘What about his assistant?' asked George. ‘This woman that Brad paid his money to when he had his picture taken? Like, if Vane has turned into some kind of a mutant, she must be driving his van around for him, and taking care of all his equipment and stuff.'

Jim said, ‘I don't know who she is, or why she's helping him. But she's an accessory to murder, don't forget, so I don't think
she'll
be making any complaints, either.'

There was a long, bewildered silence while the class tried to assimilate what Jim had asked them to believe, and what he was asking them to do. He could see it on their faces.
Supposing he's lost it. Supposing he's some kind of basket case. I mean, the way that bus caught fire, that
had
to be lightning, right? Like, what was more believable – lightning, or some spooky invisible creature that was half-man and half-camera?

Then, very slowly, Shadow stood up, and held up his hand as if he were pledging allegiance to the flag. ‘I just want to say that this is the weirdest shit that I ever heard in my entire life, and if anybody else had told me this shit, I would've paid them to take a taxi straight to the nuthouse. But I believe what you say, Mr Rook, because I believe that you don't tell no lies, and if you want anybody to come along with you and trash this dude's doo-doo-type collection, I'm with you.'

Randy raised his hand, too; and then Freddy.

‘Anybody else?' Jim asked them. ‘I'm not going to say it won't be dangerous, because it might be. But I don't see any other way of protecting ourselves. Yesterday it was Pinky and David. Tomorrow it could be any one of you.'

Edward put up his hand, and then – to Jim's surprise – so did Sue-Marie.

‘Sue-Marie, I'm not sure that this is going to be suitable for girls.'

‘You're not going to sexually disallow me, are you, sir?'

‘Well …' said Jim. ‘So long as you don't expect to be treated any differently from any of the boys.'

‘Sir … Pinky was my best friend.'

Jim looked at her and he could see that she was close to tears. ‘Sure. I know that. Thanks for volunteering.'

Shadow said, ‘This camera dude killed Pinky and David, man, and we're going to show him that
nobody
can mess with Special Class II, no matter how long they been dead. Even if they been dead since dinosaur days.'

Jim said, ‘OK … I'm going to end this class by reading a poem for Pinky and David. I'd like you all to stand up, if you would, and close your eyes, and think of Pinky and David, and their parents, and their brothers and sisters, and everybody who is grieving over their loss. It's by Kenneth Bright, and it's called “Cold Memory.”

He closed the book. Vanilla said, ‘Amen.'

J
im felt hungry around eleven o'clock that evening, and microwaved himself a can of chili con carne. He had only just finished eating when the doorbell buzzed. He went to open it, wiping his mouth on a torn-off piece of kitchen paper. Outside in the corridor stood his A-Team: Shadow, Randy, Edward, Freddy and Sue-Marie. They were all wearing dark clothes and woolly hats, and Shadow was wearing a hood, although he was so conspicuously tall.

‘This is some building, Mr Rook,' said Freddy. ‘Doesn't Scratch Daddy live in this building?'

‘If I knew who Scratch Daddy was, I'd probably be able to tell you.'

‘Only the coolest mixer in the universe.'

Sue-Marie wandered into the living room and circled around it with her mouth open. ‘This is really
amazing
,' she said. ‘It's like Castle Dracula.'

‘Is that chili you've been having for supper, sir?' asked Randy, sniffing the air. ‘Do you put crumbled corn chips in your chili? I always do. Gives it extra texture, you know? My uncle puts cigarette-ash in his, did you ever hear of that?'

‘I … ah – this chili came out of a can. I didn't have time to cook it from scratch.'

Shadow walked across to the portrait of Robert H. Vane. ‘So this is where he's hiding, yeah? That's one seriously strange picture, that is.'

They gathered around it. Jim said, ‘I don't know for sure if he's going to come out tonight. We may have to wait two or three nights, or even longer – there's no way of telling. But I get the feeling that he needs to keep on taking new pictures of people, rather like vampires need blood. He's been trapped for nearly forty years, after all. He may need fresh supplies of evil images to build up his strength.'

Edward asked, ‘Mr Rook – you said in class that you have this ability to see dead people and demons and such. When Vane comes out of this picture –
if
he comes out – will we be able to see him, too?'

‘I don't know for sure. It's possible. I've never come across anything like this before. The thing that's hiding in this painting is not a spirit in the usual sense of the word, he's only one side of Robert H. Vane's personality. And then, of course, he's mutated: I never saw anything like it. Legs like a camera tripod, an eye like a giant lens, and a hand like a flashgun.'

‘Half-man, half-machine,' said Randy. ‘That's like
Robocop
. Or maybe Seven of Nine, from
Star Trek
.'

‘Randy, hallo?' said Sue-Marie. ‘
Robocop
and Seven of Nine are
fiction
, OK? Robert H. Vane is really real.'

Jim picked up a tangled length of string, with small Christmas bells attached to it, as well as a can opener and two bunches of keys. ‘I'm going to hang this string right across the painting. If Vane
does
decide to climb out of it, we should be able to hear him.'

‘And then what?'

‘We follow him. That's all we can do.'

At that moment Tibbles walked into the living room, and stopped, and looked around.

‘What happened to your cat, sir?' asked Sue-Marie, horrified.

‘Mr Vane here tried to incinerate her, but he only half-succeeded.'

Tibbles went around and suspiciously sniffed all the students in turn. She seemed to approve of them, because she climbed up against Shadow's leg and started to nuzzle his knee.

Jim massaged her ears. ‘She looks pretty gruesome at the moment but her fur's growing back. It's a miracle she wasn't killed.'

‘Maybe it wasn't so much of a miracle,' put in Edward. ‘She's a cat, after all, and animals don't have an evil side to their personality, do they, in the same way that humans do? Like, they can't tell the difference between right and wrong.'

Shadow unhooked Tibbles from the leg of his cargo pants. ‘Ow! She may not be evil but she sure knows how to dig her claws in.'

Jim showed the A-Team around the apartment. Sue-Marie adored the bathroom, and practically invited herself around for a shower. Randy poked around the kitchen, flicking through cookbooks, and helping himself to a large spoonful of Jim's left-over chili. Shadow looked through his CD collection, and kept sorrowfully shaking his head.

‘Man, I gotta come round here and sort out your tunes. I mean, what's this Fountains of Wayne, man? You need some Choppa and some Kingpin Skinny Pimp and you definitely need some Ying Yang Twins.'

Edward sat down at the dining-room table and looked through Raymond Boschetto's books. ‘These are really rare, sir, some of these photographs of early Los Angeles. Look at this one:
An Orange Tree that Died Overnight, Simi Valley, 1889.
And who are those weird people in hoods, standing around it? They look like Ku Klux Klan.'

‘Raymond Boschetto collected hundreds and hundreds of strange photographs,' said Jim. ‘I think he was looking for any pictures that Robert H. Vane may have taken. Any images of pure evil.'

‘God, you have some totally freaky pictures in this apartment,' said Sue-Marie. She came and stood very close to him, so that her left breast pressed against his arm. ‘I don't know how you can sleep here, sir.
I
couldn't. Not without somebody to hold me.'

Jim looked down at her and she looked back at him and blinked her sooty eyelashes, as if to say, ‘What?'

‘OK,' said Jim. ‘I have plenty of Coke and Gatorade and donuts and I can grill some hotdogs later if anybody's hungry. I suggest we sit here in the kitchen and keep our ears open in case Vane tries to climb out.'

‘We're not going to keep watch?'

‘Not directly. You've already experienced what Vane can do with his flashgun. If he climbs out of that painting and finds that we're standing in his way, it's going to be cremated students on the menu.'

‘Human ash,' said Randy. ‘That might be good in chili.'

They sat around the kitchen table and talked for more than two hours. They discussed their favorite movies, their favorite TV programs, their favorite music. They talked about what they were going to do when they graduated from college. Shadow was confident that he was going to build ‘a style empire.' He was going to produce hip-hop records and DVDs and manage sports personalities, as well as designing men's fashion and generally being an international icon of all that was cool. Sue-Marie had a hazy but very sincere idea that she wanted to ‘fly around the world like Princess Di used to, helping people with no education and no food.' Edward had plans to design computer software that would give people completely invented lives, complete with childhood photos, school qualifications, credit ratings, and comprehensive details of vacations they had never been on. ‘Fantastically useful if you're a fraudster, right, or a bigamist, or your real life is so boring you just feel like banging your head against a wall.'

The Italian clock in the living room chimed three thirty, and they all checked their watches. They had already drunk eleven cans of Coke, three-quarters of a bottle of Gatorade, and eaten most of a double pack of Oreos.

‘Looks like Vane the Pain's going to be a no-show,' said Freddy.

Jim rubbed his eyes. ‘Let's give him till four. Then I think we'd better call it a night.'

‘Maybe he knows that we're waiting for him,' said Sue-Marie.

‘He probably does,' Jim agreed. ‘I think he's aware of everything that's going on around him. But I also think that he's hungry. He has a lot of time to make up for. A whole lot of souls to collect.'

‘Well, I don't mind waiting,' said Randy, scraping the last of Jim's chili out of the pot, and licking the spoon. ‘Next time, though, I'm going to bring some supplies, and cook us all a gumbo. Everybody here like chicken gumbo?'

‘I'm a vegetarian,' said Edward.

‘That's OK, you can eat the gumbo and leave the chicken on the side of your plate.'

Freddy suddenly raised his hand and said, ‘
Sssh!
Did you hear something?'

They stopped bantering and listened. All Jim could hear was the fridge muttering and the air-conditioner rattling and muffled laughter from somebody's TV, turned up too loud.

‘What was it, Freddy?' asked Sue-Marie.

‘I don't know … sounded like ker-
lunk
… like a door closing.'

Jim said, ‘Wait here.' He left the kitchen and went soft-footed to the living-room door. He had left it two or three inches ajar, so that he could hear the bells on his booby-trap tinkling if Vane tried to climb out of the painting.

Jim stopped behind the door and listened again. Nothing. Very slowly, he eased it open. It creaked slightly, and he hesitated, but there was no sound except for another roar of laughter from the neighbors' TV. He glanced back toward the kitchen, and his A-Team were all watching him, their faces tense. ‘It's OK,' he said hoarsely. ‘I don't think there's been any movement.'

He pushed the door wider and put his head around it. The only illumination in the living room came from a single table lamp with a brown glass Tiffany shade. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed. The rug was rucked up, exactly as it was before. The cushions on the couch were still indented where Tibbles had been sleeping on them.

He walked into the room and approached the painting. Robert H. Vane was still standing there, with his black cloth draped over his head. But then Jim saw that the string of bells was broken in the middle, and the bells themselves were melted into tiny, twisted blobs. He lifted up one end of the string and saw that it had been burned through.

With a chilly sense of failure, he realized what had happened. Robert H. Vane's image was only a painted surface, and so it had remained in the frame. His shadow-self must have been concealed in the silver oxides underneath. It had already climbed out of the painting, and had crept out of the apartment without them being aware of it. The
ker-lunk
sound that Freddy had heard was the front door closing behind him.