Elsinore Canyon (6 page)

“Hack it open!” I said. “Burn it!”

He clambered over me, down the rest of the steps to the fireplace, and flung the poker up to me. “Work the handle,” he said. For an eternity of several minutes, we swung, dug, pried, and drove at the door and the handle without budging it or making a dent. And then, as if our efforts had no force whatsoever and the door a will of its own, it swung open slowly; we scrambled out. Over the sounds of the night came Dana’s shrieks.
“I am coming for you, you bitch!”
She was crouched at the very edge of the roof, leaning over the ocean, wailing, clawing the air.

Back in the adobe, she hunched over her gut as she sat between me and Marcellus. Her white face turned up to the roof door. “It was real,” she whimpered. She sounded as if the discovery was a burden, not a relief.

“What did it say?” said Marcellus.

She opened her mouth, then froze. “Promise you won’t tell anyone else. Both of you.”

“Of course I won’t.” “We won’t.”

“Okay. It—”

The damn room went black again and a voice—a whisper magnified a thousand times—seared the air.
“DO NOT TELL.”
The bitch hurt my ears.

“God damn,” Marcellus groaned.

“Dana.” My voice floating, disconnected. “Do you hear it?”

“DO NOT TELL.”
God damn it, turn it down.

“She means it,” I said.

“Who does?” said Marcellus.

“The ghost—Mrs. Hamlet!”

“Who’s she talking to?”

The blackness faded. Or didn’t. I sat in growing horror as the walls and corners peeled into view. The blackness wasn’t going in a blink this time. It was—how could it be? It was pulling away from the outer edges of the room, gathering in on itself. Fingers and sheets of darkness rolled inward, across the carpet, the furniture, into itself, to form a small cloud, that finally condensed on the floor in the shape of something like a pile of clothes. Then I realized:
that was Dana.
She was balled up on the floor, covered by that black thing, that layer of horror. I yelled crazily and I was about to spring on her when the blackness lifted. It was a smoking cloud floating over her face. She huddled on the floor and looked up, her mouth wide with fear. Rage made me tingle. Why had I led her to that hellish thing? I was the guilty one. I had swam in a pool of terror that afternoon and then brought Dana down here to drown in it.
“GO!”
I shouted at the thing. It collapsed into a speck, and—
pop
—it was gone. I wheeled raggedly to grab hold of Dana.

“It’s all right,” she panted as she pushed my hands away. “She deserves it. She deserves a hearing. I’m only scared because the truth is scary.” She dragged some damp strands off her forehead. “I know it’s strange, Horst, but you’ve always been fair with strangers. Just be fair with this one.” Still on the floor, she looked towards the roof again with wondering eyes. “They didn’t teach us everything in Catholic school.”

“DO NOT TELL.”

Dana staggered up. “All right!” One second, two, three, four, five. No more voices. “It’s all right.” She looked at me and Marcellus, weaving on her feet. “Never mind.”

“Never mind what?” said Marcellus.

“Whatever I was about to tell you. Which was nothing.” She reached down for her cloak, and toppled onto it as if she was drunk. She burst into cold laughter. “Things have been hard for me lately, guys!”

I tried to wrap her up. “Are you hurt, baby?”

“Dig it, Horst!” she laughed. “Me not talking to you for six weeks, how fucked is that? But I really was that ashamed, I was trying to figure out what I did wrong.”

“You haven’t done anything to me.”

“Then I’m desolated. I’m desolated if you didn’t miss me or feel betrayed.”

“I missed you.”

“I felt so undeserving. And now that all that time has passed and I realize I was so wrong—” She finished with another snort of crazy laughter.

“What?” said Marcellus.

“Things are about to get ten times worse.”

I stretched my hands out to help her off the floor. “Dana—”

“I’m telling you so you’ll know. Don’t raise any alarms about me. No straitjackets, no exorcisms. There’s so much that’s so wrong, and I’ve got to work out my own way to fix it.” Her voice hardened. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to swallow their happy pills.” She bunched up her cloak, took my hands, and got back to her feet with a shaky breath. “Let’s go.”

It was all she would say. My heart was a spadeful of cold mud when I left for Santa Barbara at sunrise. I felt I was abandoning her. What had I done, bringing her to that thing? What had we all seen and heard, what had taken hold of Dana, what could more of those horrid visitations do to her? I was ready to fly to her the minute she called, to do anything she asked. But she didn’t call, she didn’t ask. Was I one of the “happy pills” she wouldn’t swallow? Had that blackness seduced her in some way, had she discovered some orgiastic hatred that she preferred to my friendship? Over the next month, all I could do was watch helplessly from a distance, loathing the thing we’d seen in the adobe, punching the refresh button on my computer over and over while hoping for news from her hand, and wanting to drive my fist through my monitor over the shit I read and heard.

Item:
Local heiress Dana Hamlet ambushed Robert Pattinson last night on his way out of The Licorice Club in Hollywood. Waving some eggs that she pulled out of her purse, she yelled at the startled hottie, “Have my baby, have my baby!” Bouncers held her off and got spattered with farm-fresh yolks for their efforts. We’re baffled about the whole thing too, since Pattinson is way too slim-hipped for the task.

Item:
Don’t tell the Admissions Committee at Stanford, but incoming frosh Dana Hamlet is at it again. After a clash with club security outside The Licorice last week, she punked the citizens of Beverly Hills by running around the greens in a polar bear costume while carrying a toy seal splattered with red paint. Our informants say the hairess dodged from tree to tree, making growling noises until cops persuaded her to take her head off. Unfortunately the furry white version may be better than the one attached to her shoulders.

Item:
When in doubt, wear black. When in a lot of doubt, wear a hijab? Was a certain wacky trendsetter simply making a fashion statement when she appeared in front of the Islamic Center in Los Angeles last Friday? The mystery fashionista paraded up and down during the sacred afternoon prayer covered in something like a black bed sheet, with signs attached to the head reading “FRONT” and “BACK.” Mosque-goers took issue, and one bearded male threw a Coke can at either the FRONT or the BACK. Says a witness, “She then walked over to where the can had fallen and bowed to it. Then, someone unwrapped her.” At that point, she ran away and tried to get lost among the pedestrians in the streets nearby. Not an easy thing for Dana Hamlet.

And there was more. She showed up at a Minority Women in Media fundraiser wearing a t-shirt that said “Free Clitoridectomies on Demand!” She bought billboard space on Wilshire and Normandie and put up ads in Korean and English saying “Gooks abort girls.” She scattered flyers at Catholic churches showing a picture of a man with a clerical collar pulling a little kid’s pants down. A caption said, “Birth control is bad. The Church needs your kids.” That got Mr. Hamlet a fine for littering and a candid shot on Perez Hilton complete with white drizzle. She walked one street holding a sign with a medical diagram of a woman’s pelvis with “Government Property” stamped on it. She walked another street holding a sign with a giant photo of Ashton Kutcher hugging a fan girl. A speech balloon going into his mouth said, “Fuck women.” The girl’s speech balloon said, “Yes, please.” That got her arrested on a public indecency charge. She pled guilty and Mr. Hamlet got away with another fine, but she told a reporter she was sorry she missed the chance to buy the judge a BJ in lieu of the fine. Gossip writers asked her for interviews—and she gave them. “Are you prejudiced against African Americans?” “No, it’s just Charlize Theron I hate.” “Who’s the most overrated celebrity?” “I am.” “Why should anyone listen to you?” “Because they read your crappy blog.” “What would you say to young people?” “Words.”

Item: Dana found out that Phil Polonius had been back in Elsinore Canyon for three days and he hadn’t gotten in touch with her.

In the thumbprint cove in front of the Polonius cottage, Phil zipped the back of his wetsuit and floated his board on a frothy flat. Normally he surfed with buddies, but today he wanted to be alone. Things seemed surreal to him lately. A sea—a literal sea—of cool salt water surged below and around him. It was gentle movement, natural change, rhythm, clarity, wholesome mystery. It broke on the rocks clean. Crisp fountains like thousands of tiny crystals, tinier, down to the molecule. The lubricant of the earth. Nothing sludgy or gelatinous, the way he’d seen it in shipping ports and smoggy coastal cities in Mexico and China—churning, jangling, sick places, worlds away from the havens he knew. He shuffled along the ocean floor and scooped water into his hair. It had already begun to dribble under his wetsuit, to be heated by his body so he’d be wearing a thin, uniform layer of liquid warmth in the cold waves. The cleansing shock when he first plunged his head in. The gentle drag outwards into the curl, the enticing yet terrifying translucent wall that would either crush him or carry him back to shore like a high-speed conveyor belt across a floor of glass. The satisfying crunch into the sand at the end. The smell of wet neoprene. Finishing up an afternoon on his board by bodysurfing—tilting his head down as he took a wave in so the water would rush up his nostrils, through his sinuses, and out his mouth.

The extreme creatures of this sea. Layers of incredibly rich fat, feathers and fur so fine and tightly laid that during a life of days and nights in the waves, the animal would never know cold. Rubbery skins that looked smooth from a distance, but that actually had nicks and scrapes when you touched them or saw them up close: the wear and tear that came from the rocks and the lower forms, the things that lived in shells and spikey skeletons. Those last ones, you always saw so many of them dead. Did they expire underwater, loosen from the rocks they clung to, and wash ashore as brittle remains? Or did they sicken or suffer below, then float up weakened and helpless to die whole on the surface or the airless sand?

What had happened to Dana?

He hadn’t seen her since the day after that miserable wedding reception. Of course she had plenty to be sad about—her mom dead, her dad remarried, and then Phil himself taking off for Alaska right afterward. Still, the
change.
They had been so close up until the day he got on the plane. He thought of them, together, just a few months earlier, how she used to turn her eyes to him with such trust. The things she said. “I can’t believe you love me.” “God, you’re good.” “You make a girl proud.” She gazed on him—that was the meaning of the word “gaze,” the way she looked at him—when he played his guitar with their friends around, Dana drinking in his music and running to claim a spot on his lap when he finished. And her kisses—her tongue, her teeth, her lips, her fingers curling around his neck to rake his ears, her breasts pressing into his chest, oh God. And he never had to worry when it might inexplicably go bad. Other girls he’d been with always somehow wound up wanting to hurt him, but Dana was so loyal, so steadfast, so sweet. She was strong, but she let him protect her. She was better known than he was, a year older and a fortune richer, but she showed such awe for the things he did, she deferred to him in so many ways. And now this. He wanted to talk to her, to explain, but she didn’t answer any of his messages and she never picked up when he called.

These last few weeks. All her joy and genius put to this weird shit. People loving and wanting her one day, trashing her the next. His Dana, talked of that way. They didn’t know her. He would be waiting for her when she got over this—whatever it was, and whatever would be left of her. What would be left of them? He needed to connect.

There was a rip. He’d sucked out way past his usual line, although he was still safe; he’d gone out this far before. A powerful wave would take him back to shore. He skimmed out farther, toward a smooth horizon. The side of the cove, a rocky arm, receded, and he felt as though some giant hand had let go of him. Well into the aquitory of dolphins, barracuda, bass, sea lions, sharks, jellies, rays, octopus, and marlin. It was no more than thirty feet deep, maybe fifty, well within the sixty he could free-dive, but the waves and currents made the difference. Gentle swells way off in the distance. He was flying away from the shore now, moving so fast his hair ruffled. Any wave that would take him back in would have to be huge to fight this drag. Otherwise, he’d be caught between the wave and the backwash, spun like a shoe in a washing machine and then hammered below the surface, deep. Once that happened, there wasn’t even a chance of getting sucked out by an undertow; the turbulence pushed so much dissolved oxygen into the water that even with its salt density, you’d be held down in a furious blue limbo where you couldn’t kick off the bottom to launch for the surface, where you could fight or float for a long, long time without getting popped back up. Especially with a waterlogged wetsuit. Or waterlogged lungs.