Garden of Evil (19 page)

He turned to go, but the Reverend Silence caught his sleeve. ‘Wait just one moment, Mr Rook – please!'

Jim yanked his arm free, and took two or three steps back. As he did so, however, he saw that somebody was walking across the beach toward them, as quickly as the soft sand would allow. A thirtyish-looking man, wearing a light-brown coat with a white shirt and a dark brown necktie. As he came nearer, another person materialized out of the darkness behind him, also walking toward them, but staying some way behind. This person was much taller and darker, and appeared to be wearing a hooded cloak. Either that, or it wasn't a person at all, but a swirl of thick gray smoke, like the swirl of smoke which had appeared on Jim's balcony.

The man in the brown coat was only fifty feet away now. He waved his right arm and whooped out, ‘Jim!
Jim
!'

‘Oh, no,' said Jim, under his breath. ‘Oh, no. Oh, Jesus. It can't be him. Please don't let it be him.'

W
hen he had last seen him, Jim had been only seven years old, so his father looked much shorter than he remembered him, and narrow-chested, but he also looked startlingly young.

Jim realized, though, that William ‘Billy' Rook had been no more than thirty-six when he had walked into the ocean, which was nearly four years younger than Jim was now.

He was soaking wet, drenched. Seawater was pouring from his sleeves and his thinning dark brown hair was plastered down on either side of his head. All the same, he was smiling, and he was holding out his arms, like a man who has just completed a record-breaking swim – which, in a spiritual way, he had. He had been swimming continuously for thirty-three years – or drowning, rather.

He looked so much like Jim's grandfather, with his sharp pointed nose and his heart-shaped face and his little clipped moustache. Jim's mother had always wanted him to shave off his moustache because she said it made him look like a card sharp or a door-to-door salesman, but Jim's father had insisted on keeping it, because Rook men had worn moustaches for generations. Jim was the first Rook who hadn't grown a moustache since the mid-1900s, when Los Angeles was nothing more than a single main street and a cluster of wooden oil derricks.

‘Jim!' he said, in that familiar croaky voice. ‘Jim – are you OK? It's so good to see you!'

‘Dad, you shouldn't have let them bring you here. You really shouldn't.'

‘Look at you, Jim – shoot! How you've grown up! Here – give me a hug, will you? It's been so long. It's been so darn confusing.'

He came right up to Jim with both of his arms still held wide. Jim looked over his shoulder at the tall, smoky figure behind him. It was the same figure that had appeared on his balcony, and it was the same figure that had visited him in his nightmare, and it was the same figure who had appeared in Ricky's painting of The Storyteller.

‘What's the matter with you, Jim?' his father asked him, and he began to look uncertain. ‘Can't you give your old man a hug?'

Jim looked across at the Reverend Silence. ‘You don't see him, do you?' he challenged him. ‘You don't hear him, either?'

The Reverend Silence nodded. ‘You're quite right, Mr Rook, I don't. But I'm aware that he's here, and I can guess what he's saying to you.'

‘You can't see this other person, either, this one standing right behind him, whoever he is?'

‘He has a name, Mr Rook. In fact he has a multitude of names.'

‘But you don't see him like I do?'

‘No, I regret to say that I don't. If only I shared your wonderful gift, Mr Rook.'

‘
Jim
!' begged his father. ‘What's wrong, Jim?'

‘Nothing's wrong, Dad, except that I can't hug you.'

‘What? Why not? I swear to God I didn't mean to leave you all alone on the beach like that. I thought you'd just find your way home. You had some bus fare. I left you some bus fare in that paper bag along with the Oreos.'

‘Dad, it's not that I blame you. The reason I can't hug you is because you're not physically here. Of course it's
you
, Dad, but it's only your spirit.'

‘My spirit? You mean like a ghost? How can I be a ghost? That doesn't make any kind of sense at all!'

Behind Jim's father, the tall twisting figure began to come closer, until Jim could look up into the dark recesses of its hood, and see its eyes glittering, just as they had in his nightmare. The figure raised its left hand, and Jim saw that ring again, with the snakes entwined on it.

‘
What
?' Jim said. ‘What do you want?'

At first he heard only the sound of the surf, and the wind fluffing in his ears, but then the figure's voice suddenly boomed and reverberated inside his head like a giant church bell.

‘
Time is blowing away, Mr Rook
!
Time is blowing away like the sands on the beach
!
You should make up your mind what you want, and very soon
!'

‘Jim?' said his father. He was looking more distressed by the second. ‘What's happening, Jim? I don't understand.'

‘You're dead, Dad. You're gone. Thirty-three years ago. Drowned. The coastguard searched for a week but they never found your body. Christ, Dad, we had nothing to bury.'

‘I don't get it. I can
see
you, Jim. I can talk to you!'

‘That's not because of
you
, Dad, that's because of
me
. That's why these people have brought you back here. It's
me
they want.'

‘But why can't you even give me a hug?'

Jim held out his hand. He hated to do this. There was nothing more devastating for spirits than to discover what they really were – nothing but memories, and reflections, and echoes. Nothing but the faint disturbances that a living person had once created as they walked through the physical world.

‘Take my hand, Dad,' he said. He was choking up again, and he had to pucker his lips to control himself.

‘What?'

‘Just do as I say, OK, and take my hand.'

Billy Rook reached out and tried to hold Jim's hand. He tried once, he tried twice, he tried a third time. Each time his fingers passed clear through Jim's hand as if they were nothing more than an image of fingers on a movie screen. Light, color, shadow, but no substance.

He stared at his own hand with an expression of utter shock. ‘I can feel
your
hand,' he said, hoarsely. ‘Why can't I feel mine?'

‘I told you, Dad. You're dead. You're a spirit.'

‘
But I'm here
!' he protested, and he was starting to panic. ‘
I can see you
!
I can see the beach
!
I can feel the sand
!
I can talk to you
!
I'm real
!'

‘I'm sorry, Dad. I'm so sorry.'

The Reverend Silence interrupted them. ‘You
could
bring him back, you know.'

‘No,' said Jim. ‘It's impossible.'

‘Which law says so? The laws of biology? The laws of physics? I don't think so.'

‘What about God's law?' said Jim.

The Reverend Silence grinned, almost wolfishly. ‘I believe I know more about God's law than you do, Mr Rook. A great deal more. But of course there are other laws, apart from God's law. Equally powerful. Equally earth-shattering.'

Jim looked back at his father. The expression of despair on Billy Rook's face was heart-wrenching. Jim would have done anything to be able to hug him, or even lay his hand on his shoulder or take hold of his hand, but he was no more substantial than the wind.

Without a word, Jim turned around and started to walk back across the parking lot, leaving his father and the Reverend Silence standing on the beach. He didn't look back to see if they were still standing there, because he knew that his father and the hooded figure would probably have melted away as soon as he made it clear that he was leaving. In fact, they probably would have vanished as soon as he stopped looking at them. And if the Reverend Silence's magical disappearing act at Barney's Beanery was anything to go by,
he
would have vanished, too.
Abracadabra
.

Jim sat in his car with his head bowed. The thought of going back to his apartment and being jumped on by Summer and spat at by Tibbles was more than he could take. After a while he started up the engine and drove back along Hollywood Boulevard until he reached the Cat'n'Fiddle English Bar. He stopped outside for a moment with his engine running and then he backed up and swerved into the parking lot.

He had talked to his long-drowned father. He had been forced to tell him that he was nothing more than a ghost, and that he couldn't bring him back to the world of the living. That had hurt, badly. What he needed now wasn't confrontation, of any kind. What he needed now was a bottle of Fat Tire beer or three and some irritating Dixieland jazz and a couple of hours of flirtatious banter with one of the young girls who perched around the bar looking for a pick-up.

It was nearly midnight by the time he climbed the steps back to his apartment, and he had to hold on to the handrail to keep his balance. Three Fat Tires had turned into five, and he had exchanged phone numbers with an absurdly young girl with hefty thighs and a purple tube top.

He was lurching past Ricky Kaminsky's apartment when the door opened and Nadine came out, wearing a loosely woven black poncho and baggy brown satin loons.

She was smoking a cigarette without her usual holder. ‘Jim!' she said. ‘Have you seen Ricky?' she said.

Jim blinked at her as if he had never seen her before in his life. ‘Ricky?'

‘I thought him and you might have gone out together for a few brewskis.'

‘I went for a drink, yes. But I didn't see Ricky.'

Nadine blew smoke out of her nostrils and bit her lip. ‘This is not like him at all. He
always
calls me when he's out late. Mostly because he's so drunk that he doesn't know where he is, and wants me to come find him.'

‘Well, I was at the Cat'n'Fiddle, and he wasn't in there. There was a guy at the bar who looked just like him, but it wasn't him.'

‘Jim, that is so un-useful. These days he drinks in The Stone Bar mostly because the drinks are strong and there's an alley out back where he can smoke.'

‘I'm sorry, Nadine. I haven't seen him. I promise. He'll show up when the Wild Turkey wears off.'

‘I don't know. For some reason I have a very bad feeling about this. Things have been so weird for Ricky lately. All those Storyteller paintings going wrong.'

‘I don't understand that painting thing either, Nadine, to be honest with you. Maybe it's like that automatic writing – you know, when people find that some dead author like John Steinbeck is pushing their pen for them.'

‘But Ricky's been talking in his sleep, Jim, which he never did before. I mean, he always
snores
, yes. He cuts down a whole frickin' rainforest every single night. But up until now he never said anything coherent. These nights, he keeps banging on about three white angels. Over and over. “The three . . . white . . . angels,” he says, in this real hollow voice. “The three . . . white . . . angels . . . who open the door.” I mean, what the hell is that all about?'

Jim had to shake his head. ‘Search me, Nadine. Maybe Ricky's been smoking a little too much of that prime Peruvian pot.'

‘Yeah, maybe you're right,' Nadine agreed. ‘But I think I'll wait up for him a little longer. What a goddamn waste of space that man can be.'

Jim managed to reel past Summer's apartment without her coming out to ambush him. She was probably asleep by now, anyhow. He negotiated the last flight of steps up to his own landing mostly on his hands and knees, and he had to jab his key six or seven times into the door before he located the keyhole.

He stumbled into the hallway and closed the door behind him, standing with his back to it for almost a minute with his eyes closed, thanking Bacchus for bringing him home safely.

Then he tilted his way into the kitchen, opened the fridge and took out a can of Mountain Dew Throwback, the one with real sugar in it. He popped the top and drank almost half of it without taking a breath. Afterward, he sat down at the kitchen table and let out a long, ripping belch.

He didn't know why he felt so drunk. He didn't normally drink as many as five beers, but even so the floor seemed to be tilting underneath him and he found it hard to focus.

He was still sitting there when Tibbles stalked into the kitchen. Tibbles came up close to Jim and looked up at him, sniffing suspiciously.

‘It's all right, Tibs. I don't have any more of those apples, thank God. And I don't have the energy to throw you around the room.'

Tibbles mewed at him.

‘You hungry?' Jim asked him. ‘I gave you plenty this morning, fatso. If you've scoffed it all, that's your fault. You'll have to wait until tomorrow before you I give you any more. Overfeeding is just as cruel as starving.'

But Tibbles mewed again, and this time Jim realized that it wasn't his hungry mew. It was more of a yowl, as if he were trying to warn Jim about something.

‘What's the matter, Tibs? Don't tell me we have roof rats again. I'm too smashed to go rat-catching in the attic. I still have that exterminator's number from last time. I'll call him tomorrow.'

But Tibbles mewed again, and again, and then quite suddenly he rolled over on to his back and lay on the floor with his legs wide apart, his eyes staring at nothing at all.

‘Tibbles? Tibs – are you OK?'

Jim leaned forward and shook him, but Tibbles remained inert and floppy.

‘Tibbles?'

He shook him again, but there was still no response. Jesus, he thought, Tibbles has just died on me. Maybe he's had a heart attack, or a stroke. Do cats have heart attacks? Or maybe I hurt him more than I realized when I threw him across the living room and he's been bleeding internally, or his spleen was ruptured. Do cats have spleens?