I slam my back against the roof a few times and manage to raise the crushed metal a few inches. When I have enough room to move my legs, I kick out the driver-side door, slide out, and run around to Candy’s side. Her door is jammed so tight that I can’t even get a good grip. I climb on top and drive the black blade through the roof, slicing it and prying it open like a sixty-thousand-dollar oyster. Candy looks up at me through the hole.
“This is what you mean by ‘trust me’?”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but I’m developing what are called trust issues.”
“I’m sure Allegra knows some good shrinks. Reach up your hand and I’ll get you out of there.”
We get a ride into Hollywood in a station wagon with a family from Houston. I agree with them that we’re damned lucky to walk away from an accident like that with just a few scratches. Luckier than the pickup that went off the overpass and crashed onto the street below. They drop us on Hollywood Boulevard near Allegra’s clinic, and when I try to give the dad some money he waves it off.
“I’m sure you’d do the same for someone stranded. Just pass the good fortune along.”
Candy and I look at each other and I know we’re thinking the same thing.
Who knew people not playing angles or hustling something still existed. I thought they’d died out with the triceratops. I feel funny now. A little dirty. Like maybe I contaminated their car with bad luck. I wonder if they would have given us a ride if they knew I was the Lord of the Underworld. What’s funny is I think they would have.
Nice people are fucking weird.
Carlos is sitting up in a plastic chair in the clinic reception area. His arm and shoulder are still bandaged and smell of aromatic oils and potions.
I sit down next to him.
“Hey, man. I’m really sorry to get you mixed up in my shit.”
He laughs, patting his pockets.
“When haven’t I been mixed up in your shit? I met you on the day you got back from Hell, remember?”
“I guess so.”
“Yes so. I knew something like this could happen. It’s called a calculated risk. And now it’s happened and I’m walking away. It’s like I got a measles shot. I’m immunized. Nothing bad will ever happen to me again.”
“I’m not sure it works like that.”
“Of course it does.”
He gives up patting his pockets.
“You have any cigarettes? I’m dying for one. No pun intended.”
“I thought you didn’t smoke.”
“Only after surgery.”
“Sorry, but I gave my last one to a guy who sold his soul to the Devil.”
He sits up in his chair.
“I guess there’s some things worse than getting shot.”
“Not many. Anyway, I hear the guy is such a fuckup he’s getting his soul back. Even the Devil doesn’t want it.”
“I must have missed that day at Catholic school. The nuns never told us that being a dumb-ass was a weapon against the Devil.”
“Now you know.”
He leans forward, propping his good elbow on his knees.
“Don’t apologize for any of this. Remember when you and your pretty squeeze killed all those zombies in the bar? Business doubled after that. With you back and ninjas going Wild West, I’m going to make a fortune.”
“As long as no one shoots the jukebox.”
“I’ll kill any cocksucker that touches my jukebox.”
“You’ve got someone to take you home?”
“My brother-in-law is going to give me a ride.”
“You never told me you were married.”
“I’m not. He’s really my ex-brother-in-law but I like him a lot better than my ex-wife.”
I get up and look around for Allegra.
“You take care yourself. Heal up before you reopen the bar.”
“I’m going to make so much money I’ll buy a Cadillac to drive me to my Lexus and drive that to my other Cadillac to drive to work.”
“I’ll catch you later, man.”
“Later.”
Candy disappeared into the back of the clinic right when we got here, but Allegra is putting things away in the treatment room.
“Welcome home. Candy says you two had an adventure today.”
“The other guys had an adventure. We had a car wreck.”
“And walked away with a couple of scratches. I’m jealous. Remember that time you took me with you to meet the dead man Johnny Thunders? I miss that kind of thing.”
“Maybe you should train some people to take a few of your shifts.”
“I am. You met Fairuza, the sweet Ludere, the other day. She’s my chief apprentice.”
“Cool. I’ll drag you and Vidocq along when the right kind of craziness comes up.”
She smiles and wraps two chunks of what look like pearly rocks in dark blue silk. Divine-light glass from the beginning of time. God broke a star and dropped the glass to Earth. One of his original fuckups. It wasn’t all bad. It turns out it heals a lot of wounds. Doc Kinski once used it on Allegra.
“You don’t know anything about the other Stark, do you? You’re a doctor. Maybe he’d tell you something he wouldn’t tell other people.”
“No. Sorry. He never told me anything.”
“Have you been getting some stabbings in here?”
“Are you talking about the girl? No. No stabbings. From what I hear, if she cuts you, you die. I heal people. She kills. There’s no point in me treating the dead.”
Candy comes in and crooks her thumb over her shoulder.
“Can I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure.”
We walk outside into the cool, crisp L.A. afternoon. The sky looks a little strange. Clouds are rolling in fast and it’s like the light is strobing behind them.
“I have to take a rain check on your suite. Rinko got a taste of blood last night and now she’s kind of in withdrawal. I need to take her home.”
“I understand.”
“Sorry. I keep seeing you and running off.”
I shrug.
“Maybe I deserve it. I ran out first. Anyway, you have to do the right thing by your friend.”
“Doing the right thing usually sucks.”
“Almost always.”
She kisses me and goes back inside. Through the glass I see her giving Rinko a potion and leading her into the treatment room.
There’s another reflection in the glass. A ghost.
I turn and the little girl is standing there. Frilly blue party dress and a knife as big as her leg. She stares at me like I’m a rat on her birthday cake.
“Who are you?” I ask.
She doesn’t say anything.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you killing people? You pissed off? Hungry?”
Still nothing.
I take a step toward her. She takes one back. I take another. There’s an earth tremor, like a small earthquake. I look down at my feet. When I look up again, the girl is gone. I walk out to where she was standing. Then to the far wall. I get on my knees to look under all the vehicles. The ground gives way and I land flat on my back. I was run over by a pickup truck about thirty minutes ago. It hurt. Falling six feet onto a sore back hurts more. I lie in the fresh dirt, trying to catch my breath.
“Hi, Stark.”
The voice is breathy. Barely a whisper and hard to hear over the traffic.
I’m lying in a hole as deep as a grave. There’s another hole like a tunnel leading off into the dark. The voice is coming from there.
“What is this?”
A desiccated corpse, gray parchment skin stretched like tissue paper over brittle bones, sticks its head out of the hole like a turtle and draws it back in when the light hits it.
“Don’t you recognize me?” says the corpse.
“You’re a fucking skeleton. How am I supposed to recognize you?”
“Once upon a time you wanted to kill me. Then you wanted to save me. You didn’t do either. You let Parker murder me.”
“Cherry? Is that you?”
Cherry Moon was a member of my old Magic Circle. One of the ones who stood by and let Mason send me to Hell. For staying out of the way, Mason gave her the gift of youth. Creepy youth. Candy is into Japanese cartoons but Cherry Moon wanted to be a cartoon. A forever-prepubescent Sailor Moon love doll in a school uniform. Do you know what it’s like to get hit on by a thirty-five-year-old woman who looks like she’s twelve? No. You don’t. It’s strange and unpleasant on so many levels I can’t begin to count them.
“Was that you who dropped me into a hole in Bamboo House?”
“Do you get followed around by a lot of tunneling dead girls?”
“You saved me from getting shot.”
“Yes. You owe me. You didn’t save me when I was alive. I want you to save me now.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Kill the little girl.”
When I first saw her, I thought Cherry was a ghost cursed to stay on Earth and the hole was just a ghost projection from her mind. Seeing her skeleton crammed into the narrow tunnel, I see I was wrong. Cherry did this to herself.
“Is the girl hurting you?”
“She’s killing us. All the other ghosts and spirits in L.A. When she isn’t killing you, she hides with us in the Tenebrae. Kills us like she kills the living and we don’t know why.”
When Cherry died, she was so afraid of moving on that she made herself into a jabber. Jabbers are a kind of ghost so traumatized by death that they can’t even haunt people or places like normal ghosts. They stick close to their bodies. Literally haunt their own corpses and tunnel in them from place to place. They won’t come out of the ground because their bodies are fragile and they’re afraid of being mistaken for zombies. Jabbers are about the most pathetic thing in the world.
“I don’t know what you want me to do. I can’t get near the kid.”
“You travel between worlds. I saw you come here from Hell. Come into the Tenebrae and stop her.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Find out.”
I get nearer the hole. Cherry doesn’t back away this time. I put out my hand. Slowly she creeps her hand forward until our fingertips are just touching. I was right. She’s real. A ghost hiding in her own bones.
“Jesus, Cherry, all you have to do is let go. Get out of this body. Get out of the ghost realm. Go on to wherever it is you’re supposed to go.”
“No!” she says. “Do you think Heaven is waiting for me with open arms? We both know where I’m going, and as long as these bones hold together, I’m staying right here.”
“I can help you when you get to Hell. Like you said, I couldn’t save you when you were alive. Maybe I can help now that you’re dead. But you have to let go.”
She crawls closer to the tunnel opening. I can see her lipless smile and eye sockets full of dirt and dry plant roots. I want to look away but I don’t.
“Where do you stay when you’re not stalking me?”
“I moved into an old cemetery in a field of old cemeteries. It’s the strangest place. Full of aetheric ghosts and physical ghosts like me.”
She makes a sound that’s almost like a laugh.
“There’s practically a traffic jam with us tunnelers. We have to be careful digging or we can fall into each other’s chambers.”
“What do you mean by a field of cemeteries? What the hell is that?”
“It’s like a cemetery for cemeteries. Or a garden where some kind soul has planted the dead and where we live. Go ask Teddy Osterberg. He’s the one who collects the cemeteries. I’m just one of the flowers in his garden.”
“So the little girl is killing Sub Rosas, civilians, and now ghosts. She tried to kill the other Stark, so she’s tried to kill an angel. Do you know anything about him?”
“Other Stark? He’s prettier than you. Like you in the olden days. Now you’re a mess. A girl likes a few scars. They give a man character. But you don’t have a shot with me anymore, darling.”
“Does anyone call the Tenebrae Blue Heaven?”
“I’m afraid we’re plain old Tenebrae. Tell me you’ll help us.”
I reach into my pockets for a Malediction and remember I gave my last one away. Anyway, Cherry wouldn’t want me smoking. Dried-out corpses are perfect kindling.
“If Teddy Osterberg collects the dead, he could be connected to the girl and I know the girl is connected to Saint James. I’ll check him out. Maybe I can help both of us.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t get too choked up. I’m mostly doing this for me. If I can get to King Cairo first, I’m going after him. I’m going to hurt him dead. I’m tired of people trying to kill me. Downtown. Up here. It’s getting aggravating.”
She makes the whispering sound that might be a laugh.
“You know what they say. All the birds come home to roost. The past catches up with us. And you have quite a past, Sandman Slim.”
“Philosophy from a corpse. Are you sure you aren’t Greek?”
She turtles her head back into the hole.
“I’ll see you soon. Don’t forget me.”
“That’s not likely.”
Cherry disappears into the dark. There’s a rustling and crackling of old bones as she turns around and crawls back the way she came. A homeless corpse living in a coffin squat. How desperate do you have to be to live like that?
I catch a cab at Hollywood and Sunset and have it take me to the Chateau Marmont, the traditional crash pad for showbiz and well-heeled assholes from around the world. John Belushi OD’d there. Jim Morrison crabbed around the outside windows on acid. Hunter Thompson drank by the pool, and a few months back, I played bodyguard to the other Lucifer while he stayed in his secret suite upstairs. Now that I’m the black beast of the forest, the room is mine. I think.
