Katya turned. "Doug? I didn't realize you were here too."
“And me?" came a third voice, this time a woman's.
"Clara?" Katya said.
"Of course."
The speaker walked up to Katya as she spoke, her stride remarkably confident. She was a shadow of her former self, but Tammy would still have recognized the face of Clara Bow. The bee-stung lips. The high, curved brows. The wide eyes, once filled with innocent high-spirits. But not now. Now they burned.
Katya glanced over her shoulder. "Please, Clara," she said, "don't come so close."
"Why should you care how close we get?" Clara Bow said.
"Yes," came a fourth voice. "You're not to blame, remember?"
"Anyway," came a fifth voice, "we're nothing."
"Nothing," said a sixth voice. And a seventh.
Katya turned, swinging her weapon in a wide arc. Even so, it missed its several marks. The ghosts were too quick for her; she was sluggish, even in her fury. Besides, Tammy thought, what possible harm could a kitchen knife do to these creatures? Yes, they had a corporeal existence; no question of that. But they were—as far as she understood it—spirit presences made of ether and memory. These people couldn't die. They were already dead; long, long dead.
And they were assembling now in even greater numbers, having apparently given up looking for the Devil's Country.
It was gone; the evidence of which was the fading lines on the walls of this melancholy chamber. All that remained by way of satisfaction, if that was the word, was to punish the woman who had kept them outside in her joyless Canyon for so many seasons, holding on to the hope that they would one day be let back into the house to satisfy their craving for the solace of their addiction.
Katya was well aware that she was in jeopardy, and hopelessly outnumbered. While still holding the knife she raised both hands in a vague gesture of surrender.
The dead seemed not to care. Their pale faces, which had always looked impersonal, were now—in the presence of the woman who had once been their confidante—assembling fragments of forgotten particularities. It was like a room full of Alzheimer's patients, recovering in the presence of some person they'd known well what they'd previously lost: themselves. Their eyes, which had been little more than lights in their heads, took on a specific shape and color. Their mouths, which had been slits, bloomed into sensuality.
Tammy didn't think any of these reconfigurations were good news for Katya. Unobtrusively, she caught hold of the back of Jerry's shirt, and gently eased him out of Katya's immediate vicinity.
She moved him not a moment too soon.
An instant later one of the ghosts came barreling out of the mist and caught hold of Katya. Tammy didn't see the attacker's face, but she heard the guttural cry which escaped him as he swung his captive around to face the fog.
Katya struggled, but he had her arms pinned behind her, and despite her considerable strength, he was the stronger.
"Fuck you, Ramon!" she screamed.
She made a second attempt to wrest herself free of Navarro's grip, and by sheer vigor succeeded in liberating one of her arms; the one with the knife. She then stabbed wildly at the man who had hold of her: Ramon Navarro. The knife slid into his side, and there it lodged.
Before she could retrieve it he had caught hold of her flailing arm and had pinned it again. Though he had very firm hold of her she still continued to struggle and curse, giving up on English in favor of Romanian. And then, after perhaps thirty seconds of Romanian curses, she gave up completely, and fell silent.
For a moment Tammy thought Navarro had killed her, her silence was so sudden and complete. But—as had always been the case in this house— the truth was not so simple.
The curtain of fog shifted, as though several breezes had pierced it at the same moment. And then, like a troupe of actors appearing to take their final bow, the rest of the revenants began to appear from the mist; four, five, six, seven, eight, ten, twelve—
Their eyes were on Katya; all of them, on Katya.
Now she began to struggle with fresh fervor, her movements chaotic and panicky, like those of a trapped animal. Much to Tammy's surprise, Navarro let her go. She turned on him, instantly, reaching for the knife that was still protruding from his side. But before she could catch hold of it he reached out and grabbed the front of Katya's dress. Then he pulled, tearing the light pink fabric away from her body and exposing her breasts.
The look on her face changed, her fury apparently mellowing. Navarro bent forward and put his face between her breasts.
She let out a light laugh, which was surely artificial, but nevertheless passed for the real thing well enough. He responded by licking the passage of flawless skin up to her throat, wetting it until it shone. Her nipples, aroused by his touch, were hard. Her eyes flickered closed as she murmured something in Romanian; words of appreciation to judge by their tone. Encouraged he moved his mouth down from her throat to her left breast; and as he did so he slipped his arms beneath her legs, and lifted her up.
The ghosts still assembling behind her raised their heads, watching her elevation.
She was laughing for real now, her head thrown back in abandon. Navarro was no longer licking her; he was putting all his effort into lifting her up, higher and higher still, until Katya and her laughter and her shining breasts were above his head.
Katya opened her eyes. The laughter suddenly passed away from her face, as she realized what he'd done. Again, she spoke in Romanian, but this time the words were not so appreciative. Nor did she have long to speak them, before Navarro threw her to the assembled crowd.
She seemed to hang for a long moment in the space between her deliverer's arms and the hands of those who were ready and eager to receive her.
Then she fell.
Down, down into their open arms; down to be caught by her dead, patient friends, who'd waited so very long to enjoy her hospitality again, and had been so bitterly disappointed.
Finally, after all these years—all her cruelties, all her games, all her indifference—they had her.
She screamed as they laid their cold hands on her flesh; shrieked like a little girl being violated. They ignored her protests, as she had ignored them over the years.
They pulled her hair, so that it came out at the roots. They ripped at her smooth, sweet flesh, which showed no sign of the toll the years had taken on the rest of the world. They bit off her nipples, they tore off her labia, like shreds of tender meat, and shoved the pieces down her throat to silence her.
Death had not made them kind. Time had not made them kind. Years of sitting in the Canyon—the Santa Anas in one season, rain in another, crucifying heat in another: none of it had made them kind.
They pulled at her as though she were a perfect little doll that they'd been given and were now fighting over. The trouble was, she wasn't designed for such careless handling. She tore too quickly.
In a matter of seconds what had once been Katya Lupi was a ruin: they broke her arms so that the bones poked through; they tore at her sex so that the gaping, lipless slit ran half way up her stomach. She had spat out her labia and now attempted to call them by name, to eke out a little mercy.
But they had none to give.
They had planned this martyrdom for years; each playing his or her horrid part. Someone got his fingers beneath the skin of her face and worked it off, inch by ghastly inch, leaving only the pinkness of her eyelids in a mass of red muscles. Two others (women, working together in smiling harmony) unseated her breasts from the bone, so that they hung down like sacks of fat, while the blood poured from the wounds where her nipples had been.