"I locked myself up in my house. I wouldn't see anybody. I was just about ready to kill myself."
"Oh shit," he said. "There's no reason to do that. All the bad times are over, Tammy. You can go off and live your life."
"What life? I don't have a life," she sighed. "Just that stupid little home filled with Todd Pickett memorabilia."
"You could sell it all."
"I'm going to, trust me. Maybe take a cruise around the world."
"Or better still, stay up here with me."
"I don't think—"
"I mean it. Stay here."
"Have you been downstairs?"
"Not recently. Why?"
"Because this house is going to fall down, Todd. Very soon."
"No it isn't," he said. "Did you know there are dozens of small earthquakes in California every day? Well there are. And this place is still standing."
"It doesn't have any bottom floor left, Todd. Katya's guests dug it all up."
He turned to the bed, and started to pull armfuls of the dirt off the sheet.
"What are you doing?"
"Persuading you to stay," he said, still pulling at the earth. When he had almost all the dirt removed from the bed he pulled the sheet out and went around the other side of the bed, throwing the corners of the sheet into the middle, and then bundling up both sheet and dirt. He pushed the bundle off the bed, and got up onto the clean mattress, sitting with his head against the board, and his legs crossed. His balls were tight and shiny. His dick was hard as ever. He gave her a lascivious grin.
"Climb aboard," he said.
Here, she thought, was an invitation in a million. And there would have been a time, no doubt, when she would have swooned at the very idea of it.
"I think you should cover yourself up," Tammy said, keeping the tone friendly, but firm. "Haven't you got a pair of pants you can wear?"
"You don't want this?" he said, running his fingers over the smooth head of his cock.
"No," she said. "Thank you."
"It's because I'm dead, isn't it?"
She didn't reply to him. Instead she wandered through to the closet— which was enormous; barely a tenth of it was filled—and started to go through the trousers and jeans on the hangers, and found an old, much-patched pair of jeans, their condition suggesting that he was fond of them, because he'd had them fixed so often.
As she pulled them off the hanger she heard a sound on the roof, like something scraping over the Spanish tiles.
"Did you hear that?" she called through to Todd.
There was no answer from the room next door. Bringing the jeans with her, she made her way back into the bedroom. Todd was no longer on the bed. He had snatched the dirt-stained sheet up off the floor and had wrapped it haphazardly around his body, the result being something between a toga and a shroud, and was now crawling around in the corner of the room in this bizarre costume, his eyes turned up toward the roof. He beckoned Tammy over, putting his forefinger to his lips to ensure her silence. There were more noises on the roof; scraping sounds that suggested the animal, whatever it was, had some considerable bulk.
"What is it?" she said. "That's not a bird."
He shook his head, still staring up at the ceiling.
"What then?"
"I can't see what it is, it's too bright."
"Oh so you have looked."
"Yes of course I've looked," he said, very softly. "Shit, this always happens. It's like they're its chorus."
He was referring to the coyotes, which had begun a steady round of almost panicked yelpings from the other side of the Canyon. "Whenever the light appears, the damn coyotes start up."
He had begun to shudder. Not from the cold, Tammy thought, but from fear. It crossed her mind that this was very far from the conventional image of ghost-hunting. The phantom naked and afraid; her proffering a pair of jeans to cover him up.
"It's come here for me," Todd said, very quietly. "You know that."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because I can feel it. In my chest. And in my balls. The first time it came here it actually got into the house. I was asleep, and I woke up with this terrible ache in my balls. And that"—he pointed down between his legs—"was so hard it hurt. I was terrified. But I yelled at it to go away, and off it went. I think I must have startled it."
"How many times has it been back since that first time?"
"Six or seven. No, more. Nine, ten times. Sometimes it just waits in the garden. Sometimes it sits on the roof, like it is now. And then once it was in the pool."
"There's no water in the pool."
"No, I know. It was lying at the bottom, not moving."
"And you couldn't see any shape in it?"
"No, no shape. I mean, do angels even have shapes?"
"An angel? That's what you think it is?"
"I'm pretty sure. I mean, it came to get me. And I am dead. So that's why it's hanging around. And it almost had me once—"
"What happened?"
"I looked at it. And my head started to fill up with all these memories. Things I hadn't thought about for years and years, literally. Me and Donnie as kids. Cincinnati. Nothing important. Just things you might think of in a daydream. And it said to me—"
"Wait. It speaks? This thing speaks?"
"Yes. It speaks."
"What sex is it?"
"I don't know. Sometimes it sounds more like a guy . . ." He shrugged. "I don't know."
"I'm sorry. I interrupted you. What did it say?"
"Oh. It said: all this is waiting for you."
" All this,' meaning what?"
"All the memories, I suppose. My past. People. Places. Smells. You know how sometimes you wake up from a dream and it's been so real, so strong, everything in the real world seems a bit unconvincing for the first half-hour? Well, it was like that after I saw the memories. Nothing was quite real."
"So why the hell are you fighting it? It doesn't want to hurt you."
"I'll tell you why I'm fighting. Because it's a one-way street, Tammy. I go with the light, there's no way back."
"And is being here so wonderful?"
"Now don't—"
"I mean it."
"Don't argue with me," he said. "I've thought about this a lot. Believe me. It's all I've thought about."
"So what do you want to do?"
"I want you to stay right here with me until the damn thing goes away. It won't try any tricks if you're here."
"You mean giving you the memories?"
"It's got others. Once it appeared on the lawn looking like Patricia, my mother. I knew it wasn't really her, but it's crafty that way. You know, she was telling me to come with her, and for just a few seconds—"
"It had you fooled?"
"Yeah. Not for long, but. . . yeah."
At this juncture there was a rapping sound on the door. Todd jumped.
"It's only Maxine," Tammy said, getting up, and turning from Todd. He caught hold of the jeans she was carrying, not because he wanted to wear them but to stop her escaping him.
"Don't answer it," he said. "Please stay here with me. I'm begging you, stay: please."
She held her breath for a moment, listening for the presence on the roof. It was no longer audible. Had the creature—whatever it was—simply departed, or was it still squatting up there, biding its time? Or—a third possibility, just as plausible as the other two—was she falling for some fictional fear that Todd, in his confused, post-mortem state, had simply created out of thin air? Was she just hearing birds on the roof, skittering around, and letting his imagination work her up into a frenzy about it?
"Put your jeans on," she said to him, letting go of them.
"Tammy. Listen to me—"
"I am listening," she said, crossing to the door of the bedroom. "Put your jeans on."