She was no passive victim. She pushed him back with the heel of one hand, raking his features from brow to mid-cheek with the other. Blood came from the wounds, stinking faintly of bad meat. A disgusted expression crossed Valentino’s face, as he caught a whiff of his own excremental self. The shock of it made him loose his hold on her, and she quickly pulled away from him.
In life, she’d remembered, he’d always been overly sensitive to smells; a consequence, perhaps, of the fact that he’d been brought up in the stench of poverty. His hand went up his wounded face, and he sniffed his fingers, a look of profound revulsion on his face.
She laughed out loud at the sight. Valentino’s fury had suddenly lost its bite. It was as though in that moment he suddenly understood the depths to which the Devil’s Country had brought him.
And then, out of the darkness, Zeffer called: “What the hell’s going on out — ”
He didn’t finish his question: he’d seen Valentino.
“Oh, Jesus Christ Almighty,” he said.
Hearing the Lord’s name taken in vein, Valentino — good Catholic boy that he was — crossed himself, and fled into the darkness.
Valentino’s vengeful prediction proved entirely accurate: in the next few weeks the haunting of Coldheart Canyon began.
At first the signs were nothing too terrible: a change in the timbre of the coyotes’ yelps, the heads torn off all the roses one night; the next all the petals off the bougainvillea; the appearance on the lawn of a frightened deer, throwing its glassy gaze back towards the thicket in terror. It was Zeffer’s opinion that they were somehow going to need to make peace with ‘our unwanted guests’, as he put it, or the consequences would surely be traumatic. These were not ethereal presences, he pointed out, wafting around in a hapless daze. If they were all like Valentino (and why should they not be?) then they posed a physical threat.
“They could murder us in our beds, Katya,” he said to her.
“Valentino wouldn’t — ”
“Maybe not Valentino, but there are others, plenty of others, who hated you with a vengeance. Virginia Maple for one. She was a jealous woman. Remember? And then to hang herself because of something you did to her — ”
“I did nothing to her! I just let her play in that damn room. A room which you brought into our lives.”
Zeffer covered his face. “I knew it would come down to that eventually. Yes, I’m responsible. I was a fool to bring it here. I just thought it would amuse you.”
She gave him a strangely ambiguous look. “Well, you know, it did. How can I deny that? It still does. I love the feeling I get when I’m in there, touching the tiles. I feel more alive.” She walked over to him, and for a moment he thought she was going to grant him some physical contact: a stroke, a blow, a kiss. He didn’t really mind. Anything was better than her indifference. But she simply said: “You caused this, Willem. You have to solve it.”
“But how? Perhaps if I could find Father Sandru — ”
“He’s not going to take the tiles back, Willem.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Because I won’t let him! Christ, Willem! I’ve been in there every day since you gave me the key. It’s in my blood now. If I lose the room, it’ll be the death of me.”
“So we’ll move and we’ll take the room with us. It’s been moved before. We’ll leave the ghosts behind.”
“Wherever the Hunt goes, they’ll follow. And sooner or later they’ll get so impatient, they’ll hurt us.”
Zeffer nodded. There was truth in all of this, bitter though it was.
“What in God’s name have we done?” he said.
“Nothing we can’t mend,” Katya replied. “You should go back to Romania, and find Sandru. Maybe there’s some defense we can put up against the ghosts.”
“Where will you stay while I’m gone?”
“I’ll stay here. I’m not afraid of Rudy Valentino, dead or alive. Nor that idiotic bitch Virginia Maple. If I don’t stay, they’ll find their way in.”