Garden of Evil Read online

  He was still standing there when – out of the darkness – a tall figure in white came walking toward him, from the direction of the ocean. When he was less than a hundred feet away, Jim recognized him. It was the Reverend John Silence, in his loose white shirt and his gold chains and his white flappy pants. He was wearing a straw skimmer with a black hatband around it, and he was carrying a black staff with a gold knob on top of it. He looked more like some strange kind carnival entertainer than a pastor.

  ‘Well, well, Mr Rook!’ he called out, as he approached. ‘You made it! And much sooner than I thought you would! Congratulations!’

  He came closer and held out his hand, but Jim didn’t take it.

  ‘Reverend Silence. Do you want to explain to me what you’re doing here, exactly?’ Jim demanded.

  The Reverend Silence shrugged. ‘Probably the same thing that you’re doing here, Mr Rook. Reliving the past.’

  ‘This is a past I never wanted to remember, for Christ’s sake. Like, ever. And this is a past which I had successfully managed to blot out of my mind, until you and your son started feeding me those apples. It is the apples that do it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, the apples! But you didn’t have to take them, Mr Rook. And once you had taken them, you still didn’t have to eat them. You could have thrown them in the trash. Or let them rot.’

  ‘So what do you spike them with?’ Jim asked him. ‘Do you inject them with some kind of drug? Like scopolamine, maybe, or temazepam, or something like that?’

  ‘Of course not. The Paradise apple is the purest of apples. That is why it brings back all of your memories with such clarity. The Paradise apple is the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Mr Rook. That is why we call it the Paradise apple. You eat the apple, and you see everything. Why do you think God drove Adam and Eve out of Eden? They ate the apple and they could suddenly see everything. More than anything else they could suddenly see the many shortcomings of God.’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be a pastor?’ said Jim. ‘I thought pastors were supposed to exalt God, not go around telling everybody how fallible He is.’

  ‘Truth is what is important in this world, Mr Rook. Truth, not reputation. And something else is just as important, and that is for everybody to have a second chance. God never gives us second chances, Mr Rook. If you sin – or what counts for sinning in His eyes – then you are damned for all eternity. If you die, you stay dead for ever. At least you do if God has anything to do with it.’

  He paused, and then he said, ‘What happened on this beach, Mr Rook, thirty-three years ago? Tell me, in your own words.’

  Jim had thought that he would be able to talk about this easily, but without any warning at all he found that his throat had tightened up, and that it was difficult for him to get the words out.

  ‘Come on, Mr Rook. It will do you good. You have had it all wrapped up for so long, it’s time to unwrap it, and remember it.’

  Jim took a deep breath, and then he said, in a choked-up voice, ‘It was – ahem! – it was my dad.’

  ‘Go on. What did he do, your dad?’

  ‘He brought me here, to this beach. I was seven years old. He bought me a little shovel and a bucket and I sat right here and I tried to make a sandcastle, although the sand was much too dry.’

  ‘And then what, Mr Rook?’

  ‘He walked off. I didn’t know then that my mom had told him that morning that she was going to leave him, and take me with her. Well, how could I? As far as I know he wasn’t an easy man to get on with. Something like me, I guess. Anyhow, I found out years later that she had fallen in love with somebody else.’

  Jim’s eyes were crowded with tears. He took another deep breath and cleared his throat, and then he said, ‘I sat right here trying to build a sandcastle and my dad just walked off toward the ocean. He was fully dressed – coat, shirt, pants, even a necktie. I watched him as he went, and he just kept on walking. Into the surf to start with, but he kept on going. The water came right up to his shoulders, and then all I could see was his head, and then I couldn’t even see that.

  ‘I remember standing up to see what had happened to him. I thought that he was going to turn around and come walking back, all wet . . . like this was one of his practical jokes. He was always playing practical jokes, like filling the sugar bowl with salt, and sometimes he used to kid people that he had a really bad stammer. But I waited and I waited and he never did come back.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell anybody? Didn’t you run to the lifeguard and ask for help?’

  Jim shook his head.

  ‘But why on earth not? You had just seen your father walk fully dressed into the ocean, but you didn’t say a word?’

  ‘I thought he was going to come back,’ Jim said, miserably. ‘Whenever he left us before he always came back. How was I to know that this time was going to be any different? I was only just seven years old.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I waited for him until it grew dark, and then I lay down on the sand and I must have fallen asleep. The next thing I knew it was early morning, and the sun was coming up, and some guy walking a dog was asking me if I was OK.’

  ‘A sad story, Mr Rook,’ said the Reverend Silence. ‘A very sad story indeed.’

  ‘That’s why I wanted to forget it. Now I’m going to have to forget it all over again, thanks to you and your son and your goddamned apples, and believe me that’s not going to be easy. In fact it’s probably going to be impossible. So thanks a lot, Reverend. I really needed some more pain in my life.’

  For over half a minute, the Reverend Silence stood facing the ocean breeze with his eyes half closed, saying nothing. Then he took off his skimmer and pressed it against his chest, as if he were man paying his respects to a passing funeral. ‘It was that night, wasn’t it – the night that your father walked into the ocean – when you contracted the pneumonia that almost killed you?’

  ‘How the hell do you know that?’

  ‘I am in touch with all things spiritual, Mr Rook, as well as all things temporal. You nearly died, but when you nearly died, you were given a very rare gift, so in a way your father did you a favor. You can see so much, Mr Rook. You can see so much! You don’t know how much I envy you! And there are many others, much greater than I, and they envy you, too!’

  ‘What others? Who are you talking about?’

  The Reverend Silence turned and smiled at him. ‘You saw your daughter today, didn’t you, Mr Rook? How would you like to see your father?’

  ‘What?’ said Jim. ‘I don’t have to listen to this crap! I don’t know why you’re playing me like this, but I’m not taking it any more! You understand me? I’m going, and so goodnight, and I’d appreciate it if you’d take that creepy son of yours out of my class, OK? The sooner the better.’

  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.’

  FOURTEEN

  When 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’ Ro
ok 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 wa
s 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.’