Garden of Evil Read online

  Jim managed to reel past Summer’s apartment without her coming out to ambush him. She was probably asleep by now, anyhow. He negotiated the last flight of steps up to his own landing mostly on his hands and knees, and he had to jab his key six or seven times into the door before he located the keyhole.

  He stumbled into the hallway and closed the door behind him, standing with his back to it for almost a minute with his eyes closed, thanking Bacchus for bringing him home safely.

  Then he tilted his way into the kitchen, opened the fridge and took out a can of Mountain Dew Throwback, the one with real sugar in it. He popped the top and drank almost half of it without taking a breath. Afterward, he sat down at the kitchen table and let out a long, ripping belch.

  He didn’t know why he felt so drunk. He didn’t normally drink as many as five beers, but even so the floor seemed to be tilting underneath him and he found it hard to focus.

  He was still sitting there when Tibbles stalked into the kitchen. Tibbles came up close to Jim and looked up at him, sniffing suspiciously.

  ‘It’s all right, Tibs. I don’t have any more of those apples, thank God. And I don’t have the energy to throw you around the room.’

  Tibbles mewed at him.

  ‘You hungry?’ Jim asked him. ‘I gave you plenty this morning, fatso. If you’ve scoffed it all, that’s your fault. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow before you I give you any more. Overfeeding is just as cruel as starving.’

  But Tibbles mewed again, and this time Jim realized that it wasn’t his hungry mew. It was more of a yowl, as if he were trying to warn Jim about something.

  ‘What’s the matter, Tibs? Don’t tell me we have roof rats again. I’m too smashed to go rat-catching in the attic. I still have that exterminator’s number from last time. I’ll call him tomorrow.’

  But Tibbles mewed again, and again, and then quite suddenly he rolled over on to his back and lay on the floor with his legs wide apart, his eyes staring at nothing at all.

  ‘Tibbles? Tibs – are you OK?’

  Jim leaned forward and shook him, but Tibbles remained inert and floppy.

  ‘Tibbles?’

  He shook him again, but there was still no response. Jesus, he thought, Tibbles has just died on me. Maybe he’s had a heart attack, or a stroke. Do cats have heart attacks? Or maybe I hurt him more than I realized when I threw him across the living room and he’s been bleeding internally, or his spleen was ruptured. Do cats have spleens?

  He knelt down next to Tibbles and stared into his open, unblinking eyes. He certainly looked dead. In a way Jim hoped that he was dead because he didn’t want to have to give him the kiss of life. It took only a single hair to get caught in Jim’s mouth to make him retch, and even if Tibbles had stopped breathing, his breath was still rank with this morning’s shrimp.

  ‘Oh, Tibs, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘When you think how long we’ve been together . . .’

  But as soon as he had said that, Tibbles yowled and rolled over again and stood up. He gave himself a quick shake, and let out another yowl.

  ‘What the hell was all that about?’ Jim snapped at him. ‘Cats don’t play dead! Only dogs play dead, when they’re acting in movies! Or possums!’

  Tibbles yowled yet again, and then rolled over a second time, lying on his back like before, spreadeagled.

  Jim frowned at him. ‘Are you trying to tell me something, Tibs?’ He had known Tibbles to be highly sensitive to some of the spirits that he had conjured up, and openly terrified of some of the demons, even though nobody else but Jim had been able to see them. Nobody human, anyhow. So if Tibbles were trying to give him a warning, he was anxious to find out what it was. Tibbles had no reason to like him at the moment, not at all, so whatever he was warning him about, it had to be pretty goddamned serious.

  ‘You’re dead, and then you’re not dead, and then you’re dead again. OK . . . what does that mean?’

  Tibbles shook himself a third time, rolled over and stood up.

  ‘You’re dead twice, and then you’re alive again twice? I still don’t quite get it.’

  Tibbles rolled over on to his back and lay still. After a few moments, he stood up again. He repeated this over and over until Jim had counted that he had done it eight times. Then he yowled at Jim again, and came up close to sniff at the back of his hand.

  ‘OK . . . so you’re dead eight times. Is that it? Now what?’

  Without any warning, Tibbles scratched the back of his hand. Only lightly, almost playfully, but it still made Jim whip his hand away.

  ‘Hey, cat, that stung!’

  Cat, he thought. Is Tibbles trying to emphasize that he’s a cat? I know he’s a goddamned cat. He’s been a cat ever since I first adopted him, and it’s highly unlikely that he’s ever going to change.

  But a cat who had died eight times. What did that mean, if it meant anything at all?

  A cat who had died eight times. Or maybe eight cats who had all died once.

  Jim suddenly pictured Bethany, nailed naked and whitewashed to the ceiling of his classroom; and Santana, naked and whitewashed, too, nailed high up among the branches of the cypress tree.

  Each of them surrounded by eight dead cats, pinned in the same position that Tibbles had adopted on the kitchen floor, with his legs spread apart.

  Jim gripped the edge of the table and levered himself to his feet. He was rapidly beginning to sober up. The floor had stopped tilting and the walls had stopped rotating and everything was coming back into focus, like the old railroad clock on the wall. Its hands were pointing to a quarter after midnight.

  ‘Tibbles,’ said Jim. ‘What are you trying to say to me, boy? Come on, give me a clue, will you? Are you trying to tell me that somebody else has been nailed up someplace? Is that it?’

  Tibbles ran out of the kitchen into the hallway. ‘Great,’ said Jim, waving his scratched hand dismissively. ‘Just when I thought we were beginning to communicate, man and moggy, the greatest zoological breakthrough since Doctor Dolittle.’

  But almost immediately Tibbles came running back into the kitchen, and let out another yowl.

  ‘Jesus, Tibs. You go out, you come back in. What?’

  Tibbles ran out into the hallway again. This time, he stayed out there, yowling softly and persistently. Jim waited for a moment, steadying himself, and then he followed him.

  ‘Come on, Tibs. I’m drunk and I’m tired. I don’t have the time for any of this.’

  Tibbles kept on yowling, and purring, too. Not that soft, satisfied purr that he usually gave when Jim was watching football on the TV and absent-mindedly stroking him. This was more of a death-rattle.

  At the same time, Tibbles was looking directly up at the single oil painting which hung between the coat pegs and the main bedroom door. It was only a small painting, about ten inches wide by eight inches deep. It showed a group of people having a picnic under a tree, in leaf-dappled sunlight, a conscious imitation of Dejeuner sur l’Herbe, by Manet, except that the women had clothes on.

  Jim stared at the painting for a long time before he began to understand what Tibbles was telling him, but when he did, he felt the back of his neck prickling with dread.

  It had been painted in the grounds of West Grove Community College, three summers ago, when Ricky and Nadine and Jim and some other friends had gathered together for lunch al fresco under the trees. Ricky had made three or four sketches when he was there, and then finished the painting later. He had given it to Jim as a souvenir.

  Eight dead cats, thought Jim. The grounds of West Grove Community College. And Ricky, who was now missing.

  He slammed his apartment door behind him and vaulted down the two flights of steps to Nadine’s apartment. He rang the bell and shouted out, ‘Nadine! It’s Jim! Nadine!’

  Nadine opened the door and stared at him frowzily. She was wearing green satin pajamas now and had obviously decided to try and get some sleep.

  ‘Is Ricky back yet?’

  ‘Is he hell. I�
��m not waiting up any longer. This is the last time, I can tell you.’

  Jim hurry-stumbled down the last flight of steps and climbed into his car. He knew that he shouldn’t be driving, but how long would he have to wait for a taxi? Besides, he felt stone-cold sober now, even if he was about four times over the legal limit.

  He drove westward as fast as he could, keeping an eye open for police cars. At this time of the morning, it took him less than fifteen minutes to reach the college entrance, and he sped up the driveway at nearly fifty miles an hour, slewing to a stop right outside the main entrance.

  The main revolving door was locked, but the left-hand side door was open, so that the cleaners and the security staff could get in and out. Most of the lights were on, too. Jim walked quickly along the corridor to the staircase. Off to his right, he saw the silhouette of a lone cleaner, mopping the floor. She didn’t even look up as Jim hurried past.

  He leapt up the stairs two at a time, and almost ran along the corridor to Art Studio Four. Inside, the lights were on, because he could see them shining through the porthole in the door. He burst in, and came to a dead stop.

  All of Special Class Two were gathered in the classroom – Kyle Baxter and Jesmeka Watson and DaJon Johnson and Joe Chang and Hunni Robards and Jordy Brown and all of the rest of them. They were sitting in a circle – some of them straddling chairs, others perched on top of the benches. When Jim cannoned in through the door, they all turned around and stared at him.

  So did Simon Silence, who was standing in the center of the circle, holding up a large book bound in white leather. Maybe it was the overhead lighting, but Jim thought that his face looked even flatter than before, and his eyes even more slanted.

  His smile was just the same, though: sly and knowing and self-satisfied.

  ‘Mr Rook!’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect you so soon!’

  Jim slowly approached him, stiff-legged with anger. ‘What the hell are you doing here, Simon? It’s the middle of the night!’

  ‘Yes, Mr Rook, I know. But it’s very much later than you think. In fact, it’s almost time.’

  ‘Time for what, exactly?’

  ‘Paradise, Mr Rook. Time to go back to the very beginning!’

  FIFTEEN

  Jim said, ‘You need to leave, all of you. I don’t know how you managed to get in here without alerting college security, but you’re not permitted to enter the building after hours. Apart from that, class starts at nine and what kind of state are you guys going to be in, if you’ve been up all night?’

  ‘We have very nearly finished, Mr Rook,’ said Simon Silence. ‘Then we shall go.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Simon. You’re going now.’

  ‘I’m afraid that Doctor Ehrlichman will not be very pleased.’

  ‘What does Doctor Ehrlichman have to do with it?’

  ‘It was Doctor Ehrlichman who gave us special permission to meet here tonight. It had to be tonight.’

  ‘Doctor Ehrlichman gave you special permission? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘My father asked him as a favor. Today is September the twenty-seventh, which is the Day of Divine Conquest.’

  ‘Meaning precisely what, exactly?’

  ‘Today is the anniversary of the day on which Lilith was expelled from Paradise. Today is the day when my father’s church renews its determination that the world shall be restored to the way that it was originally intended to be.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, Simon?’ Jim snapped at him, making no attempt to disguise his irritation. He was very tired, and still badly shaken from having encountered the spirit of his father, and still quite drunk, too.

  ‘You’ve got it in one, Mr Rook. Hell, that’s what I’m talking about.’ Simon Silence held out the book from which he had been reading. ‘Here . . . you are a man of learning. You should acquaint yourself with this. The Book of Paradise, which was excluded from the Old Testament in the fourth century because it tells the truth about the Garden of Eden. It explains what was meant to happen there, and how mankind was betrayed by its own Creator, because of His jealousy of the very thing that He had created.’

  As Simon Silence was speaking, Jim was looking around the classroom, first at the students of Special Class Two – who were all listening to Simon with rapt expressions on their faces – and then at the paintings on the walls, and the sculptures, and the pottery.

  Instead of landscapes and ships and nudes and horses, every single picture was a portrait of the gray-faced Satanic figure that Ricky Kaminsky had painted, when he was trying so desperately to paint a jolly, child-friendly Storyteller.

  Every sculpture, too, was an interpretation of the same devilish creature, with his leering smile and his horns, even though some of the sculptures were almost abstract, and two or three of them were only maquettes – the rough wire models that were twisted together to carry the finished clay figurine.

  Every vase and plaque was glazed in shiny metallic gray, and every one of them carried either a likeness of the demon, or a symbol which looked like a man with his arms and legs spread wide, inside a circle of stars.

  Jim thought: Shit, I’m hallucinating. Too much to drink. Or if I’m not hallucinating, then something seriously wrong is happening here.

  He turned back to face Simon and raised his hand to stop him talking. ‘Can it, Simon. That’s enough. I don’t want to hear any more. If you really think you have to, you can explain it to me tomorrow, during recess. This is a remedial English class, not some wacky Bible group. My remedial English class, remember?’

  ‘But, Mr Rook, we have one last prayer to finish.’

  ‘You’re leaving, Simon, all of you. Like, now.’

  Simon took a very deep breath. ‘Very well, Mr Rook. But I can’t say what the consequences will be. This is the Day of Divine Conquest, and my father is not going to be happy unless all of the prayers are spoken according to the sacrament.’

  ‘Simon, I honestly don’t care if your father is dancing his ass off with delight or weeping into his sacrificial wine. No, I tell a lie. I do care, as a matter of fact, because ever since he bribed Doctor Ehrlichman into admitting you into this class, all of us here have been behaving as if each one of us is the center of the universe, and nobody else on the planet counts for squat.’

  ‘It’s only one last prayer, Mr Rook. That’s not so much to ask, is it? After that, we will all go quietly, I promise you.’

  ‘Look at these goddamn pictures!’ Jim retorted. ‘Look at all of these pictures, and all of these sculptures, and all of these pots! It’s like an art gallery straight out of hell!’

  Simon looked around, and so did Jim, but all of the portraits of the gray-faced Satan had vanished, just like the Reverend Silence had vanished from the bar at Barney’s Beanery. Now the walls were covered with the same pictures that had been hanging there before – the same amateurish landscapes and misshapen horses and lopsided vases of flowers. The same crude, brightly colored pottery.

  All of the students of Special Class Two looked around, too, frowning in bewilderment.

  ‘What’s going down, Mr Rook?’ asked DaJon Johnson. ‘Simon here promised us a real special night, like we was going to get everything we ever axe for. Like each one of us was going to get our own personal paradise.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Jim. But at the same time he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about Bethany, standing in the radiant sunlight at the end of the corridor, and about his father, walking toward him out of the darkness on Santa Monica Beach. I can come back, Daddy. We can all come back. Simon will help you.

  Tommy Makovicka stood up and said, haltingly, ‘Excuse me, sir, but you said it yourself, that none of us ever got much of a break out of life. OK, maybe it was our own stupid fault, some of us, for thinking that we knew everything and never paying attention. But that’s all that Simon promised us. Just a break.’

  ‘All’s we want the chance to make our mark, Mr Rook,’ put in Jesmeka Watson. ‘You know – so t
hat people like recognize who we are, and stuff, and we’re not just nobody.’

  Joe Chang joined in. ‘You can call us selfish, sir, but tell us who isn’t? These days one dog eats the other dog. If we don’t try to find our own personal paradise, nobody else is going to help us, are they? And if we don’t, what was the point of us being born? We might as well walk into the ocean and drown ourselves.’

  Jim stared at him and said, ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘I’m not saying nothing, sir, except that we won’t never amount to nothing at all unless we help ourselves, and Simon can help us. Nobody else never offered to do that before.’

  I can come back, Daddy.

  Jim stood in front of his students for a long time, not speaking.

  We can all come back. Simon will help you.

  Simon Silence filled Jim with uncertainty, more than any student he had ever had in his class before. In fact it was much deeper than uncertainty, it came very close to dread.

  In almost every college year, Jim had to deal with at least one cocky, self-assured young man who tried to undermine his authority and dominate the classroom, but he had years of teaching experience and he invariably knew how to put them in their place. Not by losing his temper, or trying to make them look small, but actually by bolstering their self-esteem, which was what most of his students sorely lacked, no matter how aggressively they behaved.

  But Simon Silence was something altogether different. Simon Silence was calm and sarcastic and completely confident. Jim was sure that his father had enrolled him into West Grove Community College with a very specific agenda. He had come here to seduce the students of Special Class Two into becoming supporters of the Church of Divine Conquest – and not just the students, either. Quite openly and unashamedly, he had been tempting Jim to support him, too. That was why he made Jim feel so uncertain, and almost to dread him.

  As he stood in front of his class, Jim was thinking: This is seriously scary. This young man is doing something much more frightening than undermining my authority. He’s tempting me. He’s offering me something that I dearly and desperately want, and because I can call up the dead I know I could probably have it. But it can’t be right, can it? And what the hell will the consequences be, if I give in to him?