Garden of Evil Read online

  ‘So, what do you say, Mr Rook?’ asked Simon Silence. ‘One last prayer? Doctor Ehrlichman has agreed to us holding this little get-together, after all, and what harm can it do?’

  ‘I’m damned if I know the answer to that, Simon,’ said Jim. But he looked around at all the faces of Special Class Two and every one of them was appealing to him to say yes.

  If I say no, will I be letting them down? Maybe Simon is offering them Paradise, and if he is, who am I to deny it to them? And what if Bethany does come back to me, and I can make up for all of those missing years? And what if my dad comes back, too? Is that really so wrong?

  He checked his watch. ‘OK,’ he heard himself saying. ‘You have five minutes and then you have to be out of here.’

  There was a collective ‘yesss!’ of relief, and some of the class applauded and banged on the tops of the benches. Simon Silence smiled and said, ‘A very wise and generous gesture, Mr Rook. You will not regret it, I promise you.’

  With that, he lifted up the large white book and opened it. On the front cover, embossed in silver, Jim could see the word – the same Greek letters that were scrawled on his desk, underneath the doodle of the naked woman with the green snake wound around her.

  ‘Paradise,’ said Simon Silence, as if he could read Jim’s mind. ‘That’s what it means. This is the book that was excised from the Bible by the unbelievers. Only one copy of it exists in English . . . this one, which belongs to the Church of the Divine Conquest. You should read it some day.’

  Jim turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. He didn’t want to hear Simon Silence’s prayer. He felt guilty enough as it was. All the same, he stood with his back against the door for a moment and closed his eyes and whispered, ‘Bethany.’

  He was in a strangely mixed mood as he drove back home. He was nagged by doubts about the decision he had just taken, but he was also elated. Ever since he had first discovered that he could see spirits and ghosts and demons, and talk to them, too, he had tried to use his ability to help people. He had protected his family and his friends and those around him from supernatural harm, especially his students. He had also given peace of mind to the dead by helping them to understand that they really were dead, and that they could never come back.

  Now it seemed as if the Reverend Silence and his son were about to give him the power to change all of that, and to recall the dead to the land of the living. The feeling it gave him was almost like being high. He knew it was wrong. It had to be wrong. People always die for a reason, and there are no second chances. But how much happiness could he give to their loved ones, if he could bring them back from the spirit world?

  Most of all, he could show his father that life can go on, even when you feel that you’ve lost everything you care about. And he could redeem himself with Bethany.

  Everybody else in Special Class Two was going to be given their own personal Paradise – why shouldn’t he have his?

  It was a quarter of four by the time he turned into the sharply sloping driveway outside Briar Cliff Apartments. It was still dark, but the sky was gradually beginning to lighten toward the east. There was a cool early morning breeze blowing, and the yuccas were whispering all around him as if they knew that something momentous was about to happen.

  He paused outside Ricky Kaminsky’s apartment, but decided against knocking. Knowing Ricky as well as he did, he was pretty sure that he would have found his way home by now, and that he wouldn’t appreciate being woken out of a dead-drunk snoring slumber.

  He climbed up the next flight of steps until he reached Summer’s door. He was about to continue up to his own apartment when he thought: Why not? Summer easily qualifies as part of my personal paradise, and what had she said to him, only a few hours ago?

  Just you and me, Jimmy. Nobody else. Like the Garden of Eden.

  He pressed her doorbell and waited. There was no answer, so he pressed it again and this time he kept his thumb on it for almost fifteen seconds.

  Eventually, he heard a door opening somewhere inside Summer’s apartment, and the light was switched on in the hallway.

  ‘Who is it?’ Summer demanded, in a thick, throaty voice. ‘What time is it, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘It’s me,’ said Jim. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve left it kind of late, but I was wondering if you still wanted to join me for that drink.’

  ‘Jimmy! It’s the middle of the night!’

  ‘I know, Summer. But I couldn’t sleep. And I couldn’t stop thinking about you, sweetheart.’

  There was a long pause, and then Jim heard the locks turn and the safety chain drawn back. The door opened and there was Summer wearing a yellow sleeveless T-shirt and a white lace thong. Her blonde hair was all twisted up in yellow ribbons, so that it looked like snakes.

  ‘Where have you been, Jimmy? I was expecting you hours ago!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Summer. Something came up.’

  ‘You don’t say? Any chance of it coming up again?’

  ‘It’s nearly – what – four a.m. I guess it’s too late for that drink. Or maybe it’s too early. I don’t know which.’

  Summer shrugged. ‘I could manage a middle-of-the-night nightcap, if you could. You know me.’

  ‘OK. I have some prosecco in the fridge if you fancy that.’

  ‘Hey, I’m not too sure I could eat anything.’

  ‘Prosecco is like champagne, only it’s Italian.’

  ‘In that case, what are we waiting for? I just love champagne, and I adore anything Italian, especially the men. Al Pacino, mmm-mmmh! When he was younger, anyhow, and not so wrinkly! Just let me get my keys.’

  Summer went back inside and reappeared a few seconds later with a short white satin robe wrapped around her, jingling her door keys on her finger. She climbed the steps in her tippety-tappety high-heeled slippers, and Jim ushered her along to his apartment.

  ‘Just you and me, Jimmy,’ she said, as he unlocked the door, and she kissed her fingertip and touched it against his lips. ‘Just like the Garden of Eden. Adam and that other girl.’

  ‘Eve.’

  ‘No, not Eve. Eve was only a rib, wasn’t she? I mean that really sexy girl who liked it cowboy style.’

  ‘I don’t think they had cowboys in those days, Summer. I don’t even think they had cows.’

  Jim opened the door and switched on the lights. ‘Tibs!’ he called out, as he led Summer through to the kitchen. ‘Where are you, Tibs?

  He opened the fridge and took out the bottle of prosecco. ‘That cat, he’s been acting so weird lately. Sometimes I think he’s possessed.’

  ‘Well, cats – they’re magical, aren’t they?’ said Summer, sitting on a kitchen stool and crossing her legs. ‘That’s why witches always have them. Black cats, anyhow.’

  ‘What about dirty gray cats?’

  ‘I guess they’re for people who can’t make up their mind whether to be good or evil. Like, they’ll give money to charity, but if a storekeeper gives them too much change, they’ll just pocket it and won’t say a word.’

  ‘My cat is dirty gray, thanks,’ said Jim, popping the cork from the prosecco bottle. ‘So that’s me you’re talking about.’

  Summer blew him another fingertip kiss. ‘I always knew you had a flawed character. Whenever you talk to me, you can never take your eyes off my boobies.’

  Jim poured out two glasses of sparkling prosecco, and then said, ‘How about we take them through to the bedroom? It’s more comfortable in there. Less vertical, more horizontal.’

  ‘I love it when you talk like a teacher. Go on, then. The bedroom it is.’

  They went back into the hallway, but when they did so they found Tibbles waiting for them in front of the bedroom door, almost as if he were guarding it. He was sitting bolt upright, his eyes slitted, his ears folded back flat on his head.

  ‘So there you are, you mangy animal,’ said Jim. ‘I’m still not sure what you were trying to tell me with all of that playing-dead performance, b
ut I’m still glad you did it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have found out what my creepy little friend Simon Silence was up to, in the dead of night.’

  Summer said, ‘Hunh? What’s all that about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Jim told her. ‘Nothing that needs to spoil tonight, anyhow, or what’s left of it. Come on, Tibs. Clear the way, cat.’

  But Tibbles stayed where he was, right in the middle of the doorway, and slitted his eyes even more, as if to show Jim that he had absolutely no intention of budging an inch. Jim handed his glass of prosecco to Summer and bent down to pick him up, but Tibbles immediately hissed and lashed out at him with his claws, scratching the back of his hand.

  ‘There,’ said Jim, sucking blood from his knuckle. ‘I told you he’s been acting weird.’

  Jim stood up, and made as if he were turning away, but then he suddenly swung around and grabbed Tibbles with both hands, flinging him along the hallway so that he collided with a dull thump with the bathroom door.

  ‘Mademoiselle,’ he said to Summer, opening up the bedroom door and bowing.

  ‘I should report you to the ASPCA,’ said Summer. ‘Poor defenseless pussy.’

  ‘I don’t know what the hell is wrong with him,’ said Jim. ‘Maybe I should take him to a cat psychiatrist. First of all he was pretending to drop down dead. Eight times he did that. Then he was trying to show me this picture that Ricky Kaminsky painted for me. Now he’s sitting in the bedroom doorway trying to stop us from going in.’

  Summer had started to take off her wrap, baring one shoulder, when she stopped and said, ‘Jimmy.’

  Jim was walking across to his nightstand in order to switch on his bedside lamp.

  ‘Jimmy,’ Summer repeated. ‘The ceiling, Jimmy.’

  Jim switched on the lamp and looked up. Immediately, he sat down on the side of the bed in shock.

  Nailed to the ceiling, naked and thickly coated in white paint, was Ricky, with his arms and legs stretched out wide apart. His ponytail had been untied and his paint-stiffened hair radiated from the top of his head like the spokes of a wheel. All around him, eight white furry cats had been nailed in a circle.

  Summer dropped her glass of prosecco on to the carpet and said, ‘Oh my God, Jimmy. Oh my God. Oh my God I can’t believe it!’

  Jim managed to stand up again, a little unsteadily. ‘Go through to the living room,’ he told her. ‘Dial nine-one-one.’

  Summer continued to stare up at the ceiling with her mouth open so Jim shouted at her, ‘Summer! Go through to the living room and call the police! Do it now!’

  Summer stumbled out of the bedroom. Jim walked across the carpet until he was standing directly underneath Ricky’s spreadeagled body. He could see now that blood was speckled all over the pale-beige carpet and the white woven bedcover. There was even a curved spray of blood across the drapes. It looked as if Ricky might have violently flapped one arm while he was being nailed up.

  Jim had no idea what to think of this. It was so elaborate, so sadistic, so ritualistic, and yet he couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of a ritual it could be. In all of the research that he had ever done into mystical religions and sacrificial cults and demon-worship, he had never come across anything like this before.

  He was still standing there looking up at the ceiling when a warm drop of blood splashed on to his cheek. Ricky opened his eyes and stared down at him as if he couldn’t understand where he was or why he was in so much pain.

  ‘Jim,’ he croaked, and more blood dripped out of the side of his mouth. ‘Jim, help me. I’m dying, Jim. Help me.’

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Summer!’ Jim shouted. ‘Tell them we need paramedics, too! And firefighters!’

  Summer came back into the bedroom, wide-eyed with panic, holding up the phone. ‘Is there a fire?’

  ‘Ricky’s still alive! We need somebody who can get him down from there!’

  ‘Still alive? My God! OK, sure. Jesus! Paramedics. Yes, OK.’ She was still on the line to the emergency operator so she told her in a gabbly voice that they also needed the fire department to send an ambulance and a rescue team.

  ‘Hold on, Ricky!’ Jim told him. ‘Hold on, man, we have help on the way!’

  He climbed on to the bed and tramped across the mattress, raising his left arm so that he could steady himself against the ceiling. Ricky was breathing thick and slow, and blood was still sliding out of the corner of his mouth. His face was completely caked in white paint and his eyes were bloodshot, so that he looked as if he were wearing an Aboriginal mask.

  Jim tried to get a grip on the nail that had been driven through the palm of Ricky’s right hand, but it was slippery with blood and it had been hammered in far too hard for him to be able to pull it out manually.

  Not only that, all of the nails that had been driven through his hands and knees and ankles were L-shaped, so that it would have been impossible to lift him down without prying them out first.

  ‘You won’t be able to do it, Jim,’ Ricky whispered. ‘They pinned me up here hard and fast, believe me.’

  ‘We’ll get you down, I promise,’ said Jim. ‘Just stay with me, that’s all. Keep your eyes open and keep breathing.’

  ‘Bastards grabbed me just as soon as I stepped out of my front door,’ said Ricky. ‘I was high. Drunk. Nothing I could do to stop them.’

  ‘Just take it easy, Ricky. Save your strength.’

  But Ricky twisted his head around and stared at Jim fiercely with his bloodshot eyes. ‘They stripped me bare-ass naked, Jim, and then they beat the living shit out of me. I could feel things bursting inside of me. I could hear my bones breaking. I played dead, but it didn’t make no fuckin’ difference.’

  He coughed more blood, and spat, but then he said, ‘They painted me all over and they carried me up here and did this to me. Hammer and nails. And all these cats, too. And they was screeching, these cats, like all hell let loose.’

  ‘Who did it, Ricky?’ Jim asked him. ‘How in God’s name did they get you up here?’

  ‘Two guys in white. That’s who they were. Two guys all dressed in white. Older one, and a younger one. Two guys in white.’

  Jim’s mouth went dry. The Reverend John Silence, and Simon Silence. Who else could it have been? Two men dressed in white? Especially since Ricky had somehow found it impossible to paint anybody but that gray-faced Satanic figure, who appeared wherever the Silences appeared.

  ‘Did they say anything, these two guys in white?’ Jim asked him. ‘Did they call each other by name?’

  Ricky shook his head, and more drops of blood were spattered on to the bedcover.

  ‘Come on, Ricky, stay with me. You have to. Don’t give up on me now. How did they do it, Ricky? How the hell did they manage to nail you up here?’

  Ricky’s eyes closed and he let out a bubbly, snorting noise. Jim felt like shaking him awake but he thought that he would only cause him more pain, and he must already be suffering more than Jim could imagine possible. He couldn’t help thinking of that Easter hymn: We may not know, we cannot tell, what pains he had to bear.

  ‘Ricky,’ he repeated. ‘Come on, Ricky. It won’t be long now.’

  Even as he said that, he heard the scribbling sound of an ambulance siren in the distance, accompanied by the deep blaring horn of a fire truck.

  Ricky opened his eyes again, staring down at the bed as if he had forgotten where he was.

  ‘Ricky, the paramedics will be here in a minute, and the firefighters to get you down.’

  ‘Firefighters?’ Ricky frowned, and the dry white paint on his forehead cracked into furrows.

  ‘Just hold on, Ricky. Think about Nadine. What would Nadine do without you?’

  Ricky turned his head again, and blinked at him. ‘They flew,’ he said, in his clogged-up whisper.

  ‘What? Who did? What are you talking about?’

  ‘The two guys in white. That’s how they nailed me up here.’

  ‘What? I still don’t understand.’

 
‘They flew, Jim. They fuckin’ flew.’

  He continued to blink at Jim for a few more seconds, with metronomic regularity – blink, blink, blink – but then he stopped blinking and his eyes glazed over. His head dropped forward and his lungs let out a long, congested wheeze.

  ‘Ricky!’ Jim shouted at him. ‘Ricky! The paramedics are here! Ricky! Don’t give up on me now!’

  Summer came back into the bedroom, followed by two paramedics, a man and a woman, both of them African-Americans. The woman stopped as soon as she came through the door and stared up at the ceiling with her mouth open, wide-eyed in disbelief. The man slowly lowered his shoulder bag to the floor and said, ‘Hol-eee shee-it!’

  Detective Brennan came into the interview room carrying a cup of coffee and a donut with sprinkles on it.

  ‘Breakfast,’ he said, holding them up. ‘Or maybe lunch.’

  Jim was sitting at the plain wooden table in his shirtsleeves. His eyes were swollen from drinking and lack of sleep. He was unshaven and his hair was all messed up.

  The interview room was painted pale green, with windows that were covered with security mesh. Through the mesh Jim could see a small sunlit courtyard, where three uniformed police officers were talking and laughing, and a Korean woman was sitting by herself, reading a book and eating a sandwich.

  Detective Brennan dragged over a chair and sat down on the opposite side of the table. He was wearing a creased brown shirt and a yellow necktie with catsup stains on it, and crumpled khaki pants.

  ‘So what’s the connection?’ he asked, taking the lid off his coffee and blowing on it.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. What’s what connection?’

  ‘Three people get whitewashed and crucified, along with eight white Persian cats each, and every one of those people is connected to you. Your long-lost daughter, your gardener, and now your painter buddy from the same apartment block. Your daughter is discovered in your classroom, your gardener is discovered in the grounds of your college, and your painter buddy is found on the ceiling of your own bedroom.’