Darkroom (20 page)

‘So who's fighting on the
other
side?'

‘The legions of evil. The Benandanti call them the Malandanti.'

‘And how do the Benandanti fight them? And where?'

‘Usually by leaving their bodies, using astral projection, and hunting down the Malandanti in the shadow planes. The Benandanti can also leave their bodies to have secret meetings, anywhere in the world.'

Jim said, ‘Yes … I've done some of that leaving-your-body stuff. Not recommended for anybody who has to get up for work the next morning.'

Eleanor stood up, and came close to him, looking up at the painting. ‘When photography was invented, the Benandanti thought that they found a scientific way to banish evil forever. They would send photographers like Robert H. Vane all around the world, like missionaries, taking pictures of as many people as they possibly could. The silver in the photographic plates would not only
reflect
whatever evil people had inside them, but once the plate was fixed, the evil would
stay
there.'

‘And it worked?'

‘Oh, yes,' said Eleanor. ‘It worked all right. But the Benandanti hadn't understood that when people have been purged of all of their evil, they become weak and vulnerable, and they're no longer willing to protect themselves. All of those Native Americans that Robert H. Vane took pictures of … they died in their thousands, either of sickness, or because they put up absolutely no resistance to rapacious white settlers, or any of their enemies.'

‘The Daguenos, for instance,' said Jim. ‘For whom Robert H. Vane is still in mourning.'

‘That's right.'

‘But wait a minute – didn't the Daguenos attack a white settlement, and murder everybody, and pull their guts out?
That
wasn't a very weak and vulnerable thing to do, was it?'

‘That was the other face of the disaster. Yes, everybody who was photographed had the evil taken out of them, and caught on a silver plate. But every image has a life of its own, as you know. Every portrait can see, and think. Some portraits, under some circumstances, can move – especially at night, when those who knew the people in the portraits are dreaming about them.'

Jim sat down again. He had seen photographs moving for himself. Once he had even heard one speak – a single, anguished appeal:
‘Mother!'
He had seen portraits cry, out of sadness, or frustration. It wasn't hard to imagine what had happened to the portraits on Robert H. Vane's daguerrotype plates. As darkness fell, they had walked abroad, images of pure evil, but reversed, like negatives. White men with black faces and white eyes, looking to murder, and to burn, and to wreak any kind of havoc they could.

‘What happened to Vane?' he asked Eleanor.

‘As soon as the Benandanti discovered what was happening, they found him and ordered him to stop taking pictures, which of course he did, although they never told him why. But they didn't realize that he had taken a self-portrait, and that his own evil image was stored on a daguerrotype plate in his studio, along with all the rest.

‘His good self stopped taking pictures, but every night the evil part of his spirit emerged from his self-portrait, and went out to take more. The more he took, the more he mutated, until he became the creature you saw last night, half-camera and half-man. In those days, in Southern California, people were afraid to go out at night, because there were so many murders and terrible acts of rape and mutilation. What they didn't realize was that they were being plagued by themselves – their own evil images, from Robert H. Vane's plates. And, of course, being so good, they were defenseless.

‘At last one senior Benandanti missionary realized what was happening, and the Benandanti sent their agents to hunt for Vane's evil spirit. They found several of his secret studios and storehouses, and they smashed hundreds of daguerrotypes. But Vane took out insurance against his own daguerrotype being broken. He went to the best artist he could find – Gordon Shelby Welkin – and paid him a fortune to paint this portrait. On a thin sheet of silver-plated copper, which is why this painting is so heavy.

‘In his diary, Welkin wrote that he was ordered by Vane to grind up the dried caul that Vane had been born with, and mix it into his oils.'

‘His caul?'

‘Yes – the Benandanti set great store by the magical powers of a baby's caul. Most of them carry their cauls around their necks, in a hollow tube, for the rest of their lives. I don't know if I believe it myself, but I can't think what else might account for this painting being indestructible, and un-sellable, and why it always comes back to this apartment.'

Jim was so angry he could hardly breathe. ‘Vinnie must have known about this.'

‘Yes,' said Eleanor. ‘I suppose he must have done. But I never knew anything about Raymond's family. The Benandanti never tell you more than you need to know, and most of the time they tell you very much less.'

‘Goddamn it, no wonder Vinnie let me rent the place so goddamned cheap! And no wonder he asked me if I was managing to sleep OK. “Haven't been disturbed by any hunchbacks, have you, Jim, with legs like tripods? No-o-o? That's a relief!”'

Eleanor caught hold of his sleeve. ‘I swear to you, Jim, all I know is that the day after Raymond died, I had a phone call from the Benandanti telling me that they were urgently looking for somebody to take his place, but meanwhile I should be extra watchful.'

‘I see. They were looking for somebody to take his place, were they? Somebody with psychic abilities, who could take on Robert H. Vane and stop him from turning the world into negative hell, but somebody that no one would miss if anything went badly wrong? Who better than good old Jim Rook?'

‘Jim, when they told me you were moving in, you've no idea how relieved they were. People of your abilities – well, they're one in ten million.'

Jim didn't know what to say. What had seemed to be a bargain had turned out instead to be a death trap; and the people who had pretended to be friends had turned out to be vipers. He could have been incinerated last night. He might have been incinerated only a few minutes ago, if he hadn't been lucky enough to pin down the cloth that covered Robert H. Vane's head. He could be lying here now, on the rug, nothing more than a heap of gray ashes, a ribcage, and a skull.

‘I think you'd better leave,' he told Eleanor.

‘Jim … I promise you … I know the Benandanti – I trust them. If they could have thought of any other way …'

‘They didn't even
ask
me! They didn't even call me up and say, “oh, excuse us, we're the Benandanti and we happen to have an oil painting which can reduce a human being to cigar ash in five seconds flat, and would you mind keeping an eye on it for us?”'

‘You would have refused, that's why.'

‘Too damn right I would have refused!'

‘Even if you knew what Vane is capable of doing whenever he gets out? Jim, he goes around capturing the evil in people's souls, anybody he can find, and he stores them up in their hundreds, on his silver plates, so that one day you won't be safe anywhere, day or night, because the world will be overrun with the negative images of people's spirits, their evil selves, and their good selves will be far too weak to stop them.'

Jim ran his hand through his prickly hair. ‘I'm sorry, Eleanor. I like you, and I can understand what you're saying, but no, this isn't a job for me. I've had enough bad experiences with evil spirits for one lifetime, believe me, and after what happened to me in DC …'

An appalling thought occurred to him. Supposing the Benandanti had heard about his psychic abilities while he was still in Washington, working for the federal department of education? How would they have made sure that he return to Los Angeles, and to West Grove Community College? Only two days after that terrible incident in Washington, while he was still in shock, his phone had rung and it was Seymour Wallis from the West Grove board of governors. Seymour Wallis – white-bearded, avuncular, reassuring. ‘We don't know how you're making out in DC, Jim, but your old job with Special Class II just became vacant … is there a small chance that you might be interested?'

He said to Eleanor, ‘I'll be staying someplace else tonight, and tomorrow morning I'll be packing up my stuff and leaving.'

She took hold of both of his hands, her silver rings digging into his fingers. ‘Jim, I'm so sorry. Please don't go. I don't know what's going to happen if you do. It won't be like
The Night of the Living Dead
– it'll be far worse than that. The negative people are absolute evil … they're worse than vampires, and they multiply as fast as Vane can take their pictures. Crowd scenes, hundreds at a time.'

The phone rang. Jim pulled himself free from Eleanor and went over to pick it up.

‘Jim? It's Julia Fox. Listen, I have something terribly embarrassing to tell you. We have such high security at the auction house. We've had Rembrandts here without any incident. But somehow your Welkin has gone AWOL.'

‘Don't worry about it, Julia. Like you said, you probably couldn't have knocked it down for very much.'

‘All the same, we've informed the police, and they'll probably want to come talk to you.'

‘OK, Julia, thanks.' He hung up. Eleanor was standing with her arms by her sides, watching him.

‘The auction house,' he said. ‘They think that somebody's stolen my painting.'

‘Jim,' Eleanor pleaded.

‘No. I wouldn't have moved here if Vinnie hadn't lied to me, and I wouldn't have stayed here if you hadn't compounded that lie. “I sense two presences.” Do me a favor.'

‘Oh, those two presences are here all right. They're Raymond's mother and father.'

‘Really? Thanks for telling me.'

‘Please, listen. Raymond's mother and father were attending a family wedding – one of Raymond's cousins – when Robert H. Vane appeared and took their pictures. After that their evil selves used to come here night after night, beating at the door, until one day Raymond managed to find out where their daguerrotypes were hidden, and destroyed them. Now all that's left is their good selves, which stayed here after they died – and always will, probably, until they knock the building down.'

Jim said, ‘It's no use, Eleanor. Nothing can persuade me to stay here. Nothing.'

They gathered around the graves at Rolling Hills cemetery, over a hundred of them – families, friends, fellow students and the media. It was a humid morning, and the sky was a strange reddish color, as if it had been filmed through a strawberry filter, or as if something freakish were about to happen.

Bobby's and Sara's families stood together, dabbing their eyes. Dr Ehrlichman gave a speech about promising lives cut short – the same speech that he always gave when West Grove lost one of its students, whether they had died in an auto wreck, or cut their wrists, or overdosed on smack.

‘Who can predict what they might have been … what they might have achieved? Who can tell where the highway of fate might have guided their footsteps?'

At the end, Jim stepped forward. He was feeling tired and strained, and the burned prickles of his hair were stuck to his forehead with perspiration, but he had promised to say a few words on behalf of Special Class II.

‘I didn't personally know Bobby or Sara, but I know what their fellow students thought of them, how much they loved and respected them, and how much they're going to miss them. Here's a poem that I was going to read in class next week, and which we were all going to discuss. I can't say what Bobby and Sara would have thought about it, but I think it's very appropriate for their passing. “Farewell” by Henry Thompson:

As he spoke the last few lines, tears ran freely down Shadow's cheeks, and Sue-Marie took out a pink tissue and honked her nose. Bobby's father and mother tossed handfuls of earth on to his casket, and then Sara's father and mother did the same to hers. Everybody remained by the graves for a while, some of them throwing in roses, many of them standing with their heads bowed and their eyes closed.

Jim assembled Special Class II and led them down the sloping driveway to the parking lot, where their bus was waiting.

‘I can't believe they're both gone,' said Delilah, walking beside him. ‘I keep thinking that I'm going to see them tomorrow, sitting in class, just like always.'

‘Well, they'll be with us in spirit,' Jim told her. ‘We'll have a discussion tomorrow about losing people, and how to express your emotions in words. If you can describe how you feel on paper, it really helps to ease the pain, believe me.'