The Graveyard Game (30 page)

“Yes, aren’t we? The only difficulty with the plan was that the Yanks found out about it, and weren’t about to let a foreign power grab a bit of their coastline, especially when they had a civil war going on. This was in 1862, you see.

“Something went wrong, just as the expedition was beginning to make real progress. Bell-Fairfax was sent in to salvage what he could from some fool’s mistake. They never saw him again.”

“And did they ever find the treasure?” asked Lewis.

Nennius shrugged. “My cabinet minister died not long after, so I lost my primary source of information. I have a general impression they kept sneaking back to search for it, and for Bell-Fairfax too. Do you know, you’re the only person I’ve told about this, in the four centuries since it happened? It seems like the wildest cheap literature, I know. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t known the parties involved.”

“You say they kept searching for Edward?” Lewis asked distractedly.

Nennius was silent a moment, noting his familiar use of the name. He smiled at Lewis, thinking that it certainly wasn’t difficult to
snare a Preserver. All one needed for a literature drone was a good story.

He yawned and said, “Perhaps they hoped he wasn’t really dead, after all the tight corners he’d got himself out of without a scratch. I’d like to believe that. I was rather fond of him, at least as fond as one can be of the monkeys.”

“But he must have died,” Lewis said.

“Well, of course. And yet, you know, rumors persisted that he’d been seen, much later than was possible for a mortal.”

Lewis caught his breath. “Really?”

“Yes. Who knows? Perhaps all that nonsense about a Fountain of Youth was true. Certainly they did find something remarkable, in a cave on the windward side of the island.” Nennius observed Lewis’s reaction. “Or so I heard. I must admit I’ve felt the urge to go out there and see for myself if Bell-Fairfax is still strutting about. Wouldn’t you? What if he somehow dragged himself into that cave and cheated death?”

Lewis smiled but was silent, thinking very hard. Not hard enough, however, as it turned out.

That night he dreamed of a cave in the hills behind Avalon. He was in the long passage that led into the cave, terrified, though it was a pleasant passage, full of sweet melancholy perfume. It glowed with a white light that deepened to blue as he went farther in and farther down. Joseph was with him.

They emerged into a great vaulted room that stretched away into unfathomable darkness, lit only by white screens where films were playing, old films from Hollywood’s golden age, when he’d lived there. He saw Sean Connery and Michael Caine being British adventurers:
The Man Who Would Be King
. And there was Harrison Ford in Egypt in
Raiders of the Lost Ark
, and there was Ford too on another screen seeking the Holy Grail with Sean Connery. A silent film flickered in all shades of ash-silver and gray, biblical-era people dancing on the steps of an impossibly big temple set. On another screen,
Jackie Cooper waded ashore from the beached
Hispaniola
onto the sands of Treasure Island, singing Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum. On yet another screen, Rudolph Valentino rode down the side of a dune.

“That’s Pismo Beach, really,” Joseph said knowingly.

Lewis turned away from the screens. “Father of Lies,” he told Joseph, indignant, though he knew Joseph was right.

“No, I’m the son of lies, and you are too,” Joseph replied.

And there was Mendoza, so sad but so beautiful: she was sleeping in a vault, in a light like blue cellophane, dreaming peacefully, shrouded round in her fiery hair that drifted, drifted. Lewis ran toward the vault.

“What a cheap horror matinee,” Joseph said, because a skeleton came flying into Lewis’s path, but anyone could have told it was mounted from a boom and jointed together like a puppet. It was a very big skeleton, though, and a strange one. The skull’s top had been sawed off and reattached with wire. That was only done during autopsies, though, wasn’t it?

Lewis knew whose skeleton it was, hanging there so silly beside Mendoza’s vault with its bones still rattling: Edward’s. Edward hadn’t cheated death, he’d been shot and died in Mendoza’s arms. No happy ending. Lewis began to cry. Joseph leaped on the skeleton in a fury, and it fell to the floor, scattering like ivory dice.

“Bastard!” Joseph was screaming. “You got her into this condition, now you’ll have to marry her!”

“Aye, but he’s dead,” Lewis objected.

“But he won’t
stay
dead!” Joseph kicked the strange skull across the room, and Lewis realized that his friend had become a werewolf—no, the jackal-headed god Anubis, or was it Imhotep? No, he was only a coyote, after all. He pointed his muzzle at something over Lewis’s shoulder, and Lewis turned and caught his breath.

There they were together on the biggest screen of all, Edward and Mendoza, alive. He wore his commander’s uniform, she wore a sleeveless gown of beaded peach silk. He had brought her down an aisle of great palm trees to a caravanserai. Sinuous sensual music was
playing, a piece Lewis remembered from the late twentieth century called “Mummer’s Dance.”

He was unable to take his eyes from the romance. Edward led her to a high white room, shutters open to the blue sky. They undressed, smiling, clothes falling effortlessly like dropped scarves, and on a great wide bed of tapestry silk, all dark colors, gold, wine, burnt orange, green, he lay her down. Her arms went around his neck, and they kissed.

Lewis watched everything he’d ever guiltily imagined.

Joseph, behind him, was barking and howling, because they had come for Lewis at last, the little stupid men with his death. It didn’t matter. He reached up his arms to the lovers, and the realization came to him:
This is my salvation
. Dissolving in tears, he melted into the moving images and was lost, and it was so peaceful.

But he woke shaking and cold in his cabin. He sat up and turned on the gimbal light: no pale men, only a white dress shirt over the back of a chair and his own pale face reflected in the mirror over the dresser, its round brass frame like a halo. Shivering, he got up and fumbled with the thermostat. He sat huddled in his bed until morning, staring at the wall, and he never got warm.

A
FTER UNPACKING
his suitcase and testing the bed, Lewis glanced at his chronometer. Two hours yet until his job, and the cemetery was within walking distance. He adjusted the room’s climate control—nothing seemed to warm him these days—and sat down at the courtesy terminal. He tapped in Joseph’s code and waited for the screen to clear.

Joseph, mouth ringed in white foam, was brushing his teeth. “Make this quick, okay?” he said. “I’m turning in.”

“Are you going on vacation any time soon?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Joseph said. “I just came off a job. I was thinking of San Francisco.”

“What a coincidence,” Lewis said. “I was going out to the West Coast myself, for a couple of weeks. Why don’t we relive our madness in Ghirardelli Square.”

“You all right, Lewis?” The green face—this was a cheap hotel and the terminal’s color values were abysmal—loomed grotesquely close to the screen in a gigantic parody of concern. “You don’t look so good.”

“Do I ever?” Lewis said.

“Any more of that trouble?” Joseph held up his hand in a pistol-shooting gesture.

“None whatsoever.”

“You realize we can’t get any Theobromos at Ghirardelli Square. All those laws the Yanks passed.”

Lewis gave a theatrical sigh. “Well then, what about Santa Catalina Island?”

Even with the awful picture resolution, he could see the lightbulb going on above Joseph’s head. “Hm,” Joseph said. “Independent republic, lots of little loopholes to let people party. We might be able to score a couple of bars at that. I haven’t been over there since—when was it?—1923, I think.”

“It’s settled, then? Where shall we meet?”

“Where are you now?”

“New Hampshire. Little town called Arkham.”

“Ah,” Joseph said. “I know what you’re doing there. You should be done by noon tomorrow. When you finish, book the next flight to Santa Barbara. I’ll meet you in the Street of Spain, and we’ll drive to the ferry from there. Bring a lot of cash. I hear it’s expensive.”

“I have cash to burn these days,” Lewis said.

“How nice for you. So, you got that?”

“Street of Spain,” Lewis said, accessing a map and locating the ancient shopping quarter of the tiny republic. “I expect to be there at twenty hundred hours tomorrow.”

“See you. And, Lewis?”

“Yes?”

“Take care of yourself, okay?”

“Always, old boy.”

“Good. Mañiana.”

Lewis signed out, got up and showered, and took some pains combing his hair afterward. He wanted to look his best. A few minutes past twenty-one hundred hours, a yet unknown young Eccentric would limp into the local cemetery with an old pillowcase full of his writing, intent on offering it and himself in a fiery holocaust to shame the philistine world. There the youth would meet a kindly
stranger who would talk him out of it, or so his autobiography would later state: a small fair-haired man in an expensive suit who would give him cash for the contents of his pillowcase, enough cash to pay off the writer’s debts and buy him that all-important ticket to New York . . .

A
T LAST,” LEWIS SAID
, spotting the old Casino looming white at the entrance to Avalon Bay. “I don’t see why we couldn’t have taken a ferry from San Pedro.”

“Did you really want to drive through Los Angeles?” Joseph asked, and Lewis shuddered.

A little Island Guard cutter sped close and abreast of them for a few miles, scanning the
Catalina Thunderer
. It was doing this primarily for show; on Catalina it was illegal to sell liquor, meat, refined sugar, dairy products, or other proscribed substances, but it was not illegal to
own
them. This careful loophole brought the island a great deal of happy tourist trade. Avalon Harbor was packed with luxury craft at every mooring, and bigger vessels anchored discreetly farther out to sea, sending launches ashore.

“So here we are,” Lewis said, looking at the little white town, the steep green mountains rising behind it forested with ironwoods.
This is where Mendoza was, Joseph, all those years, and we never knew. A beautiful place, isn’t it?

A lot better than it was in the twentieth century
, Joseph admitted.
I don’t remember all these trees
.

The reforestation project has been under way for three centuries now
, Lewis said.
I read it in the guidebook. And, look, there’s the Hotel Saint Catherine. Remember? Of course, it’s been rebuilt, but
the book says it’s an exact restoration. We can go to the bar where you thought you saw her
.

I don’t know if I want to
do
that, Lewis
.

Well, I do
.

Joseph leaned on the rail and considered Lewis obliquely. He was more than a little concerned about his friend. He had run a surreptitious scan on him and found no malfunction, though Lewis was manufacturing compounds associated with severe stress. Lewis still hadn’t explained why they were making this trip.

You really think we’ll find her, Lewis?

I don’t know. She might be here
.

Then I guess it’s worth a look
.

That’s what I thought. See that little tower, up on the cliff? It’s a bell carillon. It used to strike the hours; the islanders disabled it when they adopted the slogan Where Time Has Stood Still. You won’t find a public clock anywhere. All the agcars are required by city ordinance to look like early automobiles, and there are never more than fifty allowed on the island at any one time. New buildings have to be as nearly as possible copies of former ones, and there are only two styles permitted: Mission Revival and Victorian
.

So . . . it’s perpetually 1923 here?

You could say that. To quote the commercial, “Our island throngs with pleasant ghosts: Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, John Wayne, and other immortals from Hollywood’s Golden Age. When you encounter the costumed actors portraying these celebrities of olden days, feel free to interact with them and ask questions about their lives and films. Each one is a certified historical reenactor capable of providing you with hours of informative conversation.”

Jesus. There’s retro and then there’s
retro.

It’s a mecca for reenactors, I understand
.

I bet. What is this, Disneyland West?

DisneyCorp doesn’t own any of it. It’s all run by a preservancy, which is run in turn by the
Company.
They have extensive offices over at the west end
.

I’m not surprised the Company’s invested in it. You know how Dr. Zeus is about places that don’t change
.

And this certainly doesn’t change
, Lewis said as their ferry pulled up to the mole. He turned to contemplate the little front street, and it did indeed look almost exactly as it had during his visits in the 1920s, with the exception of the slightly awkward Model A Fords floating two feet above the quaint old pavement. Yes, and there were a pair of actors portraying Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy parading along, tipping their hats grandly to the tourists and posing for holocards.

Joseph and Lewis went ashore, and spent an interminable thirty minutes in customs. When at last they passed through the turnstile and onto the old promenade that led into town, the hotel jitneys had long since departed, so they had to walk all the way around Crescent Avenue to the opposite side of the bay, dragging their suitcases. It was a picturesque walk, at least. Bright fish flitted in the clear water, and up every steep street that rose from the bay they caught glimpses of old gardens where clouds of bougainvillea in all its colors grew below steep gabled roofs. Beyond them loomed the jade-green mountains of the interior.

There were inviting streetside bars, where of course you couldn’t buy drinks, but you might buy glasses full of ice, and if you poured something you’d brought ashore with you into one such glass, it was nobody’s business but your own. Ice came very dear in Avalon. There were amusement arcades, as there always will be in any seaside town. There were adorable little shops full of wildly overpriced clothes. There were elegant old hotel lobbies and the front porches of little flea-bitten hotels. There were terraced restaurants shaded by olive trees, promising (but only promising) an abundance of dishes they could not legally sell, but could, for a nominal charge, prepare and serve to the determined diner who brought his own ingredients. There were stuccoed arches in the Old Spanish Days style and walls faced with Art Deco—patterned tiles in soft primary colors. There were tidy beds of bright flowers.