"If they knew," Tammy said, "don't you think somebody would have recognized you, when you came to get Todd?"
Katya looked down at the cracked floor. She was absolutely still, except for her right hand, which was idly judging the heft of the knife. When she looked up again, her face carrying a radiant smile.
"All right. Enough recriminations. We've said our hard words. Now we must begin to forgive."
Tammy looked at her with incredulity. How many faces did this woman have? "There's going to be no forgiving here," she said.
"Will you shut up," Katya snapped, passing her hand over her brow. The smile dropped away for a moment, and there was a terrible vacuity in its place. As though the masks, however many there were, concealed nothing at all.
But she put the smile on again, a little more tentatively, and looked at Jerry.
"I'm in need of your help," she said. "Your help and your forgiveness. Please." She opened her arms. "Jerry. For old times' sake. I gave you a life. Didn't I? Being up here with me, wasn't it something to live for?"
Jerry took a long time to answer. Then he said: "You smell of death, Katya."
"Please. Jerry. Don't be cruel. Yes, I've hurt a lot of people. I realize that. Nobody regrets that necessity more than I do. But right from the beginning, I was trapped. What could I do? Zeffer was the one who brought the Hunt into this house, not me. I knew nothing about it. How can I be blamed for that?"
"I think they blame you," Jerry said, nodding past Katya at the now-stilled fog; or rather, at what it concealed.
At some point in this exchange, the revenants had left off their demolition, their fury momentarily calmed as they listened to Katya's self-justification. Many of them had been physically intertwined earlier, but they had separated themselves from one another, and, shrouded by the fog, listened to the woman play her parts.
"They were your guests," Jerry said to Katya. "Some of them were great actors."
"If they were so great, why did they become addicted so easily?"
"So did you," he reminded her.
"But the room was mine. They were just people who just passed through. Yes, some of them were casual friends. Some of them were even casual lovers. But once they were dead? They were nothing.
"I knew you were going to say that eventually." Tammy said. "You selfish bitch."
"Jesus," Katya said. "I have heard enough of you."
She lifted her knife and came at Tammy. In two seconds she would have had the blade buried in Tammy's heart, but before she could reach her target somebody stepped out of the mist, and knocked the knife from her hand. It spun on the tile, but Katya was quick. She ducked down and snatched it up again, her gaze going to the figure who had stepped into her path.
He had opened his arms, as though to formally present himself to her.
"Rudy?" she said.
The man in front of her bowed his gleaming head.
"Katya," he replied.
Tammy couldn't see his face but she thought there some sorrow in the syllables; whether for her, or for himself, who could say?
He'd no sooner spoken than from another spot, close to the door, somebody else spoke her name. This second voice was heavier than Valentino's; there was more anger in it than melancholy. "Remember me?" he said. "Doug Fairbanks?"
Katya turned, "Doug? I didn't realize you were here too."
"And me?" came a third voice, this time a woman.
"Clara?" Katya said.
"Of course."
The speaker walked up to Katya as she spoke, her stride remarkably confident. She was a shadow of her former self, but Tammy would still have recognized the face of Clara Bow. The bee-stung lips. The high, curved brows. The wide eyes, once filled with innocent high-spirits. But not now. Now they burned.
Katya glanced over her shoulder. "Please, Clara," she said, "Don't come so close."
"Why should you care how close we get?" Clara Bow said.
"Yes," came a fourth voice, "You're not to blame, remember?"
"Anyway," came a fifth voice, "we're nothing."
"Nothing," said a sixth voice. And a seventh.
Katya turned, swinging her weapon in a wide arc. Even so, it missed its several marks. The ghosts were too quick for her; she was sluggish, even in her fury. Besides, Tammy thought, what possible harm could a kitchen knife do upon these creatures? Yes, they had a corporeal existence; no question of that. But they were -- as far as she understood it -- spirit presences made of ether and memory. These people couldn't die. They were already dead; long, long dead.
And they were assembling now in even greater numbers, having apparently given up on looking for the Devil's Country.
It was gone; the evidence of which was the fading lines on the walls of this melancholy chamber. All that remained by way of satisfaction, if that was the word, was to punish the woman who had kept them outside in her joyless Canyon for so many seasons, holding on to the hope that they would one day be let back in to the house to satisfy their craving for the solace of their addiction.
Katya was well aware that she was in jeopardy, and hopelessly outnumbered. While still holding the knife she raised both hands in a vague gesture of surrender.
The dead seemed not to care. Their pale faces, which had always looked impersonal, were now -- in the presence of the woman who had once been their confidante -- assembling fragments of forgotten particularities. It was like a room full of Alzheimer's patients, recovering in the presence of some person they'd known well what they'd previously lost: themselves. Their eyes, which had been little more than lights in their heads, took on a specific shape and color. Their mouths, which had been slits, bloomed into sensuality.
Tammy didn't think any of these reconfigurations were good news for Katya. Unobtrusively, she caught hold of the back of Jerry's shirt, and gently eased him out of Katya's immediate vicinity.
She moved him not a moment too soon.
An instant later one of the ghosts came barreling out of the mist and caught hold of Katya. Tammy didn't see the attacker's face, but she heard the guttural cry which escaped him as he swung his captive around to face the fog.
Katya struggled, but he had her arms pinned behind her, and despite her considerable strength, he was the stronger. "Fuck you, Ramon!" she screamed.
She made a second attempt to wrest herself free of Navarro's grip, and by sheer vigour succeeded in liberating one of her arms; the one with the knife. She then stabbed wildly at the man who had hold of her: Ramon Navarro. The knife slid into his side, and there it lodged.
Before she could retrieve it he had caught hold of her flailing arm and had pinned it again. Though he had very firm hold of her she still continued to struggle and curse, giving up on English in favour of Romanian. And then, after perhaps thirty seconds of Romanian curses, she gave up completely, and fell silent.
For a moment Tammy thought Navarro had killed her, her silence was so sudden and complete. But-as had always been the case in this house-the truth was not so simple.
The curtain of fog shifted, as though several breezes had pierced it at the same moment. And then, like a troupe of actors appearing to take their final bow, the rest of the revenants began to appear from the mist; four, five, six, seven, eight, ten, twelve-
Their eyes were on Katya; all of them, on Katya. Now she began to struggle with fresh fervor, her movements chaotic and panicky, like those of a trapped animal. Much to Tammy's surprise, Navarro let her go. She turned on him, instantly, reaching for the knife that was still protruding from his side. But before she could catch hold of it he reached out and grabbed the front of Katya's dress. Then he pulled, tearing the light pink fabric away from her body and exposing her breasts. The look on her face changed, her fury apparently mellowing. Navarro bent forward and put his face between her breasts.