Cochran bent over, pried the matchbook from the carpet, and tossed it to Kootie who juggled the hot thing around in the palm of his hand to look at it.
The moment of flame had not obliterated the letters inked onto each match. Kootie read the words carefully, then looked up at Cochran. “The match you lit has ‘tenebis’ written on it, doesn’t it?”
Cochran bent down again and brushed his hand over the carpet until he had found the match he had struck; then he straightened and stared at it.
“‘Tenebis,’” Cochran read. He looked at Kootie. “You’ve seen this inscription before? It’s Latin, right?”
“I suppose it’s Latin,” Kootie said. “I’ve never seen it before, but I can tell what the missing word must be—’cause it’s a palindrome. See?” He tossed the matchbook back to Cochran. “The letters read the same backward as forward.”
“On a matchbook,” said Angelica with a wry smile. “That’s like the people who letter LA. Cigar—Too Tragical around chimneys and frying pans—or gun muzzles,” she added, touching the grip of the automatic in her belt. “Ghosts are drawn to palindromes, and these tricks burn ’em up—dispel ’em into the open air, unlike in the coal of a cigarette, which sends their broken-up constituent pieces straight into your lungs, for a nasty predatory high. The palindrome torchers send them safely on past India.”
This seemed to jar Cochran. “What exactly the hell do you people mean by ‘India’?” he asked.
A measured thumping sounded at the motel-room door, and Kootie could hear Arky Mavranos impatiently call something from outside
“Peek out before you unlock it,” Angelica said as Kootie stepped toward the door.
“Right, Ma.” Kootie peered out through the lens, then said, “It’s just them,” as he snapped back the bolt and pulled the door open.
Mavranos came shuffling in carrying one of his spare truck batteries in both hands; Pete Sullivan followed, carrying a stack of boxes balanced on top of the ice chest. An electric plug dangled from one of the boxes.
“On the table by the window,” said Mavranos to Pete. “Hook up the charger to the battery, a quick charge on the ten-amp setting—if it’s not too dead you might have time to drag one of the others up here and charge it too.”
“What’s India?” insisted Cochran.
“Uh—ghosthood,” said Angelica, frowning at the boxes Pete was putting down. Then she glanced at Cochran and apparently noted the man’s anxious squint. “In Shakespeare’s time,” she went on patiently, “India was sorcerously hip slang for a sort of overlap place, a halfway house between Earth and Heaven-or-Hell. It’s the antechamber to Dionysus’s domain—the god was supposed to have come to Thebes by way of Phrygia from northern India, around Pakistan.”
“Pakijaper came no more” sang Plumtree, to a bit of the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
Mavranos barked out two syllables of a laugh at that, wiping black dust off his hands. “I’m gonna—” he began.
“So what would it mean,” Cochran interrupted shakily, “to say…’Her bed is India, there she lies, a pearl’?”
Angelica was frowning at him with Kootie thought, puzzled sympathy. “That’s a line from Troilus and Cressida” Angelica said. “It would mean ‘she’ is in that India ; space—a ghost associating with a living person, or vice versa. The overlap, see? And I the ‘pearl’ reference would probably mean she’s accreting stuff from the other category—physical solidity, if she was a ghost to start with, or ghosts, if she was a living person. The Elizabethan slang for ghosts was ‘ghostings’—by way of folk etymology from ‘coastings,’ meaning coastlines, outlines, silhouettes; traced replicas—and later in the play—”
“I’m gonna go trace the coastline here,” said Mavranos, “the north coast from Fort Point by the bridge to where those three old ships are moored at the Hyde Street I Pier: the area where the wild mint used to grow, that gave the city its original name I of Yerba Buena. I’ve got a piedra iman, and a—”
“A magnet?” said Angelica, turning toward Mavranos. “But that’s only good fordrawing ghosts, Arky, you don’t want Crane’s ghost—”
“Why aren’t you gonna check west of the bridge?” demanded Plumtree. “The Sutro Baths ruins is where we saw his naked ghost, last week, and that’s west of the bridge. I think you should—”
“But you don’t want his ghost—” Angelica went on and Kootie was interrupting too: “We should see what the old black lady has to say about it—”
Arky had lifted one of Angelica’s weather-beaten stuffed toy pigs out of the box Pete had carried in, and now he shoved a C battery into the compartment in its rear end; and the pig’s sudden harsh mechanical burping silenced the two women and Kootie.
After three noisy seconds Mavranos pulled the battery out, and the croaking stopped. “I’m not gonna look for his ghost,” he said clearly, “nor where we saw his ghost. What I want to do first is search around the area where your old black lady’s banker friend drowned, back in 1875; that’s near the Hyde Pier. And I’m gonna use?the magnet along with a magnetic compass—I figure that when the compass needle ignores both the magnet and the real magnetic north pole, I’ll have found the spot ; where we can yank Scott back here from the far side of India. Wherever the spot is, it’s got to be a regular black hole for plain-old ghosts, and they’ve got to add up to a pre-emptive magnetic charge—especially now, on the eve of Dionysus’s day.” He bared his teeth in a smile. “Okay?”
“Just asking,” said Angelica.
“I have no idea how long this’ll take,” Mavranos went on. “I’m gonna walk it, and cleave you people the truck. If I get no readings at all, I’ll just come back here, well before dawn, and we can do the restoration-to-life right at the spot where the banker jumped in.” He swivelled an unreadable stare from Kootie to Angelica to Plumtree. “You all are gonna want to figure out your tactics. Don’t go out—order a pizza delivered, and if you need beers or something, send Pete. Angelica,” he added, with a nod toward where Cochran and Plumtree sat on the bed, “if they try anything at all, don’t you hesitate to—”
“I know,” said Angelica. “Shoot our hosts.” ^ “Right,” agreed Mavranos. He slapped the pocket of his denim jacket and nodded at the solid angularity of his revolver. Then he was out the door, and the clump-clop of his boots was receding down the stairs.
“What happens,” asked Plumtree bleakly, “if you untie that bandage from around Crane’s leg?”
“He bleeds,” said Angelica. “He’s got no pulse, but fresh blood leaks out of him.”
“Not forever,” Plumtree said. “Where we stabbed him#8230;his throat stopped bleeding after a while, right? I mean, I doubt they tied a tourniquet around his neck, then:’ She sighed hitchingly, and ran her fingers through her disordered hair. Her lips were turned down sharply at the corners. “Tilt a few good slugs of his blood into that empty Wild Turkey bottle. Tomorrow I’ll—probably have to—” Her eyes widened in evident surprise and her face went pale. “Scant! Why am I—”
Plumtree stood up and wobbled to the bathroom then, barely managing to slam the door behind her before Kootie heard her being rackingly sick in there.
“Who’s in the mood for a pizza?” he asked brightly.
‘Hush,” said Angelica quietly. She opened her mouth as if to say more, then just repeated, “Hush.”
