Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker Read Free Book Online

historical significance.”
    “A minute ago it was just a room covered with filthy tile.”
    “Filthy tile of great historical significance,” Sandru said, allowing himself a little smile.
    “Are you saying we can’t find some terms that are mutually satisfying?
    Because if you are—”
    “No, no, no. I’m not saying that. Perhaps we could eventually agree on a price, if we talked about it for a while. But how would you ever get it back to California?”
    “That would be my problem. This is the twenties, Father. Anything’s possible.”
    “And then what? Suppose you could get everything back to Hollywood?”
    “Another room, the same proportions—”
    “You have such a room?”
    “No. I’d build one. We have a house in the Hollywood Hills. I’d put it in as a surprise for Katya.”
    “Without telling her?”
    “Well if I told her it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
    “I’m just astonished that she would allow you to do such a thing. A woman like that.”
    “Like what ?”
    The question caught Sandru off-balance. “Well . . . so . . .”
    “Beautiful?”
    “Yes.”
    “I think our conversation’s come full-circle, Father.”
    Sandru conceded the point with a little nod, lifting the brandy bottle as he did so.
    “So she’s not as perfect as her face would suggest?” he asked at last.

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    “Not remotely. Thank God.”
    “This place, with all its obscenities, would please her?”
    “Yes, I think it would. Why? Does that make you more open to the idea of selling it to me?”
    “I don’t know,” Sandru replied, frowning. “This whole conversation hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would. I expected you to come down here and maybe buy a table, or a tapestry. Instead you want to buy the walls!” He shook his head again. “I was warned about you Americans,” he added, his tone no longer amused.
    “What were you warned about?”
    “Oh, that you thought nothing was beyond your grasp. Or beyond your pocket.”
    “So the money isn’t enough.”
    “The money , the money .” He made an ugly sound in the back of his throat. “What does the money matter? You want to pay a hundred thousand dollars for it? Pay it. I’ll never see a lei so why should I care what it costs you? You can steal it as far as I am concerned.”
    “Let me understand you clearly. Are you agreeing to the sale?”
    “Yes,” Father Sandru said, his tone weary now, as though the whole subject had suddenly lost all trace of pleasure for him. “I’m agreeing.”
    “Good. I’m delighted.”
    Zeffer returned through the maze of furniture to the door, where the priest stood. He extended his hand. “It’s been wonderful dealing with you, Father Sandru.”
    Sandru looked down on the proffered hand, and then—after a moment of study—took it. His fingers were cold, his palm clammy. “Do you want to stay and look at what you’ve bought?”
    “No. I don’t think so. I think we both need a little sun on our faces.”
    Sandru said nothing to this; he just turned and led the way out along the corridor to the stairs. But the expression on his face, as he turned, was perfectly clear: there was no more pleasure to be found above than there was down here in the cold; nor prospect of any.

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T H R E E
    There were ten thousand things Zeffer had not witnessed, or even glimpsed, in his brief visit to the vast, mysterious chambers in the Fortress’s bowels; images haunting the tiles which he would not discern until the heroic labor of removing the masterwork from the walls and shipping it to California was complete.
    He was a literate man; better educated than most of his peers in the burgeoning city of Los Angeles, thanks to parents who had filled the house with books, even though there was often precious little food on the table.
    He knew his classics, and the mythologies from which the great books and plays of the ancients had been