Every now and again something on a higher floor would creak or grind, or somewhere in the darkness around her she'd hear a patter of dry plaster-dust. Then the creaking would stop, the pattering would stop, and her heart would pick up its normal rhythm again.

Of one thing she was pretty certain: there were no ghosts here. They'd wreaked their comprehensive havoc and gone on their melancholy way, leaving the house to creak and settle and eventually, when it could no longer support its own weight, collapse.

She'd seen enough. She moved back to the doorway and returned through it to the stairs, climbing over the rubble onto the lowest step. The staircase swayed ominously as she heaved herself onto it, and she saw that it had become disconnected from the wall a few feet up and was therefore 'floating', a fact she had failed to grasp during her descent. She ascended with a good deal more caution and reached the relatively solid ground at the top of the stairs with an inwardly spoken word of thanks.

The door to the master bedroom was open, she saw. A moment later, Maxine emerged and beckoned for her to come up.

"Todd's here and he wants to see you," she explained.

"Is he all right?" Tammy asked, fully realizing, even as she said this, that it was a damn-fool question to ask about a man who'd been recently murdered.

By way of reply Maxine made a strange face, as though she didn't have the least clue what the man in the master bedroom was up to.

"You should just come up and see for yourself," she said.

As they crossed on the stairs Maxine took the opportunity to whisper: "I hope to hell you can make more sense of him than I could."

"Hello, Tammy."

Todd was lying in the bed, with a pile of dirt covering his lower half. There was dirt on the floor too; and on his hands.

"You're a mess," she remarked brightly.

"I've been playing in the mud."

"Can I open the drapes a little, or put on a lamp? It's really gloomy in here."

"Put on a lamp if you really must."

She went to the table in the corner and switched on the antiquated lamp, doing so tentatively given her problem with the electricity on the lower floor. Then she went to look out of the narrow gap between the drapes. Maxine had been right; the evening was coming on quickly. Already the opposite side of the Canyon was purple grey, and the sky above it had lost all its warmth. There were no stars yet, but the moon was rising in the north-eastern corner of the Canyon.

"Don't look out there," Todd said.

"Why not?"

"Just close the drapes. Please."

She obviously wasn't quite quick enough for him, because he sprang out of bed, scattering dirt far and wide. His sudden movement startled her a little. It wasn't that she was afraid of him exactly; but if death emphasized people's natural propensities, as it seemed it did, then there was a good chance he'd be wilder in death than he had been alive. He took the drape from her hand-snatched it, almost-and pulled it closed.

"I don't want to see what's out there," he said. "And neither do you."

She looked down at his groin. How could she help herself? He was as hard as any man she'd laid eyes on, his dick moving even though he was standing still, bobbing to the rhythm of his pulse.

It would be ridiculous, she thought, not to mention it. Like his standing there with a pig under his arm, and making no reference to that.

"What's that in honour of?" she said, pointing down at the pulsing length. "Me?"

"Why, would you like it?"

"It's covered in dirt."

"Yeah." He took hold of the lower four inches of his dick and began to brush the soil off the top four, twisting his dick round (in a manner that looked painful to Tammy) so that he could fetch out the particles of dirt in the ridges of his circumcision scar.

"I didn't think I'd see you again," he said, as he worked. He let his dick go. It thumped against his belly before settling back into its head-high position. "I was beginning to think this was my only friend," he said. He knocked his dick sideways with a little laugh.

"I'm sorry," Tammy said. "I wasn't feeling well enough to come before now."

Todd wandered back over to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. More dirt fell onto the floor. He folded his arms, bunching the muscles of his shoulders and chest.

"Are you mad at me?" she said.

"A little, I guess."

"Because I didn't visit?"

"Yeah."

"I wouldn't have made very good company. I thought I was going crazy."

"You did?" He was interested now. "What happened?"

"I locked myself up in my house. I wouldn't see anybody. I was just about ready to kill myself."

"Oh shit," he said. "There's no reason to do that. All the bad times are over, Tammy. You can go off and live your life."

"What life? I don't have a life," she sighed. "Just that stupid little home filled with Todd Pickett memorabilia."

"You could sell it all."

"I'm going to, trust me. Maybe take a cruise around the world."

"Or better still, stay up here with me."

"I don't think -- "

"I mean it. Stay here."

"Have you been downstairs?"

"Not recently. Why?"

"Because this house is going to fall down, Todd. Very soon."

"No it isn't," he said. "Did you know there are dozens of small earthquakes in California every day? Well there are. And this place is still standing."

"It doesn't have any bottom floor left, Todd. Katya's guests dug it all up."

He turned to the bed, and started to pull armfuls of the dirt off the sheet.

"What are you doing?"

"Persuading you to stay," he said, still pulling at the earth. When he had almost all the dirt removed from the bed he pulled the sheet out and went around the other side of the bed, throwing the corners of the sheet into the middle, and then bundling up both sheet and dirt. He pushed the bundle off the bed, and got up onto the clean mattress, sitting with his head against the board, and his legs crossed. His balls were tight and shiny. His dick was hard as ever. He gave her a lascivious grin.

"Climb aboard," he said.

Here, she thought, was an invitation in a million. And there would have been a time, no doubt, when she would have swooned at the very idea of it.

"I think you should cover yourself up," Tammy said, keeping the tone friendly, but firm. "Haven't you got a pair of pants you can wear?"

"You don't want this?" he said, running his fingers over the smooth head of his cock.

"No." she said. "Thank you."

"It's because I'm dead, isn't it?"

She didn't reply to him. Instead she wandered through to the closet, which was enormous; barely a tenth of it was filled, and started to go through the trousers and jeans on the hangers, and found an old, much-patched pair of jeans, their condition suggesting that he was fond of them, because he'd had them fixed so often.

As she pulled them off the hanger she heard a sound on the roof, like something scraping over the Spanish tiles.

"Did you hear that?" she called through to Todd.

There was no answer from the room next door. Bringing the jeans with her she made her way back into the bedroom. Todd was no longer on the bed. He had snatched the dirt-stained sheet up off the floor and had wrapped it haphazardly around his body the result being something between a toga and a shroud, and was now crawling around in the corner of the room in this bizarre costume, his eyes turned up towards the roof. He beckoned Tammy over, putting his forefinger to his lips to ensure her silence. There were more noises on the roof; scraping sounds that suggested the animal, whatever it was, had some considerable bulk.

"What is it?" she said, "That's not a bird."

He shook his head, still staring up at the ceiling.