The Manor

by Scott Nicholson

  Except you also weren't supposed to feel pain in a dream, either. And what else could this be but pain, this sheet of red that dropped on him like a hundred sulfuric guillotines? Ribbons of electricity shot through his broken body, his nerves screaming like four alarms at a firehouse. Adam tried to laugh. Wasn't this funny, experiencing this hellburst of orange that flooded his brain, when he was surely dead?

  But wait a second. Can you dream that you're dead?

  But how would you know if you were dead… this was the kind of tiling that would give you a headache if you didn't know you were dreaming. But Adam had a headache anyway. He knelt to scrape his spilled brains together, scooped them up, and put them back in their broken shell.

  As his fingers stirred through the steaming wrinkles of his own cerebrum, he realized that his body was splayed out before him. This was odd, surreal, Daliesque. He expected to awaken at any moment to find himself giggling into his pillow. But he didn't wake up. He stood, looking at the pool of red that seeped from beneath his body and the sour bile around his head. A splinter of femur protruded from one thigh, angling out from a rip in the gray pajamas. The bone gleamed bright and wet in the pale light. The body's head was turned away in the direction of the wide stone steps that led into Korban Manor.

  But his real head, at least the one that housed his soul, was staring higher, at the black portal of the door.

  Shapes spilled out of the maw, white wispy forms like bits of shredded cobweb being swept along by the breeze of a broom.

  Some coalesced into more or less human figures, men, women, and small children, their faces blank, their eyes as black as the interior of the foyer. Some of them were in coarse crinolines, or trousers with button-up flies, a few men in overalls and felt hats, the women in bonnets or with their hair pinned up in buns. The young boys were in knickers, mended stockings sagging over square leather shoes, the girls in plain shifts, ribbons in their pigtails. An infant materialized at the feet of one of the women, its ragged diaper mingling with its ragged legs.

  Adam stepped backward as they walked toward him. Except they weren't walking, they were flitting, floating, flying, arms wide, mouths slack with grim purpose. There were about two dozen figures, and he saw Lilith among them, the maid with the flowing dress, but she was as misty as the others. The plump cook, whom he'd seen earlier pouring dishwater off the back porch, was wiping her hands on her apron.

  He screamed, but no one could hear you when you were dead.

  It was long past time for waking up.

  He tried to run, but stood transfixed, frozen, as cold as a December tombstone.

  The crowd gathered around the body that lay on the ground, the ghosts-yes, of course they're ghosts, if I'm going to have a bad dream I might as well go for broke-the ghosts merged and intertwined, showing no concern for the social constraints of personal space. And Adam, now more fascinated than frightened, also looked down at the object of their attention.

  It was he, himself, the person formerly know as Adam Andrews. There was the mole on his cheek, the small white scar above his elbow where he'd fallen off his bicycle at age nine, the awkward bend in the second toe of his kicking foot that he'd severely dislocated playing high school soccer. There was his hand, the nails unevenly trimmed, a few threads of Korban's beard hair still clutched in the rigid fingers. There was the silver ring with the garnet stone that Paul had given him.

  There lay his blood, his flesh, his body.

  A low sound filled the lawn, stretching across the hills, a funeral dirge that reminded Adam of recordings of whales he'd heard. It was a bizarre language, sonorous and sad. The syllables of the tuneless sound phased into aural chaos, a thick clotted noise. It was emanating from the manor, as if the foyer were the building's throat.

  The ghosts turned toward the door, solemn as only the dead could be. Adam gulped, looked down at his hands, and saw he was made of the same mist as the others, spun from the same insubstantial threads. He was a ghost. That meant…

  He was really dead.

  He smiled to himself. He closed his dreaming eyes. He'd have to forget being mad at Paul at least long enough to tell him about the dream. He wondered if he was snoring, then remembered that he'd pushed the beds apart, so he couldn't count on Paul giving him a nudge in the ribs. And right now, he'd love to be tickled, cuddled awake, to pull Paul's body close, to feel some human heat.

  Because being dead was a chilly business. He must have kicked the quilts off in his sleep.

  Yes, of course. Any crazy thing makes sense if you analyze it long enough. And deciding to leave Paul must have stirred up some funny things in the old Jungian jungle.

  But why shouldn't your mind pull a trick or two on you while you 're asleep?

  And what could be a better vacation site than this theme park of the deceased? What was that old black-and-white movie? Yeah, Carnival of Souls, dancing with the dead, wake up and say, "It was all a dream." And old Ephram Korban IS a nightmare-inducing sort.

  So why not enjoy it, laugh it up, go along for the ride? You'll be awake soon enough, back in the real world with real problems. Like how to deal with Paul. For real.

  He opened his eyes, and found himself still in his nightmare.

  The ghosts were bending, lifting the corpse. Amused, Adam joined them. When one of the bloody arms lolled outward, Adam placed it back over the chest cavity. The ghosts hoisted the body toward the door of the house, pale pallbearers in a silent procession. Adam trailed after them as they wafted up the steps. Waiting at the door was his malefactor, Korban.

  The man flashed a cold smile of triumph, his eyes like onyx marbles.

  "Welcome to your tunnel of the soul, Adam," Korban said.

  For a moment, Adam forgot he was dreaming. Korban held the door wide as the procession entered the darkness. Adam was unable to keep from following.

  Korban's face loomed near, and the man held out a welcoming arm. As Adam drifted into the waiting murk, he realized that it wasn't the manor that was swallowing him. The foyer was a tunnel, a tube of frigid stone-glass walls, an ever-widening mouth, all darkness, beyond light and the things that light touched. Adam shivered, colder now than ghost-cold, unwilling to let his id play anymore.

  Time to wake up now…

  Because Korban was changing, his eyes turning from dead dark orbs into fiery hateful suns.

  Because Korban was glowing with loathsome heat, Korban was reaching out to him, reaching in him, into his chest, into his heart-Please, please, please wake up!

  Korban's fingers squeezed and new pain erupted, a pain beyond human understanding, so intense that even the dreaming dead Adam screamed, and Korban pulled him deeper into the tunnel, and he knew that what was waiting ahead would be the worst thing that any part of his brain could concoct.

  He screamed again, screamed and screamed, closed his dream eyes so that he wouldn't see what was ahead But he knew what was ahead, the thing he'd buried so deeply in his mind that he'd forgotten. Though like all true forced forgettings, it had only gained power during the long years of hibernation. And when a buried memory finally claws through its coffin, digs its way through the dirt to the surface, it's not going to look kindly on the undertaker.

  This was a memory that had teeth.

  So he screamed again, and the hand in his chest was shaking, shaking him "Wake up, Adam."

  He opened his eyes, but he was still seeing the glimmers of his buried memory, the image making him throw his arms out in panic. He struck Paul in the shoulder.

  "Hey!"

  Paul stood beside Adam's bed in his underwear. Adam stared at him, unblinking. A faint fuzz of moonlight leaked through the window and the fire threw red light onto the walls.

  "You must have been having a hell of a dream," Paul said.

  Adam lay still, rolling his eyes around in their sockets, his chest sore from remembered pain. The quilts were bunched in knots around him. He glanced at the corners of the room, at the closet door, expecting the freshly exhumed me
mory to play out its image in the nearest available scrap of shadow. He looked at the portrait above the fireplace, watching for Korban's lips to part and welcome him into the tunnel.

  "I mean, you even woke me up with your thrashing around," Paul said, then added, with the slightest hint of scorn in his voice, "and I was all the way across the room."

  Adam flexed his fingers, reached up, and wiped the sweat from his forehead and upper lip.

  He drew in a breath, a sweet living and waking breath, and nothing had ever tasted so fine, not the chocolate cherry sauce on his favorite sundae, not the driest Chardonnay, not a new love's first kiss.

  Paul put his hands on his hips, impatient now. "Did you dream about my woman in white? Or are you still not talking to me?"

  Adam opened his mouth, glad to find the tip of his tongue brushing reassuringly against his teeth.

  "You were right about one thing," Adam whispered, the words dry in his throat. "It was one hell of a dream."

  CHAPTER 16

  Beautiful.

  Spence held up the page so the moonlight from the window would flash fully on the words.

  It had been waiting here. All these years. The Muse's blessing, the sweet inspiration, the sleeping dream of creation. The Gift.

  The house had given him another masterpiece.

  He leaned back in his chair and laughed. The sound echoed off the wood of the room, rattled the dresser on the mirror, mocked back at him from the wainscoting, curled around the cornice of the fireplace mantel, played off the cold rock hearth and swirled in the air like stirred dust. Korban's portrait grinned in the mischief of a secret understanding.

  The room was much nicer now that it was empty. There was only Spence and the Royal. Spence and words. And the world beyond the words?

  The world itself didn't matter. What mattered was the interpretation, the human reflection, the shaping of the illusion. The craft. Symbolism.

  The words.

  Spence's words.

  So what if those latest novels had meandered off course, had failed to sustain themselves, had crept plotless into unresolved graves? The important thing was that Spence had been anointed. The critics loved him. The New York Times Book Review had him on the cover, not once, but twice. And the little people, the aspiring writers and the coffee-shop crowd and pathetic English majors, gobbled up his books like bottom-feeding fish. This was before the era of television talk-show best sellers fashioned their follow-the-leader tastes into a drab society of the mutually hip.

  Not that the little people mattered, aside from providing the stimulus of mass adoration. Spence didn't write for them. He didn't write for the critics, either. They were as blind as Homer had been, puffing themselves up as if they had a hand in the creative process, hogs who couldn't recognize they were feeding at the same trough they spat in. Even editors were nothing more than intruders, more in love with the product than the act.

  Ultimately, Spence's whole life and career had revolved around the search. There had to be a way to strip away the layers of symbolism, to get right to the heart of the meaning. To reach the truth of things without the distraction of the typewriter's clacking, without the clumsy fingers that served as the brain's agents. Surely a more simple clarity existed than the black and white of ink on pulp.

  Soon, he would arrive. At that spiritual pinnacle, the moment when all human history, all universal laws, all theologies, every speck of dust and grain of matter and mote of thought could be condensed to its purest form. When all of everything could become the one.

  One true Word.

  Spence sighed. Until he achieved that godliness, that command of the essence, he had to work through these idiot tools of language. Poe always ranted about "unity of effect," how every word must contribute to the whole. That paranoid, absinthe-swilling madman was on the right path, but wouldn't it be much better to find the single word that was the effect?

  At least he could love what he wrote, despite its mortal shortcomings. He read the last completed paragraph.

  And he, becoming Night, found his limbs, his blood and joy, stretching across the hills. Seeping out beyond the cold dark stone that was his prison, the mountain that was his sepulcher, the house that was his heart. His fingers were now more than mere trees, his eyes more than mirrors, his teeth more than broken wood. He, becoming Night, could spread his inky waters, could lap his tides at far shores, could engulf and drown the surrounding nondarkness that no longer threatened.

  The Night walked both sides of dawn, once again bold and dreaming.

  Spence laid the page on the desk. He rubbed his eyes. Two days. Had he been writing for two days?

  His stomach gurgled. He could use something to eat. Bridget would be waiting at breakfast. Maybe he would even deign to forgive her.

  He rolled a blank page into the Royal before leaving the room so it would be waiting when he returned. He looked back at it from the doorway. The white paper glared accusingly at him.

  "Don't worry, the Word will come," he said to it, to the room, to the house and whatever was waiting in its walls. Then he closed the door.

  Sylva crossed the cabin floor and tossed a pinch of salt in the fire to keep the fetches away. Then she put the poultice on Anna's knee where the cuts were deepest. A little of the gummy mixture dribbled out of the cloth and ran down Anna's leg.

  "That ought to mend you up right nice," Sylva said.

  "What's in it?"

  "The usual. Chimney soot and molasses mixed with a little pine rosin. It's best to wrap a cut with a cobweb, but ain't many spiders this high up."

  "Won't that cause an infection?"

  "Nothing's much cleaner than chimney soot. Made pure by the fire, you see."

  The wound would heal fine. Sylva didn't think she could mend the other things that were wrong with Anna, the bad cells that burned inside her. And she didn't think she should, even if she knew what herbs to use. Part of having the power to heal was knowing when to let nature run its course. When to let the dead be dead, and when to let the living move on to other business of the soul.

  Anna was marked as clearly as if her fate had been written by a judge. The shame of it was, she was just getting started in her life, just beginning to grasp her mighty and frightsome gifts. But Sylva knew that the young woman's illness also made her powers stronger. That's why it had been so easy for Korban to summon her.

  Anna pressed the poultice to her knee and drank from the hand-fashioned clay cup. "Thank you, Miss-"

  "Sylva. Sylva Hartley."

  "And thanks for the water. I've never tasted water as good as you have here on the mountain."

  Sylva nodded and threw a stick of locust on the fire. Anna was putting off talking about it. Nobody liked to remember close calls. And Sylva had learned over the many years of waiting that patience was the only thing a body needed to be good at. She had waited a long time for the October blue moon.

  "You about got fetched over."

  "Is that what you call it when a ghost murders you?"

  "Yeah. Call it bad luck, too." Sylva stood and fished her hanging kettle from its hook over the fireplace. She poured some of the steaming water into Anna's cup. Then she crossed to the cupboard and took some leaves out of a ceramic jar. She crumbled a few of the leaves into Anna's hot water.

  "Smells good. Sort of like mint." Anna breathed in the aroma.

  "Yep. Mint with a little wild cherry root mixed in. Might ease up your headache."

  "How did you know?"

  "They always give me a headache, when I'm spelling them off. Them fresh dead, they're easier to see but they're harder to beat back down into the grave."

  Anna sipped at the tea and gave Sylva a sideways look. "How come they haven't 'fetched' you yet?"

  Sylva gave a laugh that was more of a liquid hiccup.

  "Got my cat bones and my snakeroot and my lizard powder and a whole cupboard full of other roots and herbs and reptile skins. And here's my special piece of protection."

  Sylva
rummaged under her shawl to the place near her heart. She held out her palm to show Anna the small, shriveled white thing that Sylva wouldn't have traded for a cape of spun gold.

  "Rabbit's foot?" Anna's dark eyebrows made arrow-tips on her forehead.

  "Not just any rabbit's foot. This is the left hind foot of a graveyard rabbit, snared on a winter midnight."

  "Another one of the old signs, like Ransom told me."

  "They mean as much as you want 'em to. It's all about how strong you believe."

  Anna set her cup on the rough-hewn table. She shivered despite the nearness of the fire. "What a night. I feel a thousand years old."

  "Old? I expect you wouldn't believe that I'm a hundred and five myself, give or take a few. Then again, you might, but I hardly believe it myself. I keep up with my health and all, but I suspect it's got a little to do with Korban. Like he's stretching my years on out so I don't up and die a natural death before he's done with me."

  Anna rested her chin in her hands. The fire reflected in her blue-green eyes.

  Them eyes. Lord, she's Rachel's spittin' image.

  "What does Korban want?" Anna asked. "I've studied ghosts for a long time, but most of them just seem to be trying to escape from here. This world, I mean."

  Sylva stared into the fire along with Anna. The sun was trickling through the east window now, but still the room was dark, as if night was reluctant to leave.

  "Korban wants it all back. Everything that was ever his, and then some."

  "Why?"

  "Why?" Sylva had thought about it many times over the years, but still didn't know the right answer. "Calling him evil would be too apple-pie easy. Maybe he was evil back when he was alive, but it's way beyond that now. He liked to own things, shape them up to fit his world. I reckon he still does. Is it evil to want to hold on to everything you ever loved?"

  "I'm not sure I've ever been loved."

  The words gripped Sylva's heart. Korban fetched Anna back for a reason. No matter what Rachel tried to do. Maybe nobody ever escaped from here, dead or alive.