The Manor

by Scott Nicholson

  Anna looked up, as if through the eye of the world, at the clouds that caught the blue silver of the rising moon. The widow's walk. The top of the end of the world. Where her own ghost waited.

  She forced her arms and legs to climb. It was time to meet herself.

  Spence had found the Word.

  He sensed-no, knew-it would be waiting at the end of this final paragraph.

  Truth comes in unlikely packages. The One True God comes in the oddest of shapes. All gifts are weighty. Each gift demands its equal value in sacrifice.

  The shifting and bulging walls of the house had distracted him at first. Just another evil, another thing to steal his attention, to turn him from the road to glory. Bridget gasped and screamed as they took form, as the misty shapes fell from the ceiling and rose from the oak flooring, as they drifted cold and hollow through the room.

  Spence impatiently brushed them away. The True Shining Path beckoned him, and all else was superfluous poppycock and bombast, literistic excess. The True Path led to the next sentence that caused the next word to press itself into the wood pulp, as metal hammered ink into paper into existence.

  The night was ready, breath borrowed and held prisoner, lungs of ebony and earth, feet of granite, arms sweeping seasons of sleep from the eyes of the sightless. October screamed, a carpet of frost, a turn of brown wind, the end of something. Time turned backward, cold to hot, hard water. Go out frost and come in…

  He tilted forward in his chair, not caring if the chilled air sapped his strength. He needn't waste his flesh on Bridget. He had a better intercourse here, himself and the True Word. White shadows moved across the room in silence, the fire paused in consuming, his fingers itched.

  Come in… what?

  The Word hung there, teasing, waiting, drawing him body and soul onward hovering ever out of reach.

  "I say, chap, what are you waiting for?"

  Spence thought at first the line had come from his own mind a bit of clipped dialogue that was trying to force its way into the narrative. The fire roared, yet a frigid breeze skirled across the back of his neck. His fingers rested on the desk.

  The voice came again, no Muse, no Bridget, no Korban. "Get on with it, man. It's not the bleeding end of the world yet."

  Spence turned glared at the photographer who stood in the corner of the room, face obscured by shadows. "Damn you, why didn't you knock? I can't abide interruptions when I'm working."

  Roth's accent flattened became nasally and mid-western. "We got tunnels of the soul, Jeff. And guess what's inside yours?"

  "You're mad" Spence said. "Come out where I can see you."

  The photographer waved a quick hand toward the portrait of Korban. "He said you can have a typewriter, but all the keys will be stuck."

  Spence tried to rise, anger throbbing through him and sending a bright flash of pain across his left temple.

  Roth laughed his voice changed pitch, accelerated into that shrill and strident voice from Spence's past. The voice of Miss Eileen Foxx. "I before E except after PEEEE," she said Roth's body shaking with her gleeful laughter.

  "F-f-foxx in socks?" Spence said confused his chest split with pain. A warmth spread around his groin, an unfamiliar wetness that was almost pleasant.

  Roth moved back into the shadows and was gone. Eileen Foxx's last admonishment hung in the air like a threat: "You'd better make the grade, Jefferson, or I'll be waiting. Yessirree, you'll be staying after school with me."

  Spence stared into the fire until the dampness between his legs grew cold, then he faced the typewriter again, the words on the page almost like symbols etched by people from some lost civilization. They no longer had meaning, but he knew he wasn't finished. He needed that word.

  The class would laugh at him if he didn't find the word.

  Mason lifted the bull point again, the mallet in his slick right hand. The pile of wood shavings was ankle-deep around him, the statue hewn into a recognizable shape. The head needed a lot of work, but the arms and legs were there, the torso as strong and ugly as a stump. This was a hideous masterpiece, a raw stroke of genius, a creative vision that no eyes should ever see.

  Eyes.

  The thing needed eyes, so that it might see. And once it could see, then what?

  "You're not working, sculptor," the bust said.

  "I'm thinking," Mason said.

  "You'll think when I tell you. Now finish."

  Finish. And he could have it all, fame, fortune, Mama's approval. And the girl. Oh, don't forget the girl.

  He looked at the painting again. The painted Anna had changed position, was definitely falling, and her arms were now spread wide, the bouquet slipping from her fingers, the half smile shifted to a dark, round tunnel of a scream.

  Anna. Something about Anna that he should remember, if only he could think about anything besides the statue.

  The whispers spilled from the corner of the basement, and he was afraid the tunnel had opened again, that Mama would come out and sniff at him with her pointy rodent nose, show her sharp teeth, wriggle her whiskers, and tell him about the power of dreams.

  But the whisper stirred again, and the voice was Anna's: "Mason."

  The voice was coming from the painting.

  "Don't listen to her, sculptor," the bust said. "I need you. Give me my eyes. And my mouth. I'm hungry."

  Anna spoke again from the painting. "He's burning you up, Mason. He's burning us all."

  "Work," the bust commanded.

  "Burning our dreams," Anna said. "The closer I get to being dead, the more I understand."

  Being dead? Anna?

  He had to find her. Something was wrong. Something was wrong with him. He looked at his blistered hands, the tools, the things that had shaped these monstrosities before him. Where had these graven idols come from? Not from his own imagination, that was certain.

  "Dream me to life," the bust commanded. "Don't stop now."

  Dream Korban.

  No.

  He wanted his own dreams. Good or bad, whether or not they ever brought him fame. Whether or not they made Mama proud.

  He wanted his own dreams. Not Korban's.

  Mason raised the bull point, pressed it into the hulking chest of the statue, swept his arm back, and smashed the mallet into the steel. The bust screamed. Mason flung the hammer at the bust, knocking it to the floor.

  "Sculptorrrrr," Korban roared, voice like a thousand wildfires eating the air in the room, shaking the timbers of the house.

  The statue quivered, its limbs moved with a groan of splinters, then it tore itself free from the nails that held it to the support boards. The wooden hands reached up and fumbled with the wires. The legs had been divided at the bottom, but the feet were not refined, mere dark clumps of oak covered in bark. The heavy feet scraped across the floor.

  Moving toward him.

  Mason kicked the table, tumbling the lantern over. The flame extinguished as the globe shattered. They were in darkness.

  Both he and Korban.

  Except Korban was used to darkness, Korban fed on darkness, Korban was darkness.

  Mason groped in front of his face and headed toward where he thought the stairs were. He tripped over something metallic, then he fell into the arms of the animated statue, his bones knocking on wood No, it was only an old four-poster bed frame. But he was confused now, all directions the same, and he heard the twitching and squeaking behind him. Rodent noises.

  No, no, no, not the crib.

  And on the tail of that thought came another, equally frightful one. He had longed to create a lasting work of art. And he had done it. This was his undying success.

  The statue's limbs snapped as it searched for its maker, the sound like dry bones breaking. Korban was stretching, trying on his new body in the darkness. His wonderful but clumsy body, crafted by Mason's loving touch.

  "I'm blind," came Korban's muffled voice, as if he were chewing on sawdust. "You haven't finished my eyes."

  Mason's
fingers brushed one of the support beams. He ducked behind it and knelt in the dark. He tried to slow his breathing, but he couldn't. His pounding heart was going to give him away. The heavy wooden feet shuffled in his direction.

  If he's blind, he's deaf, too. Unless part of him is still in the bust. Then maybe he can SMELL you.

  Mason shuddered at the image of a rat leaning back on its haunches, whiskers quivering and nose wrinkling as it sniffed the air in search of sustenance. Korban was a rat, a rodent king, coming to get him. The thick tail slid across the cold concrete floor. Mason pressed against his eyelids until the pain drove the image away in a burst of bright green.

  "Come here, sculptor," Korban said, and the voice was clearer now, more strident. Had Korban moved from the statue back into the bust?

  The clumsy wooden feet shuffled closer, then moved away.

  Where are the stairs?

  "Don't betray me," Korban said. The voice filled the room, but the echoes were swallowed by the dead air.

  The statue must have found the bust and lifted it off the floor. Which one did Korban inhabit? Or was he in both at the same time? If he could fill an entire house, then surely bouncing around between a couple of pieces of dead wood was no trick at all.

  Two heavy steps forward. The rasping was either Korban's labored, unnatural breathing or warm air drifting through the ductwork overhead.

  "We need each other," Korban whispered.

  Fame, fortune, and the girl. And all Mason had to do was what he already lived and longed to do, what was in his blood, what he was born for and would risk death for.

  To create.

  To dream into life.

  He was made to make.

  He could make Korban, and Korban could make him. What was it Anna had said? It was not what you believed, it was how much. He believed in his art.

  Mason was tempted to reach out and touch it, caress the sleek muscle and wooden skin.

  This would be his lasting work. It would be simple, really. Just transpose the features he had carved on the bust onto the statue. Bring Korban to full and final life.

  He heard a clicking, a soft sound that might have been a chuckle. Or a rat's sigh.,

  "Finish me," Korban whispered.

  Surrender would be so easy. Surrender to the dream. Why bothering running from the deepest desires of his heart, the calling of the fire in his soul?

  Anna's voice came from the darkness, from the corner where the painting stood. "He'll eat your dreams, Mason."

  Mason scrambled for the stairs, stumbled upward, the basement alive with the angry creak of wood and the slither of things unseen, the cold tunnel of darkness licking at his heels and threatening to swallow him forever.

  CHAPTER 25

  Sylva stood before the front door. She hadn't been in the house for many years. Not since the night of Rachel's death. A shiver swept over her, brought on by more than just the October chill. This was like entering a church, holy ground, a place where souls walked free.

  She pressed the charm that was secreted inside her blouse, held it against the warmth of her heart. She was scared, but she had faith. The moon was rising, throwing cold light over the mountain as if a new sort of day was breaking. Maybe it was. A day of endless night, when things got reborn, when dark promises were kept and broken. When spells carried the weight of prayers.

  Sylva pushed open the door without knocking. Ephram knew she was here, all right. No need to sneak around. And the others, they moved about in the walls, stirred in the basement, shifted among the cracks in the hearthstones.

  Ephram's portrait nearly took the last of her breath away. She'd seen that face in a thousand dreams, half of them nightmares, the other half the kind that made you ashamed when you woke up.

  "Look at me," she whispered.

  Ephram stared at her with dark, painted eyes.

  "I'm old," she said. "I spelled myself alive all these years. Sticking around, waiting for this blue moon of yours. Well, I'm here now, and I ain't sure what you plan to do about it."

  The portrait fell from the wall, the heavy frame splintering, the canvas folding. When a picture fell, it was a sure sign that the subject was meant to die. But when a picture of a dead person fell…

  The flames rushed out of the chimney, fingers of fire reaching toward Sylva, reminding her of that night on Korban's bedroom floor, the night he planted the seed of Rachel deep inside her. A night of cold burning.

  And this was another night of forbidden heat, a night of frost and fire. She headed for the stairs, leaving Ephram's face lying on the wooden floor by the warmth of the house's heart. They were waiting up there on the widow's walk, under the rising moon. Anna and Miss Mamie and Lilith. Ephram would join them soon enough, and Sylva wouldn't miss this for the world. For more than the world, or any world beyond this one.

  She squeezed the charm until her fingers ached, her heart pumping faith as she climbed the stairs.

  Mason fell into the lamplight of the hallway as if it were a healing water. He slammed the basement door shut behind him, slid the metal bolt into its seat. Why was there a lock on the outside? What had been kept in the basement that required locks?

  Now that he was out of the suffocating basement, his head cleared a little. And the thoughts that came were almost as frightening as the creative trance that had been consuming him from the inside out. He leaned against the door, heart pounding.

  Smooth move, Mase. In case you forgot, this guy's been dead for eighty years and you think a DOOR'S going to stop him?

  But Korban had been clumsy and stiff when shifting into the statue. That's why the ghost or spirit or whatever moved into man-made objects. Because Korban needed that energy, that made-ness, before he could claim something as a vessel.

  Then maybe he'll slip into the DOOR, sawdust-for-brains. It's not like he has to follow the rules or anything.

  Maybe so. Mason slammed his fist against the door in frustration. The door thundered in response as wooden hands chopped from the other side. Mason looked down the hall.

  "Help," he shouted. Surely someone would hear the hammering on the door and come see what was wrong. There was movement down the hall. The pantry door swung open.

  "Thank God," Mason said, stepping away from the basement door. One of its wooden panels splintered and cracked from the pounding. "There's a-um-"

  Mason was still searching for words when he realized they would be unnecessary. The cook came out of the kitchen, a cleaver in her chubby hand. He could see the utensil's raised wooden handle. All the way up to its gleaming tip. He was looking through the woman's hand.

  She was made of the same milky substance as Ransom and George.

  Which meant Mason looked to his right. The hall ended in a small closet door. He'd have to go past-or through-the cook to get to either the front or rear doors of the house. And he had a feeling that he needed to get out fast, because the walls were buzzing with that same strange static he'd felt in the basement.

  The basement door splintered, gave way, and the golden red oak of Korban's hands stabbed through. The cook, suddenly solid, blocked the hall with her ethereal girth. Her lip was curled as if she'd just taken a whiff of rancid buttermilk. The cleaver danced in the air before her, its metal blade reflecting the flames from the lamps. Mason backed away from her, though there was nowhere to run. Korban reached through the gash in the door, clubbing Mason with one crude stub of fist. A spark-filled darkness flooded his skull, and he fell to the floor. When he blinked himself awake, blood leaking down his scalp, he saw swirls in the grain of the wainscoting.

  The wall was moving, or else his head was swimming. No, it wasn't the wall. It was something inside the wall.

  A face took shape and emerged from the wood. The face split in a grin as it stepped into the hall. The ghost of George Lawson waved its spare hand and drifted toward Mason.

  Korban shattered the latch and the basement door swung open. Mason forced himself to stand and ran toward the cook, hoping she was
as soft as she looked. He ducked low and dived toward her knees, the way he'd been taught in peewee football back in Sawyer Creek. His bones jarred as he plowed into her chilly flesh, and he heard something pop in his shoulder.

  Ghosts weren't supposed to be solid. But then, ghosts weren't supposed to be at all. The cleaver whistled through the air and he looked up just in time to see the cook's face, dead and unchanged. She could just as easily have been chopping carrots for a stew.

  He tried to roll to his left, but the cleaver glanced off his upper biceps. He let out an agonized breath, and drops of blood were flung across his face as she raised the cleaver for another blow. He crawled like a crippled spider across the floor, skittering past her, Korban's massive feet thundering down the hall.

  Mason leaped for the stairs, grabbing the rail to pull himself forward. His heart throbbed, sending fresh rushes of blood from his wound as he careened up the steps. The blood reassured him in an odd way, a reminder that he was still alive. In a world where dreams made nightmares, blood was welcome, and pain meant that he could still feel.

  Mason reached the second-floor landing and peered down the hall to the master bedroom. William Roth stood in the shadows beside Spence's closed door.

  "Run," Mason yelled, fumbling to close the torn gap in his arm. "The ghosts-Korban-"

  Then all speech was lost as Roth stepped into the light of the astral lamps. The photographer's face hung in rags, a crisscross of fresh scars making a gridwork of his smile. His eye sockets were blank, like empty lenses.

  The photographer held out a pale fist as Mason tried to shape his vocal cords into a scream.

  "Hiyer, mate," the Roth-ghost said, the words mumbled and muffled. The sliced lips opened again, and wet spindly things fell from the dead man's mouth and began crawling down his ripped shirt. Spiders.

  Both ends of the hall darkened. A harsh wind extinguished the lamps on the walls. It was the long dark tunnel, rushing at him from two directions, that would lead Mason back to the rats.

  Ransom's voice crept from the walls. "We got tunnels of the soul, Mason."