Anna checked on Mason again. He held his hand in the watering barrel, where a pipe supplied cold spring water from the hills. He had a second-degree burn. There would probably be scars, but the wounds would heal eventually.
EVERYTHING heals eventually, Anna thought. Even if you don’t have the power of charms and spells and herbs. Or the power over life and death.
Paul tore a strip off the waist of his shirt, dipped it in the water, and wrapped Mason’s cut arm. “Used to be a Boy Scout,” he said.
“Eagle?” Mason grunted.
“No. One of the lesser birds. Buzzard, maybe.”
“Sorry about your friend.”
“Yeah. I’ll deal with it after I quit lying to myself. After I figure out what happened.”
“We all have our guilt to deal with,” Mason said. “And we learn from our mistakes.”
“I sure as hell wish I had salvaged my videotapes, though. I could have been rich and famous. Who will ever believe it now?”
“You don’t want any evidence,” Mason said. “And if you look at what you have to pay for success, it’s not such a hot deal.”
“Is he in shock?” Anna asked Paul.
Paul looked into Mason’s eyes, then felt his pulse. “No. Maybe on the edge, but—”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Mason said.
“Shock’s not a bad way to go,” Anna said. “A dying soldier’s best friend.”
“Where in the world did that come from?”
“I don’t know. Just popped into my head.”
Paul stood up and rubbed at his eyes. “I guess we’re all suffering from disorientation. Or maybe mass hysteria. Because my camera didn’t lie.”
“All of it had to go,” Anna said. “Because it all belonged to Ephram Korban.”
“Then how will we ever prove it was real?”
“I don’t think we want to prove it,” Mason said.
“I wonder if they saw the smoke from down in the valley,” Cris said.
“Probably not,” Anna said. “There would have been sirens or a Forest Service helicopter by now.”
It was strange to be reminded that another world existed off this mountaintop, a world of sanity and order, where the dead stayed in the ground for the most part and people drifted through ordinary lives. Anna stood, heading for the wreckage of the barn. “Good thing the fire department didn’t get here in time to put it out, huh? I don’t think any part of Ephram should remain.”
“What are we going to tell them?” Mason said. “I mean, what really happened here?”
“I’ve got a theory. But a theory’s worth about as much as a match in hell. There’s supposed to be some old trails that go down the side of the mountain. I’m going to find one and ride down to the river and follow it until it meets a road.”
“Need some company?” Mason asked.
“Not the kind that gets woozy from heights. Plus you need time to heal.”
“I’ll go with you,” Zainab said.
Anna shook her head. “No. They need you here. And I’ve had a lot of experience with horses. It’ll be faster if I go alone.”
Paul nodded. “The writer’s having trouble breathing. Ate a little too much smoke. Good luck, Anna.”
Paul, Cris, and Zainab headed up the road, where Spence and Bridget gathered near the house’s foundation like ghosts who felt an obligation to haunt. But there were no more ghosts at Korban Manor. They had all moved on, to wherever their destination had been before Miss Mamie copied them as crude little dolls and Korban hijacked their midnight flight to eternity.
Korban Manor was nothing but ash and charcoal and a sprinkle of embers. And Korban was nothing, just a burned memory, a flash in the cosmic pan. A dream that was already half-forgotten, one that faded by the minute, and Anna was sure his magnificent marble grave marker was only a handful of dust, those words Too Soon Summoned crumbled like the lie they were.
Just before sunrise, she’d hiked to Beechy Gap and visited the site of the cabin where she’d seen the strange little carved figures. The cabin was gone, a small pile of ash marking its passage. The figures must have exited, too, wended toward the heavens in smoke and fire. Free at last.
Anna sorted through the fallen barn timbers for a saddle and bridle. She lifted a shattered board and saw Ransom’s blank face, a trickle of crusted blood at one corner of his mouth. The scrap of cloth from his charm was clenched in one rigid hand. She covered him before Mason noticed.
The dead deserved her respect. Death wasn’t romantic or glamorous. She was through worrying about their motives, their hopes, their endless dreams. Her fascination had faded. She had no desire to ever see another ghost, especially her own.
Even Rachel’s, though the two of them had shared an intimate bond that ran far deeper than mere mother and child.
Maybe this was how Anna was destined to belong. Those were her people, her connection, kindred spirits, however briefly. In an odd way, maybe they lingered inside her, invisible, in her blood, in the tainted, cancerous cells that corrupted her organs and pushed her inevitably toward the final darkness. She was as much a ghost as she was a mortal. A stranger in two strange lands.
But they all were. Every organic thing that had ever caught the spark of life. The dying begins with the birth.
So what?
Did she really expect that, by becoming a ghost, she would understand what being a ghost meant? She’d been alive for twenty-six years and had come no closer to the meaning of life in all that time. Why should death be any less of a mystery to those experiencing it?
As for today, the air was fresh and the pain inside was somewhere down around six, an arc and trick, or maybe a five, a broken wing. A hell of a long way from zero. She could live for those who had gone before, and those yet to come. Weeks or months, it was all a precious and fleeting gift.
Anna saw a flash of dull silver in the broken lumber, moved some timbers, and found a bridle, then a saddle and blanket. She pulled them from the rubble. Mason watched with interest as she harnessed one of the Morgans.
Some of the smoke that had collected in her lungs had started to rise. She cleared her throat and spat loudly. “Is that how they do it in Sawyer Creek?”
Mason smiled at her. It wasn’t such a bad smile, though it was surrounded by a face gray from smoke, ash, and weariness. She carried the blanket to him and covered him up.
“Better keep you warm, just in case,” she said.
“Go out frost?”
“That’s not funny.”
“I know.”
CHAPTER 82
Spence grabbed at a piece of black ash as it wafted to the ground.
No. It wasn’t the Word.
He grabbed another, then another.
The Word would endure. Mere fire couldn’t destroy it. He coughed. The ashes had stuck to his tears, making his cheeks feel thick and clotted. He coughed again, his stomach quivering.
“Why don’t you come away from there? That smoke’s no good for you.”
He turned. The Muse?
No. Bridget, Ms. Georgia Peach, the latest corruption.
“You stupid blowhard,” Bridget said. “Be glad that stuff got burned. Maybe someday you can write a real story, something that’s not possum vomit.”
Real? How dare she criticize—
“And you can leave me out of it.” She walked away, then turned and stood with her hands on her hips. “I don’t know what I ever saw in you. But I can sure see you now.”
“Don’t leave.”
“I believe you said this was always your favorite part. ‘The End.’ Well, it sounds good to me, too.”
Spence watched her go. She didn’t matter. She was just another prop, another character sketch. One of the little people. He stood under the snowfall of gray and black, waiting for the Word to come from on high.
Maybe if he could remember the story, bring it back to life, it would lead him again to the Word.
Something about the night?
He touched the crumpled page he’d tucked inside his jacket. Maybe later, after years had passed, he would be able to read it. And maybe it would contain some hint of the night’s long spell.
But the night was leaving, retreating over the far steel-blue hills, going on to other writers, other vessels. It would spread its loving cloak on another part of the world, shower its gifts elsewhere, whisper its secret sentences. And Spence was again alone, with nothing but himself and words.
The ashes rained on.
CHAPTER 83
Mason tried to curl the fingers of his scorched right hand. A strip of electric pain jolted up his arm, pausing only briefly at the cut in his shoulder to gather momentum before reaching his brain. He bit his tongue to keep from crying out.
Maybe this was what suffering was all about. The art of sacrifice. It wasn’t about enduring starvation, struggling for recognition, fighting the fear of failure. Maybe it was about finishing, letting go. And realizing that the dreams you bring to life sometimes have no place in the world, and are best left as dreams.
The toughest critics weren’t in New York or Paris. They weren’t in the art schools. They didn’t wear berets and sport tiny mustaches and drink espresso. Sometimes they lived in your mirror.
“How are you holding up?” Anna asked, tightening the cinch around the horse’s girth. She had strong hands.
“Well, I don’t think I’ll be doing much sculpting for a while.” Mason thought of his tools, buried somewhere under the heap of ashes and bones in the basement. He had no desire to see them again.
Anna nodded at him and adjusted the saddle, then stroked the horse’s ears. The Morgan snorted with pleasure.
He had to ask. “What was it like. . . you know?”
“To be dead?” Anna’s cyan eyes fixed on a faraway point somewhere beyond the range of sight.
“Uh-huh.”
“Somebody who loves me said it’s the same as being alive, only worse.”
Mason looked up at the thin pillar of smoke. The wind was carrying it away, and he caught the odor of apples. Now that the sun was out, the sky was a shade of winter-born blue.
December would come with its soft snows, then the nights would get shorter and spring would arrive. Grass would grow over the ruins, locust and blackberry vines would spring up from the burned-out spot. The granite would sleep under its skin of dirt. The sun would rise and fall, the seasons would turn, the clock’s restless hands would spin in only one direction.
Forward.
“What are you going to do later?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know. I think I’m cured of metaphysics, though. Let the dead rest. They’ve earned it.” She put a foot in the stirrup and swung astride the horse. It was a natural fit. “What about you?”
“Depends. As soon as I get back to Sawyer Creek, I’m going to tell Mama that dreams aren’t the only thing we got in this world.”
“Really. What else have we got?”
“Pain.”
“Dreams and pain. Well, that’s a lovely mix. Maybe you can add ‘faith’ to that list.”
The kind of mix that maybe love was made of. Mason wondered if one day he might find out. He looked down at the ground and saw a bit of color amid a pile of loose hay. He kicked at the hay, and then saw the flowers. A bouquet of bluets, flame azalea, daisies, baby’s breath, painted trillium. Spring mountain flowers, fresh-cut and sweet, the stems wrapped in clean lace. He carried them to Anna. “Somebody must have left these for you.”
She took the bouquet and held it to her nose, eyes moist. “Dead stay dead,” she whispered. “And rest in peace.”
Anna tucked the bouquet into the bridle, eased back on the reins, and the Morgan raised its head.
“See you soon, Mason. Take care of yourself.”
She twitched the reins and the horse started down the dirt road.
“Hey, Anna,” he yelled after her. “Did you mean what you said up on the widow’s walk?”
She didn’t stop, but turned in the saddle and looked back. She shouted over the steady clop of the horse’s hooves, “About trusting you? Maybe.”
Anna gave him a half smile and left him to wonder which half of it she meant.
THE END
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###
About the author:
I have written 13 novels, including The Red Church, Solom, The Harvest, Speed Dating with the Dead, Disintegration, Liquid Fear, and The Skull Ring. Other electronic works include Burial to Follow and the story collections Ashes, The First, Zombie Bits, Gateway Drug, and Flowers. I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where I play guitar, raise an organic garden, and work as a freelance fiction editor.
Talk to me at [email protected] or visit me at Haunted Computer, and be the first to get news, contests, and freebies by singing up for my monthly newsletter Scott’s Inner Circle. Connect with me at Facebook, Twitter, or my blog. If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends and give another Nicholson title a try. If you hated it, why not try another one anyway? What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, and what does kill you is probably lurking in my next book. Read on for more.
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Movie script for Creative Spirit
Artists at a mountain retreat find their work is reviving a slumbering spirit.
CREATIVE SPIRIT:
THE MOVIE
Original screenplay adapted from the paranormal thriller
The Manor/Creative Spirit
By Scott Nicholson
Copyright ©2005 Scott Nicholson
WGAw Registration #822663
Published by www.hauntedcomputer.com
GLOSSARY OF SCRIPT TERMS:
Cut: Quick transition between scenes.
Smash Cut: Forced, jarring transition between scenes
Fade: Gradual blurring of scene as a transition
Dissolve: Slow transition between scenes, often indicates time lapse
INT.: Interior scene
V.O.: Voice-over
O.S.: Off screen, but the action or dialogue is occurring in the scene
EXT: Exterior scene
CONT’D: The same character continues speaking.
POV: Camera angle from a single character’s point of view
Beat: A pause, usually in dialogue.
Want to play casting director? Email [email protected] with “Creative Spirit movie” in the subject line and your actor suggestions will be posted and credited on the Creative Spirit movie page
CREATIVE SPIRIT:
THE MOVIE
FADE IN:
EXT. WOODS OUTSIDE THE KORBAN MANOR—NIGHT/1898
YOUNG SYLVA, 16, in Victorian working dress, runs through moonlit woods. KORBAN MANOR is in the distance, a four-story Gothic mansion topped by a widow's walk. Smoke rises from the chimneys.
Sylva hurries around the house, fills her arms with firewood, and enters the back door.
CUT TO:
INT. MANOR STAIRS
Sylva leaps up the servants' stairs, down a dark hall, enters the MASTER BEDROOM.
CUT TO:
INT. KORBAN'S BEDROOM
Moonlight spills between the curtains into the shadowed room. Sylva kneels at the fireplace, rips newspaper and stacks kindling, reaches for the matchbox on the mantel.
Behind her, TWO RED SPECKS glow near the headboard of the bed. Raspy breathing, or what could be the wind.
Sylva, hands shaking, tries to strike a match against the hearth. At the spark, the breathing gets louder.
KORBAN
Sylva.
Sylva tries another match. The red specks grow dimmer. She sobs and drops the matchbox.
KORBAN (CONT'D)
(weaker)
Spell me.
The match strikes, flame touches paper. The paper smolders but doesn't catch. Sylva fans at the dying fire.
YOUNG SYLVA
Go out frost, come in fire. Go out frost, come in fire. Go out frost,
come in fire.
The flame roars to life. The firelight reveals EPHRAM KORBAN, 40's, bearded, eyes dark now. He sits up in bed. Sylva focuses on feeding the fire.
Korban rises out of bed, slow legs, learning to walk. He comes up behind Sylva and puts a hand on her shoulder.
KORBAN
You were late.
YOUNG SYLVA
I'm sorry.
KORBAN
Don't let the fire go out again. Or you know what will happen.
Korban turns Sylva and pulls her to her feet. He touches her cheek. Her eyes widen as smoke rises from where their skin meets. He reaches for the highest button on her dress and moves his lips to hers.
KORBAN (CONT'D)
(whispers)
Together we'll burn.
Korban kisses her. Their lips make a scorching sound. The fire roars—
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN ROAD—MORNING/PRESENT DAY
—into glorious sunrise. VAN drives up a twisting, unpaved mountain road. The van is tiny against the great ridges in the distance. The mountains are glorious with late September.
The bank drops off steeply along one side of the road. A lone crow swoops over the great valley.
CUT TO:
INT. VAN.
MASON JACKSON, 30, in the van. A bulky canvas satchel is in his lap. He glances out the van window, down at the drop-off then away, obviously uneasy.
Other PASSENGERS are talking in the low, excited voices of people nearing a destination.
Creative Spirit with Screenplay Page 28