Ghost Box: Six Supernatural Thrillers

by Scott Nicholson

  So when he’d seen the flicker of pale movement inside the shed, he hadn’t given the whispers much of a thought. He’d figured it was a possum or maybe a screech owl. Nothing that would have caused much damage. But George was paid to keep the place up and the critters out, or, as Miss Mamie said, “Just the way things were when Ephram was still lord and master here.” So George had lifted the old metal latch and pushed open the creaking door, hoping that any snakes were scared away by the noise.

  “But it wasn’t no possum, nor no screech owl, was it?” whispered Old Leatherneck.

  George’s eyes popped open. He must have drifted off. That was another one of Haley’s signs. The two-by-four across his chest rose and fell with his shallow breathing. The sun had slipped low, the dark angles of shadows sharp and thick in the carnage.

  Fear gave him a burst of energy, and he levered the two-by-four. His stub of a wrist screamed in fire-juice red.

  “Hear that? Wasn’t no possum, was it, Georgie?”

  Now he wished the old bastard would shut up. He needed to focus, get the job done in a hurry, he didn’t need—

  “Might be sssnakes.”

  Or it might be—

  —the long white slithery shadow—

  —whatever trick his eyes had played on him as he’d stepped inside the shed. Because if a fellow couldn’t trust his own eyes, his days as a to-the-sixteenth-inch handyman were numbered. But right now, all that mattered was—

  —that slippery shadow that you could see right through—

  —the next push, prying that ceiling joist off his left arm. His chest erupted in hot blue sparks of pain, hell-blazer blue, a blue so intense it was almost white. But the joist gave a little groan and inched upward, awakening the nailed nerves in his biceps.

  “She’s moving, soldier! She’s a-moving! And the pain ain’t nothing, is it? Hell, we been through bookoos of this kind of hurt. This is like a pansy-assed waltz through the daisies.”

  A waltz. The long white shadow had been doing a waltz. Like a worn linen curtain blowing in the wind, only . . .

  “Sure wasn’t no screech owl’s face, Georgie-Boy.”

  The shadow had a human face.

  George gurgled and the spit trickled down his cheek. He pried again and the joist lifted another cruel and precious inch. New colors of pain came, pus yellow, electric green, screaming violet, crazed ribbons of agony. A big section of the roof quivered and the amputated hand worked free of its wooden skewer, fell and bounced off his forehead and away.

  But George barely noticed, because he was back in the tunnel, riding the miners’ rails. And he was rounding that slow curve into darkness, that final turn away from the bothers of breathing.

  And suddenly he knew what was around the bend.

  She would be waiting, the white shadow with the large round begging eyes, the thing with arms spread wide, one hand holding that dead bouquet of flowers. She looked even more afraid than George. Just before the shed collapsed, he’d seen the long see-through tail wriggling under the lace hem of her gown, a tail as scaly as a—

  “The snakes crawl at night, Georgie.”

  “No, they don’t,” George said, voice hoarse and weak. “I know, because I looked it up.”

  He was weeping because he realized he couldn’t remember his mama’s name. But sorrow didn’t matter now, neither did the pain, nor the nails in his flesh, nor the missing hand, nor the dust filling his lungs, nor the creeping night. Even Old Leatherneck was nothing, just a distant jungle ghost, a cobweb, an echo.

  All that mattered were the miners’ rails and that turn in the bend, and the tunnel opening into a deeper, airless blackness. A black beyond the colors of pain.

  She was waiting. With company.

  Johnny Cash was right, and the encyclopedia was wrong.

  The snakes did crawl at night.

  CHAPTER 6

  The fields were golden-green sheets stretched to the surrounding forest. Great ridges of earth rose along the horizon, carved and chipped and smoothed by that master sculptor, Time. Mason now knew why these mountains were called the Blue Ridge, though the changing leaves splashed such an array of colors that he almost wished he’d stuck with painting.

  Pumpkin orange, summer squash yellow, cornsilk gold, beet purple. Van Gogh would have given his other ear to paint this place.

  Except such a thought smacked of that dreaded ideal of artistic sacrifice. Mason wondered if the esteemed historical roster of insane artists had not been schizophrenic or poisoned by the lead in their paint, but had instead been driven mad by the whispering of demanding Muses.

  He drove the thought from his head because it seemed like an option only a nut would consider. And he’d given up painting not because of a lack of desire or talent, but because of its visual nature. His mother could feel the sculpture with her fingers, but a painting was nothing to her but an endless piece of darkness.

  A few horses and cows grazed in the meadow that sloped away from the front of the house. The open land must have been about twenty acres, cleared of boulders and carefully tended. Mason found it hard to believe that these soft grounds gave way to steep granite cliffs on all sides.

  Not even a jet trail marked the blue autumn sky, as if the manor were remote from modern civilization not only in distance but in time as well. Majestic hardwoods spread their limbs at carefully spaced intervals along a carriage trail that wound toward the west. An apple orchard covered a rise beside the pasture, the trees dotted with pink and golden fruit. Lush grass swayed softly in a hayfield beyond, ending at the edge of a dense forest.

  A soft voice interrupted his reverie: “Now you know why artists trip over their egos to get up here. Especially in the fall.”

  Anna Galloway crossed the porch and leaned over the railing, then closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose with an exaggerated flourish. “Ah. Fresh air. A nice change from the stench of pretension inside.”

  “You a painter?” Mason asked, still looking across the fields, irritated by her jab at artists.

  “No.”

  “Me either.”

  “What are you, then?”

  “Does everybody have to be something?”

  The woman tilted her head back toward the house. “If you listen to them, you’d think so.”

  “Well, this is a retreat, after all. Back up and go ‘Whoa,’ I reckon.” He didn’t want her to know he felt out of his element. He already missed Sawyer Creek’s dirty little streets with their utility poles and peeling billboards. Back home, he’d be heating up the teakettle and tuning the radio to Mama’s favorite conservative talk show right about now.

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “This satchel? Nothing. Just some tools.”

  “Too bad,” she said. “You’d be far more interesting if it was a parachute.”

  Mason tried not to look at her too closely, though that was all he wanted to do. She was pretty, sure, but there was also the sense that she wouldn’t let him hide behind his dumb-bumpkin act, the one he’d used to bluff his way through art college.

  Those cyan eyes pierced too deeply, saw beyond the slick face of first impressions. He came up with a snappy comeback a couple of seconds too late. “Think it’s weird I carry my tools everywhere?”

  “I think it’s weird you carried them over the bridge. Like you expect art to happen at any moment.”

  He wished he could tell her. The tools were not all that expensive, but they had come at great cost. He thought of Mama alone at their cramped apartment in Sawyer Creek, sitting in her worn recliner, a cat in her lap. Eyes never blinking.

  This woman he’d only just met was too damned insightful and saw his self-doubt with uncanny clarity. He was worse than the rest, even while pretending he was apart from other artists, not buying into their wankish and vain prattle. He wasn’t sure whether his work revealed anything about the world, but he was determined to shove it in the world’s face and make it notice anyway.

  Mason adjusted the satc
hel on his shoulder, feeling the woman’s eyes on him. “Sculpting tools,” he said. “A hammer, hatchet, chisels, fluters, gougers, some blades.”

  “You do wood?”

  “I’ve done a little of everything.” He finally looked her full in the face, forcing himself not to blink against her gaze. “Except here I’ll be doing wood.”

  She nodded as if she’d already forgotten him. “Six weeks is not very long. It would be hard to tackle something stone in that time.”

  Her accent was almost rural, as if she’d tried to be country but somebody had sent her off to college to have it squeezed out of her. One of the horses, a big roan, galloped across the pasture. She smiled as she watched it.

  “Some place, huh?” Mason said.

  “I’ve seen pictures, but they certainly don’t do it justice.” Again she sounded distracted, as if Mason were as boring as Miss Mamie’s well-heeled gang in the foyer.

  Mason stepped between the shrubs and fingered the mortised joints of the railing. Grooved columns held up the portico, the paint thick and scaly where the layers had built up over the decades. The stone foundation of the manor wore a fur coat of green moss. A sudden juvenile urge to impress the woman came over him. “Colonial revivalist architecture,” he said. “This Korban guy must have had the bucks.”

  “Do you know anything about him?”

  “Only what I read in the brochure. Industrialist, made a fortune after the Spanish-American War, bought out this mountain, and built the manor as a summer home. Two thousand acres of land connected to civilization by nothing except that wooden bridge.”

  He hated himself for blathering. He hadn’t come to Korban Manor to mess around. He needed to get serious about his work, not spar with someone who seemed about as interested in him as if he were a piece of lint. Besides, artists were supposed to be aloof.

  “So you only have the sanitized biography,” she said. “I did a little research on him myself. That’s my line.”

  “You’re a writer?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Figured. They’re more stuck up and screwed up than artists, if you ask me.”

  “Nobody did. As I was about to say, Korban set down in his will that the place be kept as a period piece from the end of the nineteenth century. He stipulated that Korban Manor become an artists’ retreat. While he was alive, he encouraged the servants to fill the house with handmade mountain crafts and folk art. Maybe he liked the idea of his house being filled with creative energy. Sort of a way to keep himself alive.”

  “That portrait of him is a bit much, though,” Mason said. “He must have had a hell of an ego.”

  “He probably was an artist, then.” She looked tired and gave him a dismissive and maddening half smile. “Excuse me, I have to go to my room.”

  Mason fumed inside. Stupid self-obsessed girl, distracted and abrupt, as snotty as any of those Yankees chattering in the foyer. Playing a Goth, white enough without the makeup. Probably used that same little one-liner of “Death” for most of her snappy comebacks.

  He should have faked it a little better, acted like a heartbreaker. Maybe he’d start wearing a beret, appear sophisticated, grow one of those wimpy little Pierre mustaches. That would get a laugh out of the boys back at Rayford Hosiery.

  “See you later,” he said, trying hard not to sound optimistic. Then, without knowing where the words came from, he added, “I hope you find what you came here for.”

  She turned, met his eyes, serious again. “I’m looking for myself. Tell me if you see her.”

  Then she was gone, swallowed by the big white house that bore Korban’s name.

  CHAPTER 7

  “We can just push the beds together,” Adam said.

  “Yeah, and when you roll over in your sleep, you’ll be the one whose ass falls into the crack.”

  “Wonder what kind of bed the married couples got.”

  “Probably a swinging harness rigged to the bedposts, with a mirror on the ceiling.”

  “Don’t act so persecuted, Paul. This will be romantic, like in the old days when we used to snuggle on your sister’s couch.”

  “Yeah, until Sis found out. That was a scene that won’t make it into a Disney family special.”

  Adam sighed. If only Paul weren’t so hardheaded. They would make do. They always had. And God wasn’t out to punish people like them, despite the vehement rants of the rabid right wing.

  “Listen,” Adam said. “We’ll push both beds sideways against the wall, and you can have the back. If anybody rolls off in the night and knocks his head on the floor, it’ll be me.”

  Paul rubbed his hair in exasperation. A few strands of it stood up, dirty blonde and wavy, young Robert Redford hair. That, combined with his half-lidded eyes and thick eyelashes, made him look sleepy. Adam liked that sleepy look. It was one of the things that had first attracted him to Paul.

  “Okay,” Paul said. “I’ll quit griping now. This is supposed to be a second honeymoon.”

  Adam smiled. Paul’s tirades never lasted long. “Does this mean I get my virginity back?”

  Paul pulled one of the feather pillows from under the blankets and threw it.

  Adam knocked it away easily. “Say, did you get a load of Miss Mamie?”

  “She could pass for a drag queen if she had a little neck stubble.”

  They laughed together. Adam said, “You don’t mince words. And you don’t mince anything else, either.”

  “I’ll mince your meat if you’re not careful. And that’s why you love me.”

  “Well, that’s one of the reasons.”

  “Let’s get unpacked. I want to go out and meet some people.”

  “That’s exactly like you,” Adam said. “We go eight hundred miles to get away from it all, and then you have to swing right into the middle of the social scene.”

  “Live to party, Princess.”

  “Hey, it’s my inheritance we’re throwing away here. And don’t think I’m going to let you forget it.”

  Paul gave his fake pout in reply.

  Adam carried their luggage to the closet. Paul had three matching suitcases and a heavy-duty case for his video camera. Adam had only a gym bag and a backpack.

  “Besides,” Adam said, “when the money runs out, we can always rent that tremendously gorgeous body out for Calvin Klein commercials.”

  “As long as I don’t have to full monty with Kate Moss. She gives me the willies.”

  “If she gets a look at you, she’ll want to carry your baby.”

  “Like that will ever happen.”

  “Hey, come on. You’d make a cute dad.”

  “Don’t start that,” Paul said.

  Adam began putting Paul’s cotton shirts on hangers, careful to keep his back turned. He didn’t want his disappointment to show. Paul was dead set against adoption, against that ultimate long-term commitment. And nobody could be as dead set as Paul.

  “Sorry,” Adam said, his words muffled by the closet. “I just thought, out here in the wilderness, away from our old life and all the pressures—”

  “I said not to start.”

  “You said we could talk about it when we got here.”

  “But I didn’t mean right away. I want to relax a little, and you’re making me all tense.”

  “Let’s not fight. It’s a bad way to start a vacation.”

  “I need to work some, too. How can I get anything done if you’re bugging me about that settling-down crap?”

  Adam sighed into the dark hollow of the closet. He finished putting away the clothes, then pretended to be interested in what was going on outside the window. Paul would have fun getting some footage here. A nice, peaceful nature documentary for an uptight Boston boy.

  They had a room on the third floor, smaller than the ones he’d seen while the maid was leading them upstairs. The window was set in a gable. The entire upper floor, including walls and angled ceilings, was covered with varnished tongue-and-groove boards. On the way up, Ad
am had asked the maid about a narrow ladder that led to a small trapdoor in the roof. She told them it went to the widow’s walk and that guests weren’t allowed up there. She said it with what Adam thought was nervousness and a dismissive haste. He wondered if, during some past retreat, a guest had suffered an accident there.

  He turned from the window, ready to make peace. If he could get Paul talking about video, the spat would soon be forgotten. “So, do you think you brought enough tape?”

  “Got enough for eight hours. Too bad the budget didn’t allow for me to get a Beta SP camera. I’m stuck with crappy digital.”

  “Well, you’re freelancing for public television. What do you expect, the budget for Titanic minus Leo DiCaprio’s dialogue coach?”

  “Hey, I’d be happy with his hairstylist’s budget. Documentary grants are at the bottom of the list for funding these days. Maybe I should go into ‘Mysteries of the Unexplained Enigmas and Other Offbeat Occult Phenomena.’ With all this talk about the manor being haunted, who knows?”

  Adam smiled, counting a victory whenever Paul slipped into sarcastic humor. Paul wouldn’t take any money from Adam to subsidize his videos, but otherwise he had no qualms about being a “kept man.” Paul stretched out on one of the narrow beds and stared at the ceiling. Maybe he was visualizing the edit of some sequence.

  “Tell you what,” Adam said. “I’ll see if I can arrange to be abducted by space aliens while you roll the camera.”

  “I hear they do all kinds of bizarre sexual experiments.”

  “Sounds better every minute.”

  “Hey, what can they do that I can’t do better?”

  Adam crossed the room. Paul had that sleepy look again. “Kiss me, you fool.”

  Paul did. Adam felt eyes watching them. Strange.

  “What?” Paul asked, his voice husky.