Ghost Box: Six Supernatural Thrillers

by Scott Nicholson

  “Does the luck not work the other way?” Anna asked.

  “That charm is a heck of a lot older than what you might reckon. It’s come to mean luck to most people, but signs get watered down and weakened ‘cause people forget the truth of them. Same as a four-leaf clover.”

  “Sure, they’re magically delicious, like the cereal.”

  “Used to be, it gave the person carrying it the power to see ghosts and witches. Back when people believed.”

  Anna caught Mason’s look. “So points-down on the horseshoe is bad, right?”

  “It’s practically throwing open the door to every kind of dead thing you care to imagine. I like for the dead to stay dead.” He again gave Anna that sad, distant look. “Too bad not everybody around these parts feels the same way.”

  Mason helped Ransom down from the barrel. Anna tethered the horses to a locust post and followed the men inside the barn. Horse-drawn vehicles were lined against a side wall. The hay wagon stood nearest the door. Beside it were two sleighs, a surrey with its top folded down, and a fancy carriage with a lantern at each corner. All of the vehicles were restored and maintained in the kind of condition that would send antique dealers scrambling for their checkbooks. The aroma of cottonseed oil and leather fought with the hay dust for dominance of the barn’s air.

  A large metal hay rake sat in the far corner, slightly red from rust. There was a single seat for the operator and a coupling in the front to yoke the draft animals. The large steel tines of the rake curled in the air like a claw.

  “That’s a wicked-looking machine,” Mason said.

  “Yep,” Ransom said, unblocking the wheels of the wagon. “That’s the windrower, that sharp part that looks like an overgrown pitchfork. And you can see the hay-cutter arm. Works by the turn of the wheels. We still do hay the hard way around here.”

  “I’ll bet the horses love it,” Anna said.

  “Yeah, and they’s smart enough to know they get to eat the hay, come winter.”

  “You going to cut any while we’re here?” she asked, thinking how much fun it would be to help. Hard physical labor did wonders for the depressed and self-pitying mind. “Some of those meadows around here are getting pretty high.”

  “We had to hold off for a while because the signs were in the heart.”

  “The heart?”

  “Ain’t a good time for cutting oats or wheat or any reaping crop. It’s a time fit only for the harvest of dead things.”

  Mason cleared his throat and spat loudly. “Ugh. Hay dust choking me.” He looked at Anna and said, “Sorry for being crude. That’s the way we do it in Sawyer Creek.”

  “In case you ain’t noticed, this ain’t Sawyer Creek,” Ransom said. He motioned them to go to the rear of the wagon and he picked up the tongue. “Throw your shoulders in, now.”

  They maneuvered the wagon out the door and under the shed. As Anna and Ransom hitched the team, Mason explored the barn. A few minutes later, he poked his head outside. “Hey, what’s under the trapdoor?”

  Ransom stroked the mane on the chestnut mare. “Taters, sweet taters, cabbage, apples, turnips. Root cellar for stuff that don’t need to be kept so cold.”

  “Can I look?”

  Ransom went to the bench and tugged on a pair of rough leather gloves. “Help yourself.”

  Anna followed Mason to the corner of the barn, where the trapdoor was set in the floor between two stacks of hay bales.

  “Got doors on the bottom floor, where the barn’s set against the hillside,” Ransom said. “We can haul from the orchards and gardens straight up to here, save a lot of handling. Then there’s a tunnel goes back to the Big House. Ephram Korban had it dug in case a blizzard struck or something. He was always going on about ‘tunnels of the soul,’ for some reason. I expect he was about half-crazy, if some of them legends are true.”

  “Or maybe all the legends are true and he was all the way crazy,” Anna said.

  Mason knelt and lifted the heavy wooden door. The cellar smelled of sweet must and earth, with a faint scent of rotted fruit. The darkness beneath had a weight, like black oil. A makeshift ladder led down into the seemingly bottomless depths.

  “Ain’t much of interest down there,” Ransom said. “Unless you like to sit and talk to the rats.”

  “Rats?” Mason let the door fall with a slam, knocking dust loose from the rafters. Anna fought a sneeze.

  Ransom grinned, his sparse teeth yellow in the weak lamplight. “Rats as big around as your thigh.”

  “I hate rats,” Mason said. “I grew up with them. Sounded like cavalry behind the walls of my bedroom. What I hate the most is those beady eyes, like they’re sizing you up.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ransom said. “They get plenty to eat without having to gnaw on the guests.”

  “Miss Mamie would probably scold them for having bad manners.”

  Anna laughed. Maybe Mason wasn’t so bad. At least he wasn’t afraid to show weakness. Unlike her.

  Mason stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. Something fluttered from the rafters and brushed Anna’s face, and she wiped at it as if it were cobwebs.

  “Jesus, don’t tell me that was a bat,” Mason said, ducking. “Bats are nothing but rats with wings.”

  “That was a bluebird,” Ransom said. “Lucky for you, young lady. If a bluebird flies in your path, it means you’re going to be kissed.”

  “Great,” she said. “And I thought I earned my kisses by casting magic spells on unsuspecting men.”

  “Believe what you want,” Ransom said. “I reckon you see through the signs better than anybody. Now, I’d best get on with the chores.”

  Mason wiped his hands on an old horse blanket hanging from the rafters. “So, Ransom, do you have time to help me find an overgrown log that’s just right for statue-making?”

  “Why do you think we hitched up the wagon? Miss Mamie always gets her way with things.”

  “So I’m starting to find out.”

  “Let’s get on before dark. Might have to go below Beechy Gap where we had a big windfall a few winters back. Want to come along, young lady?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve got some chores of my own.”

  “I reckon some things got to be done alone,” he said.

  Anna wasn’t sure what to make of Ransom. He kept dropping hints, but a deep fear was hidden behind his eyes. Maybe he had secrets of his own. She waited until Mason and Ransom climbed up onto the buckboard seat, then she passed Ransom the reins.

  “See you later tonight?” Mason asked her.

  Anna felt the half smile on her face, and wasn’t sure which way she wanted the corners of her mouth to point. “We’ll see.”

  Ransom flipped the reins and the team headed up the road, where the wide sandy ribbon threaded between the trees into the forest. She slid the barn doors closed, then looked up at the horseshoe.

  It was points-down again.

  Dead things come in.

  She looked at the forest.

  Under the fringe of shadowed underbrush, amid the laurel and locust and briars, the woman in white stood, the bouquet held out in challenge. The ghost stared at Anna like a mirror, then turned and drifted among the trees.

  “All right, damn you,” Anna said. “I’ll play hide-and-seek with you.”

  As she entered the forest, she wondered how you could ever catch up to your own ghost. And why it would hide from you in the first place. Ransom was right about one thing. A woman with secrets generally was bad news.

  CHAPTER 30

  And the night spread, seeping like warm oil over the hills, expanding, filling the valleys and rising up the gray Appalachian slopes. The night became an ocean, an ink-stained bloodbath. The night became the sky. The night became a mouth that swallowed the night before, all the previous nights, all the nights to come, the night—

  Spence rattled on, fingers pounding the slick keys. He was an automaton now. There was no world, no room, no smell of lantern smoke and sweat and sweet Bridget nea
rby, only the glowing battlefield of the half-empty page. No outer night lurked beyond the window, only the night that came to life through words, the night that swelled and surged through his veins, that pumped darkness through his extremities, that burned in the ebony furnace of his heart.

  He was dimly aware of the strand of drool running down one side of his cheek. He grinned, and the drool leaked onto his cotton shirt. The saliva was from another plane, a reality so flat and dull and senseless compared to the magical land unfolding beneath his keystrokes. His wrists ached and his fingers were stiff, eyes watering from strain, but those problems were of the flesh, and this work was of the Word.

  The master, the paper, urged him on. Commanded him forward. Trumpeted reveille with a Joshua horn. Ordained him a god, albeit a lesser god.

  Because he was a servant to the great god Word, the one true god. Word who giveth and taketh away, Word who gave his only begotten suffix so that Spence shall not perish but have everlasting metaphor, Word who spewed forth from burning bush and graven tablet and mighty cloud. In Word we trust.

  A hand dropped on his shoulder, an intrusion from somewhere on that dreary plane of soil and substance. Ah, that must be the Muse, who was also slave to Word, made Word from dust and bit of bone, Muse who offered the fruit, Muse who served as adjective to his improper noun.

  “Jeff,” she sang, and lovely was her music. He wanted to weep, but the tears would blur the glorious page. His page. And Spence’s moment of vanity broke the spell, angering the god who was Word.

  He stopped typing and glanced around, blinking.

  “Come to bed, honey,” Muse said. “You haven’t slept in thirty-six hours.”

  A thick ream of manuscript was piled on his desk. His eyes burned and he forced his dry eyelids to close. Muse was drawing him away from the world of Word, down from the soft high temple. Perhaps Muse was no friend after all, but an enemy. “What do you want?”

  She was no longer Muse, only Bridget, a Georgia sophomore shivering in a sheer nightgown, her nipples hard from the chill in the air.

  “I’m worried about you.” She leaned over him from behind and wrapped her arms around his chest. Spence let the swivel chair sag backward. Now that the spell of Word was broken, anxiety sluiced through his limbs. One corner of his eye twitched.

  Bridget kissed him on the neck, just below the line of his newly grown stubble. “You’re working so hard. Why don’t you come to bed?”

  “I can’t work if I’m in bed.” His irritability returned now that the letters had stopped flowing.

  “I’m lonely for you, honey.”

  She had forgiven him for the previous day’s mistreatment. Or had that been last night? A hundred years ago? Time lost all meaning at Korban Manor.

  “Dear, dear, dear,” he said, letting each word dangle in the air like a noose. “What is your loneliness compared to the great loss the world would suffer should my work go unfinished?”

  “I know it’s important. I’m not like you, though. I need a little companionship now and then.”

  “Surely you can turn your not inconsiderable charms toward procuring yourself a bedmate. You can play your illusory games of love elsewhere, with my blessing.”

  Bridget pulled her arms from his chest. Spence swiveled the chair so he could admire his latest bauble. Her comely curves undulated beneath the clinging fabric of her gown. A treasure. A pretty, useless thing.

  “Jeff, I don’t want anybody else. I love you.”

  This distraction was getting interesting. Perhaps Word would forgive him a moment’s idleness. Surely even Ephram Korban played emotional games in his day.

  “Love,” he said, and the word flowed as if spoken by Sir Laurence Olivier himself, the liquid of the phonic dripping off Spence’s tongue. A classic oratory was coming on, rising from his bones to his chest, through his lungs and throat, air made wisdom. The only thing that ever changed was the audience.

  “Love, the ultimate vanity,” he said. “All love is self-love. Motherly, brotherly, sexual, puppy, religious, sacrificial. All love is masturbation. And so, I give you permission to love yourself, since that seems to be what you require of me.”

  “Honey, don’t be so . . . so . . .”

  “Obdurate. From the Latin ‘to harden.’ Synonyms: firm, unbending, inflexible. Oh, how I wish that were true. But the mind embraces what the flesh shrinks from in shame.”

  “Don’t do that. You know I don’t care about your—about our—problem.”

  Spence laughed, his girth wiggling from the sheer ecstasy of his self-love. He reached up and stroked her hair, a romance-novel cliché, silken tassels, spun gold. Her cheeks were pink with hoarded passion, lips slightly parted as she gasped at his touch. Her skin glowed like honey in the firelight.

  “Our problem,” he said.

  She had crossed the line. This demanded a response.

  His hand closed into a fist around her hair. He pulled her head forward, reaching behind him to grab the manuscript. He flung the loose pages at her face, pleased at the slapping sound the paper made against her skin. The pages kited to the floor as she grunted.

  “Pick them up,” he said, twisting her hair, forcing her to her knees. She was petite, no match for his great bulk. She sobbed as she fumbled among the papers. He jerked her to her feet, though she had collected only a small sheaf of pages.

  “Read,” he said with cold menace.

  Her eyes were wide, cheeks wet with tears, lower lip quivering.

  “Read,” he said again. Calm now.

  Her eyes flicked across the page, shoulders shaken with sobs, breasts swaying miserably against the confines of satin.

  “Aloud.” He was once again Jefferson Davis Spence, the legend, the genuine article. No more illusions of Muses and far-off literary gods, no more lofty aspirations, no more symbiosis with the Royal typewriter. Now he could focus on the art of cruelty.

  “‘The night spread its f-filth like spies, like flies,’” she said, voice trembling. “‘The n-night walked the night, climbed its own spine like a ladder, the night rattled the bones of its own cage . . .’”

  Spence relaxed his grip on her hair, and now stroked her. He closed his eyes, lost in the precious rhythm of his own prose.

  “‘. . . the night growled, hissed like a snake, sputtered like a black firework, the night entered itself, laved itself with its own tongue, swallowed its own tail . . .’”

  Ah, the Muse was singing again. All she needed was the proper sheet music.

  “‘. . . the night tastes of charcoal and ash, the night tastes of licorice, the night tastes of teeth—yes, of cold teeth . . . go out frost . . .’”

  Her voice trailed away, but Spence still rocked back and forth in his chair like a babe lulled by its own sonorous babble.

  “Jeff?” She took a careful step backward.

  “You stopped reading. I didn’t tell you to stop.”

  “This stuff is . . . this stuff is . . .”

  Spence smiled, his face warm with satisfaction at this small but tender tribute, the peak of self-love. He braced for the paroxysm of bliss, awaiting her ejaculation of praise.

  “This is just so awful.” She dropped the section of manuscript to the floor. “You’ve been wasting your talent on this? This . . . maggot mess?”

  Spence, anticipating the rush of sweet validation, didn’t register her words at first. But the tone was clear. Even with their Southern flavor, the words were exactly like those of Mrs. Eileen Foxx, his fifth-grade teacher. Foxx in Socks, the kids called her, because they weren’t clever enough to come up with something lewd or connected to bodily functions.

  Mrs. Foxx had berated him in front of the whole class because he’d had the temerity to misspell the word “receive.” He stood at the chalkboard, breathing the dust of a thousand mistakes, while the other children howled with laughter, relieved because it wasn’t them this time. And the warm wetness spread beneath his waist, his small bladder voided, and the laughter changed in pit
ch, rose to the level of schoolhouse legend.

  And on that sunny spring afternoon at Fairfield Elementary school, a new grammar rule was formed: I before E except after P.

  Born as well that day was Jefferson Spence, the writer. The one who would out-obtuse Faulkner, who would out-macho Hemingway, who would out-wolf Tom Wolfe. And though he couldn’t reach back through the halls of time and grab Mrs. Foxx by the frayed seams of her cardigan sweater and smash those ever-pursed lips, he could act now. He could vent against the critics and the sneerers and the pretty popinjays, all the other Eileen Foxxes of the world who deserved retribution.

  He swept his hand hard against the cheek of the faux Muse. She moaned and collapsed back onto the bed, an arm bouncing against the brass bedstead, another arm flopping across her chest. A trickle of blood leaked from her mouth, and one nostril clotted red as well. As the flesh of her cheek warmed from the blow, her eyes stared back at him with all the severity of Eileen Foxx’s.

  He turned from her gaze.

  Ah, Ephram smiled. Ephram, who had offered support during Seasons of Sleep. Ephram, an ally in a universe of small-minded fifth graders who would never understand.

  It wasn’t that he always failed with women, or that his literary output was uneven. It wasn’t a flaw in the equipment. It was them. It had always been them.

  They stood between him and the true light, the bright shining path, the burning Word. Who needed mere physical pleasure? What one needed was the shedding of pleasure, the removal of distraction.

  One needed to become the Word, a communion reduced to its simplest form.

  Spence placed his fingers on the cold keys of the typewriter. The lantern hissed in approval, the fireplace rumbled with hot delight. He looked at Ephram again, and then at the blank page, his greatest ally and his most dreaded enemy.

  He scarcely heard the door close behind his back. He pressed his fingers down, seeking the approval of the true god Word. His hands moved of their own accord, as if encased in living gloves.

  CHAPTER 31

  Anna stumbled through the trees, tired but determined, the ghostly figure always just on the edge of her vision. The moon had risen in synchronicity with sunset, only a small curve sliced from its white roundness. The flashlight was unnecessary in the clearings and stretches of meadow, but the moon couldn’t penetrate the cold shadows beneath the forest canopy.