The Manor

CHAPTER 14

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, ringers 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 nearby, 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 yourabout 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 cliche, 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 pitch, 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.

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.

The ghost woman faded in and out of view, as if fighting to keep its constitution. Anna had called out to her several times, but not even the wind responded. The forest was silent, and even the crickets seemed to be huddling in dread. The air was chilly and dew hung heavy on the maple, laurel, and birch leaves that brushed her face and shoulders. The game of hide-and-seek seemed eternal, as if Anna would forever have to chase this spirit, the two of them bound in a shared purgatory of loneliness.

Anna thought the ghost was leading her to the cabin where she had seen the ghost of the young girl on her first night at the manor. But her dead tour guide turned up the ridge when they reached the meadow below the cabin, heading higher into the steep hills of Beechy Gap. Anna weaved her way among granite boulders that angled from the ground like worn fossils. The trail steepened and narrowed, and the vegetation changed as well, from leafy deciduous to stunted balsam and jack pine.

Anna scooted across a long flat jut of stone. She was on the highest part of the rocky ridge. The great sea of mountains stretched out toward the horizon. A whisper of wind tried to stir itself, then gave up and settled back to earth.

The trees were thinner here, and her breath plumed from her mouth like the smoke of her soul. The few stars hung in the cold sky, shivering and twinkling. Even the familiar Dog Star and the orange wink of Saturn gave her no comfort. She was alone, except for the translucent woman who hovered above the cold dirt and stone of the ridge. The ghost beckoned her forward with a wave of the haunted bouquet.

Anna's flashlight played over a mass of fallen posts and splintered boards scattered in a treeless stretch of ground. The ghost woman was among the ruins of the old shack, her ethereal figure penetrated by a dozen ragged pieces of wood. The ghost opened her mouth, trying to form a lost language. Bits of broken glass glinted in the flashlight's beam.

Anna slid off the rock toward the twisted debris. One thick piece of timber jabbed forlornly at the sky. Anna stepped closer, answering the summons of the ghost. The woman stood waiting, eyes vacant, the bouquet held out in either welcome or apology.

Then the night fell in.

One of the broken timbers lifted from the ground and cut an audible arc in the air as if swung by an invisible giant. The heavy wood slammed into her stomach. The flashlight fell at her feet, its beam sending a thin streak of orange into the underbrush.

Anna doubled over, spears of fire wending through her gut, rusty nails driving into her temples, her teeth biting tin roofing. But it was more than the agony of cancer. This pain was bone-deep and deadly serious. Her right wrist was squeezed in a knife-edged vise.

Anna closed her eyes and collapsed.

No slow-motion countdown would take this pain away. Through the hammering of her pulse, she could hear tremors in the building's rubble. Wood rot and corruption assaulted her nostrils as she writhed in the muddy fallen leaves.

In the jumble of ruin, she saw a tunnel, a long, dark, cold mouth opening up before her. A stale breeze blew up from the depths of the tunnel, but it had to be her imagination, because the tunnel led down into the earth. Her sweat was slivers of ice on her face, the cold swabbing her bones, and she thought of those words from the bathroom mirror. Go out frost.

Then she heard the voice, a soft mournful wail that stretched over the hills.

Anna opened her eyes with effort, vision blurred by tears of pain. Two forms drifted among the ruins, the ghost woman kneeling, a second ghost swelling and hovering over the first. The other ghost was a man in blue jeans, flannel shirt, and workman's leather boots, his clothes as translucent as his sick milk of skin. A few shreds of nebulous flesh hung from one sleeve of the shirt. His one hand held the piece of timber that had struck her. He looked down at the ghost woman, his eyes as deep as the cold black tunnel had been.

A radiance shone around the dead man, an aura of malevolent energy. His ectoplasmic face was twisted in rage, the lips peeled back to show jagged teeth. He dropped the timber and put his lone hand around the woman's throat, and Anna could see the strength in his fingers as they tightened around surreal flesh. Anna's throat burned in sympathetic pain. The ghost woman screamed soundlessly, struggled for a moment like a wind-driven linen caught in a briar vine, then faded from view, again a corpse, dead a second time, the bouquet falling from her fingers and dissipating into mist.

Anna rolled onto her hands and knees and started to crawl away. The caustic fires still scorched her insides, but now a black surf of fear washed over her, momentarily dousing the raw ache. She glanced back and saw that the man's aura had grown brighter, as if the spirit murder had fueled some infernal fire. He smiled at her, his tongue slithery as an eel and his eyes spilling forth a darkness that rivaled the black night.

The mouth parted. "That you, Selma?"

At least this ghost remembered language, though its tone was crazed.

"It's me," it said. "George. I knew you'd come back. Korban promised me."

Come back? From HIS side or hers?

"I'm not Selma," Anna said, trying to rise, but the weight of the night sky was too great.

"I got a present I been saving just for you. We got tunnels of the soul, Selma."

The ghost held something in his hand, something that dangled like a small kill from a hunter's belt. Anna thought at first it was the bouquet. Then it wiggled.

It was his other hand, the one that had lost its place at the end of his right arm.

As she struggled in the dirt, the spirit tossed the hand toward her. It landed on its fingers and scrabbled after her like a spider. The ghost's laughter echoed across the dismal hills. "Hand of glory, Selma."

Anna turned, tried again to regain her feet, but the pain had made her drunk, awkward, confused.

The severed hand closed around her ankle.

That was impossible. Ghosts had no substance, at least a substance that could take solid form in the real world.

But this IS the real world. And sometimes, it's not what you believe, but how MUCH you believe.

She believed in ghosts. They existed. You couldn't turn faith off and on like water from a spigot.

Too bad.

Because now she had what she'd always wanted.

Physical contact with the dead.

Her ankle was numb, hot ice, liquid fire, ringed by dull razors.

The fingers pressed into her meat. Anna was jerked flat on her stomach. She flailed at the air, grabbing for a nearby pine branch. The hand pulled her backward before she could reach the branch. Toward the rubble. Where he waited.

"Come on, now, Selma. Don't keep old Georgie-Boy waiting." The ghost's voice had changed, deepened.

She dug her fingernails into the ground, clawing at the sharp stones and pine needles. She grunted, realizing for the first time since she'd witnessed the spectral struggle that she was still breathing.

Breath.

That meant she was alive. Not a ghost yet. But if this spirit had the power to murder ghosts, what would it do to the living?

The hand tugged again, sliding her across three feet of damp dirt. Wet leaves worked their way underneath her shirt, chilling her belly.

A strange sound spilled across the ridge, like the scream of a dying mourning dove. Anna looked at the ghostman, his smile stretching and leaking red, orange, yellow, the colors melding into a malchromatic aurora that surrounded him as if he were lit by hellfire.

Anna slid another couple of feet closer to the ruins, desperately kicking at the hand. It was like kicking a rotted fish. She was pulled again and the sharp end of a piece of wood pressed into the back of her leg. The thing was dragging her into the spiked tips of broken timber and the sawteeth of the ripped tin roofing. She was about to be sacrificed at the stake.

But why?

Why would a ghost want to kill her?

"Snakes crawl at night, honey," it said. "Snakes crawl at night."

More backward pressure.

The sharp wood against her leg dug into flesh and sent bright sparks of pain shooting up the chimney of her nervous system. A board knocked against her vertebrae, drumming her spine as if it were a xylophone. Broken glass dug into her knee, cutting through the corduroy of her slacks and stinging like acid. The flames in her abdomen expanded into her chest, into her head, sent lava through her limbs. She closed her eyes and saw streaks of light against the back of her eyelids, like popping embers or shooting stars. Behind the streaks was the black tunnel, expanding endlessly outward, and shimmering at the far end was the woman in white.

So this is what it feels like to die.

She had come to Korban Manor to find her ghost, pushed by the prophetic power of her dreams. This was what she wanted. Except she'd never expected it to be so painful. More shards, splinters, and crooked nails worked into her skin as the rubble shifted with her weight.

Silly girl. Guess you were wrong about everything. You thought death would be cold, but it's hot, hot, and that tunnel is so deep The hand on her ankle yanked, insistent, tenacious. Then a hand gripped one shoulder.

And words came from somewhere above her, like the voice of an insane angel: "Go out frost, go out frost, go out frost."

The pain fell away, and only darkness remained.