The Manor

CHAPTER 18

Mason wiped the sweat from his forehead. He had removed his shirt, but still the room was too warm. Oak chips stuck to his chest and arms. His shoulders had passed the point of aching. The pain had transformed into a dull, constant drumming somewhere in the back of his mind.

His sculpting instructor at Adderly, Dennis Graves, had told him that the key to art was stamina. Mason's first assignment had been to carve the letters of the word stamina into a block of white pine. That clumsy effort now rested across Mama's dead television set. He'd given it to her like a kindergartner who'd brought home a finger painting. That was back before her blindness, though after her eyesight failed she often held it in her lap and ran her fingers over the letters.

Someday he was going to do another word just for her: dreams.

He would fashion it in bronze or copper, something durable. Maybe even granite. Except then the word would be too heavy. Maybe it would be too heavy even in balsa wood. Or air.

Mason had finished with the hatchet and adze. The rough form was fleshed out. The sky had grown darker in the basement's small high windows. He didn't know if that meant rain or that dusk was coming. He'd long ago lost track of time.

Mason worked with his broad chisel and mallet, shaving off sections of the oak. The grain was cooperative, as if in a hurry to become its true shape. The statue was revealing itself too fast, and there was no way that he should be this far along already. It was almost as if the wood was pumping energy back through his tools into his hands.

Sure, Mase. Whatever you think. Artistic license.

And look here, the shoulders are squared, one of Korban's arms will be across his stomach, the other hand behind his back. An aristocratic pose. A man who knows what he's all about.

The dead space of the basement swallowed the sounds of metal on metal and metal into wood.

Come out, Korban. I know you 're in there, somewhere inside this godforsaken hunk of oak. SING to me, you beautiful old bastard. Rise up and walk.

Mason squinted as a spray of sawdust skipped back toward his face. He drove the chisel's blade into a space beside the statue's left arm. Stamina. Dreams.

He'd have to send Dennis Graves another word.

Spirit.

You had to have spirit, or you were lost. The material had to have spirit. You couldn't squeeze soul out of a stone. It had to already exist, to have existed forever, waiting there for the artist to release it.

The breath of spirit wind blew from the four corners. That's where dream-images came from. They weren't really new ideas or visions. They were things that already were, that just had to be revealed to human minds.

Okay. Okay. Now you're losing it, linthead.

Artistic pretension is expected, and all that gibberish might come in handy after you get "discovered." But right now, the reality is that you 're working yourself into a lather and you can't make yourself stop. You should have taken a break to eat and rest.

But YOU CAN'T MAKE YOURSELF STOP.

Mason frowned and rammed the chisel off the flank of hip. He didn't think it was a good sign when people started having philosophical debates with themselves. He was supposed to be in a creative trance. He wanted it, searched for it, prayed to the gods of impossible dreams.

He looked at the bust of Korban, and it seemed to smile at him from the table. The wooden lips parted: "So why can't you stop?"

I can stop any time I want to.

"Certainly. I believe you, Mr. Jackson."

Look, you can't just turn creativity off and on at will. You've got to roll with it while you've got the wheels. You've got to take the Muse's hand when she wants to dance.

"Fine. No arguments. But let's just see you stop."

Okay. But I want you to know that my shoulders and arms and finger muscles are going to scream in pain because they 're wound tighter than a spool of factory thread. Besides, I'm doing this for Mama, not me.

The bust said, "Excuses, excuses."

I'll show you. Here we go…

Mason flailed at the chisel. Two inches of dark red wood peeled away from the section that would be Korban's left kneecap. He repositioned the blade and drew back the mallet for another blow.

The bust laughed, a sound like the shuffle of rodents. "You're not stopping."

Okay, already. Get off my case. I just had to get USED to the idea.

Mason curled another strip of oak away, then looked down at his tools scattered around the floor among the shavings.

See? I can take my eyes off it if I want to. Just as an experiment, I'm going to think about something besides Ephram Korban's statue. Take, for instance, the lovely Anna Galloway…

Mason paused, a drop of sweat hanging at the tip of his nose.

"Ah, so it's fair Anna that makes your heart sing," the bust said. "You can have her, you know. Once you finish. I promise. And I always keep my promises."

Mason clenched his teeth and gave the hammer an extra-hard swing. He could stop any time he wanted. He just didn't want to think about her right now. Didn't want to think, didn't want to think, didn't want to think "I say, who were you talking to?"

Mason spun, hammer in hand, raising it as if to ward off an attacker. William Roth stepped back, his gray eyes startled wide. He almost dropped the canisters of liquid in his arms.

"Easy, mate."

Mason lowered the hammer. The spell was broken. "Sorry. I was just getting carried away there for a minute."

"Looks longer than a ruddy minute to me. Have you been working on that thing nonstop?"

Mason nodded. The pain in the back of his shoulder blades sent its first red twinges to his brain. He rubbed his right biceps.

Roth looked past Mason at the statue. "Good Lord, how did you get so much done already? You must be working like a pack of beavers."

Mason looked at the statue and tried to see it as Roth did. All the limbs were clearly suggested in the mass of wood, and it was distinguishable as a human form. The head was a featureless block but in close proportion to the rest of the body. The legs rose up from the base with a vibrancy and strength.

"It's coming along," Mason said. "I promised Miss Mamie it would be lovely."

"What's the rush? You're going to bust a blooming artery if you keep at it like that."

"Say, can I ask you something?"

"As long as you put down the hammer."

Mason laid the hammer on the worktable beside the bust. "Take a look at this painting."

Roth set his canisters on the table and Mason lifted the canvas to the light of the nearest lantern.

Roth pursed his lips in approval. "Quite a piece of work."

"What do you see in that smudge there, at the top of the house? Along the railing of the widow's walk?"

Roth bent close and peered at the shapes. "Looks like people to me. Wonder who messed it up."

"Would you believe me if I told you those people weren't there two days ago?"

Roth looked at Mason and then back at the painting. "I'd say you're ass over teakettle from overwork."

"Well, maybe it's something to do with the chemicals in the paint. It just bugs me, that's all. As an artist myself, I know how it feels to come up short of perfection."

Roth gave his barking laugh. "Don't kid yourself with all that 'artist' rot. It's all about jack, selling out for whatever you can get."

Mason rubbed his chin and felt the scratch of stubble. He had been neglecting his hygiene. He could smell his own underarms. To Roth, the studio must have stunk like the laundry room at a gym. Mason knelt and retrieved his shirt, shook the wood chips free, and put it on. He glanced at the statue and felt guilty for thinking of abandoning it.

"What are you doing down here?" he asked Roth, before his mind could fixate on Korban again.

"Going to develop some negatives. Miss Mamie said I could use the wine cellar. Dark enough down here, don't you think?"

"And warm, too. They must be keeping the main furnace going full tilt. It's on the other side of the wall there. I hear them stoking it every three or four hours."

"This Korban bloke must not have been much of a save-the-trees sort."

Mason looked at the statue again. "Maybe in some crazy way, he is the trees."

"Get some sun, Mason. You're starting to go a bit dodgy."

"Maybe you're right."

"Loosen up, have some fun." Roth grinned, flashing his vulpine teeth. "Have a go at that quirky bird Anna. She's your style."

"No, thanks. I have enough worries. I'd better get some food in me so I can finish this thing."

From the stairs, Mason took a last look back at the statue that would be Ephram Korban. It was going to be wonderful. Dennis Graves would eat his mallet in jealousy. This creation was shaping up to be a god.

Spence wept.

The beauty, the elegance of the prose, was sweeping over him like the black tide in his novel. He could feel it approaching. With every sentence, every preposition, every punctuation mark, he was nearing the Word.

The keys sang as they slapped against the carriage, the ringing bell of the return heralded the coming glory. Spence could barely see the page through the blur of his tears, even with the sun pouring through the window, but he didn't need to see. The ghostwriter was compelling his fingers, sending them flying over the keyboard, the words no longer even remotely his own.

Spence wondered if that made any difference. The word author was derived from authority. He had always prided himself on his control and mastery of language, of juggling the alphabet, tricking verbs, nailing down nouns. But this was the uninhibited writing, the deeper language, the cracks between sound and thought. Communication that got to the heart of the truth.

He was dimly aware of Bridget on the bed. He would go to her later, when darkness came. New strength surged in his flesh, his blood was rejuvenated, his power to perform restored. The gift and blessing of the Word. The act of sacrifice always gave power back to the one making the sacrifice.

The room was cold, even with the fire leaping up the chimney as if yearning for the freedom of the sky. His fingers were like winter sticks, but still they rattled the keys, the music of ice cubes in a glass. Ephram Korban watched Spence from the portrait, the most encouraging of editors, his dark eyes suggesting plot twists.

Bridget could wait, impatient and aching in the warm bed. For now, there was only the page. The final page.

Spence sighed. The ending was always like a small death.

Those bittersweet words, The End.

Maybe End was the One True Word.

The only word that had ever mattered.

The manor welcomed Anna back, with its dark wainscoting and high ceiling and the fire roaring in the foyer hearth. And Korban, benevolent old Ephram, Grandfather Ephram, smiled kindly down from his vigilant perch above the mantel.

Maybe she did belong here. As much as anywhere. She belonged nowhere else, after all. And Korban Manor was the end of the world, the kind of place where Anna deserved to pass her final days, walking these windswept ridges in the hard heart of the Appalachian winter. If she died here, her spirit would answer its true calling, her ghost would drift above the manor just as she'd seen so many times in her dreams.

And was that so bad?

As long as Rachel Faye Hartley stayed in the graveyard or haunted the trails of Beechy Gap, never crossing this threshold of stone and wood, then Anna could be as content as any dead and restless thing. To gaze from the widow's walk, a widow without a husband to mourn, nor even a mother for that matter, and wait for whatever came after the passing of forever. Could such an afterlife possibly be worse than her actual life, which she had drifted through without any positive effect, never knowing the full and mysterious power of love?

No. Death could never be worse than this life, the one that cancer had invaded, where she had been abandoned, where she had walked a million sad miles alone.

"Anna?"

God. Not him, not now. She wiped quickly at her eyes, pretending they had been stung by the smoke that came down the chimney as the wind turned. "Hi, Mason."

"I'm glad I found you. I've been meaning to ask you something."

"As long as it's not personal."

"Hey, are you okay? You look a little shook-up."

"Like I've seen a ghost?" Anna managed a bitter laugh.

"Well, that's sort of what I wanted to ask you about. Because there's a painting of Korban Manor down in the basement-"

Anna moved closer to the inviting warmth of the foyer's fireplace, rubbing her hands together. The action was designed to put distance between her and Mason, but he hovered uncomfortably near. He checked the hallways, then spoke, his voice lower.

"The painting has a smudge on the rooftop," he said. "And the way the paint's breaking down, it looks like the artist may have hidden some figures on an earlier layer of paint, sort of like a subliminal image. Because the smudge is starting to look like people."

"Don't artists sometimes recycle their canvases? Maybe the painter covered over a mistake or a rough draft."

"Well, that's what I thought, too. But now I can see their faces."

Anna looked up at Korban's portrait, wondered how many times that face had lived in a painter's fevered mind, how many hours her long-dead relative had sat in stiff repose as an adored subject. Even Cris had talked about how the manor and Korban's face kept creeping into her mind until all her fingers wanted to do was record him in charcoal, ink, and Conte crayon. And Mason had told Anna about the bust of Korban, how the dead man's image haunted his sleep and drove him into obsessive bouts of work.

"Let me guess," Anna said. "One of the faces is Ephram Korban's. Because you see him every time you close your eyes."

"One of them is Ephram Korban." He glanced sideways at the portrait, as if not quite trusting it enough to turn his back to it. "But that's not so strange, considering that nobody seems to do anything creative around here without invoking the old bastard in some way or another."

"He looks sort of charming, doesn't he?"

"As charming as a nest of snakes, maybe."

"Korban gets painted a lot around here. Big deal. What else is strange about the painting?"

"One of the other faces. I mean, the oil paint is dry, and from the dust on the frame, it might be a year old, or might be twenty. Maybe more. And you told me you'd never been here before."

"I never lie, unless I have a good reason." Except to myself I've been lying to myself since before I learned to speak.

"Then, since you're a ghost hunter, you might be interested to know that your face is in the painting."

The fire spat an ember onto the hearth, toward Anna. Mason crushed it out with his foot.

"Show me," Anna said.