The Manor

CHAPTER 25

Sylva stood before the front door. She hadn't been in the house for many years. Not since the night of Rachel's death. A shiver swept over her, brought on by more than just the October chill. This was like entering a church, holy ground, a place where souls walked free.

She pressed the charm that was secreted inside her blouse, held it against the warmth of her heart. She was scared, but she had faith. The moon was rising, throwing cold light over the mountain as if a new sort of day was breaking. Maybe it was. A day of endless night, when things got reborn, when dark promises were kept and broken. When spells carried the weight of prayers.

Sylva pushed open the door without knocking. Ephram knew she was here, all right. No need to sneak around. And the others, they moved about in the walls, stirred in the basement, shifted among the cracks in the hearthstones.

Ephram's portrait nearly took the last of her breath away. She'd seen that face in a thousand dreams, half of them nightmares, the other half the kind that made you ashamed when you woke up.

"Look at me," she whispered.

Ephram stared at her with dark, painted eyes.

"I'm old," she said. "I spelled myself alive all these years. Sticking around, waiting for this blue moon of yours. Well, I'm here now, and I ain't sure what you plan to do about it."

The portrait fell from the wall, the heavy frame splintering, the canvas folding. When a picture fell, it was a sure sign that the subject was meant to die. But when a picture of a dead person fell…

The flames rushed out of the chimney, fingers of fire reaching toward Sylva, reminding her of that night on Korban's bedroom floor, the night he planted the seed of Rachel deep inside her. A night of cold burning.

And this was another night of forbidden heat, a night of frost and fire. She headed for the stairs, leaving Ephram's face lying on the wooden floor by the warmth of the house's heart. They were waiting up there on the widow's walk, under the rising moon. Anna and Miss Mamie and Lilith. Ephram would join them soon enough, and Sylva wouldn't miss this for the world. For more than the world, or any world beyond this one.

She squeezed the charm until her fingers ached, her heart pumping faith as she climbed the stairs.

Mason fell into the lamplight of the hallway as if it were a healing water. He slammed the basement door shut behind him, slid the metal bolt into its seat. Why was there a lock on the outside? What had been kept in the basement that required locks?

Now that he was out of the suffocating basement, his head cleared a little. And the thoughts that came were almost as frightening as the creative trance that had been consuming him from the inside out. He leaned against the door, heart pounding.

Smooth move, Mase. In case you forgot, this guy's been dead for eighty years and you think a DOOR'S going to stop him?

But Korban had been clumsy and stiff when shifting into the statue. That's why the ghost or spirit or whatever moved into man-made objects. Because Korban needed that energy, that made-ness, before he could claim something as a vessel.

Then maybe he'll slip into the DOOR, sawdust-for-brains. It's not like he has to follow the rules or anything.

Maybe so. Mason slammed his fist against the door in frustration. The door thundered in response as wooden hands chopped from the other side. Mason looked down the hall.

"Help," he shouted. Surely someone would hear the hammering on the door and come see what was wrong. There was movement down the hall. The pantry door swung open.

"Thank God," Mason said, stepping away from the basement door. One of its wooden panels splintered and cracked from the pounding. "There's a-um-"

Mason was still searching for words when he realized they would be unnecessary. The cook came out of the kitchen, a cleaver in her chubby hand. He could see the utensil's raised wooden handle. All the way up to its gleaming tip. He was looking through the woman's hand.

She was made of the same milky substance as Ransom and George.

Which meant Mason looked to his right. The hall ended in a small closet door. He'd have to go past-or through-the cook to get to either the front or rear doors of the house. And he had a feeling that he needed to get out fast, because the walls were buzzing with that same strange static he'd felt in the basement.

The basement door splintered, gave way, and the golden red oak of Korban's hands stabbed through. The cook, suddenly solid, blocked the hall with her ethereal girth. Her lip was curled as if she'd just taken a whiff of rancid buttermilk. The cleaver danced in the air before her, its metal blade reflecting the flames from the lamps. Mason backed away from her, though there was nowhere to run. Korban reached through the gash in the door, clubbing Mason with one crude stub of fist. A spark-filled darkness flooded his skull, and he fell to the floor. When he blinked himself awake, blood leaking down his scalp, he saw swirls in the grain of the wainscoting.

The wall was moving, or else his head was swimming. No, it wasn't the wall. It was something inside the wall.

A face took shape and emerged from the wood. The face split in a grin as it stepped into the hall. The ghost of George Lawson waved its spare hand and drifted toward Mason.

Korban shattered the latch and the basement door swung open. Mason forced himself to stand and ran toward the cook, hoping she was as soft as she looked. He ducked low and dived toward her knees, the way he'd been taught in peewee football back in Sawyer Creek. His bones jarred as he plowed into her chilly flesh, and he heard something pop in his shoulder.

Ghosts weren't supposed to be solid. But then, ghosts weren't supposed to be at all. The cleaver whistled through the air and he looked up just in time to see the cook's face, dead and unchanged. She could just as easily have been chopping carrots for a stew.

He tried to roll to his left, but the cleaver glanced off his upper biceps. He let out an agonized breath, and drops of blood were flung across his face as she raised the cleaver for another blow. He crawled like a crippled spider across the floor, skittering past her, Korban's massive feet thundering down the hall.

Mason leaped for the stairs, grabbing the rail to pull himself forward. His heart throbbed, sending fresh rushes of blood from his wound as he careened up the steps. The blood reassured him in an odd way, a reminder that he was still alive. In a world where dreams made nightmares, blood was welcome, and pain meant that he could still feel.

Mason reached the second-floor landing and peered down the hall to the master bedroom. William Roth stood in the shadows beside Spence's closed door.

"Run," Mason yelled, fumbling to close the torn gap in his arm. "The ghosts-Korban-"

Then all speech was lost as Roth stepped into the light of the astral lamps. The photographer's face hung in rags, a crisscross of fresh scars making a gridwork of his smile. His eye sockets were blank, like empty lenses.

The photographer held out a pale fist as Mason tried to shape his vocal cords into a scream.

"Hiyer, mate," the Roth-ghost said, the words mumbled and muffled. The sliced lips opened again, and wet spindly things fell from the dead man's mouth and began crawling down his ripped shirt. Spiders.

Both ends of the hall darkened. A harsh wind extinguished the lamps on the walls. It was the long dark tunnel, rushing at him from two directions, that would lead Mason back to the rats.

Ransom's voice crept from the walls. "We got tunnels of the soul, Mason."

The statue clambered up the stairs, awkward as a drunken mannequin. Mason peeked over the banister and saw the bust cradled in the statue's arm like an infant carried by its mother.

The bust's maple lips parted, and a cry echoed off the woodwork, as if the entire house joined voice with Korban: "Finish MEEEEEE."

Mason fled up the stairs. The third floor was dark. Only a milky spill of moonlight through the windows prevented Mason from running full-speed into a wall. He tried to suck breath into his lungs, but the black air was like a solid thing, a suffocating thickness. Mason heard voices and looked up, saw the square of lesser darkness.

The trapdoor to the widow's walk.

Where Anna's ghost had screamed from the painting.

The swollen moon rose, cutting through the tree branches. The forest glittered with frost, and Anna's breath hung silver before her. Miss Mamie led her to the railing, and Anna looked out across the land that would be her home. She belonged to this house, to this mountain, to Ephram Korban.

"You're beautiful," Miss Mamie said, lifting her lantern to Anna's face. "I can see why Ephram wants you so badly. For that, and for your gift."

The Abramovs sat in their chairs, drew their instruments to their bodies like the meat of lovers. Paul perched his video camera on a tripod, Adam watching him. Cris and Zainab chatted near the bar, Lilith laughing and filling their glasses. Other guests stood in a cluster by the far railing, talking in low, excited voices.

"You know why you're here, don't you, Anna?" Miss Mamie said.

"Because I belong here." The words were someone else's.

"So do I," Sylva said, and Miss Mamie turned, faced the old woman.

"No," Miss Mamie said, cheeks burning with rage. "This is Ephram's night. He told me you'd never be back, that he had used you up."

"Ephram needs me more than he needs you."

"I kept him alive, and he kept me young. Look at you, you pathetic sack of skin and bones. And you thought he could ever love such as you."

"Love's like a door that swings both ways. And so's death. Frost and fire. But you wouldn't know that, would you? You don't know a thing about magic, or spells, or faith, or any of the things that kept Ephram's spirit here all these years."

"You're just a crazy old witch-woman, muttering over dust and herbs. I'm the one he needs. I know how to make the poppets."

"Well, he'll be along shortly, and you can just ask him for yourself. Now, what do we do about dear little Anna?"

"Anna?"

Anna lifted her head at the mention of her name, the night like water, the world in slow motion.

The Abramovs began a solemn duet, bows sliding across the strings with melancholy softness, the notes vibrating on the wind. This was Anna's house. She wasn't Anna Galloway, had never been. That life was a dream, the lethal cancer a bell that had sounded her home, death just a slow transition that carried her back to herself.

She was Anna Korban.

And she would walk these walls forever.

The cold of the world became the coldness inside her, the frozen heart of forever, as she stepped to that dividing line.

"What about her?" Sylva said.

"Oh, Anna dies," Miss Mamie said. "For the last time."