The Manor

CHAPTER 6

I'm a ghoulie-chasing fool.

Anna let the yellow beam of the flashlight lead her as if she had no will of her own. She found herself heading up a forest trail, onto one of the narrower worn paths crowded by laurel. The waxy leaves brushed against her face and hands. Crickets and katydids launched their choruses from the obscurity of the dark forest.

You follow and you follow and you never catch up. You reach out and they dance away. You run and they run faster. You look in the dark and see nothing but darkness.

Ghosts played by their own rules. Anna had a hunch that ghosts didn't need to unravel secrets, didn't demand explanations. Life's great mysteries must mean very little to those no longer living. Undoubtedly all spirits received the necessary explanations as a gift to welcome them to the afterlife. But perhaps the dead needed amusement. Eternity surely got tedious after a while.

Anna wasn't worried about getting lost in the woods, even though Korban Manor's lighted windows had disappeared from view. After leaving the house, she'd stopped by the barn and found four horses in their stalls. She had massaged their necks and stroked the bristling hairs above their noses.

She was comforted by their warm animal smell. The aroma of straw and manure brought back memories of one of her foster families, who had kept a farm in West Virginia. Anna had grown into a woman that summer. Her first sexual experience was with the handsome but dull boy who came every other day to collect the eggs. She'd also spent hours in the weedy local cemetery, sitting among the crumbling, illegible markers, wondering about the people under the ground and the part of them that might have survived the crush of dirt and decay.

And still she wondered, her curiosity sending her into anthropology at Duke University and parapsychology at the Rhine Research Center, and now out into the night woods. Roads that never ended, a seeking that never found. The moon and a sprinkle of starlight gave vague shape to the landscape. She followed the ridge to the point where the ground sloped rapidly away. Boulders gleamed like bad teeth in the weak light. Beyond the field of stone was a yawning gap of black valley, dusted silver by an early frost.

The ribs and ripples of the Blue Ridge Mountains rolled out toward the horizon, the distant twinkle of the town of Black Rock set among them like blue and orange jewels. A jet's winking red light cut a dotted line in the east. A little flying tin can of humanity, some passengers probably afraid of a crash, some munching stale peanuts, others longing for a cigarette. Most with thoughts of relatives, spouses, and lovers recently visited or waiting at airport terminals ahead.

All with places to go, things to look forward to. People to belong to. Hopes, dreams, futures. Life. She thought of that Shirley Jackson line, "Journeys end in lovers meeting."

Yeah, right. Journeys end in death, and lovers never meet.

She turned from the lights that were starting to blur in her vision and put aside her self-pity. She had a forest to explore. And she felt a tingle in her gut, an instinct that she had learned to trust even if Stephen couldn't prove it was real. There were dead among these trees and hills.

She sometimes wondered if the cancer was a progression of that instinct. As if death were her true natural state, and life was only an interruption to be briefly endured. As if, by rights, she belonged to the dead and that her sense of them grew stronger the closer she got to becoming one of them.

That was morbid thinking. Still, she couldn't ignore the Jungian symbolism of turning her back on those dim, distant lights of civilization to enter the dark forest alone. In search of herself.

This is my life's work. If I can leave just one thing behind, if I can shed a little light into the ignorant and blind caves of the human consciousness, then maybe it's worth it. Or maybe I'm more vain than any artist, politician, or religious zealot in thinking that my beliefs matter.

Wouldn't it be nice to love, to belong, to be connected? To know that there was more to your time of breathing than the rush toward its end? What if it WERE possible to meet another spirit, touch someone, share the science of souls, to create something that has a life beyond living and dying? Or is such wishing only a more grotesque form of vanity?

She stared at the cone of battery-powered light as it bobbed ahead of her on the trail. The older she got, and the closer to death and the deeper into her search she found herself, the more alone she became. And if there was anything that frightened her, that could frighten someone who had seen ghosts, it was the thought that any soul or consciousness or life force that continued beyond death would do so alone, forever isolated, forever lost.

Anna figured she was about a mile from the manor now. She was beginning to tire. That was one of the things she hated most about her illness. Her strength was slowly draining away, slipping from this life into the next.

She paused and played the flashlight along the ridge ahead of her. Night noises crept from beneath the canopy of hardwoods, the stirring of nocturnal animals and the restless mountain wind. A breath of pine-cleansed air and the cold dampness of the early twilight revived her. The trail had intersected with several larger ones, and she had earlier crossed another wagon road. She followed her instinct, the one that carried her through the night like the moon pulled a restless tide.

The trail widened under a copse of balsams, then opened onto a meadow of thick grass. A shack overlooked the clearing, frail and wobbly on its stilts of stacked rock. A crumbling chimney, gray in the dim starlight, penetrated the slanted tin roof. The glass sheets of the windows were like dark eyes watching for company.

This was what Anna had been sent to find. She waded through the meadow, her pants cuffs soaked by the frosted grains of grass. A large rounded stone was set at the foot of the porch, as pale as the belly of a fish. She stepped on the stone and peered into the dark doorway.

The house wanted her.

Maybe not the house, but whoever had lived and then died here. Something had bound a human soul to this place, an event terrible enough to leave a psychic imprint, much the way light burned through the emulsion on a photographic negative.

The air hummed with inaudible music. The tiny hairs on the back of Anna's neck stood like magnetized needles. Despite the chill of night, her armpits were sweaty. A preternatural fear coursed through her veins, threatening to override her curiosity.

Something hovered beyond the door, wispy and frail as if unfamiliar with its own substance.

Or perhaps it was only the wind blowing through some chink in the board-and-batten walls.

Anna shined the flashlight on a knothole just above the door handle. A flicker of white shadow filled the hole, then dissolved.

Anna put her other foot on the stone porch. A form, a face, imprinted itself in the grain of the door.

A small voice skirled in on the wind, soft and hollow as a distant flute: "I've been waiting."

Anna fought the urge to run. Though she believed in ghosts, the sudden strangeness of encountering one always hit her like a dash of ice water. And this one… this one talked.

Anna backed away, the flashlight fixed on the door.

"Don't go," came the cold and hollow voice. Anna's muscles froze. She fought with her own body as her heartbeat thundered in her ears. The voice came again, smaller, pleading: "Please."

It was a child's voice. Anna's fear mixed with sympathy, melded into a need to comprehend. Did young ghosts stay young forever?

Anna stepped up onto the porch. The boards creaked under her feet. Something fluttered under the eaves and then joined the night sky. A bat.

"What do you want?" Anna said, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. Her flashlight beam on the door revealed only wood and rusted hardware.

"Are you her?"

"Her?"

"Help me," came the plaintive voice again, fading now, almost lost. "Help us."

Anna lifted the iron catch and pushed the door open, playing the flashlight's beam into the house.

She glimpsed a tiny figure, a young face outlined by long locks of hair, a few folds of soft fabric flowing beneath the begging eyes. The threads of the vision were unraveling.

"Stay," Anna said, both a request and a desperate command.

But the shape faded, the ghostly lips parted as if to speak, and then there were only the eyes, floating, floating, becoming wisps of lesser shadow, then nothing. The eyes had burned into Anna's memory. She would never forget them. The eyes had looked- haunted.

"Hello?" Anna called. The word died in the hollow shell of the shack. She moved the light across the room. A few shelves stood to one side, a rough beam of wood spanning the black opening of the fireplace. A long table marked off what had been the kitchen area. A row of crude, hand-carved figurines stood on the table, their gnarled limbs protruding at grotesque angles.

Anna touched one of the figurines. It was about a foot tall, not lacquered or painted, the wood dark and bone-dry with age. The body was made from a chopped root, the arms and legs shaped from twisted jackvine. The head was a wrinkled piece of fruit, brown like dried apple, the eyes and mouth set in a deformed grin.

They appeared to be folk art, something an early Scots-Irish mountain settler had carved during long winter nights to amuse the children. But the figurines were arrayed on the table like religious relics. One was wrapped in a peeling sheet of birch bark that appeared to emulate a dress. Another wore a garland of dried and dead flowers.

Anna shined the flashlight on the nearest stooped statue. The crude opening of the mouth held a gray, papery substance. Anna scratched at it with her fingernail and it fell to the table. Anna identified the object instantly by its mottled markings and coarse, pebbly grain.

Snakeskin.

Anna moved behind the table, facing in the same direction as the figurines. An old fireplace was directly across the room, its stones blackened by the smoke of ten thousand fires. The heap of ashes gave no evidence of when the fireplace was last used. The corners of the room were thick with cobwebs, which drifted like diaphanous sails against the breeze that leaked through the log walls.

One upper half of the room was covered by a loft. Anna climbed the rickety ladder, but saw only thick dust and the scattering of leaves that marked a rodent's nest.

She was checking the primitive kitchen when she heard a noise outside. The moonlight at the window was briefly interrupted. Had the ghost returned?

Anna ran outside, holding the flashlight at chest level. A stooped human form crossed the meadow, heading for the thicket of hardwoods behind the shack. A ragged shawl trailed out behind the figure in the night wind that had arisen.

"Wait!" Anna took a step and tripped over a loose piece of planking. She tumbled off the porch and landed on her wrist in the packed dirt. An electric shock of pain raced up her arm. By the time she got to her feet and collected her flashlight, the person or thing had disappeared into the black trees.

Anna followed. When she reached the edge of the forest, she waited and strained her ears. The night made a hundred sounds: the wind moaning through the branches, limbs squeaking, leaves scraping against bark, animals disturbed from sleep, unseen birds cluttering. Any hope of hearing footfalls was futile.

It must have been human. Anna sensed no ethereal thread she could follow. She wondered if the person in the shawl had also seen the ghost. Or was it someone who had arranged the primitive figurines in a strange mockery of ritual? Had she really seen the ghost or was she victim of an elaborate trick? Was she so desperate to find proof of afterlife that her own mind was deceiving her?

Anna rubbed her wrist for a moment. No one, not even Anna herself, had known her destination that night. The ghost had been real, she was certain. The figurines were probably the handiwork of one of the manor's guests and left behind as a gift or tribute. Or maybe it had been the idle tomfoolery of one of the manor's workers.

She turned to follow the flashlight back toward Korban Manor, bothered by the strange sensation that she was heading home.

She realized why she had come to Korban Manor. She had been fooled into thinking it had been her choice, that she needed to make contact for her own reasons. Out of all the reputedly haunted places she could have spent her final days, she hadn't simply picked this mountain estate. She hadn't dreamed of this place because of some long-forgotten paranormal journal she had once read.

No, she had been summoned.

The snapping of a twig brought her out of her reverie. Something large emerged from the forest shadows. Anna raised the flashlight, ready to use it as a club if necessary. The beam flashed across the looming black shape.

"You!" she said.

Mason held up his hands as if to ward off her anger. "I saw her."

"The ghost?"

"What ghost? I saw an old woman spying on you, then she took off running through the woods. I tried to follow her but she must know these old trails pretty well."

"How dare you follow me? What are you, some kind of slimy pervert stalker?"

"No, I just… well, Miss Mamie's little party was boring me to death, and I couldn't help being curious after all that talk about ghost stories. When I saw you leave the manor-"

"You arrogant bastard." She shoved past him and headed down the trail, not caring that she was leaving him in darkness. She only wished that ghosts really were evil, so that one might bite off his stupid oversize head. With any luck, he'd wander off the trail and have to spend the night in the forest, then wake up cold, sore, and miserable. She broke into a run and told herself it was the wind and not anger and embarrassment that filled her eyes with tears.

Miss Mamie took off her pearls and placed them on the dresser among the purple velvet ribbons and bottles of rosewater. She looked in the mirror, bringing the lamp closer so she could check her skin. Anyone seeing the faint beginnings of wrinkles around her mouth and me streaks of silver at her temples would think she was fifty years old. Not bad, considering she was going on a hundred and twenty.

Ephram had promised to keep her young. Ephram always kept his promises. He was the perfect gentleman. That was what had first attracted her, why she'd fallen in love with him. His was a complete and perfect possession.

She opened the locket attached to her necklace. Inside the locket was Ephram's young face in sepia, with its sharp cheeks, a narrow angle of nose, thick beard and sideburns burgeoning over a high stiff collar. Oh, and those dark eyes, those cold burning eyes that had swept her heart away and caged her soul, that had sparked the tinder of her desire. He'd always had power, even back when he was a mortal.

But now, MOW…

"Now we are ready," he said from the mirror. "Just as I promised."

Her heart accelerated and her palms grew moist. She placed a hand on the mirror's smooth surface. Ephram's face coalesced in the reflection of the firelight. A row of peeled apples hung drying on a string by the fire, carved into heads, with protruding ears and noses. The eyes and mouths glistened like scars. The faces would take shape as they dried, taking on their own unique features.

"How do you like them?" she asked.

"You've chosen well." Ephram's voice was low and sibilant.

"They will feed you, given time." Miss Mamie looked into those seductive eyes. She felt a flush of warmth. Her love had never faltered.

Her dead husband's eyes flared in a storm of red and gold. "Even now, their dreams give me strength. And the blue moon is coming again."

"Just like the night you died."

"Please, my love. You know I don't favor that word. It sounds so… permanent."

"What about Sylva?" Miss Mamie said, lowering her eyes, anticipating his anger.

"What of her? She's just an old witch-woman with a sack of feathers, weeds, and old bones. Her power is nothing but the pathetic power of suggestion. But mine "- his voice rose, thunderous, until she was afraid that the guests upstairs might hear-"mine is the power that shapes both sides."

"So many years." Miss Mamie ran her hands over the neckline of her lace nightgown. "I don't know if I can wait much longer."

"Patience, my heart's love. These are special. These are true makers. They carve me, they write me, they draw me into life. Their hands give me shape, their minds give me substance. They make me just as you make them. And soon, Margaret-"

Ephram reached up through the mist that swirled inside the mirror and placed his palm against the glass. Miss Mamie put her fingers on the mirror, craving the cruel and arousing electricity of his touch. Her dead husband smiled.

"Soon all those we have sacrificed will find their home, their true eternal life, in me. I will have what any lord and master deserves."

"What any lord and master deserves," she repeated in a whisper. Then the mists faded. Ephram collapsed into an ethereal smoke, and the mirror was again clear.

She studied her own face. She was a lucky woman. Her own hopes and dreams were about to be reborn. Soon Ephram could escape the mirror, these walls, this house. Soon she could touch his flesh again.

She went to bed, alone with her lust. Patience, she told herself. Ephram had promised her. And Ephram always kept his promises.