Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 4 (Boxed Set) Read online

  “This place?”

  “Korban Manor. It’s pretty unique, and I could get a lot of scenic footage. Ephram Korban’s history sounds pretty interesting, too. An industrialist with a God complex.”

  “A historical documentary?”

  “Something like that?”

  “What about all the footage you’ve already shot, all those weeks in the Adirondacks and the Alleghenies?”

  “I’ll keep it in the can. I can use it anytime.”

  “I don’t know, Paul. The grant people might get upset. After all, you signed on for an Appalachian nature documentary.”

  “To hell with the grant committees. I do what I want.”

  Paul was pulling his Orson Welles bit. Even in the dark, Adam could visualize the famous “Paul pout.”

  So what if Paul spent months on footage, and still had weeks of postproduction, editing, and scripting left? Those were only technical details. Paul wanted to be the artist, the posturing auteur, the brash visionary. Stubbornly refusing to sell out.

  No matter the cost.

  But Adam wasn’t in the mood to argue. Not after the good time they’d just had.

  “Why don’t you sleep on it, and we can talk about it in the morning?” Adam stroked one of Paul’s well-developed biceps. Lugging a twenty-pound camera and battery belt through the mountains all summer had really toned him up.

  “I mean, this is like an alien world or something,” Paul said. “No electricity, people living like they did a hundred years ago. And the servants, all of them still live here, like serfs around the castle.”

  Adam was drifting off despite Paul’s excitement. “Uh-huh,” he mumbled.

  He must have fallen asleep, because he was standing on a tower, the wind blowing through his hair, dark trees swaying below him—

  No, it wasn’t a tower. He recognized the grounds of the manor. He was on top of the house, on that little flat space marked off by the white railing—now what had the maid called it? Oh, yeah, the widow’s walk—and Adam found himself climbing over the rail and looking down at the stone walkway sixty feet below, and the clouds told him to jump, he felt a hand on his back, pushing, then he was flying, falling, the wind shook him, why—

  “Adam! Wake up.” Paul was shaking his shoulder. Paul had sat up in bed, the blankets around his waist. A decent amount of time must have passed, because a little moonlight leaked through the window.

  “What is it?” Adam was still groggy from the dream and the after-dinner drinks.

  Paul pointed toward the door, his eyes wide and wet in the dimness. “I saw something. A woman, I think. All dressed in white. She was white.”

  “This is the southern Appalachians, Paul. Everybody’s white.” Adam shook away the fragments of the nightmare.

  “No, it wasn’t like that. She was see-through.”

  Adam gave a drowsy snort. “That’s what happens when you smoke Panamanian orange-hair. It’s a wonder you didn’t see the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover in drag.”

  “I’m not joking, Adam.”

  Adam put a hand on Paul’s chest. His boyfriend’s heart was pounding.

  “Get back under the covers,” Adam said. “You must have fallen asleep and had a weird dream. I think I had one myself.”

  Paul lay back down, his breathing rapid and shallow. Adam opened his eyes momentarily to see Paul staring at the ceiling. “No drinks or smoke tomorrow, okay?”

  There was a stretch of silence, one that only a noise-polluted New Yorker could truly appreciate. Finally Paul said, “I told you I’d be working.”

  Adam knew that tone. They’d argued enough for one vacation. Adoption, Paul’s video, his drug use. And now Paul was seeing things. Adam suddenly wondered if their relationship would survive six weeks at Korban Manor.

  He turned his back on Paul and burrowed into the pillows.

  “She had flowers,” Paul said.

  CHAPTER 24

  Mason’s hands ached. Sawdust and wood shavings were scattered around his feet. Wood chips had worked their way down the tops of his tennis shoes and dug into the skin around his ankles. He tossed his chisel and mallet on the table and stood back to look at the piece.

  He had worked in a fever, not thinking about which grain to follow, which parts to excise, where to cut. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. The room had grown warmer. The candles had long since melted away, and the oil was low in the base of the lantern. He must have worked for hours, but the soreness in his limbs was the only evidence of passing time.

  Except for the bust before him on the table.

  He’d never attempted a bust before. He brought the lantern closer, examining the sculpture with a critical eye. He could find no flaws, no features that were out of proportion. Even the curves of the earlobes were natural and lifelike, the eyebrows etched with a delicate awl. The sculpture was faithful to its subject.

  TOO faithful, Mason thought. I’m nowhere near good enough to produce this caliber of work. I’ve had successes along the way. But this . . . Jesus Henry Christ on a crutch, I couldn’t do Korban’s face this well if I’d KNOWN the old geezer.

  But it was Korban’s head on the table, the Korban that filled the giant oil paintings upstairs, the same face that hung above the fireplace in Mason’s room. Most amazing of all was that the eyes had power, just as they did in the portraits. That was ridiculous, though. These eyes were maple, dead wood.

  Still . . .

  It was almost as if the figure had life. As if the true heart of the wood had always been this shape, as if the bust had always existed but had been imprisoned in the tree. The face had been caged, and Mason had merely inserted the key and opened the door.

  He shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t have any idea where you came from,” he said to the bust, “but you’re going to make the critics love me.”

  The love of the critics meant success, and that meant money. Success meant he’d never have to step foot in another textile mill as long as he lived, he wouldn’t have to blow chunks of gray lint out of his nose at every break, he wouldn’t have to wait for a bell to tell him when to take a leak or buy a Snickers bar or race the other lint-heads to the parking lot at quitting time. Sure, he still had years of carving ahead, but success started with a single big break.

  He was already planning a corporate commission, the gravy train for artists. He’d buy Mama a house, get her some advanced text-reading software and an expensive computer, and then find all the other ways to pay her back for the years of handicap and hardship. Best of all, he could make her smile.

  Or maybe he was being suckered by the Dream Image, the high that came after completing a work. He still had to treat the wood, do the fine sanding and polishing. A hundred things could still go wrong. Even as dry as the maple had been after years in the forest, the wood could split and crack.

  Mason rubbed his shoulder. His clothes were damp from sweat. The weariness that had been building under the surface now crested and crashed like a wave. Even though he was tired, he felt too excited to sleep. He took one last look at the bust of Korban, then covered his work with an old canvas drop cloth he’d found in the corner.

  The first red rays of dawn stabbed through the ground-level windows. Mason’s stubble itched. Back in his old life, he’d be on his third cup of coffee by now, waiting on the corner for Junior Furman’s pickup to haul him to work. The start of another day that was like a thousand other days.

  Mason traced his way back across the basement, ducking under the low beams and stepping around the stacks of stored furniture. He finally found the stairs and went up to the main floor. The smell of bacon, eggs, and biscuits drifted from the east wing, and kitchenware clanged in some distant room. Mason’s stomach growled. An older couple passed him in the hall, steam rising from their ceramic coffee cups. They nodded a wary greeting. Mason realized he probably looked bleary-eyed and unkempt, like an escaped lunatic who’d broken into the medicine cabinet.

  When Mason reached
his room, he looked at the painting of Korban again, marveling at how closely his sculpture resembled that stern face. But the face seemed a little less stern this morning. And the eyes had taken on a little more light—

  Don’t be bloody DAFT, he chided himself in William Roth’s accent.

  Mason took a long, hot shower, then lay in bed as dawn sneaked through the cracks in the curtains. In his mind’s tired eye, he saw Korban’s face, then that dissolved away and he saw Anna. Then his mother, features worn, made even sadder by the pathetic light of hope that somehow still shone in her diseased eyes. Then he pictured Miss Mamie, with her haughty lips. Ransom, clutching his warding charm. Korban, dark pupils holding wretched secrets. Anna, soft and somehow vulnerable, harboring her own secrets.

  Korban. His mother. The bust. Anna.

  Miss Mamie. Ransom.

  KorbanAnnaMissMamieAnnaKorban.

  Anna.

  He decided he liked Anna’s face best, and thought of her until he slept and dreamed of wood.

  CHAPTER 25

  Anna woke before the first rooster’s crow broke the black silence. Across the room, Cris rolled over in her sleep. The darkness behind Anna’s closed eyes wasn’t as total as the room’s darkness. Streaks of blue and red flared across the back of her eyelids.

  She slipped into her robe and went into the bathroom. The antique plumbing used gravity to flush the toilets, and the water pressure was inconsistent, though the central heating ensured plenty of hot water. She lit a globed lantern before extinguishing her flashlight, then stepped into the shower and turned the taps.

  Under the dull drumming of the water, she forgot the pain in her abdomen. She hadn’t dreamed last night, though the questions had swirled around and around as she spun down the drain of sleep.

  Where was her ghost? Who was Rachel Faye Hartley? Why was Miss Mamie so curious about Anna’s “gift”? How much time did she have left? What would happen after that time expired?

  And the biggie, would anyone even care?

  She peeled back the shower curtain and wrapped a towel around her. The room had grown colder, and with the water turned off, the steam hung heavy on her skin. It coated the mirror above the sink, and though she wasn’t in the mood to gauge the darkness of the circles beneath her eyes, she wanted to make sure she could pass for hale and hearty.

  She was about to reach up a corner of the towel to wipe the mirror when the room grew even colder, as if a wind had crept through the crack beneath the door. Her blurred face in the mirror breathed mist.

  Then the water collecting on the mirror ran in streaks, and Anna didn’t believe her eyes. Because even somebody who saw ghosts didn’t see things like this.

  Letters formed, as if drawn by the tip of an invisible finger, the symbols silver in the soft glow of the lamp: G-O.

  Anna saw her own wide eyes reflected in the word, as the second set of letters etched itself against the surface of the mirror: O-U-T.

  “Go out?” Anna whispered, now that her mind translated the symbols into words.

  Was this a message of some sort? From whom? Go out from where? Did something want her out of the house?

  But another word was forming, even as the steam threatened to turn to ice and shivers stretched her skin tight.

  F-R-O-S-T just above the rim of the mirror.

  Anna fought down a breath, though her lungs were like frozen stones. Then the letters blurred, the cold steam collected and ran down the smooth glass in rivulets, and the words were gone.

  “Go out frost,” Anna said.

  She toweled quickly and hurried back into the room to stoke the fire.

  CHAPTER 26

  “It’s going to be beautiful.”

  Miss Mamie gazed lovingly at the bust that Mason had carved. The sculptor was gifted. Ephram had chosen well. But Ephram had always chosen well, in love, in life, and now in death.

  “Mr. Jackson worked late,” Lilith said, holding the lantern higher so the light caught the angles of Korban’s hewn features. “He won’t be down for a while.”

  Miss Mamie ached to fondle Korban’s face, but she didn’t dare risk drawing any of its energy away. That wasn’t for her. That was for Ephram. She would touch him again soon enough. The blue moon was only two nights away.

  Lilith went to the corner of the studio space and lifted an oil painting. “This was my favorite,” she said.

  “Put that down. You’re done with painting. And so is he. Know your place.”

  Lilith returned the painting to the shadows. Lilith was just another servant, another tool that helped build Ephram’s bridge back into this world. But Lilith’s spirit still hung in the air, an echo of the dreams she had created, dreams that fed Ephram and fueled his sleeping soul. She was like the others, too hungry for her own return, too obsessed with her own escape from the tunnel.

  She didn’t know that she would never escape.

  “You may go now,” Miss Mamie said. “Help see to lunch. I’ll be along shortly.”

  Lilith took another forlorn look at the painting.

  As if she would ever be as gifted an artist as Ephram.

  Oh, Lilith had tried, she’d sacrificed, but she was just starting to learn the basics when she’d drowned in the pond below the barn. Her tunnel of the soul always led back here, to this dark basement where she had once dared to create.

  Lilith climbed the stairs and closed the basement door.

  They were alone.

  “Oh, Ephram,” Miss Mamie said to the bust. “It’s better than I ever dreamed.”

  The oak flexed and stretched, the eyes twitched between their wooden lids. Then the lips parted. “Yes. The fit is rather nice.”

  She squatted so that she was at eye level with him. She stroked the rough cheek, ran the back of her hand along the engraved beard.

  “It’s working,” she whispered. “Just as you said.”

  The stiff brow lifted. “It’s going to take a little getting used to. Soon, Margaret, my love, I’ll have arms to hold you again. Hands to paint with, eyes to see the world anew, legs to walk beside you. But the sculptor must work harder. I need to be finished in time.”

  “I’ll make him start this evening.” She wondered what those arms would be like, once Mason Jackson finished the life-sized statue. They might be crude and clumsy. But even wearing wooden flesh was better than being trapped in the damp stone, bleak walls, and cold glass of the manor. Ephram could eventually use his magic to soften the wood, tame it, and make it tender.

  He was gaining power as the blue moon approached. She could sense it, as if he were a bed of embers on the edge of erupting into hot flame. He was summoning his fetches, those who had died under his spell, those who feared the dark slithery things in the tunnels of their souls. He ate their dreams and fed them fear. And she had helped by carving their poppets, which were hidden away in that old cabin on Beechy Gap, and their souls could never leave the mountain.

  “Soon,” Miss Mamie said, the word like an ache, a long promise.

  This was the end of decades of waiting, of dark deeds and death, of plotting, stealing, enslaving. Time was nothing to Ephram, but Miss Mamie still clung to the impatience of mortality. Possession worked both ways, its tug equally strong on the living and the dead.

  Ephram’s wooden lips pressed together, then stretched into a smile. “It weakens me to leave the walls.”

  “You’ll be whole again. Two more nights.”

  “And Anna?”

  “She’s weak. Dying.”

  “Ah. Sweet dreams.”

  The bust grimaced, eyes closed, forehead creased in concentration. “Make him finish me,” Ephram said with effort.

  “Mr. Jackson has passion,” Miss Mamie said. “He loves you. He worships you. He wants to please you.”

  “He worships only the flesh of his work. But no matter. His spirit is mine.”

  “We all belong to you. They dream of you.”

  “As they should.”

  “And after you’ve lur
ed Sylva to the manor—”

  “You’re not to mention her name.” The bust’s eyes opened, flickering in bands of orange and red. She cringed, waiting for Ephram to punish her, give her back the years, steal away the gift of youth. She knelt, head bowed, tears streaming down her face.

  “Do you know why I’ve never led you through your tunnel of the soul?” Ephram said, voice cold, long dead, and almost weary.

  Miss Mamie wiped her eyes and sniffed in hope. “Because you love me?”

  That was the only dream worth having, the only dream that would last beyond death. Love absolved them of evil, made the killings and the soul tricks and the torture of dead things all worthy and noble. Love forgave what God could not.

  Ephram’s laughter was abrupt and harsh, crowding the stale air of the basement. She looked into his cruel, hot eyes.

  “No, no, no,” he said, more comfortable now in the wood, seeping into the angles and grooves and shaved spaces until it was his face. “I spare you because I need you. You’re the one person I know will never betray me.”

  Sylva had betrayed him, though Miss Mamie wasn’t going to remind him. His anger at Sylva might become misplaced again, as it so often did. But Miss Mamie might find out the one thing that bothered her, if she asked the right questions.

  “I have to know,” she said, breathless, the room stifling. “Do you love me the most?”

  The bust sighed. Miss Mamie wondered if a dead man was capable of lying. No, not Ephram. He never lied, and he always kept his promises.

  “Margaret, there is only you. Forever. Why do you think I’ve lingered here, chained my soul to this house with you?”

  If only she could be certain. But a house of love wasn’t built on a foundation of doubt. “Then why have you kept Sylva alive, too?”

  Silence filled the basement, the shadows waiting impatiently at the edge of the lantern’s glow. She had only dared challenge him because she knew, with the blue moon approaching, that Ephram needed her more than ever. And she wanted them to possess each other, mind, body, and spirit. No secrets.