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

  “Hey, we’re not all assholes. And I wish you’d get off your personal vendetta against everybody who has a dream. Some artists are normal people who just happen to make things because we can’t figure out how in the hell to communicate with people.”

  “And some of us are normal people who search for proof of the afterlife because this life sucks in so many ways and humans always disappoint us. Ghosts are easier to believe in than most of the people I’ve met.”

  “Truce, then. Obviously we’re both crazy as hell. For a minute there, I was afraid we didn’t have anything in common.”

  That brought an unfamiliar smile to Anna’s lips. “All right. Let’s start over. I guess you’ve heard all the ghost stories. About how Ephram Korban jumped to his death off the widow’s walk, though the best legends claim that one of the servants pushed him to his death because of the usual reasons.”

  “What reasons are those?”

  “Unrequited love or requited love. Why else would you want to kill somebody? And, according to gossip and even a few parapsychology articles, Korban’s spirit wanders the land, trying to find a way back into the manor in which he invested so much of his time, money, and energy.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  The horses heard a call from the barn and took off at a gallop. “I wish I were that free,” she said. “Maybe I’ll get to be a horse in the next life.”

  “The downside is, you’d have to die first. Like Ephram Korban.”

  “Well, he has a grave site up over that ridge, but a grave’s nothing but a hole in the ground. I haven’t seen his ghost.”

  “You really think ghosts are here?”

  “I know they’re here. When your life burns up, you leave a little smoke behind. And don’t ask me to prove it, or you’ll remind me of someone I’ve spent the past year forgetting.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. Maybe I’ll ask Ransom to let me borrow one of his charm bags. Says they keep restless spirits away.”

  “Can’t hurt,” Anna said. “I’m going down to the barn. Care to join me?”

  “I’m heading there anyway. Miss Mamie has all but demanded that Ransom help me find a whopping big log to turn into a life-sized statue.”

  “Ah, you poor suffering artists. Always having to please the critics.”

  “You poor critics, always having to fake that world-class cynicism.”

  By the time they reached the barn, Ransom had led the horses under an open shed built onto one wing of the barn. He hooked the cinch under the belly of the big roan, whose ears twitched as if this were a familiar game. Two lanterns blazed inside the barn, dangling from the dusty rafters. Leather straps and gleaming bits of metal hung along one wall, and four saddles were lined on a bench beneath the pieces of harness.

  “Well, hello there, young’ns,” Ransom called in greeting. He looked a bit longer at Anna and glanced at the sky with a frown.

  “Need any help?” Anna asked.

  “Don’t need none, but I sure do like company. You know your way around a horse?”

  “One end eats and the other doesn’t,” Mason said.

  “And one end might kick you in the crotch, if you send off vibes of stupidity.” Anna rubbed the nose of the chestnut, and in seconds it was nuzzling her neck, blowing softly through its nostrils. If only she were that good with men. Back when she cared about such things, anyway. Or ghosts. It would be a welcome change for them to rush out of the land of the dead with open arms and a smile.

  She snapped the reins on the bridle and fed the leather through the steel rings. “These guys are great,” she said to Ransom.

  “They sure took a shine to you.”

  “I was raised around horses once.”

  “Once?” Mason asked.

  “A long story, one of many,” she said.

  “Watch out, Mason,” Ransom said. “A woman with secrets is generally bad news. Will you folks give me a hand hauling out the wagon?”

  They headed for the interior of the barn, Ransom pausing to push the sliding wooden doors farther apart. He was about to step inside when he looked above the barn door and grabbed the rag-ball charm from around his neck. He waved it and closed his eyes, whispering something rhythmical that Anna couldn’t hear.

  “Danged if they ain’t changed it again,” Ransom said. He rolled a wooden barrel to the door, climbed on it with trembling legs, then stood and turned the horseshoe that was nailed above the door. He hung it so that the prongs pointed up, toward the sky.

  “Does the luck not work the other way?” Anna asked.

  “That charm is a heck of a lot older than what you might reckon. It’s come to mean ‘luck’ to most people, but signs get watered down and weakened ‘cause people forget the truth of them. Same as a four-leaf clover.”

  “Sure, they’re magically delicious, like the cereal.”

  “Used to be, it gave the person carrying it the power to see ghosts and witches. Back when people believed.”

  Anna caught Mason’s look. “So points-down on the horseshoe is bad, right?”

  “It’s practically throwing open the door to every kind of dead thing you care to imagine. I like for the dead to stay dead.” He again gave Anna that sad, distant look. “Too bad not everybody around these parts feels the same way.”

  Mason helped Ransom down from the barrel. Anna tethered the horses to a locust post and followed the men inside the barn. Horse-drawn vehicles were lined against a side wall. The hay wagon stood nearest the door. Beside it were two sleighs, a surrey with its top folded down, and a fancy carriage with a lantern at each corner. All of the vehicles were restored and maintained in the kind of condition that would send antique dealers scrambling for their checkbooks. The aroma of cottonseed oil and leather fought with the hay dust for dominance of the barn’s air.

  A large metal hay rake sat in the far corner, slightly red from rust. There was a single seat for the operator, and a coupling in the front to yoke the draft animals. The large steel tines of the rake curled in the air like a claw.

  “That’s a wicked-looking machine,” Mason said.

  “Yep,” Ransom said, unblocking the wheels of the wagon. “That’s the windrower, that sharp part that looks like an overgrown pitchfork. And you can see the hay-cutter arm. Works by the turn of the wheels. We still do hay the hard way around here.”

  “I’ll bet the horses love it,” Anna said.

  “Yeah, and they’s smart enough to know they get to eat the hay, come winter.”

  “You going to cut any while we’re here?” she asked, thinking how much fun it would be to help. Hard physical labor did wonders for the depressed and self-pitying mind. “Some of those meadows around here are getting pretty high.”

  “We had to hold off for a while because the signs were in the heart.”

  “The heart?”

  “Ain’t a good time for cutting oats or wheat or any reaping crop. It’s a time fit only for the harvest of dead things.”

  Mason cleared his throat and spat loudly. “Ugh. Hay dust choking me.” He looked at Anna and said, “Sorry for being crude. That’s the way we do it in Sawyer Creek.”

  “In case you ain’t noticed, this ain’t Sawyer Creek,” Ransom said. He motioned them to go to the rear of the wagon and he picked up the tongue. “Throw your shoulders in, now.”

  They maneuvered the wagon out the door and under the shed. As Anna and Ransom hitched the team, Mason explored the barn. A few minutes later, he poked his head outside. “Hey, what’s under the trapdoor?”

  Ransom stroked the mane on the chestnut mare. “Taters, sweet taters, cabbage, apples, turnips. Root cellar for stuff that don’t need to be kept so cold.”

  “Can I look?”

  Ransom went to the bench and tugged on a pair of rough leather gloves. “Help yourself.”

  Anna followed Mason to the corner of the barn, where the trapdoor was set in the floor between two stacks of hay bales.

  “Got doors on the bottom floor, where
the barn’s set against the hillside,” Ransom said. “We can haul from the orchards and gardens straight up to here, save a lot of handling. Then there’s a tunnel goes back to the Big House. Ephram Korban had it dug in case a blizzard struck or something. He was always going on about ‘tunnels of the soul,’ for some reason. I expect he was about half crazy, if some of them legends are true.”

  “Or maybe all the legends are true and he was all the way crazy,” Anna said.

  Mason knelt and lifted the heavy wooden door. The cellar smelled of sweet must and earth, with a faint scent of rotted fruit. The darkness beneath had a weight, like black oil. A makeshift ladder led down into the seemingly bottomless depths.

  “Ain’t much of interest down there,” Ransom said. “Unless you like to sit and talk to the rats.”

  “Rats?” Mason let the door fall with a slam, knocking dust loose from the rafters. Anna fought a sneeze.

  Ransom grinned, his sparse teeth yellow in the weak lamplight. “Rats as big around as your thigh.”

  “I hate rats,” Mason said. “I grew up with them. Sounded like cavalry behind the walls of my bedroom. What I hate the most is those beady eyes, like they’re sizing you up.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ransom said. “They get plenty to eat without having to gnaw on the guests.”

  “Miss Mamie would probably scold them for having bad manners.”

  Anna laughed. Maybe Mason wasn’t so bad. At least he wasn’t afraid to show weakness. Unlike her.

  Mason stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. Something fluttered from the rafters and brushed Anna’s face, and she wiped at it as if it were cobwebs.

  “Jesus, don’t tell me that was a bat,” Mason said, ducking. “Bats are nothing but rats with wings.”

  “That was a bluebird,” Ransom said. “Lucky for you, young lady. If a bluebird flies in your path, it means you’re going to be kissed.”

  “Great,” she said. “And I thought I earned my kisses by casting magic spells on unsuspecting men.”

  “Believe what you want,” Ransom said. “I reckon you see through the signs better than anybody. Now, I’d best get on with the chores.”

  Mason wiped his hands on an old horse blanket hanging from the rafters. “So, Ransom, do you have time to help me find an overgrown log that’s just right for statue-making?”

  “Why do you think we hitched up the wagon? Miss Mamie always gets her way with things.”

  “So I’m starting to find out.”

  “Let’s get on before dark. Might have to go below Beechy Gap, where we had a big windfall a few winters back. Want to come along, young lady?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve got some chores of my own.”

  “I reckon some things got to be done alone,” he said.

  Anna wasn’t sure what to make of Ransom. He kept dropping hints but a deep fear was hidden behind his eyes. Maybe he had secrets of his own. She waited until Mason and Ransom climbed up onto the buckboard seat, then she passed Ransom the reins.

  “See you later tonight?” Mason asked her.

  Anna felt the half smile on her face, and wasn’t sure which way she wanted the corners of her mouth to point. “We’ll see.”

  Ransom flipped the reins and the team headed up the road, where the wide sandy ribbon threaded between the trees into the forest. She slid the barn doors closed, then looked up at the horseshoe.

  It was points-down again.

  Dead things come in.

  She looked at the forest.

  Under the fringe of shadowed underbrush, amid the laurel and locust and briars, the woman in white stood, the bouquet held out in challenge. The ghost stared at Anna like a mirror, then turned and drifted among the trees.

  “All right, damn you,” Anna said. “I’ll play hide-and-seek with you.”

  As she entered the forest, she wondered how you could ever catch up to your own ghost. And why it would hide from you in the first place. Ransom was right about one thing. A woman with secrets generally was bad news.

  CHAPTER 30

  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, fingers 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.”

&n
bsp; 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 your—about 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 cliché, 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.