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

  “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 chittering. 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, and 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.

  CHAPTER 13

  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 the 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, now . . .

  “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.

  CHAPTER 14

  “I need something stronger.”

  “You ain’t supposed to come out here in broad daylight, Ransom. What if somebody seen you?”

  “I’m scared. I ain’t coming out here in the dark. It’s bad enough when you can see, and it’s getting worse.”

  “Was you followed?”

  “Not by none of the guests. Miss Mamie told them they ain’t allowed up Beechy Gap. But the others”—Ransom lowered his voice and hunched his head as if afraid that the cabin’s knotty walls were listening—”you know, them—they’s everywheres now.”

  Sylva Hartley bent and spat into her fireplace. The liquid hissed and cracked, then evaporated against the flaming logs. She ran the back of her leathery hand against her shriveled mouth. She looked past Ransom, staring down the decades that were as dark as the smoky stones beneath the hearth.

  “Lord knows it’s getting worse,” she finally said in agreement. She pulled her frayed shawl up around her neck.

  “The last charm worked right fair for a while. Kept them scared off. But now, they just laugh at me when I do my warding.”

  Sylva thought Ransom ought to have a little more faith. That was the key: faith. All the charms in the world didn’t amount to a hill of beans if you didn’t believe. Ransom had been raised Christian, and that was all fine and dandy
. But when you got right down to it, some things were older and ran deeper than religion.

  It was too bad about George Lawson. George was an outsider, not born on the mountain. He didn’t know what he was up against. With the proper charms, he might have dodged Ephram’s little games.

  But maybe not. Ransom was right. They were getting stronger. Ephram was getting stronger. And now George was on their side, too. Along with all the other people Ephram had fetched over in the last hundred years.

  “You mind flipping them johnny cakes?” she said.

  Ransom crossed the floor of the cabin to the little blue steel cookstove. He turned the cakes in the skillet. The smell of scorched cornmeal filled the room.

  “They don’t stay invisible no more,” he said, his back to her. “It used to be just Korban, and you only seen him in the Big House once in a while. But the others, they been walkin’.”

  “The blue moon in October. A time of magic. Right magic and wrong magic.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Ransom’s voice trembled.

  She didn’t blame him for being scared. She was scared, too, but she didn’t dare let it show. “First off, I’m going to have me a bite to eat. After that, I guess we’ll just have to see what the cat drug in.”

  Ransom handed her a plate made of hammered tin. He had laid a fried piece of side pork beside the johnny cakes. Liquid fat pooled in the bottom of the plate and dripped out a small hole in the metal. Sylva put the plate on one arm of her rocker so the grease wouldn’t stain her clothes.

  “It’s the people, ain’t it?” Ransom asked, the firelight glittering in his eyes. “The people staying at the Big House.”

  Sylva said nothing, just worked the pig gristle between the stumps of her teeth. There was a generous hunk of meat in the fat. Ransom always made sure she got one of the better slabs whenever they slaughtered and smoked one of the manor’s hogs. She figured she ate almost as well as the fancy guests.

  She swallowed the pork and drained a cup of sassafras tea. Finally, she spoke, gazing into the fire, at the yellow and orange and bright blue. “It’s the people. And the girl. The one with the Sight.”

  Even though her voice was soft, the words were as thick as thunder in the damp air of the cabin. The whole forest had grown quiet, as if the trees were bending in to listen. She was sure a catbird had been warbling out a happy sunrise song only minutes before.

  “First he claimed the dead ones, now he’s going after the live ones,” Ransom said. “They’s got to be some kind of ritual or other you can use against him.”

  “You forget. We got to play by the rules. But Ephram Korban, he ain’t beholden to nothing. Not man nor God nor none of my little bags of stoneroot and bear teeth and hawk feathers.”

  Ransom touched the pocket of his coveralls.

  “But just keep right on believin’,” she said. “The ashes of a prayer are mightier than the highest flames of hell.”

  “I’d best be getting back. Got the livestock to tend to. And Miss Mamie’s been watching me awful close.”

  “Get on, then.”

  “You sure you’ll be okay?”

  “Been okay all along, ain’t I? But it’s good to be looking out for each other.”

  Ransom nodded. His face was in the shadows beyond the reach of the firelight and she wasn’t able to see his expression. The sun filled the room as he opened the door and went outside. She winced at the intruding light and waited for the sound of the falling wooden latch. Then she turned her gaze back to the fire and forked up another chunk of corn cake.

  The fire . . .

  Sylva looked down at her withered hands.

  If only she had felt pain. The wounds without pain were the slowest in healing.

  The tin plate sat empty in her lap. The fire had gone out. She shivered and spat into the ashes. She wasn’t sure which pain was greater, Ephram’s loving or his leaving her.

  She had known Ephram would come back. But then, he had never really left. He didn’t die when she had pushed him off the widow’s walk. He just went into the house. Because she’d killed him under the October blue moon.

  As he had promised, wood and stone became his flesh, the smoke his breath and the mirrors his eyes, the shadows his restless spirit’s blood. And his heart burned in the fires of forever.

  She shivered in the heat of the day and reached for the matches.

  CHAPTER 15

  The house threw a sunrise shadow across the backyard. Mason was tired, his face scratched from his midnight wanderings. He’d slept poorly, his brain invaded by feverish images of Anna, his mother, Ephram Korban, Lilith, a dozen others whose faces were lost in smoke. He shivered as he walked behind the manor, following the worn path that wound between two outbuildings. He climbed a row of creosote railroad ties that were terraced into the earth as steps leading into the forest.

  The door on the smaller building was open. An old man in overalls emerged from the darkness within. Mason waved a greeting. The man rubbed his hands together, his breath coming out in a mist.

  “Brrr,” he said, creasing his wrinkled jaws. “Cold as a woman’s heart in there.”

  “What is it?” Mason asked. He’d assumed it was a tool storage shed or something similar. The shed, like its larger counterpart, was constructed of rough-cut logs and chinked with yellowish red cement. A smell of damp age and cedar spilled from the doorway.

  “‘Frigeration,” the man said. When his mouth opened on the “gee” sound, Mason saw that the old man had about enough teeth left to play a quick game of jacks. His overalls threatened to swallow him, his back hunched from years of work. The man cocked his head back toward the door and went into the shed. “Take a look-see.”

  Mason followed. Cold air wafted over his face. A mound covered the center of the dirt floor. The old man stooped down and swept at the grainy mound with his hands, revealing streaks of shiny silver.

  “Ice,” said the man. “We bury it under sawdust so it will keep through summer. You wouldn’t think it would last that long, would you?”

  “I wondered how you kept the food cold without power,” Mason said. “What about the food safety police, the health inspectors?”

  “They’s rules of the world and then they’s rules of Korban Manor. Two different things.”

  The old man pointed through the door to a western rise covered by tulip poplars. Wagon tracks crossed the meadow, curving up the slope like twin red snakes. “They’s a little pond up yonder,” he said. “A spring pops out ‘twixt two rocks. The pond’s fenced off from the animals so it stays clean. Come the third or fourth long freeze in January, when the water’s good and hard, we go up and cut out big blocks of it.”

  “Sounds like a lot of work. I understand that heavy machinery isn’t allowed on the grounds.”

  “Oh, we got machines. A wagon is a machine. So’s a horse, in its way. And, of course, they got us, too.”

  Mason went out into the sun and the man closed the door behind him. His gnarled hand fumbled in the front pocket of his overalls as if he were looking for a cigarette. He pulled out something that looked like a knotted rag with a tip of feather protruding from one end. He waved the rag in the sign of the cross over the front of the icehouse door. The motion was practiced and fluid, appearing natural despite its oddness.

  Mason expected the man to comment on the ritual, but the knotted rag was quickly squirreled away. “What’s in the other shed?” Mason asked after a moment.

  “That’s the larder. Keep stuff in there that doesn’t need to be so cold, such as squash and cucumbers and corn. A little spring runs through there, gets piped out into the gully yonder.”

  Mason looked where the man had pointed and saw a trickle of water meandering through a bed of rich, black mud. Blackberry briars tangled along the creek banks, the scarlet vines bent in autumn’s death. “Do you pick the berries, too?”

  “Yep, and the apples. They’s hells of apples around here. You gonna have something apple every meal. Pie, turno
vers, stewed, fried apples with cinnamon and just a dash of brandy. We keep up a vegetable garden, too, and——”

  “Ransom!”

  They both turned at the sound of the shrill voice. Miss Mamie stood on the back porch, leaning over the railing.

  “Yes, Miss Mamie,” the man responded. The last bit of starch seemed to have gone out of him, and Mason was sure the old man was going to disappear inside his overalls.

  “Now, Ransom, you know you’re not to trouble the guests,” Miss Mamie said in a high, artificially cheerful tone.

  “I was just—” Ransom swelled momentarily, then seemed to think better of it. He studied the tips of his worn work boots. The sun lit the silver wires of hair that were combed back over his balding head. “Yes, Miss Mamie.”

  The hostess stood triumphantly at the porch rail and turned her attention to Mason. “Did you sleep well, Mr. Jackson?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he lied. He sneaked a glance at Ransom. The man looked as if he’d been beaten with a hickory rod. “Um . . . thanks for setting me up in the master bedroom. It’s very comfortable.”

  “Lovely.” She clasped her hands together. Her pearls shifted over her bosom. “Ephram Korban would be so pleased. You know our motto: ‘The splendid isolation of Korban Manor will fire the imagination and kindle the creative spirit.’”

  “I read the brochure,” Mason said. “And I’ve already got a few ideas. I might need a little help getting started, though. Is it okay if Ransom helps me collect some good sculpting wood?”

  Miss Mamie frowned and her thin eyebrows flattened. Her face worn the same expression that glared from the portraits of Korban. Mason realized he had challenged her authority, if only mildly. He was suddenly sorry he had dragged Ransom into the spotlight of her stare. She folded her arms like a schoolmarm debating the punishment of unruly students.

  After a moment, she said, “Of course it’s okay. As long as his chores are finished. Are your chores finished, Ransom?”