Scott Nicholson - The Manor

"You ain't from money, are you?" Ransom asked, raising a white eyebrow.

"Well, not really. Both my parents had to work all week to get by." Mason didn't mention that his dad worked only two days a week and drank four and a half. Dad faithfully took off every Sunday morning to give thanks for the evening's pint. No other prayers ever passed his lips that didn't reek of bourbon. Except maybe from his hospital bed, when cirrhosis escorted him to the self-destruction he'd spent a lifetime toasting.

"People around here, they fell all over themselves to get Korban's money. They was scrub poor, these people. The only cash they ever saw was once or twice a year when they loaded some handmade quilts or goods on the back of a mule and took down to Black Rock to trade. So when Korban come in with his offers, nobody blamed them for selling out."

"I guess I would sell out, too, if I got the chance," Mason said. He was thinking of Diluvium, his first commissioned piece and the worst thing he'd ever fabricated. Also the most successful.

Ransom fumbled in his overalls pocket and again pulled out the feathery rag ball. He waved it in the strange genuflection before lifting the cast-iron latch on the shed door.

"Um-what's that feather for?" Mason asked.

"Warding off," Ransom said, as if everybody carried such a charm. He pushed the door open. Before entering, he kicked the doorjamb so hard that his overalls quivered around his bony frame. "Yep, still sturdy."

Mason wanted to ask what Ransom thought he was warding off, but didn't know what words to use. He chalked it up as one more of the manor's oddities. Compared with ghost stories, Korban's ever-watchful portraits, the jittery maid, and hearth fires burning in the heat of day, what was one old man's eccentricities? Next to Anna, Ransom was practically a model of sanity and reason.

They went into the small shed, Ransom peering up at the rafters. Light spilled from the two single-paned windows set in the south wall. Workbenches lined the back room, piled high with broken harness and rusting plows, millwork and buckets of cut nails. Worn-handled shovels, picks, and axes leaned near the door. A long cross-saw dangled from wooden pegs, a few of its jagged teeth missing. The corner was a mess of wooden planes, hammers, and block-and-tackle tangled in yellowed hemp rope. The room smelled of iron and old leather.

"Don't have to lock up tools," Ransom said. "What would a thief want with a tool? Then he'd have to work."

Mason began picking out the equipment they might need. If he was lucky, they would find a chunk of walnut or maybe a maple stump. More likely, they would have to hack a piece out of a fallen tree. He was checking the heft of a hatchet when he noticed Ransom studying the dark ceiling again. "Sky's not about to fall, is it?"

"Never know."

"What are we, about four thousand feet above sea level? A lot less sky to fall on us up here."

Ransom didn't even smile, just scratched at one weathered cheek. Maybe Mason had misjudged the old man. Those sparkling and tireless eyes suggested Ransom was no stranger to humor. But maybe the man had his own reasons for becoming solemn.

"Found what you need?" Ransom asked, waiting near the door.

"Sure. You mind grabbing that maul over to your left? We might need to do some heavy hitting."

When they were back outside, they stood in the clearing and arranged the tools for easier carrying. Ransom wore an expression that Mason could only call "relieved."

"What's the matter?" Mason asked.

"Man's got a right to be scared, ain't he?"

What was there to be scared of out here? Did wild predators still stalk these woods? "Scared of what?"

"Miss Mamie said not to tell." Ransom sounded almost like a child. Mason wondered what kind of hold the woman had over Ransom. The man even said her name with a kind of frightened reverence, his hand moving up his overalls bib toward the pocket that held the rag-ball charm.

"Look, if there's some kind of danger, you owe it to your guests to warn them. Plus, I thought we were friends."

Ransom looked off toward the trees at the sun that was starting its downward slide to the west. "I reckon. Don't ever let on to Miss Mamie, though."

"Of course not."

Ransom exhaled slowly. "You know we have four gatherings of guests each year. We take a month between each batch to get things fixed up, 'cause we're too busy when the guests are here to do repairs. Somebody has to go around and check on all the little outbuildings and cabins, original homesteads that can't be torn down. Korban set it in his will that everything stay like it was.

"Three of us was keeping up the grounds. We always switched off, one keeping up the livestock, one tending to the flowers and gardens and firewood, and the last playing handyman. Miss Lilith, the maid, and the cook see to the kitchen and the house."

"I've met Lilith. Pretty girl."

Ransom wobbled his knot of a head. "Not hard on the eyes. Anyways, last night, one of the men, George Lawson, was up Beechy Gap checking on the old Easley place. That was another of the original settler families. The last Easley girl worked at the house until she married off down to Charlotte with one of them artists a few years back.

"Well, my friend George, he went into that old Easley shack. I don't know what happened, I didn't find no tools or nothing, so I can't say he was doing carpentry work. But the whole blamed shack fell on him." Ransom's jaw clenched. "Died real slow."

"I'm sorry, Ransom. What did the investigators say?"

"Like I said, they's rules of the world and they's rules of Korban Manor."

Mason didn't understand. This place was remote, but an accidental death ought to require some kind of inquiry.

"George was a good man. And he wasn't stupid. Made it through Vietnam, so he must have had some kind of sense. He just crossed the wrong threshold, is all." Ransom looked like he was about to add something to that last sentence, then changed his mind.

"Which way's Beechy Gap?"

Ransom jerked his head toward the north. "Over the ridge yonder."

"I wouldn't mind having a look sometime."

"Nope. Guests ain't allowed up there."

"Rough terrain?"

Ransom looked him full in the eyes for the first time since they'd left the tool shed. "Some things just ain't part of the deal. You'll find a lot of places are off-limits at Korban Manor."

Ransom pulled the charm from his pocket and motioned at the shed with it. "Now, about that wood of yours. I got to be getting back soon."

They gathered the tools and veered off the trail into the forest.

Adam walked along the fence, his head full of the wilderness smells. He felt sure that Manhattan's pollutants had permanently clogged his sinuses, but maybe the fresh mountain air would add a year back to the six the city had stolen from his life. The near-perfect silence was eerie, and he had almost gone through a physical withdrawal in the night as his sleeping self yearned for those constant sirens, car horns, and burglar alarms. And all this wide-open space was unnatural. No wonder hillbillies were stereotyped as crazed and grizzled outcasts. There was nothing to impose the insanity of civilization upon them, so they had to make up their own rules of order.

Paul was off somewhere shooting video, no doubt wrapped up in the latest project, the world reduced to the narrow scope of his viewfinder. That was for the best. Though solitude was kind of creepy in itself, especially in the sprawling expanse of the manor, he needed a break from Paul's company. He'd talked briefly with the weird photographer Roth on the porch, and had recognized the same artistic self-absorption that plagued Paul.

Adam saw a man by the barn dressed in worn work clothes. It wasn't one of the handymen who'd helped unload the van. Probably someone in charge of the stables, or else the tender of the long garden that stretched in stubbled rows in the low valley. The man waved Adam over. Adam stole a glance back at the manor a hundred yards away, then approached the barn.