Scott Nicholson - The Manor

He scarcely heard the door close behind his back. He pressed his fingers down, seeking the approval of the true god Word. His hands moved of their own accord, as if encased in living gloves.

Anna stumbled through the trees, tired but determined, the ghostly figure always just on the edge of her vision. The moon had risen in synchronicity with sunset, only a small curve sliced from its white roundness. The flashlight was unnecessary in the clearings and stretches of meadow, but the moon couldn't penetrate the cold shadows beneath the forest canopy.

The ghost woman faded in and out of view, as if fighting to keep its constitution. Anna had called out to her several times, but not even the wind responded. The forest was silent, and even the crickets seemed to be huddling in dread. The air was chilly and dew hung heavy on the maple, laurel, and birch leaves that brushed her face and shoulders. The game of hide-and-seek seemed eternal, as if Anna would forever have to chase this spirit, the two of them bound in a shared purgatory of loneliness.

Anna thought the ghost was leading her to the cabin where she had seen the ghost of the young girl on her first night at the manor. But her dead tour guide turned up the ridge when they reached the meadow below the cabin, heading higher into the steep hills of Beechy Gap. Anna weaved her way among granite boulders that angled from the ground like worn fossils. The trail steepened and narrowed, and the vegetation changed as well, from leafy deciduous to stunted balsam and jack pine.

Anna scooted across a long flat jut of stone. She was on the highest part of the rocky ridge. The great sea of mountains stretched out toward the horizon. A whisper of wind tried to stir itself, then gave up and settled back to earth.

The trees were thinner here, and her breath plumed from her mouth like the smoke of her soul. The few stars hung in the cold sky, shivering and twinkling. Even the familiar Dog Star and the orange wink of Saturn gave her no comfort. She was alone, except for the translucent woman who hovered above the cold dirt and stone of the ridge. The ghost beckoned her forward with a wave of the haunted bouquet.

Anna's flashlight played over a mass of fallen posts and splintered boards scattered in a treeless stretch of ground. The ghost woman was among the ruins of the old shack, her ethereal figure penetrated by a dozen ragged pieces of wood. The ghost opened her mouth, trying to form a lost language. Bits of broken glass glinted in the flashlight's beam.

Anna slid off the rock toward the twisted debris. One thick piece of timber jabbed forlornly at the sky. Anna stepped closer, answering the summons of the ghost. The woman stood waiting, eyes vacant, the bouquet held out in either welcome or apology.

Then the night fell in.

One of the broken timbers lifted from the ground and cut an audible arc in the air as if swung by an invisible giant. The heavy wood slammed into her stomach. The flashlight fell at her feet, its beam sending a thin streak of orange into the underbrush.

Anna doubled over, spears of fire wending through her gut, rusty nails driving into her temples, her teeth biting tin roofing. But it was more than the agony of cancer. This pain was bone-deep and deadly serious. Her right wrist was squeezed in a knife-edged vise.

Anna closed her eyes and collapsed.

No slow-motion countdown would take this pain away. Through the hammering of her pulse, she could hear tremors in the building's rubble. Wood rot and corruption assaulted her nostrils as she writhed in the muddy fallen leaves.

In the jumble of ruin, she saw a tunnel, a long, dark, cold mouth opening up before her. A stale breeze blew up from the depths of the tunnel, but it had to be her imagination, because the tunnel led down into the earth. Her sweat was slivers of ice on her face, the cold swabbing her bones, and she thought of those words from the bathroom mirror. Go out frost.

Then she heard the voice, a soft mournful wail that stretched over the hills.

Anna opened her eyes with effort, vision blurred by tears of pain. Two forms drifted among the ruins, the ghost woman kneeling, a second ghost swelling and hovering over the first. The other ghost was a man in blue jeans, flannel shirt, and workman's leather boots, his clothes as translucent as his sick milk of skin. A few shreds of nebulous flesh hung from one sleeve of the shirt. His one hand held the piece of timber that had struck her. He looked down at the ghost woman, his eyes as deep as the cold black tunnel had been.

A radiance shone around the dead man, an aura of malevolent energy. His ectoplasmic face was twisted in rage, the lips peeled back to show jagged teeth. He dropped the timber and put his lone hand around the woman's throat, and Anna could see the strength in his fingers as they tightened around surreal flesh. Anna's throat burned in sympathetic pain. The ghost woman screamed soundlessly, struggled for a moment like a wind-driven linen caught in a briar vine, then faded from view, again a corpse, dead a second time, the bouquet falling from her fingers and dissipating into mist.

Anna rolled onto her hands and knees and started to crawl away. The caustic fires still scorched her insides, but now a black surf of fear washed over her, momentarily dousing the raw ache. She glanced back and saw that the man's aura had grown brighter, as if the spirit murder had fueled some infernal fire. He smiled at her, his tongue slithery as an eel and his eyes spilling forth a darkness that rivaled the black night.

The mouth parted. "That you, Selma?"

At least this ghost remembered language, though its tone was crazed.

"It's me," it said. "George. I knew you'd come back. Korban promised me."

Come back? From HIS side or hers?

"I'm not Selma," Anna said, trying to rise, but the weight of the night sky was too great.

"I got a present I been saving just for you. We got tunnels of the soul, Selma."

The ghost held something in his hand, something that dangled like a small kill from a hunter's belt. Anna thought at first it was the bouquet. Then it wiggled.

It was his other hand, the one that had lost its place at the end of his right arm.

As she struggled in the dirt, the spirit tossed the hand toward her. It landed on its fingers and scrabbled after her like a spider. The ghost's laughter echoed across the dismal hills. "Hand of glory, Selma."

Anna turned, tried again to regain her feet, but the pain had made her drunk, awkward, confused.

The severed hand closed around her ankle.

That was impossible. Ghosts had no substance, at least a substance that could take solid form in the real world.

But this IS the real world. And sometimes, it's not what you believe, but how MUCH you believe.

She believed in ghosts. They existed. You couldn't turn faith off and on like water from a spigot.

Too bad.

Because now she had what she'd always wanted.

Physical contact with the dead.

Her ankle was numb, hot ice, liquid fire, ringed by dull razors.

The fingers pressed into her meat. Anna was jerked flat on her stomach. She flailed at the air, grabbing for a nearby pine branch. The hand pulled her backward before she could reach the branch. Toward the rubble. Where he waited.

"Come on, now, Selma. Don't keep old Georgie-Boy waiting." The ghost's voice had changed, deepened.

She dug her fingernails into the ground, clawing at the sharp stones and pine needles. She grunted, realizing for the first time since she'd witnessed the spectral struggle that she was still breathing.

Breath.

That meant she was alive. Not a ghost yet. But if this spirit had the power to murder ghosts, what would it do to the living?

The hand tugged again, sliding her across three feet of damp dirt. Wet leaves worked their way underneath her shirt, chilling her belly.