Scott Nicholson - The Manor

Laughter shook the tin roofing. Mason's heart did a somersault.

"Got myself into the tunnel, old buddy. 'Cause I just had to know. Now let me fetch you on inside. Korban don't like to be kept waiting."

There was a rusty creak, and the hay rake rolled forward. Ransom's eyes shifted from side to side, looking for an escape. He saw Mason.

"The charm ain't working, Mason. How come the charm ain't working?"

George turned in Mason's direction, again without moving any of its withered, fibrous extremities. "Plenty of room inside, young fellow. The tunnel ain't got no end."

Ransom ducked between the wagon and the surrey and Mason turned to run. Too late. The barn door screed across its track and slammed shut.

Mason fled along the inside of the wall, making sure he kept plenty of distance between him and the ghost-you just called it a GHOST, Mason. And that's not a good sign-until he got beside the surrey. He dropped to his knees, his bones clattering against the floorboards. He crawled to Ransom's side. "What the hell is that thing, Ransom?"

Ransom peered between the spokes of the wagon wheel. Mason could smell the man's fear, salt and copper and greenbriar.

"What I been warning you about, son. He's one of them now. Korban's bunch."

"I don't believe in ghosts."

Ransom's rag-ball charm was clenched inside his fist. "That don't matter none, when the ghosts believe in you."

The shape floated forward, arms raised, the ragged end of its amputation fluttering with the motion. Mason found himself staring at the stump, wondering why a ghost shouldn't be all in one piece.

Ghost-you called it a ghost again, Mason.

The hay rake creaked, rolling out of its corner toward the pair.

"Go away," the old man said in a high, broken voice. "I got warding powers."

"Come out and play, Ransom," said the George-thing. "Gets lonely inside, with just the snakes for company. We can set a spell and talk over old times. And Korban's got chores for us all."

Ransom held up the charm bag. "See here? Got my lizard powder, yarrow, snakeroot, Saint Johnswort. You're supposed to go away."

George laughed again, and thunder rattled in the saves of the barn. Horses whinnied in the neighboring stalls.

"Don't believe ever little thing they tell you," George said. "Them's just a bunch of old widows' tales. 'Cause it ain't what you believe, is it, Ransom?"

"It's how much," Ransom said, defeated, looking down at the little scrap of cotton that held the herbs and powder. The cloth was tied with a piece of frayed blue ribbon. White dust trickled from the opening.

Suddenly Ransom stood and threw the bag at George. "Ashes of a prayer, George!"

Mason was frozen by his own fear and a strange fascination as the bag came untied and the contents spread out in a cloud of green and gray dust. The material wafted over the ghost, mingled in its vapor, caught a stir of wind from the crack beneath the door, and swirled around the shape.

George shimmered, faded briefly, fizzled like a candle about to burn the last of its wax Jiminy H. Christ, it's working, Mason thought. IT'S WORK The cloud of herbs settled to the floor, and George wiped at its eyes.

"Now you boys have gone and made me mad" the ghost said, its voice flat and cold, seeping from the corners of the room like a fog. "I tried to do it nice, Ransom. Just you and me, taking us a nice long walk into the tunnel like old friends. But you tried to spell me."

George shook its see-through head. The motion made a breeze that chilled Mason to the bone. Ransom ducked behind the wagon wheel and tensed beside him. The ghost fluttered forward, steadily, now only twenty feet away, twelve, ten. A rusty metallic rattle filled the barn.

George held up the amputated hand. "They took my hammering hand, Ransom. He took it"

The ghost sounded almost wistful, as if debating whether to follow the orders of an absent overseer. But then the deep caves of the eyes grew bright, flickered in bronze and gold and blazing orange, and the face twisted into something that was barely recognizable as having once been human. It was shrunken, wizened, a shriveled rind with pockmarks for eyes. The voice came again, but it wasn't just George's voice, it was the combined voice of dozens, a congregation, a chorus of lost souls. "Come inside, Ransom. We're waiting for you."

The horses kicked their stall doors. A calf bawled from the meadow outside. The surrey and the wagons rocked back and forth. The lantern quivered on the floor and shadows climbed the walls like giant insects.

The calf bawled again, then once more, the sound somehow standing out in the cacophony.

"Calf bawled three times," Ransom whispered. "Sure sign of death."

Mason crouched beside him, wanting to ask Ransom what in the hell was happening. But his tongue felt like a piece of harness against the roof of his mouth. He didn't think he could work it to form words. Ransom looked at George, then at the closed door. The door was much farther.

Mason reached out to touch Ransom's sleeve, but came up with nothing. Ransom made a run for it. The ghost didn't move as Ransom's boots drummed across the plank floor. Mason wondered if he should make a run for it, too. Ransom moved fast, arms waving wildly.

He's going to make it!

Ransom was about six feet from the door when the hay rake pounced-POUNCED, Mason thought, like a cat-with a groan of stressed steel and wood, the rusty tines of the windrower sweeping down and forward. Ransom turned and faced the old farm machine as if to beg for mercy.

His eyes met Mason's, and Mason knew he would never forget that look, even if he got lucky and escaped George and managed to live to be a hundred and one. Ransom's face blanched, blood rushed from his skin as if trying to hide deep in his organs where the hay rake couldn't reach. Ransom's eyes were wet marbles of fear. The leathery skin of his jaws stretched tight as he opened his mouth to scream or pray or mutter an ancient mountain spell.

Then the windrower swept forward, skewering Ransom and pushing him backward. His body slammed against the door, two dozen giant nails hammered into wood. Ransom gurgled and a red mist spewed from his mouth. And the eyes were gazing down whatever tunnel death had cast him into.

The wagon and surrey stopped shaking, the walls settled back into place, and a sudden silence jarred the air. The old man's body sagged on the tines like a raw chuck steak at the end of a fork. Mason forced himself to look away from the viscera and carnage. The lantern threw off a burst of light, as if the flames were fed by Ransom's soul-wind leaving his body.

George floated toward Mason, who took a step backward.

"You're not here," Mason said. He put up his hands, palms open. "I don't believe in you, so you don't exist."

The ghost stopped and looked down at its own silken flesh. After a stretch of skipped heartbeats, it looked at Mason and grinned.

"I lied. It ain't what we believe that matters," it said softly, sifting forward another three feet. "It's what Korban believes."

The hand reached out, the hand in the hand, in a manly welcome. Marble cold and grave-dirt dead.

Mason turned, ran, waiting for the pounce of the hay rake or the grip of the ghost hand. He tripped over a gap in the floorboards and fell. He looked back at his feet. The root cellar.

He wriggled backward and flipped the trapdoor open, then scrambled through headfirst. He grabbed the first rung of the ladder and pulled himself into the damp darkness of the cellar. If potions and prayers didn't work, then a trapdoor wouldn't stop a ghost. But his muscles took over where his rational mind had shut down.

He was halfway inside when the trapdoor slammed down on his back. Stripes of silver pain streaked up his spinal column. Then he felt something on the cloth of his pants. A light tapping, walking.