Scott Nicholson - The Manor

Fingers.

He kicked and flailed his legs, grabbed the second rung, and heaved himself into the darkness. He was weightless for a moment, his stomach lurching from vertigo. Then he was falling, a drop into forever that was too fast for screaming. The door slammed into place overhead as he landed in the root cellar. The air was knocked from his lungs, but that didn't matter because he wasn't sure he'd breathed since he'd entered the barn.

The cellar was completely dark except for a few splinters of light that leaked through gaps in the flooring above. He experimentally moved his arms and something tumbled to the ground. He reached out and squeezed the thing under his hand, then felt it. He had landed in a sweet potato bin.

Mason rolled to his feet, then ducked behind the bin. He tried to remember what Ransom had said about another door at one end of the cellar, and a tunnel leading back to the house. George might already be down here. How well could ghosts see in the dark?

Boots, marching feet, fell loud and heavy above him, then he realized it was his pulse pounding in his ears. He opened his mouth so he could listen better. The upstairs was quiet. Mason smelled the earth and the sweet apples. He tried to get a sense of the cellar's layout, to figure out where the exit was, but he'd lost his sense of direction in the dark.

He could find the ladder again, but a trapdoor worked both ways. What would be waiting for him if he went back up? The hay rake, its tines dripping red? George, ready to give him a hand up? How about Ransom, full of holes, now one of them, whatever they were supposed to be?

He thought of Anna, her quiet self-confidence, her hidden inner strength disguised as aloofness. She claimed to understand ghosts, and hadn't ridiculed Ransom's folk beliefs. She wouldn't freak if she saw a ghost. She would know what to do, if only he could reach her. But what can anybody who's alive really know about ghosts?

His racing thoughts were broken by a soft noise. At first he thought it was the creaking of the hay rake flexing its metal claw up in the barn. But the noise wasn't grating and metallic.

It was a rustle of fingers on cloth.

The hand.

He kicked and flailed, and more sweet potatoes tumbled to the cool dirt.

The noises came again, from all sides, from too many sources to be five ghostly digits.

Then he recognized the sound, one he'd grown familiar with while living by the Sawyer Creek landfill.

It wasn't a creaking, it was a squeaking.

Rats.

"Go away," Anna said to the ghost that had stepped from the wall, that now stood before her in evanescent splendor.

Rachel drifted closer, the forlorn bouquet held out in apology or sorrow. "I never wanted to hurt you, Anna."

"Then why did you summon me back here? Why didn't you just let me die dumb and happy, with nobody to hate?"

"We need you, Anna. I need you."

"Need, need, need. Do you ever think I might have needed somebody, all those nights when I cried myself to sleep? And now you expect me to feel sorry for you just because you're dead? "

"It's not just me, Anna. He's trapped all of us here."

Did the dead have a choice about where their souls were bound to the real world? Did the doorway open on a particular place for each person, or did ghosts wander their favorite haunting grounds because they wished themselves into existence? Those were the kinds of questions the hard-line parapsychologists never asked. They were too busy trying to validate their own existence to feel any empathy for those spirits condemned to an eternity of wandering.

But Anna wasn't strong on empathy herself at the moment. "And if you were free, where would you go?"

Rachel looked out the window, at the mountains that stretched to the horizon. "Away," she said.

"And Korban has bound your soul here? Why would he do that?"

"He wants everything he ever had, and more. He wants to be served and worshipped. He has unfulfilled dreams. But I think it's love that keeps him here. Maybe, behind it all, he's afraid of being alone."

"Something else that runs in the family," Anna said. "Well, I don't mind being alone, not anymore. Because I found what I thought I'd always wanted, and now I see I never wanted it at all."

"We have tunnels of the soul, Anna. Where we face the things that haunted our lives and dreams. In my tunnel, I'm unable to save you, and I watch as Ephram twists your power until it serves him. Our family had the Sight, Sylva and me, but it's stronger in you. Because you can see the ghosts even without using charms and spells."

"Maybe the spells will help me," Anna said. "Isn't there one that makes the dead stay dead? 'Go out frost,' is that it?"

"Don't say it, Anna. Because soon you'll get fetched over, too, and Ephram will be too strong for any of us to stop."

Anna rose from the bed. "Go out frost."

Rachel dissolved a little, the bouquet wilting to transparent threads in her hand, her eyes full of ghostly sadness. "You're our only hope. It's Sylva."

"Go out frost."

Rachel faded against the door. "Sylva," she whispered.

"Go out frost. Third time's a charm."

Rachel disappeared. Anna looked up at Ephram Korban's portrait. "You can have her, for all I care."

Anna put on her jacket, collected her flashlight, and went for a walk, wanting to be as far away from Rachel as possible. If Rachel was going to hang out at Korban Manor, then Anna would take a stroll to Beechy Gap.

Rachel had said Sylva knew some sort of secret. Maybe Sylva knew a spell that would keep all ghosts away. Anna had dedicated a big part of her life to chasing ghosts. Now that they were everywhere, she never wanted to see another as long as she lived. Or even after that.

Mason kicked himself backward, pressing against the moist clay bank. Another sweet potato tumbled to the ground. At least he hoped it was a sweet potato. More squeaks pierced the darkness, a sour chorus rising around him.

He would rather face the ghost of George Lawson, stray hand and bloody hay rake and all, than what was down here in the dark. He thought about making a dash for the ladder, but he was disoriented. He was just as likely to run into the apple barrels or trip over one of the pallets that were scattered across the dirt floor. And falling would bring his face down to their level.

To his left came a clicking, a gnawing, a noise like teeth against tinfoil. Maybe five feet away, it was hard to tell in the blackness. The room was like a coffin, with no stir of air, no edge or end that made any difference to the one trapped inside. He huddled in a ball, looking up at the cracks in the boards, at the yellow lines of light that were his only comfort. He smelled his own sweat and fear and wondered if the salt would bring the rats closer.

Leaves whisked across the floor upstairs, then the barn door slid open with a rusty groan. That was followed by a dull thump and Mason pictured Ransom's body hitting the planks, limbs lolling uselessly. Then the lantern went out above, and Mason closed his eyes against a black as deep as any he had ever seen.

No. There had been a worse darkness.

Funny how things come back to you. Maybe this was one of those tunnels of the soul. A memory so long buried that the meat had rotted off its bones, that the skeleton had started its slow turn to dust, that the existence of it could no longer be proven. But always that spark remained, that hidden ember, just waiting for a breath of wind to bring the corpse back to full life, to resurrect the memory in all its awful glory.

Funny how that happened.

This was it, the memory. Only this couldn't be real. Or was the first time the one that was shadowy? It didn't matter. Because they were the same, past and present entwined in the same heart-stopping fear.