Scott Nicholson - The Manor

"Dream me to life," the bust commanded. "Don't stop now."

Dream Korban.

No.

He wanted his own dreams. Good or bad, whether or not they ever brought him fame. Whether or not they made Mama proud.

He wanted his own dreams. Not Korban's.

Mason raised the bull point, pressed it into the hulking chest of the statue, swept his arm back, and smashed the mallet into the steel. The bust screamed. Mason flung the hammer at the bust, knocking it to the floor.

"Sculptorrrrr," Korban roared, voice like a thousand wildfires eating the air in the room, shaking the timbers of the house.

The statue quivered, its limbs moved with a groan of splinters, then it tore itself free from the nails that held it to the support boards. The wooden hands reached up and fumbled with the wires. The legs had been divided at the bottom, but the feet were not refined, mere dark clumps of oak covered in bark. The heavy feet scraped across the floor.

Moving toward him.

Mason kicked the table, tumbling the lantern over. The flame extinguished as the globe shattered. They were in darkness.

Both he and Korban.

Except Korban was used to darkness, Korban fed on darkness, Korban was darkness.

Mason groped in front of his face and headed toward where he thought the stairs were. He tripped over something metallic, then he fell into the arms of the animated statue, his bones knocking on wood No, it was only an old four-poster bed frame. But he was confused now, all directions the same, and he heard the twitching and squeaking behind him. Rodent noises.

No, no, no, not the crib.

And on the tail of that thought came another, equally frightful one. He had longed to create a lasting work of art. And he had done it. This was his undying success.

The statue's limbs snapped as it searched for its maker, the sound like dry bones breaking. Korban was stretching, trying on his new body in the darkness. His wonderful but clumsy body, crafted by Mason's loving touch.

"I'm blind," came Korban's muffled voice, as if he were chewing on sawdust. "You haven't finished my eyes."

Mason's fingers brushed one of the support beams. He ducked behind it and knelt in the dark. He tried to slow his breathing, but he couldn't. His pounding heart was going to give him away. The heavy wooden feet shuffled in his direction.

If he's blind, he's deaf, too. Unless part of him is still in the bust. Then maybe he can SMELL you.

Mason shuddered at the image of a rat leaning back on its haunches, whiskers quivering and nose wrinkling as it sniffed the air in search of sustenance. Korban was a rat, a rodent king, coming to get him. The thick tail slid across the cold concrete floor. Mason pressed against his eyelids until the pain drove the image away in a burst of bright green.

"Come here, sculptor," Korban said, and the voice was clearer now, more strident. Had Korban moved from the statue back into the bust?

The clumsy wooden feet shuffled closer, then moved away.

Where are the stairs?

"Don't betray me," Korban said. The voice filled the room, but the echoes were swallowed by the dead air.

The statue must have found the bust and lifted it off the floor. Which one did Korban inhabit? Or was he in both at the same time? If he could fill an entire house, then surely bouncing around between a couple of pieces of dead wood was no trick at all.

Two heavy steps forward. The rasping was either Korban's labored, unnatural breathing or warm air drifting through the ductwork overhead.

"We need each other," Korban whispered.

Fame, fortune, and the girl. And all Mason had to do was what he already lived and longed to do, what was in his blood, what he was born for and would risk death for.

To create.

To dream into life.

He was made to make.

He could make Korban, and Korban could make him. What was it Anna had said? It was not what you believed, it was how much. He believed in his art.

Mason was tempted to reach out and touch it, caress the sleek muscle and wooden skin.

This would be his lasting work. It would be simple, really. Just transpose the features he had carved on the bust onto the statue. Bring Korban to full and final life.

He heard a clicking, a soft sound that might have been a chuckle. Or a rat's sigh.,

"Finish me," Korban whispered.

Surrender would be so easy. Surrender to the dream. Why bothering running from the deepest desires of his heart, the calling of the fire in his soul?

Anna's voice came from the darkness, from the corner where the painting stood. "He'll eat your dreams, Mason."

Mason scrambled for the stairs, stumbled upward, the basement alive with the angry creak of wood and the slither of things unseen, the cold tunnel of darkness licking at his heels and threatening to swallow him forever.

Sylva stood before the front door. She hadn't been in the house for many years. Not since the night of Rachel's death. A shiver swept over her, brought on by more than just the October chill. This was like entering a church, holy ground, a place where souls walked free.

She pressed the charm that was secreted inside her blouse, held it against the warmth of her heart. She was scared, but she had faith. The moon was rising, throwing cold light over the mountain as if a new sort of day was breaking. Maybe it was. A day of endless night, when things got reborn, when dark promises were kept and broken. When spells carried the weight of prayers.

Sylva pushed open the door without knocking. Ephram knew she was here, all right. No need to sneak around. And the others, they moved about in the walls, stirred in the basement, shifted among the cracks in the hearthstones.

Ephram's portrait nearly took the last of her breath away. She'd seen that face in a thousand dreams, half of them nightmares, the other half the kind that made you ashamed when you woke up.

"Look at me," she whispered.

Ephram stared at her with dark, painted eyes.

"I'm old," she said. "I spelled myself alive all these years. Sticking around, waiting for this blue moon of yours. Well, I'm here now, and I ain't sure what you plan to do about it."

The portrait fell from the wall, the heavy frame splintering, the canvas folding. When a picture fell, it was a sure sign that the subject was meant to die. But when a picture of a dead person fell…

The flames rushed out of the chimney, fingers of fire reaching toward Sylva, reminding her of that night on Korban's bedroom floor, the night he planted the seed of Rachel deep inside her. A night of cold burning.

And this was another night of forbidden heat, a night of frost and fire. She headed for the stairs, leaving Ephram's face lying on the wooden floor by the warmth of the house's heart. They were waiting up there on the widow's walk, under the rising moon. Anna and Miss Mamie and Lilith. Ephram would join them soon enough, and Sylva wouldn't miss this for the world. For more than the world, or any world beyond this one.

She squeezed the charm until her fingers ached, her heart pumping faith as she climbed the stairs.

Mason fell into the lamplight of the hallway as if it were a healing water. He slammed the basement door shut behind him, slid the metal bolt into its seat. Why was there a lock on the outside? What had been kept in the basement that required locks?

Now that he was out of the suffocating basement, his head cleared a little. And the thoughts that came were almost as frightening as the creative trance that had been consuming him from the inside out. He leaned against the door, heart pounding.

Smooth move, Mase. In case you forgot, this guy's been dead for eighty years and you think a DOOR'S going to stop him?

But Korban had been clumsy and stiff when shifting into the statue. That's why the ghost or spirit or whatever moved into man-made objects. Because Korban needed that energy, that made-ness, before he could claim something as a vessel.