Scott Nicholson - The Manor

His gut ached, sweat pooled under his armpits, his scalp tingled. The electric tension of the ghosts made the hairs on the back of his hands stand up. He pressed another key, and i slapped into place beside the f.

He thought the One True Word would be something rare and noble, something with seven syllables that only literary giants and dictionary-makers knew. Funny that the word was common, elemental. But Spence's opinions held no weight here.

He was only the instrument, the sword and scepter, the pen, the flint and steel. The Word was the beginning and end of things.

Go out frost and come in fi…

He slammed home the r, weeping at the finishing of his work, already feeling the old emptiness, already bracing himself to need Bridget again. Someone to save him from himself.

He looked up at Ephram Korban, at the kind face, the encouraging eyes, the generous lips that had given him every wondrous word of this magnificent manuscript.

"Thank you, sir," Spence said.

The ghosts were gone now. No distractions. No excuses. Just himself and Word and Korban. As he watched, the portrait faded to black, like the dying of an old tube television set.

He searched the keyboard, blind from tears, and put his clumsy, unworthy finger in the beautiful cup of the key.

Sylva felt the energy rush through her veins, the weariness falling away, the sweet juice of youth washing over her like a brisk waterfall. She tilted her head back and laughed. Let Miss Mamie fade to dust. Ephram loved only one, the one who had made the sacrifices. The one who had faith. The one who had crum-Wed the bloodied burial gown of her own daughter, who had crushed owl bones and raven feathers and stoneroot and a dozen other special substances.

The one who gave Ransom bad charms. The one who built Ephram's bridge back to this world on the ashes of a thousand prayers. The one who had said the spells, who had sent magic on the winds and summoned Anna, hooked her in the deepest meat of her heart and reeled her in, tricked her blind so that her death could complete the circle.

Oh, Sylva had the faith, all right, and she wanted all the fruits of faith.

She wanted Ephram back.

She rose, fourteen again, eager to give her restored virginity back to the man who had stolen her soul, who had lit an everlasting flame in her heart. She tossed a pinch of the special dust toward the statue, imagining those big arms loving her, those crude lips hot on her skin, those eyes burning into hers forever.

"Say it," the statue said.

She whispered, trembling, "Go out frost, come in fire."

At Sylva's words, the four threads of smoke from the chimneys insinuated themselves, thickened into a great gray fog. The smoke sent its frayed fingers toward Anna, wending between Mason, Sylva, and the statue that housed part of the soul of Ephram Korban. The bust, which contained the rest of Ephram's invisible and eternal self, smiled at Anna with perverse affection.

Mason swatted at the smoke with both hands, but it slipped past him and the moonlit gray fingers crawled over Anna like cold earthworms. They found the soft part of her throat and became solid, squeezing in a gentle pressure that was almost erotic. She reached up to pull them away, then relaxed under their insistent caresses. Her lungs burned from lack of air and an icy dizziness rushed up her spine to the base of her skull. She tried to speak, Mason had her by the shoulders and was shaking her, she was dimly aware of movement on the widow's walk, but the gray tide was seeping in from the edges of her vision, pushed by a great black wave of nothing.

She didn't know when the change occurred. The line had been thinner than she'd ever imagined. For the briefest of moments, she was on both sides, alive and dead at once, but the moment passed and she crossed over. She'd finally found herself, her true self. She'd become the ghost she'd always wanted to be.

The pain inside was gone. In its place was an unsettling hollowness, an empty ache. Loneliness. She was dead and she still didn't belong.

And death was just like life, because the world was the same: Sylva whispering something to the statue, Miss Mamie kneeling and wailing, her hands cupped over her face as if trying to hold her flesh in place, Lilith drifting under the moonlight, the Abramovs slumped with vacant eyes, now playing a funereal tune, Mason crouched before her, yelling at her, raving about a talking painting and Korban in the wood and dreams come to life and all sorts of nonsense. Couldn't he see that none of that mattered?

Death and life, all the same now.

Rachel hovered before her, holding out the bouquet. "I'm sorry, Anna. I failed you."

Anna reached for the bouquet. Her body collapsed.

"Anna!" Mason jumped toward her, tried to catch her and slow her fall, but the body she'd abandoned slumped beyond his reach. She heard her flesh slam against the wooden planks of the widow's walk, but her spirit kept falling. Through the house, through this place of dark emptiness that would be her home.

Death wasn't a release. Death, at least in Ephram Korban's version, was just another prison, this one full of the same suffering that shadowed the living. Only here, there was no escape, no hope, and still nobody to belong to.

"Anna." Rachel's voice, a moaning graveyard wind, a desperate fetching.

And still Anna fell.

Mason held Anna in his arms. Her face was pale, eyes glazed and protruding. He put his cheek to her mouth. No breath.

No breath.

Anger and fear rose in him, tears stinging his eyes. He looked up at the obscene, bloated moon. She was dead. And it was his fault. He'd failed her.

He gently laid her down, wiped the blood from his face, and turned to the statue. The old woman that Korban had called Sylva had changed, was now young, her face twisted in a sick rapture. Mason rose to his feet, though the long drop beyond the railing made his head swim, the sense of being on the top of the world caused his guts to clench in dread.

"Go out frost, come in fire," Sylva repeated, her skin vibrant and healthy in the moonlight. Hadn't Anna said something about frost and fire?

God, why couldn't he remember?

And did it even matter?

Because his statue, his creation, his big goddamned dream image, stood there on the widow's walk like a monstrous wooden idol, born of vanity and faith and love. Yes, love. Because Mason loved his work.

"You'll finish me, won't you, sculptor?" The bust spoke calmly, cradled in the thick arms of the statue. "You love me. Everyone loves me."

"You promised me Anna," Mason said.

"Oh, her. She's nothing. A necessary evil. And you'll learn that flesh is fleeting, but the spirit is for eternity. Isn't that right, my dear Sylva?"

"When you give somebody your heart, you owe them," the woman said. And though she now had a beauty that rivaled Anna's, the shadows around her eyes were older than the Appalachians, dark and cold and full of terrible secrets.

"Then pay your debt," Ephram said. "Finish the spell."

"Third time's a charm," she said. "But, first, they's one more promise you got to keep."

"Promise? What promise?" The statue raised its face to the moon, and the grain of the oak sparkled like a hundred diamonds. Frost. It had settled on the wood.

Frost and fire.

Mason wasn't sure of the connection between those two words. But he understood fire. Miss Mamie's lantern glowed near the railing, where she'd set it down upon Korban's arrival. Mason wondered if he could reach it before Korban decided it was time to start hurling bodies from the top of his house.

"Anna," Rachel called again.

Anna opened her eyes to darkness.

The darkness wasn't absolute. She blinked.

"Where am I?" she asked, her voice passing as if over a hundred tongues.