Scott Nicholson - The Manor

"In the basement."

"The house?"

"We all live here," said someone else, and a hand was in hers, small and cold.

"You," Anna said, "the girl ghost from the cabin, the one Sylva called Becky."

"You came to help us." And the girl smiled.

"I can't help you," Anna said. And now she saw Rachel, ethereal and shimmering against the curtain of darkness.

"I had to wait for you to die, Anna," Rachel said. "You have the gift, even stronger than mine. Korban killed me because he knew I was stronger than Sylva. But not like you. When you were alive, you had the Sight. Second Sight. But you had to die to get Third Sight."

"Third Sight?"

"The power to look from the dead back to the living. The power to join us together. To hold our dreams, the way Ephram never could, because he wanted them for himself. He wanted our fear and hate. But he forgot about faith. Because we believe in you, Anna."

"Believe. So says the world's greatest liar." She wished she could laugh, but in this bleak, gray land of nothingness, such a sound couldn't exist.

"Believe," Rachel said. "Become the vessel. Hold our dreams, our real dreams. Let our dreams go into you, so we can finally die."

"You want to die?"

"More than anything," the girl said.

"Help us," came another voice from the gray smoke of this new dead world.

"Free us from Korban," said another, and then another. How many souls had Korban trapped here over the years? How many of Sylva's potions and spells had spun their sick binding magic?

"Follow your heart," Rachel said.

"My heart. It only leads me to hell."

"It belongs to the living."

"No. I belong here."

"Sylva lied, not me."

"I don't trust any of you. Why should I believe you?"

"Listen. I'm not your mother."

"Not my mother?"

"Ephram's power is that he lets you see what you want to see. He gives you what you wish for. Why do you think you can finally see the dead?"

Anna didn't think it was possible to descend into a chill deeper than death, but the revelation made her soul spin. She had been a fool. How could you ever find your own ghost?

"Sylva used you," Rachel said. "She used me, too. We're just pieces of driftwood to throw on her sacrificial fire."

"I hated you," Anna said. "When Sylva told me you were my mother, I thought I'd finally found somebody to blame. Now it's just me. I'm just as lost as ever."

"I'm sorry. I wanted to tell you, but Ephram controls me, too. All I want is to have never been born."

"That goes for me, too," Anna said.

"You're not alone, Anna. Something's happened. The binding spell has broken."

"The dolls," Adam said.

"Adam?" Anna said. Her soul eyes couldn't see him in the gloom. "Are you dead?"

"They say I am, so I must be."

"What about the dolls?" Rachel said.

"Miss Mamie made them," Adam said. "Carved, with little apple heads. I saw mine, only I didn't know what it was. I think she carved one for everybody who died."

"She's dead," Anna said. "I guess she never carved her own doll."

"Then she can't bind us anymore," Rachel said. "We're free."

"Not free," Anna said. "Not until Ephram's been killed for the final time."

"Save us," Becky said.

"Get us out of here," Adam said.

"You're the one," Rachel said. "You were fetched here for a reason."

Other voices came from the surrounding darkness, pleading, encouraging. Anna felt their energy flow around her, a current of heat that stirred her dead heart.

"Third Sight, Anna," Rachel said. "I'm not your mother, but I would be proud if I were. Because you're strong. Even stronger than Ephram."

"I don't know," Anna said. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Say it. What Sylva taught you. Only backward."

"Frost and fire?"

"Yes. And believe it. Living stay alive, dead go back." Living. Maybe living wasn't so bad, even with its pain, sorrow, and failure. But at least life offered hope, second chances, choices. Was that the pain that rose inside her soul now? The pain of hope, the yearning for forgotten flesh, the regret of things left undone and words left unsaid?

She thought of Mason on the widow's walk, facing the wooden monster he had made, a monster that would haunt this mountain the way no ghost ever could. Haunt it like a god, with anger and power and arrogance, as if all things living and dead belonged to it.

"Go out fire, come in frost," Rachel said. "Say it."

Anna opened her dead and dreaming mouth. Dozens of voices joined hers, Becky's, Adam's, Rachel's, all blended into a chorus, a chant of hope, an ache for the final freedom. "Go out fire, come in frost. Go out fire, come in frost. Go out fire, come in frost."

One, a dividing line.

Two, an empty hook.

Three, a skeleton key.

Third time's a charm, opening the door.

To a room of hope. A house of faith.

A home for the soul of Anna Galloway.

She was Anna. She was alive.

She opened her eyes, saw the blanched circle of the moon, felt the October chill on her skin, tasted the smoke that skirled from the chimneys, smelled the decay of windblown leaves, heard the hollow distant roar of Ephram Korban's heart. She put a hand to her own heart. Beating. In rhythm with his. And with the spirits she carried inside her, the combined hopes and dreams of the unhappy dead.

Fuel.

Ephram wanted fuel, she would give him fuel.

She rose, and though her body still lay prone on the widow's walk, she didn't need flesh for this task. All she needed was faith of the spirit. Because she'd finally found something to belong to, something that offered more than just an endless darkness, something larger than herself.

Her house was full, and Korban's was a house divided.

Caught between frost and fire.

Miss Mamie rose from her clatter of bones and husk of corpse.

Where was her flesh, the beauty that Ephram had given her? She wanted a mirror, because mirrors never lied. And neither did Ephram. Because Ephram loved her. He'd killed her for a reason, surely.

Maybe their love was meant for the other side, not the mortal side. That's the only thing that made sense. She still had eyes, she could see the mortal world, and could taste all the strange wonder of death, and death was the same as life, only better.

She would go to Ephram now, on his terms, the way he had made her.

But why was Sylva still alive? And young again, and beautiful?

Ephram could explain everything. After all, they had forever.

She went to him, though her spirit seemed stitched to the night sky, heavy and thick, and she fought to step from the fabric of darkness.

A dull aura shimmered around the rough cut of the statue's shoulders. Ephram hoisted the polished maple bust aloft as if it were a trophy, showing himself the world, showing the world to the man who owned both sides of it.

"Make her go away," Sylva said to him. "Then I'll finish the spell."

"Sylva," Ephram said, the statue and bust speaking in unison. "I've given you everything."

"I want more than everything. It ain't enough that I get your heart. I want her out of your heart for good."

"You're the only one I ever loved."

"Yeah, but that's the same thing you said to her. Except you lied to one of us."

Miss Mamie fought the gravity that pulled her toward darkness. Tunnels of the soul, Ephram said we all have tunnels of the soul. What's in mine, Ephram? What do I fear more than all the world?

Sylva stared with wide loving eyes at the handsome hunk of oak. Her spells had brought out a misty horde, collecting around the statue like worshippers at the feet of a resurrected prophet:

Ransom, confused and sad, fingers fumbling for a charm that had no power.

George Lawson, offering his ragged hand in tribute.