Scott Nicholson - The Manor

Flames crawled along the cracks in the baseboard, smoke erupted from the fireplace. The window shattered outward and flames gushed from under the closet door like colored water.

A shrill voice pierced through the crackling of the fire: "Get out, Jeff,"

The Muse? He looked up from the typewriter, confused. The work was beautiful. Out of place in this malefic chaos, this destruction, this Dantean inferno. But the Word-the word couldn't harm its maker, could it?

He had been wrong. The Word had lied.

Korban had lied.

The writer was the master. The language was the slave.

The room was filled with smoke now. Bridget, shouting from the hall, ducked out of sight. Spence sat forward with a squeak of chair springs. He tried to scoop up his manuscript, but hungry flames rippled up the back of the desk.

He stood, eyes bleary, fingers numb. Smoke filled his mouth and throat. He started toward the door. He couldn't leave his manuscript. He turned with effort, dazed from lack of oxygen. The pages had burst into a bright bonfire, the sentences now vapor, the Word lost in the heat of its own blinding glorious lie.

Spence blundered against the door frame, a tug of regret in his chest. He hadn't pressed the period, the final key. He hadn't finished the manuscript. He started back into the room, but the ceiling was falling, the house collapsing, the typewriter lost in a tide of yellow and red.

The fire sucked oxygen through the window, and the hot breeze sent a sheet of paper out the doorway. Spence grabbed it, held it to his chest.

Weeping, he staggered down the hall, coughing and spitting.

"— fire," Sylva whispered, finishing the spell, though it was far too late.

All the years of waiting, of sacrifice, of deception, wasted now. The years that Ephram had given her back, the ones stolen from Margaret, were fading, retreating into the past. By rights, they should have been hers. Ephram should have been hers.

Her wooden lover writhed and twitched on the charred husk of the widow's walk. Behind the wall of flames, he had somehow lost a little of his majesty. But he still had that power, that magnetism that had driven her to sacrifice everything for him. He was dying again, the third and final time, and he needed her. She felt it as keenly as she felt her hair shrinking from the heat, as she felt the moisture of her skin evaporating.

"Sylvaaaaah," he roared or it might have been the hungry tongues of the flames.

She crawled toward him, into the fire. Unlike the first time with Ephram, this time the fire burned her both body and soul.

As the blaze stole her breath, as her eyes dried in their sockets, as her brain boiled, she realized that possession worked both ways. When you gave somebody your heart, they owed you. And you owed them in return.

Both ways.

Frost and fire.

And pain, a deep freeze of burning agony. The thing called love. A suicidal, murdering thing.

Anna lowered herself, weaving through the branches. Mason was close behind, working his way down with frantic care. The heat from the house flowed over her, bits of wood and ash flying past on the wind of the firestorm. The sensation reminded her that she was alive, that the death she had welcomed was now something she was struggling to avoid. Maybe being alive meant nothing more than fighting to stay that way

Maybe.

Or maybe Rachel was right. You have to live for something bigger than yourself, belong to something that matters. Then you earn your rest.

"Hang on, Mason, we're almost there."

"Good. Because I think the house is falling."

They finally reached the ground, Mason stumbling, weak from his wounds. She supported him, leading him across the lawn away from the manor. The heat had melted the frost, and the grass was damp, steam rising. When they reached safely, she and Mason collapsed on the ground, ridding their lungs of smoke, watching Korban's funeral pyre as it stretched its fingers toward the moon.

The giant skeletal framework of the house was outlined in black, and Anna saw Korban's face in the flames, a hundred times life-sized, trapped in his own black tunnel, the one where his dreams died, where his servants abandoned him, where his heart turned to ash. Where he owned nothing and no one and his work went forever unfinished.

The great gables folded, the rails tumbled over the side. The Ionic columns snapped and the portico thundered down. The windows wept fire, the walls tucked themselves into each other, the piano works made a brassy clamor as they tumbled into the basement. Glass shattered and flames sputtered, smoke tunneled from the top of the house like the mouth of hell at the end of the world.

"Look," Anna said, pointing across the frost-coated lawn to the edge of the forest. Matchstick figures moved among the shadows.

"Some of them got out," Mason said. "They are alive, aren't they?"

"Sure." She realized her Second Sight had been blinded, somehow it had perished along with the ghost of herself she had given to Ephram Korban.

Good riddance.

Horses galloped across the meadow, whinnying in fright. Then the night was torn apart by a soul-searing shriek that echoed across the mountains. The ground shook, trees bent backward, and the barn collapsed. The fences also fell, gleaming like wet bones in the moonlight.

"He's taking it all with him," Anna said.

"Does that mean he's…?"

"Dead? Do we even know what that means anymore?"

He put his arm around her, and she relaxed against him, grateful for his warmth. "I think it's all a dream. But dreams aren't such a big deal. I like being awake better."

"So do I."

They sat in the grass, watching the fire dwindle, and waited for dawn.

"The bridge is gone," Cris said. "There's nothing left but some timbers braced against the edge of the cliff."

"I'm not surprised," Anna said. "Korban took everything that belonged to him. A control freak to the end."

The morning sun had lifted over the ridges, melting the remainder of the frost, and the mist rose off the ground like lost spirits, joining the last threads of smoke from the smoldering house. Anna and Mason sat on bales of hay, along with Zainab and Paul. Anna had tethered the two Morgans to a nearby locust. The other horses and the cattle had wandered into the orchard, no longer fenced off from the sweet autumn grass. Pigs played at the edge of the little pond at the foot of the slope, and wrens sang like the world was new.

Anna checked on Mason again. He held his hand in the watering barrel, where a pipe supplied cold spring water from the hills. He had a second-degree burn. There would probably be scars, but the wounds would heal eventually.

EVERYTHING heals eventually, Anna thought. Even if you don't have the power of charms and spells and herbs. Or the power over life and death.

Paul tore a strip off the waist of his shirt, dipped it in the water, then wrapped Mason's cut arm. "Used to be a Boy Scout," he said.

"Eagle?" Mason grunted.

"No. One of the lesser birds. Buzzard, maybe."

"Sorry about your friend."

"Yeah. I'll deal with it after I quit lying to myself. After I figure out what happened."

"We all have our guilt to deal with," Mason said. "And we learn from our mistakes."

"I sure as hell wish I had salvaged my videotapes, though. I could have been rich and famous. Who will ever believe it now?"

"You don't want any evidence," Mason said. "And if you look at what you have to pay for success, it's not such a hot deal."

"Is he in shock?" Anna asked Paul.

Paul looked into Mason's eyes, then felt his pulse. "No. Maybe on the edge, but-"

"You're not getting rid of me that easily," Mason said.

"Shock's not a bad way to go," Anna said. "A dying soldier's best friend."