The Manor

by Scott Nicholson

  The horses kicked their stall doors. A calf bawled from the meadow outside. The surrey and the wagons rocked back and forth. The lantern quivered on the floor and shadows climbed the walls like giant insects.

  The calf bawled again, then once more, the sound somehow standing out in the cacophony.

  "Calf bawled three times," Ransom whispered. "Sure sign of death."

  Mason crouched beside him, wanting to ask Ransom what in the hell was happening. But his tongue felt like a piece of harness against the roof of his mouth. He didn't think he could work it to form words. Ransom looked at George, then at the closed door. The door was much farther.

  Mason reached out to touch Ransom's sleeve, but came up with nothing. Ransom made a run for it. The ghost didn't move as Ransom's boots drummed across the plank floor. Mason wondered if he should make a run for it, too. Ransom moved fast, arms waving wildly.

  He's going to make it!

  Ransom was about six feet from the door when the hay rake pounced-POUNCED, Mason thought, like a cat-with a groan of stressed steel and wood, the rusty tines of the windrower sweeping down and forward. Ransom turned and faced the old farm machine as if to beg for mercy.

  His eyes met Mason's, and Mason knew he would never forget that look, even if he got lucky and escaped George and managed to live to be a hundred and one. Ransom's face blanched, blood rushed from his skin as if trying to hide deep in his organs where the hay rake couldn't reach. Ransom's eyes were wet marbles of fear. The leathery skin of his jaws stretched tight as he opened his mouth to scream or pray or mutter an ancient mountain spell.

  Then the windrower swept forward, skewering Ransom and pushing him backward. His body slammed against the door, two dozen giant nails hammered into wood. Ransom gurgled and a red mist spewed from his mouth. And the eyes were gazing down whatever tunnel death had cast him into.

  The wagon and surrey stopped shaking, the walls settled back into place, and a sudden silence jarred the air. The old man's body sagged on the tines like a raw chuck steak at the end of a fork. Mason forced himself to look away from the viscera and carnage. The lantern threw off a burst of light, as if the flames were fed by Ransom's soul-wind leaving his body.

  George floated toward Mason, who took a step backward.

  "You're not here," Mason said. He put up his hands, palms open. "I don't believe in you, so you don't exist."

  The ghost stopped and looked down at its own silken flesh. After a stretch of skipped heartbeats, it looked at Mason and grinned.

  "I lied. It ain't what we believe that matters," it said softly, sifting forward another three feet. "It's what Korban believes."

  The hand reached out, the hand in the hand, in a manly welcome. Marble cold and grave-dirt dead.

  Mason turned, ran, waiting for the pounce of the hay rake or the grip of the ghost hand. He tripped over a gap in the floorboards and fell. He looked back at his feet. The root cellar.

  He wriggled backward and flipped the trapdoor open, then scrambled through headfirst. He grabbed the first rung of the ladder and pulled himself into the damp darkness of the cellar. If potions and prayers didn't work, then a trapdoor wouldn't stop a ghost. But his muscles took over where his rational mind had shut down.

  He was halfway inside when the trapdoor slammed down on his back. Stripes of silver pain streaked up his spinal column. Then he felt something on the cloth of his pants. A light tapping, walking.

  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.

  CHAPTER 22

  "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 m
e," 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.

  The squeaking.

  The rats, tumbling in the dark like sweet potatoes or a child's toys. How many?

  One was too many. How many squeaks? Mason held his breath so he could listen. Ten. Fifteen. Forty.

  Mama was out of town. Somebody had died, that's all Mason knew, because he'd never seen Mama cry so much. And Mason sensed a change in her when Mama gave him all those extra hugs and kisses, held him in her lap for hours. Then she was gone.

  And Daddy, Daddy with his bottles, was all Mason knew after that. He lay in the crib, his blankets wet, too scared to wail. If he cried out, maybe Mama would come. But if she didn't, Daddy might. Daddy would only get mad, yell, and break something.

  So Mason didn't say anything. Time passed or else it didn't. There was no sun in the window, only the light that Daddy turned on and off. Daddy slept on the floor one time, and Mason looked through the wooden bars of his crib, saw him with his bottle tipped over, the brown liquid pouring out across the floor.

  Daddy woke up, rubbed his eyes, yelled, looked in at Mason, left him wet again. Daddy turned out the light, and as the door closed, Mason remembered the vanishing wedge of brightness, how scared he was as it got smaller and smaller, then the door banged shut and the dark was big, thick, everything.

  Time passed or else it didn't, Mason's tiny heart pumping, pounding, screaming. Crying would do no good. Mama wasn't here. And his cries might bring them. He closed his eyes, opened them. One black was the same color as the other.

  Squatting in the root cellar, Mason closed his eyes, opened them, trying to blink away the memory. He covered his face with his hands. He remembered reading somewhere that rats always went for the soft parts first, the eyes and tongue and genitals. He didn't have enough hands.

  This was the memory, the first time. The skittering in the dark. The scratching against the wall. The ticking of claws across wood. The squeak of pleasure at the discovery. So dark in the room that he couldn't see their shiny eyes when he finally forced himself to look.

  Mason heard them, though, even with the wet blankets pulled tightly over his head. Soft whispers of tiny tongues against liquid. Daddy's bottle. The spilled stuff had brought them. Would it be enough to fill them? Would they go away?

  Please, please, go away.

  The squeaking sounded now like laughter, like a moist, slobbery snickering. Go away? Of course they wouldn't go away, this was the dark and they owned the dark. They crept toward the crib, the hush of their tails dragging behind.

  No, no, NO.

  This was now and not the memory, he wasn't a small child, and he wasn't afraid of rats anymore. And because the root cellar was darker than the world outside, he might be able to see the outline of the door. All he had to do was open his eyes.

  Mama's voice came to him, and he couldn't swear whether the words were spoken or merely imagined: It's ALWAYS the memory, Mason. Big Dream Image. Don't ever let go of your dreams. They're the only thing you got in this world.

  And something quick and wet and warm flicked at his face, just under his left eye, it may have been only the corner of a blanket shifting, yes, of course, that's what it was, rats don't eat little boys, that's not tiny feet pressing against your legs, it's only your imagination, and you always had a good imagination, didn't you?

  And you lived long enough to learn that the darkness doesn't spread out forever, that rats don't own everything, just your dreams, AND DREAMS ARE THE ONLY THING YOU GOT IN THIS WORLD.

  And Mama came home finally and opened the door and turned on the light and held you but it was too late, days too late, years too late, the rats had EATEN you, eaten your eyes, now it's dark all the time and they own the dark and Mama can't open the door because they ate her eyes, too, and she's sitting in her rat's-nest chair back in Sawyer Creek and "Looks like you're in a right smart pickle."

  The voice, from nowhere and everywhere, seemed part of the dark. And darkness had to have different colors, because the deep black tunnel opened like a throat before his closed eyes. Standing at the edge of the tunnel was Ransom Streater, dripping wounds and all, a perfect row of punctures across the chest of his overalls, one buckle bent. Ransom with his grinning possum mouth and old freckled bald head and dead, dead, dead eyes.

  "Korban fetched me up to your bad place," Ransom said. "You ought to see mine. I got it worse than you do, believe me. But Korban says if I'm a good helper, then I get out of my bad place for a little bit. All I gots to do is walk you out."

  "Where am I?"

  "Why, in the heart, that's where. 'Cepting Korban wants to send you back. Says you got chores to do."

  "What chores?" Mason forced his eyes wide, even though the rats were hungry and eyes were soft and juicy. But the image didn't change, Ransom stood shimmering before him, the tunnel stretched out black and deep and cold, only now there was a light at the end, precious light, beautiful light, a ratless ligh
t, Mama was opening the door.

  Mason stood, heard the rats slither back into their unseen holes. He said the only thing he could think of to say. "You're dead."

  "And it ain't no Cakewalk, let me tell you." Ransom touched his wounds, his eyebrows lifting as he fingered a hole in his ribs. "At least you got a choice."

  Mason stepped closer, the light beckoned. He took one glance backward in the darkness, heard the noise of whiskers and claws and wet, sharp teeth. He shivered. Korban would keep this place waiting for him.

  But the best thing to do was put your fears behind you, as least for as long as possible. Deny their existence. Bury them.

  "Where does the tunnel go, Ransom?"

  "Why, to the end. Where else would it go?"

  Mason swallowed. He remembered Ransom, the old, living Ransom, had said the tunnel led back to the manor's basement. He thought about running for the ladder, but he heard a squeak and a whisper of tongue. Then, Mama's voice, unmistakable, poured from the dark throat of the tunnel. "Dreams is all we got, Mason. Now get in here and make Mama proud."

  And it wasn't only Mama's voice, here in the damp, dark dirt of Korban's estate, that bothered him. It was the suggestion of squeakiness in her words, as if they had spilled from between large, curved, rodent teeth.

  Mason followed Ransom into the black tunnel, blinked as the light grew unbearably bright, then softened. A lantern was burning on the table. Mason was in the studio, his unfinished statue waiting before him.

  "Tunnels of the soul, Mason," Mama said. "I'll be watching."

  Mason turned just in time to see the long hideous gray rope of tail disappear into the dark tunnel. Ransom stood by the shadows of the basement. "We all got chores. My batch is waiting back in the tunnel. Yours is on this side, for now."

  Mason knelt, trembling, and selected a fluter. He took up his hatchet and approached the statue, studied the rough oak form. Ephram Korban was in there somewhere, just as he inhabited everything. At the heart of it all.

  Mama lied. She 'd said dreams were all we had in this world. But we have nightmares, too. And memories.