Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 4 (Boxed Set)

by Scott Nicholson

  Had a sense of humor, too. She’d be a joy to tumble. Roth moved toward her, wanting to get close enough for her to marvel at the sparkle in his smoky eyes. Something crawled across his face and he brushed it away.

  God save the bloody queen, it was a spider.

  He stepped back and saw the web spun between him and Lilith, stretching across the bridge like golden wire, the dew catching the sunrise. He detested spiders. From the African veldt to the Arctic tundra, the little buggers jumped at you with their sharp pincers. He’d read somewhere that, no matter where you stood on the globe, there’d be a spider within six feet of you, and he believed it.

  He looked down at the rough planks of the bridge. The yellow-striped bastard was making for a crack, its legs scrabbling, its arachnid brain no doubt having a laugh at Roth’s expense. Roth brought a boot down on the spider, grinding it into the grain of the wood, sending its soul to spider hell, where hopefully God fed them nothing but DDT.

  “Sorry, love,” he said to Lilith. “Hope that didn’t upset you.”

  The smile flitted across the thin lips, fast as insects. “You didn’t kill it. You delivered it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Living things never die, they just move on through deeper tunnels of the soul.”

  “Er, righty right.”

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Miss Mamie will be wondering where I’ve gotten off to. I can’t stay away from the house for long.”

  She walked past him, and he took a whiff of her fragrance. He liked that sort of thing, collected their scents the way some blokes collected phone numbers or underwear. This one smelled a bit like earth, ripe and lush. Fertile and moist. He could dig it, all right.

  She stopped at the end of the bridge. “I’ll see you later, then.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the life of me,” he said, and watched her delightful small arse shake as she walked up the sandy road leading to the manor. When she disappeared through the trees, he turned his attention back to the view. The ridges had lost their glow now that the sun was rising. He’d best pack away.

  The ravens watched as he returned his lens to its case. Bloody birds had no fear. He thought about waving them on, sending them scattering over the valley. Oh, bother that. The day was looking up, with fair and tender Lilith on the agenda.

  He was about to head back for the manor and breakfast when he saw the web again. Still spread out in those fine and sinister patterns, shipshape. Lilith had walked right through it. And still it hung there, whole and perfect, waiting to snatch things from the air.

  This place was going to drive him daft if he wasn’t careful.

  CHAPTER 38

  Mason hewed the flesh of the oak, excited by the tannic smell of the wood. He worked with his hatchet, scraping it around as if skinning an animal. The log was braced with a couple of old chestnut boards, a pain in the rump to work around, but art was never easy. With the wires adding support, the oak waited for his touch like a masochistic and naked lover in a torture chamber.

  The reddish strips of peeled bark were piled around his feet, and he stumbled in them as he felt along the wood’s smooth surface. Here would be the arms, one knee here, a strong spread of shoulder there. This knot could become the ball of one loose fist.

  He hadn’t lied to Miss Mamie. The statue would be worth the trouble. Nothing great was ever created without a little risk. Suffer for art, that was the ticket to the top. Sacrifice everything and everyone, especially yourself.

  Mason drove the hatchet sideways, into the area that would be the neck. He drew back and struck again and again, the outline of the form burned into his mind, his hands sure of their work. He chopped until his right shoulder and biceps ached, removing the sections of dead wood that blocked the emergence of the true shape. The flames at the end of the candles bobbed as the air stirred with his blows and breath.

  When he could no longer lift his arm, Mason stood back and pushed away the wood scraps with his shoe. He moved across the studio space and studied the log from different angles. The height of the shoulders, the angle of the elbow, the distance between the feet, all had to be perfectly measured. As he was taking a step back to get another view, he knocked over the oil painting that he’d leaned against the cupboard.

  He knelt and picked it up. Again he was struck by its singular beauty. How would he feel if his own work never left the basement, if it stayed forever in the shadows, never to be appreciated and admired? His work would be better than this, but the painter had talent. The soft brushstrokes and colors, the off-white of the manor, the splendor of the night forest, the turbulent storm clouds as fresh as wet reality.

  He looked closer, at the top of the house. The smudge along the widow’s walk was brighter now and had spread several inches across the canvas. Mason peered into the mist and blinked. There were angles and shapes in the smudge. He brought the lantern from the table and tilted it toward the painting.

  Mason traced a finger over one of the shapes. The shape was a deeper gray white than the smudge, suggesting a human shape. More forms hovered beyond it, behind the thick pale line that portrayed the rail of the widow’s walk. People?

  People would be out of place in the painting. The house was the subject, so dominating an image in itself that to besmirch it with humanity would be a cruel insult. Had somebody else made the same observation as Mason, and tried to blot out those shapes on the roof? Or did the artist realize the mistake upon completion, and sought to correct it before the oils had dried?

  Miss Mamie would know, or maybe Lilith, who’d shown an interest in the painting. Perhaps he’d be allowed to take it to his room and hang it beside that portrait of Korban. A master and his domain.

  He leaned the painting back against the cupboard. His own work was more important. That was the artist’s first tenet. Creative duty first, everything else second.

  Besides, Mama was watching.

  His wood called to him in the language of the unborn. He answered, with chisel and claw, tooth and hatchet, sharp blade and hungry soul.

  CHAPTER 39

  Adam found Miss Mamie after breakfast. She sat in a wicker chair in the study with her hands folded in her lap. She was dressed in forest green today, her décolleté gown showing the pale expanse of her upper bosom. She had foregone her pearl necklace in favor of a black silk choker.

  She lifted her hands, revealing some small pieces of wood spread across a cloth. She had a knife in one hand, bits of wood clinging to the blade. As Adam watched, she sliced a length of thick vine and began wrapping it around what looked like the torso of a doll. The doll’s head looked like a knob of dark, shriveled fruit, the features stretched and distorted from the act of drying.

  The Abramovs were at the far end of the study, away from the fireplace and the sunlight that poured through the high windows. They were playing a minuet in andante that was reminiscent of Mozart. Their cello and violin trilled in counterpoint, then shifted into a descending harmony. The rich notes vibrated against Adam’s skin.

  He sat on the sofa across from Miss Mamie and bowed his head in respectful silence. He watched the musicians’ fingers glide over the strings. The duo increased their tempo, then went into the recapitulation, toying with the melody before finally sustaining the tonic and fifth notes as a finale. Adam joined Miss Mamie in applause.

  “Bravo,” she said. “How extraordinarily lovely. Ephram Korban would be pleased.”

  As the Abramovs started a new piece, Adam leaned over to Miss Mamie. “How are you today?”

  “Just fine, Mr. Andrews. How do you like my little hobby? An old Appalachian craft, passed down by Ephram himself. They say when you whittle a poppet, you’re building a house for a lost soul.”

  “Looks tough on the hands.”

  “But they make lovely gifts. What do you think of this one?”

  She held up the gnarled figurine, the twisted limbs of vine making the poor thing look crippled. It was hideous, the eyes crude, one larger than the othe
r.

  “That’s wonderful. I don’t think Daniel Boone could have done any better.”

  “Are you enjoying your stay so far?”

  “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that. I’ve decided to cut my visit short. I have, um, pressing business to take care of.”

  Miss Mamie’s brow darkened and she pursed her lips. She dropped the little wooden figure and it clattered off the hearth, the shriveled head rolling away. “Oh, dear, what a great fall,” she said, so softly that Adam barely heard her.

  Adam held up a hand. “I’m not looking for my money back. My roommate Paul will be staying on.”

  Miss Mamie looked out the window. A cloud must have passed over the sun, because the room grew darker. The Abramov melody shifted into a minor key and began twisting in agitato.

  “Nobody can leave,” she said.

  “I know the van doesn’t come back up for another couple of weeks. I was wondering if you could possibly make other arrangements.”

  “You don’t understand. Nobody can leave. Especially you.”

  Mrs. Abramov’s face clenched as she increased the tempo of her chaotic melody. There was little of the beauty that the couple had been squeezing out of the instruments only minutes before. Now the notes were more like tortured wails than music.

  Adam looked out the window. “Can’t one of the handymen take me down on horseback? I saw two of the guests out riding the other day.”

  “It’s not time yet,” Miss Mamie said, finally looking away from the window. Her eyes glittered with what Adam took to be anger. “The party is tonight. A lovely affair, up on the widow’s walk under the full moon. It’s something of a hallowed tradition at Korban Manor.”

  “I can pay extra for the trouble. I know what a bother this is.”

  Miss Mamie glowered and touched the locket that dangled unfashionably from her choker. “He—he doesn’t want you to go.”

  “Paul?”

  Miss Mamie seemed to recover just a little. “Black Rock is a half day’s journey by horse. And you belong here.”

  The string music increased in intensity, fragmenting into chromatic chaos.

  “I’ll walk, then.”

  The music stopped abruptly, a diminished fifth quivering in the air, embarrassed at its isolation.

  “No one leaves,” she said.

  Adam followed her gaze to the portrait of Korban above the fireplace, that same face that had whispered dream words to Adam about tunnels of the soul. Adam shivered. The house itself brooded, as if the walls were weary of darkness. The air was heavy, and even the blazing fire added nothing to the room’s cheer. Adam moved to the hearth and rubbed his hands, trying to drive the remnants of the nightmare from his mind.

  He looked down at the broken figurine. A scrap of fabric was tucked into a splintered crease in the torso. Gray cotton, like his pajamas.

  “Play on,” Miss Mamie said to the Abramovs.

  CHAPTER 40

  Roth found Spence on the smoking porch, sitting in a hand-carved rocker whose legs seemed to bow outward from the stress.

  “How goes the Shakespeare bit?” Roth asked.

  The writer already had a drink, scotch, judging from its amber appearance. It was scarcely ten o’clock. Spence was certainly living up to his reputation. Roth had half suspected the writer had affected an alcoholic’s indulgence that was as phony as his legendary womanizing or Roth’s own accent.

  “The best ever, as always,” Spence said, face pale and eyes nearly pink from lack of sleep.

  “You’d like to feed it to the critics with a shovel, wouldn’t you, mate? I mean, they’ve been bloody hard on you these last few years.”

  Spence let out a wet sigh, his chins flexing like a grubworm. “There’s only one critic I want to nail. My first one.”

  Roth sat in a swinging seat that was woven from thin reeds. He placed his camera case on the floor. If he worked it around right, a dissipated Spence would make a great addition to Roth’s gallery of deceased celebrities. Because Spence was clearly running headlong toward some invisible cliff edge.

  “Your old mum, I bet,” Roth said. “They can be rather overbearing.”

  “My mother was a saint. The critic to whom I’ve alluded is long dead. But I have hopes that a merciful God will bring me face-to-face with her in the afterlife.”

  Roth grinned. “Yeah, what use is heaven if you can’t have a go at all your old enemies?”

  Spence took a long swallow of scotch. “You’re boring me, Mr. Roth. I loathe boredom.”

  “Listen here, mate, I had this idea—”

  “Let me guess. You have a book you want me to write and we’ll split the money after I do all the work.”

  “Not quite that bald. I was thinking about a coffee table book on Korban. I’ll take the photographs, dig up some old archival stuff, convert some of these portraits to digital files. All you have to do is put your name on the cover and type a few pages as a foreword.”

  “My name isn’t what it used be.”

  “The project’s a natural. Some eccentric bloke builds himself a rural empire, then dies by mysterious means. We can even play on the ghost angle. I’ve no qualms about inserting some transparent orbs or fairy dust on the film.”

  “Speaking of fairies,” Spence said. Through the porch screen, they could see a young man carrying a video camera toward the forest.

  “His friend let him go off alone like that? Seemed the jealous and clingy sort.” Roth had occasionally been driven to experiment when no birds were available for plucking. Males were a bit too rough around the edges for his taste, but they offered an element of danger that no woman could match. Still, if Spence were that prim about such matters, best to play it straight. He made no comment.

  “Ephram Korban would have despised such depraved moral weakness,” Spence said.

  “You talk as if you knew him.”

  “No, but I understand him. I can feel him. This house was his in more than mere ownership.”

  “Ah, you believe that ghost tripe?”

  “I’ve felt the spirit move me.”

  Roth wondered how many drinks the man had downed with breakfast. “Then why not a book? We can do it as a tribute if you’d rather.”

  Spence lifted himself with effort. “I’d sooner write a trashy thriller, something with vampires and a Martian Pope and a government conspiracy. And an unlikely love interest. One must have a love interest to make the pot boil.”

  “Think about it.”

  “Excuse me, I have work to do. Real work.” Spence carried his empty glass toward the study, no doubt for a refill.

  Roth sat in the shade of the porch. Spence, dead in the bathtub, his fat, white gut displayed in a two-page tabloid spread. Moby dicked. That would be a picture worth a thousand words. And multiple thousands of dollars.

  How to make that overtaxed heart explode? A ménage à trois with Bridget and Lilith? Or put Paul and Adam on him. With his homophobia, Spence likely had some serious bones in the closet.

  Roth smiled. There was an easier way, one that wouldn’t involve the complicity of outsiders.

  If Spence were so bloody in love with his work, what would happen if the work went into the fireplace? Best of all, he could blame it all on a ghost. Who could ever prove otherwise?

  CHAPTER 41

  The wind played through the trees that surrounded the graveyard, a lonely music for a dead resting place high on the edge of the world. Sylva leaned on her walking stick, watching from the fence, too brittle to risk climbing over. The old woman had knelt in the grass, searched the ground for a minute, then picked something and passed it through the fence to Anna. It was a four-leaf clover.

  “Lucky charm?” Anna asked.

  “Better than luck. Lets you see the dead.”

  “I already do.”

  “Only when they want. This here gives you the power over them.” Sylva nodded toward the grave of Rachel Faye Hartley. “That’s the one you’ll be wanting to summon.”
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br />   “Summon?”

  “Come in fire, dead come back. Say it. Third time’s a charm.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “It’s in your blood. You just got to believe.”

  Anna stared at the cold stone, the flowers chiseled by some delicate hand, a bouquet that never wilted. She believed in ghosts, and so she saw them. And since she’d arrived at Korban Manor, she’d see them more clearly than ever before. Maybe it was always a question of faith. Part of the belief might originate from the dead spirit, and a ghost had to dream itself back toward the living world.

  Perhaps Anna and the ghost had to meet halfway in a union of sad and enslaved souls, and if she only had to recite an old mountain folk spell, that wasn’t so much to ask. The ghost, in this case the person who had lived by the name of Rachel Faye Hartley, had to put forth the real effort. After all, it would be Rachel who wrenched herself from the dark peace of eternal slumber to rise and return to a world perhaps best forgotten. A world that held only the promise of pain and loneliness.

  Anna looked down at the clover. Could she believe in magic? With cancer eating her flesh, she had to put all her faith in the permanent existence of the soul, or else she might as well leap from the top of Korban Manor herself. Without faith, what was the point?

  She closed her eyes and said the words: “Come in fire, come in fire, come in fire.”

  A chill caressed her, a soft immortal coldness. When she opened her eyes, the woman in white stood before her, the bouquet in her diaphanous hands. It was as if Anna were looking into a trick mirror, because she recognized herself in that pale and transparent face.

  “Anna,” the woman said, in that same whispered tone that had haunted Anna’s dreams, had called to her from the trail, had led her into the woods where George Lawson’s spirit seized her in its severed hand.

  “You,” Anna said. “You’re the one who summoned me here. It’s wasn’t Ephram Korban at all.”

  “You grew up beautiful, just like I always figured.” The words were like splashes of ice water.