When artists gather at a remote mountain estate for a retreat, they are unaware that their energy is feeding something unwholesome. Sculptor Mason Jackson and dying parapsychologist Anna Galloway must uncover the dark secrets of Korban Manor before their spirits are trapped forever.
CREATIVE SPIRIT
By Scott Nicholson
Bonus Edition with feature-length screenplay
Copyright 2003 Scott Nicholson
Published by Haunted Computer Books
“If you can dream, and not make dreams your master . . .”
——Rudyard Kipling
“I’ll eat your dreams.”
——Ephram Elijah Krane
For my mother, Delores, who sees
1898
If the fire is out, I’m dead.
As Sylva ran through the dark forest, the laurel branches slapped at her and wooden talons raked through her long, flowing hair.
But it wasn’t her fault. Momma had a fever and Daddy was off the mountain with a load of apples, Sylva had to take care of her two little brothers and she was only sixteen and stuck on this idiot mountain and life shouldn’t be so unfair.
She stumbled over a root and nearly fell. She grabbed up the hem of her coarse linen skirt and ran on through the trees. Briars whipped at her knees. It was only half a mile, but on November nights it felt like forever, as if the Korban estate expanded to join the darkness.
And the darkness welcomed it. But she couldn’t think about that. The fire was her job and the family depended on Korban. All the old families depended on him, especially the ones who had sold their land to him.
She was grateful for the high wedge of moon, but the moon sometimes revealed things she didn’t want to see. Her breath was silver in its light as she whispered little spells of safekeeping.
The manor seemed to be slipping farther away from her, as if the snake-belly trail had gained new curves. But at last she emerged onto the spread of pastures leading to the lawn. She could barely glance at the house, which stood black and brooding against the Blue Ridge Mountain sky. But she had to check the window.
Dark.
She was late.
Sylva sprinted to the house, her heart lodged in her throat and her pulse hammering. She gathered some logs from the firebox and crept up the back stairs. Margaret was away on a trip somewhere, to a place called Baton Rouge, fancy-sounding. If only Sylva could hurry, maybe no one would notice her tardiness.
It’s just a silly little fire. It ain’t like anybody’s going to freeze to death.
She tiptoed down the hall, floorboards groaning at her failed stealth. She paused at his door. If she knocked, she’d be found out. Best to say nothing, start the fire, and sneak out again.
The bedroom was dark. She was afraid to light a lantern because, if any guests were visiting, one of them might look in. Sylva closed the door behind her, hoping the embers still cast enough glow for her to see. But the hearthstones were cold and the room was filled with the pungent stench of the spent fire.
Kneeling, she put the wood on the floor and groped for the newspapers and the tin box of matches that she kept beside the poker. Even sheltered from the cold night air, she felt smothered as if by the waters of a deep dream, and the smallest movement took a great effort. The matches rattled when she knocked over the container. She balled up some pages of the newspaper and stuffed them under the fire irons. As she did, a harsh, low sound came from somewhere in the room.
Sylva struck a match and it flared briefly and died. In that split second of light, she had seen movement out of the corner of her eye. Trying to hurry, though gravity worked against her, she struck another match. A winter wind blew across the room and extinguished the flame before she could touch it to the paper.
Why are the windows open?
Ephram never allowed the windows open in his room. Her fingers were like water skins as she fumbled for another match. The low sound came again, a rattling exhalation followed by the unmistakable creak of the poster bed. She squeezed her eyes closed, even though the room was pitch black, and concentrated on the match that she wanted to scratch across a stone.
A voice came, muffled and desperate and everything but dead.
“Fuh . . . fire,” it said.
Sylva’s heart gave a jump like a frightened rabbit. Ephram Korban was in the room, in the bed. She dared not look in his direction, but the same power that seemed to be weighing down her limbs made her neck turn slowly toward the bed. She opened her eyes and saw nothing but blackness.
“Spell me,” he said, a little more forcefully, almost angrily, but still muffled as if speaking through blankets.
She nodded slowly, though he couldn’t see her in the dark. Nor could she see him. And yet . . .
As she looked at the bed, its form taking shape in her mind from the memory of it, she could picture Ephram lying there, his face stern and his hair and beard flowing onto the pillows. Handsome Ephram, who had never been sick. Ephram, who stayed young and strong while the workers and natives had faded away with their wrinkles and stories and tired, failing breath. Ephram, who was said to never sleep.
Two small dots of light hovered in the darkness of the bed, weakly glowing, the only thing in the room she could see. She tried to turn her head away, tried to strike the match, even though she had now been pulled from mere waking sleep to a helpless awareness.
She washed the sheets. She knew which side of the bed was his. The dots expanded, hovering near the headboard where the pillows were. Where Ephram’s eyes should be.
The eyes smoldered the deep red color of a dying ember.
“Call in the fire,” he rasped, as a sharp flicker of yellow glinted among the red dots. The glowing eyes blurred in her tears as she jerked the matchstick along the stone. It caught and she applied the flame to the paper. At last she could look away from that terrible bed, those impossible eyes. But she had to say those awful words, the ones Momma had taught her.
The spell.
She whispered them, hoping to weaken their power through lack of volume. “Go out frost, come in fire. Go out frost, come in fire. Go out frost, come in fire.”
The fire leapt to life and she put some kindling on the grate. As the wood crackled and heat cascaded onto her face, she found that her limbs were regaining their strength, her scratched flesh no longer stinging.
Not daring to turn now that the room was bathed in firelight, she busied herself stacking a night’s supply of logs onto the irons. Her tears had dried on her cheeks, but she felt their salty tracks. She was in trouble and had committed the most unforgivable of offenses. She could only stare into the flames as they rose like yellow and red and blue water up the chimney.
A hand fell softly on her shoulder. She looked up, and Ephram was standing above her. He was smiling. His eyes were deep and dark and beautiful, alive in the firelight.
How silly I’ve been, picturing them to be red.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her words barely audible over the snapping of the hot logs and the hammering of her heart. “I didn’t mean to be late.”
Ephram said nothing, only moved his hand from her shoulder to her cheek, then up under her long hair until his thumb brushed her ear. She shivered even though the fire was roaring.
She couldn’t help looking around at all the fine things, the oval cut-edged mirror over the bureau, the velvet drapes that plunged from the top of the windows like lush purple waterfalls, the soft silk lace rimming the edge of the poster bed.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice now deep and strong, and her gaze was fixed back to his bearded face.
They said that if you passed him in the dead of night, his eyes changed colors, gold, red, t
hen yellow, the shades of fire. But now his eyes were coal black.
They said when he stood atop the house on the widow’s walk, his shadow stretched two miles in every direction, that he burned black candles in the cellar. But that was what the men said. The house girls said other things, which Sylva equally refused to believe.
He wasn’t a monster.
He was a man.
“Sorry I was late,” she whispered.
“But not too late.”
She started to turn back to the fire, to add more word, to do her duty. She’d said the words, the way her Momma taught her, and now she was done.
He caught her cheek and his face was near hers. “We burn together.”
She didn’t understand, all she knew was that she had wished for this moment so many times while lying on her straw mattress in the cabin loft. Those dreams had come to her, taken over her body, brought her skin alive. Ephram’s hands on her flesh. But in her fantasies, she hadn’t been this scared.
Then she realized what was wrong. He was behind her and above her, his face lit by the fire. She was kneeling on the hearth, looking up. But, somehow, his shadow was on her face. She couldn’t fix on the thought, couldn’t make sense of it, because other sensations were flooding her. His fervid hand traced the soft slope of her neck.
And again Sylva was smothered in a dream, only under a different power this time, as she rose and let him put his arms around her, as the hellish heat of his lips pressed against hers. She was lost in his warmth, his strength, his great shadow. When he took her hand in his and brought it to the flames, she didn’t whimper or beg. He was the master, after all.
Their hands went into the flames, merged, combusted, and skin and bone were replaced by smoke and ash.
There is no pain. How can there not be pain?
The next thing she knew, she was removing her coarse house-girl skirt and homespun blouse and they merged once more, this time on the floor in front of the fire, the spell lost from her lips, and only Ephram in her senses.
CHAPTER 1
Heights.
Success.
The parallels were so obvious now, as he stood at the edge of the bridge, the steep gorge yawning below, high granite peaks plunging away to a distant death.
“You going?” said the woman behind him.
Mason Jackson grabbed a gulp of the pure Blue Ridge Mountain air. If only it were helium.
The people ahead of him were already across, entering the woods that led to the estate. A horse-drawn wagon had taken the luggage, and Mason was free except for the heavy tools in his canvas satchel.
Enough weight to drop him fast, way, way, down to where—
“Are okay?” the woman said. The van was already backing up behind them, making the five-mile return trip down the winding road to Black Rock.
Mason nodded. He looked into those cyan eyes, the ones he’d glanced at from time to time during the ride up. At least during those moments when he wasn’t staring out the window at the sheer drop along the shoulder of the road.
“We’re being left behind,” she said. She was nearly as pale as he felt, though she was young, maybe late 20s. Near his age, but he didn’t want to think about that, though she was attractive, with large, dark eyes and straight black hair.
“Run along, I’ll catch up,” he said.
Or, more likely, I’ll run back down the mountain before I step foot on that bridge.
“It’s sturdy enough,” she said. “Those horses must have weighed a couple of thousand pounds.”
“Sure,” he said, tapping the wooden guardrail. “This thing would hold a tank.”
“Acrophobia,” she said. “Everybody’s got some kind of phobia or other.”
Uh-oh. She’s intelligent. This could be bad.
“I couldn’t even climb the monkey bars in grade school,” he said.
“Will it help if you take my hand, close your eyes, and just take a step at a time?”
He smiled, though his throat was tight. “That’s mighty nice of you, Miss—”
“Galloway. Anna Galloway.”
“But how can I trust you not to walk me right over one of those rock ledges?”
She returned the smile, and it was fetching, though a little weary. “You can’t trust me. But maybe while you are walking, you can pretend you are walking on a giant concrete runway, as solid as—”
“No good. Planes freak me out, too.”
The wind shifted a little, and the autumn canopy around them shivered in gold and scarlet. A faint odor of wood smoke drifted by.
“Well, all the good rooms will be taken if we wait any longer,” she said. “I don’t want to spend the whole retreat in a broom closet.”
“After you,” he said, nearly forgetting the long drop. Her eyes were as deep as the gorge and a fall there could be just as fatal.
Anna edged past him and stepped onto the bridge. She put one hand out, clutching her purse with the other. It was a tidy leather purse, brown, not showy or overly stylish. Compact, like she was.
He took her hand and put his other on the railing. Okay, Momma. See? I can make sacrifices for success.
As he walked, he squinted, afraid to close his eyes but not trusting the darkness. He fixed his gaze on an oak stump on the other side of the bridge, imagining how he would accent its natural shape and turn it into a gargoyle or watchdog.
The bridge bucked once as a breeze skirled beneath the girders, and Mason’s stomach fell away. Anna’s hand tightened around his and pulled with more insistence, and he hurried after her. Then they were on solid ground and he let out a cracked laugh of exhilaration.
She released his hand and he wiped the sweat from his palm. He hadn’t noticed his tool bag had banged against his hip, and a bruise started.
“Thank you kindly, Anna,” he said, looking back, feeling silly now.
She shrugged. “A phobia’s a phobia.”
She was already heading down the dirt road that led into the hardwood forest. He hurried after her, his tools clinking. “So what’s yours?” he said, catching up.
“My what?”
“Your phobia.”
She pursed her lips and looked melancholy. “Death.”
“That’s a good one.”
“Makes the other ones insignificant, right?”
“If you’re lucky enough for death to be the end.”
He mulled on that as they walked, her short, brisk steps in a synchronized punctuation to his long strides.
Then the forest ended and Korban Manor stood before them like something out of an antique postcard. The open fields fell away to a soft swell of orchard, a patchwork of meadows, and two barns stitched together with fencing. The manor itself was three outsized stories high, tall the way they were built in the late 1800s, six Colonial columns supporting the portico ceiling at the entrance. Black shutters framed the windows against the white siding. Four chimneys puffed away, the smoke swirling through the giant red oaks and poplar that surrounded the house.
Atop the roof was a widow’s walk, a flattened area with a lonely railing. Mason wondered if any widows had ever walked those boards. Probably.
One thing about an old house, you could be sure that somebody had died there, probably a whole lot of somebodies.
A painter or photographer would probably kill for the view the widow’s walk afforded. Mason might even commit a lesser crime for the privilege, except he knew he’d grow dizzy with all that open air around him and that deadly depth stretching below. At least he’d have an opportunity to study Korban Manor’s intricate scrollwork from the safety of ground level.
“Can you handle the porch steps?” Anna asked.
Mason frowned, unable to tell if she were teasing. “Yeah. I can always crawl if I need to. I’m pretty good at crawling.”
“Good luck, then.,” she said, bouncing up the stairs and entering the tall front door. Inside, the group was milling around, getting settled. He wanted to shout out a final “Thanks” but Anna was
gone.
Good luck with your phobia, too.
CHAPTER 2
“Have you seen George?” Miss Mamie asked Ransom Streater. She hated to mingle with the hired help, with the exception of Lilith, but there were times when orders had to be given or stories set straight. The best way to head off gossip was to originate it.
“No, ma’am.” Ransom stood by the barn, his hat in his scarred hands, sweat clinging to his thin hair. He smelled of the barnyard, hay and manure and rusty metal. Around his neck was a leather strap, and she knew it was attached to one of those quaint charm bags. These rural mountain people actually believed that roots and powders had influence over the living and the dead. If only they knew that magic was created through the force of will, not by wishful thinking.
Magic was all in the making. Like the thing she held cradled in her arms, the poppet she had shaped with great love and tenderness.
“I need someone to help the sculptor find some wood tomorrow,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.” The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed once.
“When was the last time you heard from George?”
“This afternoon, right after the last batch of guests come in. Said he was going up Beechy Gap to check on things.”
Miss Mamie hid her smile. So George had gone to Beechy Gap. Good. Nobody from town would miss him for at least a couple of weeks, and by then it wouldn’t matter.
And she could count on Ransom to keep his mouth shut. Ransom knew what kind of accidents happened to people around Korban Manor, even to those who wore charms and muttered old-timey spells. And a job was a job.
Everyone had a burning mission in life.
Some missions were more special than others.
She took the little doll from its bit of folded cloth. Its apple head had shriveled into a dark and wizened face, the mouth grim with animated pain. The body was made from whittled ash and the arms and legs were strips of jackvine. Ransom drew back from the doll as if it were a rattlesnake.
“Will you take care of George for me?” Miss Mamie asked.
Creative Spirit with Screenplay Page 1
