The Manor (29 page)

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 an-cient mountain spell. Then the windrower swept forward, skewering Ran-som 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 tun-nel 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 be-cause 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 experimentaly 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 lead-ing back to the house. George might already be down here. How wel could ghosts see in the dark?

Boots, marching feet, fel 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 up-stairs was quiet. Mason smeled 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, ful of holes, now one of
them,
whatever
they
were sup-posed 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 flex-ing 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 tum-bled 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 fa-miliar with while living by the Sawyer Creek landfil. It wasn't a creaking, it was a
squeaking.

Rats.

"Go away," Anna said to the ghost that had stepped from the wal, 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 no-body to hate?"

"We need you, Anna. I need you."

"Need, need, need. Do you ever think I might have needed somebody, al 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 spir-its 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 unfulfiled 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. "Wel, 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 me," 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'l 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 ful of ghostly sadness.

"You're our only hope. It's Sylva."

"Go out frost."

Rachel faded against the door. "Sylva," she whis-pered.

"Go out frost. Third time's a charm."

Rachel disappeared. Anna looked up at Ephram Korban's portrait. "You can have her, for al 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 strol to Beechy Gap. Rachel had said Sylva knew some sort of secret. Maybe Sylva knew a spel that would keep al ghosts away. Anna had dedicated a big part of her life to chas-ing 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 ris-ing around him.

He would rather face the ghost of George Lawson, stray hand and bloody hay rake and al, 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 palets that were scattered across the dirt floor. And faling 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 differ-ence 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 dul 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 exis-tence 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 al 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 al 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 al 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, yel, 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, yeled, looked in at Mason, left him wet again. Daddy turned out the light, and as the door closed, Mason remembered the vanish-ing wedge of brightness, how scared he was as it got smaler and smaler, 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.

Squating 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 read-ing 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 finaly forced himself to look.

Mason heard them, though, even with the wet blan-kets puled tightly over his head. Soft whispers of tiny tongues against liquid. Daddy's bottle. The spiled stuff had brought them. Would it be enough to fil 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 smal child, and he wasn't afraid of rats anymore. And be-cause 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 dark-ness 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—