The Manor (14 page)

He was positive he
wanted
to photograph the bridge, but by the time he'd walked under the canopy of trees down the road, the idea didn't seem al that wonderful. The day was so warm that, even in the shade, his fore-head beaded with sweat. A spasm of nausea and dizziness passed over him. Before he came around the final bend where the manor grounds gave way to the plum-meting rocks, he'd decided that the bridge would be a bloody waste of good stock. So he walked back toward Korban Manor. By then a little breeze sprang up, and he felt better as the sweat dried. He snapped more pictures of the house from the exact same locations as before. It was al such a bunch of poppycock.

"I'm going daft, is all," he muttered under his breath.

"What's that you said?"

The female voice had come from somewhere to his right. He squinted into the shadow of the trees, hoping he'd maintained his British accent while he'd been mut-tering. One mustn't slip.

"I was saying, 'What a lot of bother,' " he said.

He saw her now, siting on a stump beside a sycamore. She had a sketch pad in her lap and a charcoal stick clutched between her fingers. Roth eyed her long legs, appreciating that the day was warm enough for her to wear shorts.

"You taking pictures?" she asked.

Pictures. Gawps and ninnies took
pictures.
Roth framed the vital, captured the essential, immortalized the utterly proper.
Stupid bird,
he thought. Still, in his experience, the emptier the space upstairs, the tighter the compartment below.

He was geting frustrated with his work anyway. Maybe the time was right to line up an evening's com-panion. "Yes, my dear," he said, raising the camera and pointing it at the woman.

She looked away.

"Don't be shy, love. Make my camera happy. I won't even make you say 'cheese' or anything of that sort." He zoomed in on her cleavage without her noticing.

She looked up and smiled, he clicked the shutter, and then put the camera away. "Say, didn't I see you at Miss Mamie's little after-dinner last night?"

"Yeah. I saw you. You're William Roth, right?"

Roth loved it when they pretended not to be im-pressed by his celebrity, but she couldn't hide the smal sparkle in her eyes. Maybe he wasn't a famous movie star, but name recognition definitely came in handy for bedding the birds. "I'm every inch of him," Roth said. "And to whom do I have the pleasure?"

"Cris Whitfield. Cris without the
h."
She held out her hand in greeting, realized it was smudged by the charcoal, and put it back in her lap.

"Charmed." He arched his neck as if to look at her drawing, but was actualy peeking down her halter top.

"What are you drawing?"

"The house," she said, nodding toward it.

"Mind if I've a look?"

She shrugged and turned the sketch pad toward him. He took the opportunity to stand over her.

"I'm not very good," Cris said.

Looked quite good from the little peek I got.

"The house isn't an easy subject," he said, reaching for the pad. "I can hardly get a decent framing for it. I can't imagine how frightfuly awful drawing the thing would—"

He'd expected a stick-house drawing, something that the Big Bad Wolf could blow over with a half a breath. But not this . . . this
asylum
the woman had sketched. Not coming from this little ponytailed girl who looked like a Malibu beach bunny, who probably studied EST or reiki or whatever New Age pap was al the rage now. Because the drawing was definitely of the manor, but was of much
more
than that. It was all droopy and dark and pessimistic, a cross between Dali and that Spanish artist, Goya. They'd found some of Goya's paintings after he'd died, hidden away in his house because no one could bear to look at them. Roth fought a sudden urge to touch the sketch.

The charcoal was as thick as fur on the paper. The shadows of the portico were sharp and steep, and Roth could almost imagine winged creatures fluttering in that darkness. The windows of the gables were leering eyes, the large front door a ravenous maw. He glanced from the drawing to the house, and for just a second, so short a time that he could convince himself that it was a trick of suggestion, the house
looked
the way she had drawn it, swaying and throbbing like a live, growling beast.

"Bloody hel, girl," he finaly managed. "Where did that come from?" She looked shyly down at the tips of her hiking boots. When she shrugged, he only half noticed her jig-gling breasts. "I don't know," she said. "It just sort of happened." Roth shook his head.

"I've never done anything that good," she said. "I mean, I'm not that good at all."

"Looks ace to me."

"Not this picture. I know
it's
good. But it's not be-cause of me. It's because of the house."

"The house?" Roth thought about how he couldn't manage to make himself photograph anything but the house. And how he'd felt a litle queasy when he'd been walking down the road toward the bridge. At least until he got back within sight of the house.

"It's like it's got this ... energy," Cris said. "When I was drawing, the charcoal almost seemed to be moving by itself."

"Like hypnotic suggestion and that rot?" he snorted, then regretted it. Scorn wasn't the way into a woman's heart, or any of the other warm parts, either.

Cris's lip curled. She slapped the sketch pad closed. The haunting, warped drawing stil lingered in Roth's mind.

"Everybody's a critic," she said. "Why don't you just go back to pushing your silly little buttons?" She stormed past him, kicking up leaves. Roth watched her walk onto the wagon road and toward the house. He shifted the strap that was digging into his neck, then checked the camera that was perched on the tripod. Blew a go at
her,
he thought.
What do I care about any twopence line drawing, anyway? Artists are a pack of
fools, going on about "meaning" and "creative spirit" and such nonsense.
Al it came down to was money, power, and sex, and how to secure more of each.

He peered through his viewfinder at the manor. Cris bounced up the wide steps leading to the porch. As she disappeared through the front door, Roth couldn't shake the feeling that the house had swallowed her whole. The forest looked different in the daytime. Its edges were blunter, the branches less menacing, the shadows under the canopy less solid and suffocating. Anna took in the afternoon air, feeling alive, fresh, renewed. Korban Manor and the mountains were bringing back her appetite, making her forget the long darkness that the cancer pushed her toward. She took a right at the fork in the trail, remembering that Robert Frost poem about the road less traveled, be-cause the right fork was little more than an animal path. But the trail led to an opening on a knoll, a soft rounded skull of earth wearing a cap of grass. In the middle of the opening stood a square section of iron fence, and white and gray gravestones protruded from the dirt within it.

"So this is where you keep your dead," she said to the sky.

Anna made her way to the fence. She looked around, but the forest was still and silent. This wouldn't be the first cemetery she'd committed trespass against. She heaved herself over, gripping the wrought floral design and scrollwork of the fence to keep from spearing her-self on the sharp-tipped ends. Two large marble monuments, beautiful though worn with age, dominated the graveyard. The first read EPHRAM ELIJAH KORBAN, 1859-1918. TOO SOON SUM-MONED. The one beside it, slightly less ornate, said simply Margaret. Anna knelt and pressed her palm to the soil above Ephram's final resting place.

"Anybody home, Miss Galoway?"

Anna looked up. Miss Mamie stood by the fence, somehow having crossed fifty feet of open field with-out Anna noticing.

"I was just out for a walk, and I got curious."

"You know what they say about curiosity and the cat. Most of our guests respect fences."

"Do you mean the guests who walk, or the ones who float?"

Miss Mamie's giggle echoed off the monuments. "Ah, those ghost stories. I couldn't resist approving your application, you know. Paranormal researcher. That's too perfect."

"It's just as much an art form as painting and writ-ing. It's all about seeking, isn't it?"

"Clever. And just what are you seeking, Anna?"

"I suppose I'll know it when I find it."

"One can only hope. Or perhaps you won't have to search. Perhaps it will find
you
."

"Then you don't mind if I prowl in your graveyard?"

Miss Mamie looked at Korban's monument. "Make yourself at home."

"Thanks."

"Don't be late for dinner, though. And be careful if you're caught out after dark." Miss Mamie started to leave, then added. "You're one of those, aren't you?"

"One of what?"

"What the mountain people around here call 'gifted.' Second Sight. The power to see things other people can't."

"I'm not so special."

"Those ghost stories are so delightful. And good for business, too. What artist who fancies himself living on the edge could possibly pass up an opportunity to come here? If you see anything, you'll tell me, won't you?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die."

"Don't hope too hard. Not yet, anyway."

Anna watched the woman cross the grass and enter the forest, then she headed toward the rest of the grave markers that stippled the slope. She explored them, reading the names. Hartley, Streater, Aldridge, McFall. Then the names gave way to simple flagstone markers, in some cases chunks of rough granite propped toward the heavens as a forlorn memento of a long-forgotten life.

Would her own death be so little noted? Would her mark be as insignificant? Did it even matter?

At the edge of the scattered stones, where the rear of the fence met the woods, a pale carved tombstone stood in the shade of an old cedar. Anna went to it, read rachel faye hartley etched in the marble. An ornate bouquet of flowers was engraved above the name.

"Rachel Faye, Rachel Faye," Anna said. "Someone must have loved you." And though Rachel Faye Hartley was now dust, Anna envied her just a little.

Sylva watched from the forest until Miss Mamie left. Anna looked small and lost in the graveyard, talk-ing to the stones, looking for ghosts among the blades of grass. The girl had the Sight, that much was plain. And something else was plain, that dark aura around her, hanging around her flesh like a rainbow of mid-night.

Anna was fixing to die.

Sylva drew her shawl close together, holding it with one knotted hand. The other held her walking stick, which she leaned on to rest for the trip back to Beechy Gap. She didn't get out much these days, especially now that Korban's fetches were walking loose. Things were mighty stirred up, and part of that had to do with the coming blue moon.

The other part had to do with that girl in the grave-yard, the one who stared a litle too long at the grave of Rachel Faye Hartley.

"You'll be joining her soon enough," Sylva whis-pered to the laurel thicket around her. "If Ephram will let you, that is."

The sun was sinking by the time Anna climbed back over the fence, full of vinegar for such a sick person. Anna didn't know the old ways, was weak in the power of charms and such. The girl wouldn't understand the power of the healing roots, bone powder, and special ways of speling. But maybe the talent was only buried in her, not lost forever. Because blood ran thick, thicker than water. And magic ran through tunnels of the soul, Ephram always said.

But Ephram was a liar.

Both before and after he died.

A screech owl hooted, a sound as lonely as a night winter wind. Sign of death, for one to hoot during day-light. But lately signs of death were everywhere, com-ing at all hours. Sylva said a spell of safe passage and slipped into the woods, hurrying home as best she could before the sun kissed the edge of the mountains.

"Honey?"

Spence pounded on the typewriter keys, pretending not to hear her.

"Jeff?" Bridget put a hand on his shoulder.

He stopped typing and looked up. "You know not to bother me when I'm working."

"But you didn't even come to bed last night."

He hated the plaintive note in her voice, her eager-ness to please. He despised her concern. Mostly, he was annoyed by the distraction.

"I hope the typewriter didn't keep you awake." He didn't realy care whether it had or not. He was making progress, chasing the elusive Muse, and that was all that mattered.

"No, it's not that," Bridget said. "You just need your rest."

"There wil be plenty of time for rest after I'm dead. But at the moment, I'm feeling particularly and effu-sively alive. So be a dear and let me continue."

"But you missed lunch. That's not like you."

Spence wondered if that was some kind of barb at his weight. But Bridget never criticized. She hadn't the imagination to attack with words. Spence was the reign-ing master of that genre.

"It's also unlike me to interrupt my work to have a litle romantic chat," he said, then stretched his vowels out in his Ashley Wilkes accent. "Now, why don't ya'l make like Scahlett and get yosef gone with the wind?"

"Don't be mean, honey. I'm only trying to help. I want you to be happy. And I know you're only happy when you're working on something."

"Then make me ecstatic," he said. "Leave."

A small sob caught in Bridget's throat. Spence ig-nored it, already turning his attention back to the halffinished page and the thirty other pages stacked beside the Royal. He would do some revision, he knew, but it was excelent work. His best in many years. And he didn't want it to end.

The door opened and he called to Bridget without looking. "I'll see you at dinner," he lied. The door closed softly. Spence smiled to himself. She didn't have enough self-esteem to slam the door in anger. She would be apologizing by this evening, think-ing the little scene was all her fault. She was by far the most enjoyable of Spence's cor-ruptions, out of al the English majors and married pro-fessors and young literary agents and assistant editors who thought they'd falen in love with him. But, in the end, they were nothing, just meaningless stacks of bones, scaffolds to prop him up when the loneliness was un-bearable. When he was working and working wel, he needed no one's love but his own.