log on their toes, but at last it stood upright, supported by scrap lumber and wires tied to flails in the joists overhead.
'That had better be some statue, after all this trouble,' Miss Mamie had called from the head of the basement stairs before slamming the door and leaving Mason alone.
No. Not alone.
He lifted the sheet of canvas. The face of Ephram Korban stared at him. Had Mason really carved such smug perfection? But the work wasn't complete. Now that Korban had a face, he needed legs, arms, hands, an oak heart.
This would be the sculpture that earned Mason Beaufort Jackson a mention in the magazines. Forget The Artist's Magazine or Art Times. This baby was going to land him in the pages of Newsweek. Mason began writing headlines and article leads in his head, a feature in Sculpture to start with.
MILLTOWN BOY MAKES GOOD
If you heard that an artist was named 'Mason Jackson,' you'd automatically assume that he'd adopted a nom de plume.
(Wait a second, 'nom de plume' is only for authors. Okay, call it a pseudonym then. The article writer would work that bit out.)
But there's nothing put on about this up-and-coming sculptor. Jackson has been called 'the Appalachian Michelangelo.' This young southern artist may have his feet planted in the land of moonshine and ski slopes, but his hands have descended from a more heavenly plane. Jackson's sculpture series, The Korban Analogies, is opening to wide acclaim at the Museum of Modern Art in Philadelphia and will soon cross the ocean to London and Paris, where critics have already rested the heavy crown of 'Genius ' on the unprepossessing man's head.
Jackson's tour deforce is the powerful Korban Emerging (pictured, left), which Jackson calls 'a product of semidivine guidance.' The Rodinesque muscularity and massiveness of the work has impressed even the most jaded critics, but there's also a singular delicacy to Jackson's piece.
No less a discerning eye than Winston De-Bussey's has found the work faultless. He calls Mason an 'uncanny master' of wood, a medium in which so few top artists dare to work these days.
'It is as if there is no difference between the pulp and human tissue,' raves DeBussey in a rare moment of expansiveness. 'Jackson breathes organic life into every swirl of grain. One almost expects to look down and see roots, as if the statue is continually replenishing itself from the juice and salt of earth.'
But Jackson takes the praise in stride, offering little insight into the mind behind the man.
'Each piece is conceptualized through a dream image,' Jackson said, speaking from his farmhouse-cum- studio in Sawyer Creek, a small mill town nestled in the North Carolina foothills. 'And I have absolutely nothing to do with that part of the process. My job is to take that fragile gift and somehow not misinterpret it through these clumsy human hands. Because the dream is the important thing, not the dreamer'
If Mason started talking like that, Junior would elbow him in the ribs and Mama would make him stop watching public television. Such nonsense would earn him some funny looks at the hosiery mill, where he was more at home than in any art museum. He could fool himself into thinking he was good, but fooling others was much harder. If he wanted to fool the entire world, this monstrous piece of oak before him needed to be turned into the most beautiful dream image ever conceived.
First he'd have to skin the bark.
Then find the man inside.
He lifted the hatchet, looked at the dark spaces in the corners of the basement. He didn't belong in the mill. This was what he was bom for, the reason he'd come to Korban Manor. He'd never felt so alive.
He thought of Anna's words, how Ephram Korban's spirit lived on in these walls. How a soul might be nothing more than the sum of a person's mortal dreams. How dreams could lie. How dreams could turn to ash.
No. This dream was real.
The hatchet bit into the wood.
The bony hand on Anna's shoulder tugged her shirt, lifted her. So the ghostman had her now. She was finally going to find out what it was like to be dead. Or maybe she was already a ghost, because the worst of the pain was fading.
Anna tried to stand, but her legs were like damp smoke. She knelt on one bloody knee, feeling for purchase among the broken boards. She opened her eyes to face the dead thing, resigning herself to crawl into the dark tunnel.
But it wasn't the leering spirit that held her. It was an old woman.
'Ought to watch yourself a mite better,' the woman said.
Her face was wrinkled, the moonlight revealing her swollen veins, her eyebrows as white as ice. But the blue eyes set among those sagging folds of skin were bright, young, intelligent. And Anna recognized the shawl that was draped around the woman's stooped shoulders.
'You were at the cabin-'
'Hush yourself, child. I seen what you seen, and we both seen way too much. Let's get away from here, then we can have us a long chat.'
Anna got to her feet, pushing the broken boards away from her legs. The pain was gone, and the ring of fire around her ankle had faded. The moon was higher now, approaching the zenith of its arc.
Anna studied the rubble. It could all have been a dream, except for the tearing of her clothes and skin.
'Come on away from there. George got fetched over, but that don't mean you got to go yet,' the woman said.
The old woman led Anna from the fallen building. The woman had surprising strength for someone who appeared to be in her eighties. Anna watched her climb over the flat rocks with the agility of a mountain goat, even though she used a thick walking stick to steady herself. Anna looked for her flashlight, but it must have rolled into the thorny underbrush and out of sight. She hurried after the woman.
The old woman paused on a table of rock, looking out over the great expanse of mountains. The sky was woolen gray, but Anna could make out the ripples and swells of earth stretching out to the horizon.
'Korban about snatched you,' the woman said without turning toward Anna. 'Thought I'd get a chance to warn you first. But old Ephram's always been the impatient sort.'
'Ephram Korban, you mean?'
'The master of these here parts. Or, at least, he likes to think so.'
'But you're talking in present tense. He's dead.'
'Like that matters much.' She spat off the rock into the tops of the trees below.
'Who was that woman I saw?' Anna's head was clearing a little. 'And the little girl at the cabin?'
The old woman laughed, but it was a broken gargle, heavy with cynicism. 'You got the Sight, all right. Knew it when I first laid eyes on you. Now, no more questions till we get away from this place. 'Cause this place is Korban's.'
Anna followed the woman off the rock and down the narrow trail, amazed at the way the woman's hard leather shoes dodged over protruding roots and stones, the walking stick nimbly stabbing at the dirt in search of purchase. They headed off the ridge to the back side of Beechy Gap.
Anna paused to catch her breath, rubbing her abdomen. 'One question. What does 'go out frost' mean?'
'Old mountain spell. Means 'dead stay dead.' ' Anna would have to remember that one. She hoped that, unlike what Ransom had said about horseshoes and four-leaf clovers, this little piece of magic hadn't been worn thin by time.
Adam had spent the long hours of insomnia trying to nab the thoughts that orbited his head like space junk. And most of the thoughts were about asking Miss Mamie if there was a way he could cancel his stay at the manor. He didn't care about a refund. Paul could remain with his camera and his pouty lips and his arrogance for the rest of the six weeks, as far as Adam was concerned. All Adam needed was a ride out of this place.
They'd had another argument, this one in the study after carrying the log into the basement. Paul was showing off for William Roth, who was hitting on several women at once, and Adam tried to get Paul aside for a chat. Paul had sneered and said, 'Why don't you go to bed, Princess? I know how bored you get talking about anything besides yourself.'
Adam had finally fallen asleep sometime around what felt like midnight, though the moon was so bright that time hadn't seemed to pass at all. And again he'd had the dream, the dream of the fall from the widow's walk. But
