now than ghost-cold, unwilling to let his id play anymore.
Time to wake up now…
Because Korban was changing, his eyes turning from dead dark orbs into fiery hateful suns.
Because Korban was glowing with loathsome heat, Korban was reaching out to him, reaching in him, into his chest, into his heart-Please, please, please wake up!
Korban's fingers squeezed and new pain erupted, a pain beyond human understanding, so intense that even the dreaming dead Adam screamed, and Korban pulled him deeper into the tunnel, and he knew that what was waiting ahead would be the worst thing that any part of his brain could concoct.
He screamed again, screamed and screamed, closed his dream eyes so that he wouldn't see what was ahead But he knew what was ahead, the thing he'd buried so deeply in his mind that he'd forgotten. Though like all true forced forgettings, it had only gained power during the long years of hibernation. And when a buried memory finally claws through its coffin, digs its way through the dirt to the surface, it's not going to look kindly on the undertaker.
This was a memory that had teeth.
So he screamed again, and the hand in his chest was shaking, shaking him 'Wake up, Adam.'
He opened his eyes, but he was still seeing the glimmers of his buried memory, the image making him throw his arms out in panic. He struck Paul in the shoulder.
'Hey!'
Paul stood beside Adam's bed in his underwear. Adam stared at him, unblinking. A faint fuzz of moonlight leaked through the window and the fire threw red light onto the walls.
'You must have been having a hell of a dream,' Paul said.
Adam lay still, rolling his eyes around in their sockets, his chest sore from remembered pain. The quilts were bunched in knots around him. He glanced at the corners of the room, at the closet door, expecting the freshly exhumed memory to play out its image in the nearest available scrap of shadow. He looked at the portrait above the fireplace, watching for Korban's lips to part and welcome him into the tunnel.
'I mean, you even woke me up with your thrashing around,' Paul said, then added, with the slightest hint of scorn in his voice, 'and I was all the way across the room.'
Adam flexed his fingers, reached up, and wiped the sweat from his forehead and upper lip.
He drew in a breath, a sweet living and waking breath, and nothing had ever tasted so fine, not the chocolate cherry sauce on his favorite sundae, not the driest Chardonnay, not a new love's first kiss.
Paul put his hands on his hips, impatient now. 'Did you dream about my woman in white? Or are you still not talking to me?'
Adam opened his mouth, glad to find the tip of his tongue brushing reassuringly against his teeth.
'You were right about one thing,' Adam whispered, the words dry in his throat. 'It was one hell of a dream.'
CHAPTER 16
Beautiful.
Spence held up the page so the moonlight from the window would flash fully on the words.
It had been waiting here. All these years. The Muse's blessing, the sweet inspiration, the sleeping dream of creation. The Gift.
The house had given him another masterpiece.
He leaned back in his chair and laughed. The sound echoed off the wood of the room, rattled the dresser on the mirror, mocked back at him from the wainscoting, curled around the cornice of the fireplace mantel, played off the cold rock hearth and swirled in the air like stirred dust. Korban's portrait grinned in the mischief of a secret understanding.
The room was much nicer now that it was empty. There was only Spence and the Royal. Spence and words. And the world beyond the words?
The world itself didn't matter. What mattered was the interpretation, the human reflection, the shaping of the illusion. The craft. Symbolism.
The words.
Spence's words.
So what if those latest novels had meandered off course, had failed to sustain themselves, had crept plotless into unresolved graves? The important thing was that Spence had been anointed. The critics loved him. The New York Times Book Review had him on the cover, not once, but twice. And the little people, the aspiring writers and the coffee-shop crowd and pathetic English majors, gobbled up his books like bottom-feeding fish. This was before the era of television talk-show best sellers fashioned their follow-the-leader tastes into a drab society of the mutually hip.
Not that the little people mattered, aside from providing the stimulus of mass adoration. Spence didn't write for them. He didn't write for the critics, either. They were as blind as Homer had been, puffing themselves up as if they had a hand in the creative process, hogs who couldn't recognize they were feeding at the same trough they spat in. Even editors were nothing more than intruders, more in love with the product than the act.
Ultimately, Spence's whole life and career had revolved around the search. There had to be a way to strip away the layers of symbolism, to get right to the heart of the meaning. To reach the truth of things without the distraction of the typewriter's clacking, without the clumsy fingers that served as the brain's agents. Surely a more simple clarity existed than the black and white of ink on pulp.
Soon, he would arrive. At that spiritual pinnacle, the moment when all human history, all universal laws, all theologies, every speck of dust and grain of matter and mote of thought could be condensed to its purest form. When all of everything could become the one.
One true Word.
Spence sighed. Until he achieved that godliness, that command of the essence, he had to work through these idiot tools of language. Poe always ranted about 'unity of effect,' how every word must contribute to the whole. That paranoid, absinthe-swilling madman was on the right path, but wouldn't it be much better to find the single word that was the effect?
At least he could love what he wrote, despite its mortal shortcomings. He read the last completed paragraph.
And he, becoming Night, found his limbs, his blood and joy, stretching across the hills. Seeping out beyond the cold dark stone that was his prison, the mountain that was his sepulcher, the house that was his heart. His fingers were now more than mere trees, his eyes more than mirrors, his teeth more than broken wood. He, becoming Night, could spread his inky waters, could lap his tides at far shores, could engulf and drown the surrounding nondarkness that no longer threatened.
The Night walked both sides of dawn, once again bold and dreaming.
Spence laid the page on the desk. He rubbed his eyes. Two days. Had he been writing for two days?
His stomach gurgled. He could use something to eat. Bridget would be waiting at breakfast. Maybe he would even deign to forgive her.
He rolled a blank page into the Royal before leaving the room so it would be waiting when he returned. He looked back at it from the doorway. The white paper glared accusingly at him.
'Don't worry, the Word will come,' he said to it, to the room, to the house and whatever was waiting in its walls. Then he closed the door.
Sylva crossed the cabin floor and tossed a pinch of salt in the fire to keep the fetches away. Then she put the poultice on Anna's knee where the cuts were deepest. A little of the gummy mixture dribbled out of the cloth and ran down Anna's leg.
'That ought to mend you up right nice,' Sylva said.
'What's in it?'
'The usual. Chimney soot and molasses mixed with a little pine rosin. It's best to wrap a cut with a cobweb, but ain't many spiders this high up.'
