ridges in the hard heart of the Appalachian winter. If she died here, her spirit would answer its true calling, her ghost would drift above the manor just as she'd seen so many times in her dreams.
And was that so bad?
As long as Rachel Faye Hartley stayed in the graveyard or haunted the trails of Beechy Gap, never crossing this threshold of stone and wood, then Anna could be as content as any dead and restless thing. To gaze from the widow's walk, a widow without a husband to mourn, nor even a mother for that matter, and wait for whatever came after the passing of forever. Could such an afterlife possibly be worse than her actual life, which she had drifted through without any positive effect, never knowing the full and mysterious power of love?
No. Death could never be worse than this life, the one that cancer had invaded, where she had been abandoned, where she had walked a million sad miles alone.
'Anna?'
God. Not him, not now. She wiped quickly at her eyes, pretending they had been stung by the smoke that came down the chimney as the wind turned. 'Hi, Mason.'
'I'm glad I found you. I've been meaning to ask you something.'
'As long as it's not personal.'
'Hey, are you okay? You look a little shook-up.'
'Like I've seen a ghost?' Anna managed a bitter laugh.
'Well, that's sort of what I wanted to ask you about. Because there's a painting of Korban Manor down in the basement-'
Anna moved closer to the inviting warmth of the foyer's fireplace, rubbing her hands together. The action was designed to put distance between her and Mason, but he hovered uncomfortably near. He checked the hallways, then spoke, his voice lower.
'The painting has a smudge on the rooftop,' he said. 'And the way the paint's breaking down, it looks like the artist may have hidden some figures on an earlier layer of paint, sort of like a subliminal image. Because the smudge is starting to look like people.'
'Don't artists sometimes recycle their canvases? Maybe the painter covered over a mistake or a rough draft.'
'Well, that's what I thought, too. But now I can see their faces.'
Anna looked up at Korban's portrait, wondered how many times that face had lived in a painter's fevered mind, how many hours her long-dead relative had sat in stiff repose as an adored subject. Even Cris had talked about how the manor and Korban's face kept creeping into her mind until all her fingers wanted to do was record him in charcoal, ink, and Conte crayon. And Mason had told Anna about the bust of Korban, how the dead man's image haunted his sleep and drove him into obsessive bouts of work.
'Let me guess,' Anna said. 'One of the faces is Ephram Korban's. Because you see him every time you close your eyes.'
'One of them is Ephram Korban.' He glanced sideways at the portrait, as if not quite trusting it enough to turn his back to it. 'But that's not so strange, considering that nobody seems to do anything creative around here without invoking the old bastard in some way or another.'
'He looks sort of charming, doesn't he?'
'As charming as a nest of snakes, maybe.'
'Korban gets painted a lot around here. Big deal. What else is strange about the painting?'
'One of the other faces. I mean, the oil paint is dry, and from the dust on the frame, it might be a year old, or might be twenty. Maybe more. And you told me you'd never been here before.'
'I never lie, unless I have a good reason.' Except to myself I've been lying to myself since before I learned to speak.
'Then, since you're a ghost hunter, you might be interested to know that your face is in the painting.'
The fire spat an ember onto the hearth, toward Anna. Mason crushed it out with his foot.
'Show me,' Anna said.
CHAPTER 19
William Roth pulled the negatives from the glass jar with practiced movements. He'd unwound hundreds of rolls of film, but this was the first time he'd done it in a wine cellar. A red light would have been handy, but this was no harder than developing in a tent in Sudan or a shack in the Amazon basin. He'd mixed the chemicals by the light of a lantern, doused the flame, done his business, and rinsed thoroughly.
All that remained was to let the film dry. The basement air was still, which might help keep the heavy dust off the emulsion. Dust hung everywhere about this place, what with the ashes of constant fires drifting about. And that fellow Mason with all his sawdust and grit.
Roth felt along the surface of the workbench, found the matches and the warm globe of the lantern, then stroked the match to life and touched it to the wick. He'd rigged a piece of twine across the small room, and now attached the six rolls of film to it using clothespins borrowed from the maid. After hanging the last strip, adding an extra clothespin at the bottom to take the curl out of the celluloid, he brought the lantern closer for a look at his work.
Ah, there were those shots from the bridge, and even colorless, and with black, white, and shades of gray reversed, he could tell the photos would add to the legend that was Roth. He scanned down the squares of images, coming to those of the bridge and Lilith.
'Bloody hell?' He brought the lantern closer, even though he risked warping the celluloid with the heat.
There spanned the length of bridge, where it disappeared into the trees leading back to Black Rock and civilization. Those creepy ravens were perfectly plain in reverse image along the bridge rails, and the frosted spiderweb hung in the pictures like a dark piece of lace. But Lilith didn't appear in any of them.
Roth wiped his eyes. Maybe he'd advanced the film too far, taken the shots of her after he'd reached the end of the roll. That was the sort of thing amateurs did, gawps and ninnies, not masters. When was the last time Roth had made a mistake?
'Bloody goddamned hell,' he whispered, his accent a blend of Manchester and lower-class Cleveland. Maybe it was time for a drink, a comfy fireside, and a bit of rest. The fringe benefits of fame and fake charisma might prove to be fleeting if he kept on like this. Especially since Spence was proving to be a stone wall. If Roth's luck didn't improve soon, he might start blaming the curse of Korban or some such.
He lifted the lantern high, the dusty bottoms of the bottles surrounding him like ancient eyes. He pulled a bottle from the rack that lined one wall. The dark glass bore a plain label, corked right here at the estate. In ink, someone had handwritten 1909. Probably a decent year. Decent enough to blot out that memory of the bridge, at any rate. And maybe decent enough to warm the heart and part the legs of the fair and tender Lilith.
Roth tucked the bottle under his arm and left the basement, his photographs consigned to the darkness.
'She won't let me leave,' Adam said.
'Damn.' Paul took another draw off his joint. The sweet smell of marijuana drifted across the back porch. 'Too bad, Princess.'
Paul's third joint of the day. Rational conversation would be impossible. But then, hadn't it always been? There wasn't much left to discuss anyway.
Adam stood against the rail, staring out at the mountains. Paul sat in one of the mule-eared rockers, not bothering to move his chair closer to Adam's. The noise of the piano leaked from the study, drowning out the morning song of birds. Someone laughed drunk-enly inside the house, no doubt another suffering artist who had self-inflicted misery to drive away.
Adam didn't even have that pathetic excuse for his nightmares. Because he'd gone to bed cold sober, and his mind was far too clear, preserving every detail of his death and subsequent resurrection.
'You know something?' Paul's face looked sinister as he sucked in a lungful of smoke. He held it in, then exhaled toward Adam with an exaggerated flourish. 'Maybe if you'd loosen up, you could get a little more joy out of life. Do you always have to be so damned serious about everything?'
