figures were clearly visible, dabbed in thick strokes of oil. The woman with the bouquet had moved into the foreground, beyond the railing, and her position had changed, her arms spread, eyes wide. She was falling.
And Mason didn't care what Anna said, all that nonsense about the woman being Anna's mother, because that was Anna's face and those were Anna's eyes and the woman wore that mysterious half smile that no other woman in the world could pull off.
'Ah,' the bust said. 'So it's the woman you want, after all. Precious Anna.'
'What about her?' Mason was far past the point of doubting his sanity. Some artists claimed their work spoke to them, so maybe hearing Korban's voice wasn't unusual. But the dividing line, the step from mere genius into certifiable tortured soul, occurred when you started talking back to the object in question.
'You can have her, once you finish me. I've already promised you fame. And I always keep my promises.'
Mason's response was to take his bull point from the table. He lifted his mallet, bent his elbow to test its weight. He thought about spinning and driving the thick iron point between Korban's eyes. A blow from the mallet would split the bust in half. But how could you kill something that was already dead?
The statue quivered before him, the rough-hewn limbs flexing. Grain split along one forearm, and the block of head tilted, a small knothole parting in the place where Mason had planned to carve the mouth.
'Finish me,' moaned the knothole.
Mason dropped his hammer and stepped back, sweat and sawdust and fear stinging his eyes. The wooden arms reached for him, flecks of curled oak falling from the blunt hands. Mason stumbled against the table, knocking over the bust. He looked down and saw the eyes looking up at him. It was the same cold glare as in Korban's portrait upstairs. Too perfectly the same.
'What about Anna?' Mason said.
'I promise you two will be together. We'll all be one big happy family.'
That made sense, as much sense as Mama watching from the tunnel, and probably a drunken and mean-eyed version of Dad as well. Just like old times, with rats in the walls and darkness all around and Dad passed out on the floor. So if he could drag Anna in there with him, the darkness might be a little more bearable. Korban always kept his promises. How could you not trust those wise and wonderful eyes?
Mason picked up the hatchet. The critics had spoken. More off the left. Finish it. Make it perfect. Big dream image brought to life. Create.
Wood.
Flesh.
Heart.
Dream.
CHAPTER 24
Anna felt as if she were back in one of her dreams, those that had filled her nights in the past year. As she had so many times before, in that lost land of sleep, she approached the manor from the forest. The house's hulking form rose between the trees that surrounded it like guardian beasts. The windows were eyes, glaring and cold even with the light of a dozen fires behind them. The chimneys spouted a breath of ephemeral transition, matter into energy, substance into heat. The front door whispered a soft welcome, the darkness inside promising peace.
But this waking dream had features beyond all those previous ones, as if a seventh sense had been added to her other six. The grass was thick under her shoes and glittering frost clung to the skin of the earth. The sky was bright on both the eastern and western horizons, painted with lavender and maroon by some large and ragged brush. The wind had settled like a sigh, and autumn's surrender hung in the cool air. The manor waited. Ephram Korban waited.
Is this where I belong? Anna thought. Am I really coming home?
Sylva said that Anna was fuel. That Korban would consume her, use her, leave her soul as ashes.
What did it matter? Let her love and hate and anger and pride flow out into the house. Into Ephram Korban. No one else wanted it.
She laughed, giddy as she crossed the porch, the raw static energy of the house flowing over her body, warming her, making her feel wonderful. Coining home. Home is where the heart is.
Miss Mamie was waiting. She opened the door and stepped aside, sweeping her arm out in welcome. 'Ephram said you'd come.'
Anna felt drunk. Even her pain was ebbing, the fires of cancer dying down inside her. She would offer everything. Korban could have her pain, her loneliness, her feeling of never having belonged. Bon appetit.
Yes, she had come home. This place had opened her soul, had allowed her to see ghosts. Given her what she wanted. She could die happy here.
'You're looking lovely this evening, Anna,' Miss Mamie said to her. The words sounded as if they had come from far away. The fire roared and crackled at the end of the foyer. Anna looked at the portrait of Korban above the fireplace. Grandfather. With eyes so bright and loving.
How could she have resisted getting the family back together? Let the circle be unbroken. Did it matter if some were alive and some were dead? When you came right down to it, was there any difference?
One, a dividing line.
Then zero. Nothing. All the same.
Anna looked at the house with new eyes. The columns, the corners, the carving in the hearth, the reddish brown lower paneling, the polished oak floors. She didn't blame Korban for never wanting to leave this beautiful place. She didn't want to leave it now, either.
'You're just in time for the party,' Miss Mamie said. 'Up on the widow's walk.'
Fuel.
Painting.
Something about the painting. Her standing here by the fire. Mason.
'What is it, dear?' Miss Mamie put a cool hand to Anna's cheek. 'You're not feeling ill, are you?'
'Where's Mason?'
'The sculptor? He's busy right now, but he'll be joining us. As soon as he's finished.'
Anna let herself be led to the stairs. Something about the walls bothered her, something she knew she should remember. But they were ascending now, Miss Mamie leading the way. They reached the second-floor landing and Anna looked down the hall toward her room. The astral lamps along the wall seemed to brighten and then dim, as if fed by a slow, even breathing.
They reached the third floor. Anna hadn't been to this part of the manor before, though threads of some dim ancestral memory tugged at her. The walls were covered with boxcar siding, cheap interlocking pine. No paintings hung here. There were doors that must have led to other bedrooms, and gabled windows at each end of the floor. A conductor's lantern on a handmade table near the stair rail was the only light.
The lantern.
Mason had one like it in the basement.
Where was Mason? She tried to picture his face, but it was lost in the mist inside her head, along with everything else. The walls throbbed, swelled, and contracted. The house was moving in rhythm with her breathing. She began to get dizzy, then Miss Mamie leaned her against a small ladder.
Anna looked up, as if through the eye of the world, at the clouds that caught the blue silver of the rising moon. The widow's walk. The top of the end of the world. Where her own ghost waited.
She forced her arms and legs to climb. It was time to meet herself.
Spence had found the Word.
He sensed-no, knew-it would be waiting at the end of this final paragraph.
Truth comes in unlikely packages. The One True God comes in the oddest of shapes. All gifts are weighty. Each gift demands its equal value in sacrifice.
The shifting and bulging walls of the house had distracted him at first. Just another evil, another thing to steal his attention, to turn him from the road to glory. Bridget gasped and screamed as they took form, as the misty
