shapes fell from the ceiling and rose from the oak flooring, as they drifted cold and hollow through the room.
Spence impatiently brushed them away. The True Shining Path beckoned him, and all else was superfluous poppycock and bombast, literistic excess. The True Path led to the next sentence that caused the next word to press itself into the wood pulp, as metal hammered ink into paper into existence.
The night was ready, breath borrowed and held prisoner, lungs of ebony and earth, feet of granite, arms sweeping seasons of sleep from the eyes of the sightless. October screamed, a carpet of frost, a turn of brown wind, the end of something. Time turned backward, cold to hot, hard water. Go out frost and come in…
He tilted forward in his chair, not caring if the chilled air sapped his strength. He needn't waste his flesh on Bridget. He had a better intercourse here, himself and the True Word. White shadows moved across the room in silence, the fire paused in consuming, his fingers itched.
Come in… what?
The Word hung there, teasing, waiting, drawing him body and soul onward hovering ever out of reach.
'I say, chap, what are you waiting for?'
Spence thought at first the line had come from his own mind a bit of clipped dialogue that was trying to force its way into the narrative. The fire roared, yet a frigid breeze skirled across the back of his neck. His fingers rested on the desk.
The voice came again, no Muse, no Bridget, no Korban. 'Get on with it, man. It's not the bleeding end of the world yet.'
Spence turned glared at the photographer who stood in the corner of the room, face obscured by shadows. 'Damn you, why didn't you knock? I can't abide interruptions when I'm working.'
Roth's accent flattened became nasally and mid-western. 'We got tunnels of the soul, Jeff. And guess what's inside yours?'
'You're mad' Spence said. 'Come out where I can see you.'
The photographer waved a quick hand toward the portrait of Korban. 'He said you can have a typewriter, but all the keys will be stuck.'
Spence tried to rise, anger throbbing through him and sending a bright flash of pain across his left temple.
Roth laughed his voice changed pitch, accelerated into that shrill and strident voice from Spence's past. The voice of Miss Eileen Foxx. 'I before E except after PEEEE,' she said Roth's body shaking with her gleeful laughter.
'F-f-foxx in socks?' Spence said confused his chest split with pain. A warmth spread around his groin, an unfamiliar wetness that was almost pleasant.
Roth moved back into the shadows and was gone. Eileen Foxx's last admonishment hung in the air like a threat: 'You'd better make the grade, Jefferson, or I'll be waiting. Yessirree, you'll be staying after school with me.'
Spence stared into the fire until the dampness between his legs grew cold, then he faced the typewriter again, the words on the page almost like symbols etched by people from some lost civilization. They no longer had meaning, but he knew he wasn't finished. He needed that word.
The class would laugh at him if he didn't find the word.
Mason lifted the bull point again, the mallet in his slick right hand. The pile of wood shavings was ankle-deep around him, the statue hewn into a recognizable shape. The head needed a lot of work, but the arms and legs were there, the torso as strong and ugly as a stump. This was a hideous masterpiece, a raw stroke of genius, a creative vision that no eyes should ever see.
Eyes.
The thing needed eyes, so that it might see. And once it could see, then what?
'You're not working, sculptor,' the bust said.
'I'm thinking,' Mason said.
'You'll think when I tell you. Now finish.'
Finish. And he could have it all, fame, fortune, Mama's approval. And the girl. Oh, don't forget the girl.
He looked at the painting again. The painted Anna had changed position, was definitely falling, and her arms were now spread wide, the bouquet slipping from her fingers, the half smile shifted to a dark, round tunnel of a scream.
Anna. Something about Anna that he should remember, if only he could think about anything besides the statue.
The whispers spilled from the corner of the basement, and he was afraid the tunnel had opened again, that Mama would come out and sniff at him with her pointy rodent nose, show her sharp teeth, wriggle her whiskers, and tell him about the power of dreams.
But the whisper stirred again, and the voice was Anna's: 'Mason.'
The voice was coming from the painting.
'Don't listen to her, sculptor,' the bust said. 'I need you. Give me my eyes. And my mouth. I'm hungry.'
Anna spoke again from the painting. 'He's burning you up, Mason. He's burning us all.'
'Work,' the bust commanded.
'Burning our dreams,' Anna said. 'The closer I get to being dead, the more I understand.'
Being dead? Anna?
He had to find her. Something was wrong. Something was wrong with him. He looked at his blistered hands, the tools, the things that had shaped these monstrosities before him. Where had these graven idols come from? Not from his own imagination, that was certain.
'Dream me to life,' the bust commanded. 'Don't stop now.'
Dream Korban.
No.
He wanted his own dreams. Good or bad, whether or not they ever brought him fame. Whether or not they made Mama proud.
He wanted his own dreams. Not Korban's.
Mason raised the bull point, pressed it into the hulking chest of the statue, swept his arm back, and smashed the mallet into the steel. The bust screamed. Mason flung the hammer at the bust, knocking it to the floor.
'Sculptorrrrr,' Korban roared, voice like a thousand wildfires eating the air in the room, shaking the timbers of the house.
The statue quivered, its limbs moved with a groan of splinters, then it tore itself free from the nails that held it to the support boards. The wooden hands reached up and fumbled with the wires. The legs had been divided at the bottom, but the feet were not refined, mere dark clumps of oak covered in bark. The heavy feet scraped across the floor.
Moving toward him.
Mason kicked the table, tumbling the lantern over. The flame extinguished as the globe shattered. They were in darkness.
Both he and Korban.
Except Korban was used to darkness, Korban fed on darkness, Korban was darkness.
Mason groped in front of his face and headed toward where he thought the stairs were. He tripped over something metallic, then he fell into the arms of the animated statue, his bones knocking on wood No, it was only an old four-poster bed frame. But he was confused now, all directions the same, and he heard the twitching and squeaking behind him. Rodent noises.
No, no, no, not the crib.
And on the tail of that thought came another, equally frightful one. He had longed to create a lasting work of art. And he had done it. This was his undying success.
The statue's limbs snapped as it searched for its maker, the sound like dry bones breaking. Korban was stretching, trying on his new body in the darkness. His wonderful but clumsy body, crafted by Mason's loving touch.
'I'm blind,' came Korban's muffled voice, as if he were chewing on sawdust. 'You haven't finished my eyes.'
Mason's fingers brushed one of the support beams. He ducked behind it and knelt in the dark. He tried to
