he blinked himself awake, blood leaking down his scalp, he saw swirls in the grain of the wainscoting.
The wall was moving, or else his head was swimming. No, it wasn't the wall. It was something inside the wall.
A face took shape and emerged from the wood. The face split in a grin as it stepped into the hall. The ghost of George Lawson waved its spare hand and drifted toward Mason.
Korban shattered the latch and the basement door swung open. Mason forced himself to stand and ran toward the cook, hoping she was as soft as she looked. He ducked low and dived toward her knees, the way he'd been taught in peewee football back in Sawyer Creek. His bones jarred as he plowed into her chilly flesh, and he heard something pop in his shoulder.
Ghosts weren't supposed to be solid. But then, ghosts weren't supposed to be at all. The cleaver whistled through the air and he looked up just in time to see the cook's face, dead and unchanged. She could just as easily have been chopping carrots for a stew.
He tried to roll to his left, but the cleaver glanced off his upper biceps. He let out an agonized breath, and drops of blood were flung across his face as she raised the cleaver for another blow. He crawled like a crippled spider across the floor, skittering past her, Korban's massive feet thundering down the hall.
Mason leaped for the stairs, grabbing the rail to pull himself forward. His heart throbbed, sending fresh rushes of blood from his wound as he careened up the steps. The blood reassured him in an odd way, a reminder that he was still alive. In a world where dreams made nightmares, blood was welcome, and pain meant that he could still feel.
Mason reached the second-floor landing and peered down the hall to the master bedroom. William Roth stood in the shadows beside Spence's closed door.
'Run,' Mason yelled, fumbling to close the torn gap in his arm. 'The ghosts-Korban-'
Then all speech was lost as Roth stepped into the light of the astral lamps. The photographer's face hung in rags, a crisscross of fresh scars making a gridwork of his smile. His eye sockets were blank, like empty lenses.
The photographer held out a pale fist as Mason tried to shape his vocal cords into a scream.
'Hiyer, mate,' the Roth-ghost said, the words mumbled and muffled. The sliced lips opened again, and wet spindly things fell from the dead man's mouth and began crawling down his ripped shirt. Spiders.
Both ends of the hall darkened. A harsh wind extinguished the lamps on the walls. It was the long dark tunnel, rushing at him from two directions, that would lead Mason back to the rats.
Ransom's voice crept from the walls. 'We got tunnels of the soul, Mason.'
The statue clambered up the stairs, awkward as a drunken mannequin. Mason peeked over the banister and saw the bust cradled in the statue's arm like an infant carried by its mother.
The bust's maple lips parted, and a cry echoed off the woodwork, as if the entire house joined voice with Korban: 'Finish MEEEEEE.'
Mason fled up the stairs. The third floor was dark. Only a milky spill of moonlight through the windows prevented Mason from running full-speed into a wall. He tried to suck breath into his lungs, but the black air was like a solid thing, a suffocating thickness. Mason heard voices and looked up, saw the square of lesser darkness.
The trapdoor to the widow's walk.
Where Anna's ghost had screamed from the painting.
The swollen moon rose, cutting through the tree branches. The forest glittered with frost, and Anna's breath hung silver before her. Miss Mamie led her to the railing, and Anna looked out across the land that would be her home. She belonged to this house, to this mountain, to Ephram Korban.
'You're beautiful,' Miss Mamie said, lifting her lantern to Anna's face. 'I can see why Ephram wants you so badly. For that, and for your gift.'
The Abramovs sat in their chairs, drew their instruments to their bodies like the meat of lovers. Paul perched his video camera on a tripod, Adam watching him. Cris and Zainab chatted near the bar, Lilith laughing and filling their glasses. Other guests stood in a cluster by the far railing, talking in low, excited voices.
'You know why you're here, don't you, Anna?' Miss Mamie said.
'Because I belong here.' The words were someone else's.
'So do I,' Sylva said, and Miss Mamie turned, faced the old woman.
'No,' Miss Mamie said, cheeks burning with rage. 'This is Ephram's night. He told me you'd never be back, that he had used you up.'
'Ephram needs me more than he needs you.'
'I kept him alive, and he kept me young. Look at you, you pathetic sack of skin and bones. And you thought he could ever love such as you.'
'Love's like a door that swings both ways. And so's death. Frost and fire. But you wouldn't know that, would you? You don't know a thing about magic, or spells, or faith, or any of the things that kept Ephram's spirit here all these years.'
'You're just a crazy old witch-woman, muttering over dust and herbs. I'm the one he needs. I know how to make the poppets.'
'Well, he'll be along shortly, and you can just ask him for yourself. Now, what do we do about dear little Anna?'
'Anna?'
Anna lifted her head at the mention of her name, the night like water, the world in slow motion.
The Abramovs began a solemn duet, bows sliding across the strings with melancholy softness, the notes vibrating on the wind. This was Anna's house. She wasn't Anna Galloway, had never been. That life was a dream, the lethal cancer a bell that had sounded her home, death just a slow transition that carried her back to herself.
She was Anna Korban.
And she would walk these walls forever.
The cold of the world became the coldness inside her, the frozen heart of forever, as she stepped to that dividing line.
'What about her?' Sylva said.
'Oh, Anna dies,' Miss Mamie said. 'For the last time.'
CHAPTER 26
Mason scrambled through the trapdoor and up into the cold night.
The presence of the great space around him, and the depth below, made his head swim and his stomach lurch. The sea of night and the distant rolling waves of the mountains took the strength from his legs, as if they were boneless. He forced himself not to think about the ground far below on all sides. A pathetic fear of heights paled in comparison to all the new fears he'd discovered.
Mason blinked the blood from his eyes and took in the unreal scenery of the widow's walk. Anna was by the rail, between Miss Mamie and an old woman in a filthy dress and shawl. They seemed to be arguing over Anna, who looked drugged or sleepy, swaying in the strange light cast by the moon. Mason's sweat cooled in the autumn air, and he touched the gash in his shoulder. The pain yanked him alert, and he ran to Anna.
'The painting,' he said. 'You were calling to me.'
'Who are you?' Anna said.
'Where's the statue?' Miss Mamie asked him. 'You didn't leave it down there alone, did you?'
He looked behind him, at the trapdoor. 'We've got to get out of here, Anna.'
Mason took her arm, and the coldness of her skin flooded through him like an electric shock. He looked into her eyes and saw a blackness inside that never ended. Tunnels. Her eyes were tunnels of the soul, leading down to death or opening from a deeper darkness inside her.
Before he could shake her, ask her what was wrong, the statue stuck its rough-hewn head through the opening. Shrieks erupted from some of the guests as the statue rose awkwardly onto the widow's walk, its heavy limbs clattering, Mason's chisel still in its chest, the bust tucked under its thick wooden arm. The Abramovs stopped
