CHAPTER 30
'The bridge is gone,' Cris said. 'There's nothing left but some timbers braced against the edge of the cliff.'
'I'm not surprised,' Anna said. 'Korban took everything that belonged to him. A control freak to the end.'
The morning sun had lifted over the ridges, melting the remainder of the frost, and the mist rose off the ground like lost spirits, joining the last threads of smoke from the smoldering house. Anna and Mason sat on bales of hay, along with Zainab and Paul. Anna had tethered the two Morgans to a nearby locust. The other horses and the cattle had wandered into the orchard, no longer fenced off from the sweet autumn grass. Pigs played at the edge of the little pond at the foot of the slope, and wrens sang like the world was new.
Anna checked on Mason again. He held his hand in the watering barrel, where a pipe supplied cold spring water from the hills. He had a second-degree burn. There would probably be scars, but the wounds would heal eventually.
EVERYTHING heals eventually, Anna thought. Even if you don't have the power of charms and spells and herbs. Or the power over life and death.
Paul tore a strip off the waist of his shirt, dipped it in the water, then wrapped Mason's cut arm. 'Used to be a Boy Scout,' he said.
'Eagle?' Mason grunted.
'No. One of the lesser birds. Buzzard, maybe.'
'Sorry about your friend.'
'Yeah. I'll deal with it after I quit lying to myself. After I figure out what happened.'
'We all have our guilt to deal with,' Mason said. 'And we learn from our mistakes.'
'I sure as hell wish I had salvaged my videotapes, though. I could have been rich and famous. Who will ever believe it now?'
'You don't want any evidence,' Mason said. 'And if you look at what you have to pay for success, it's not such a hot deal.'
'Is he in shock?' Anna asked Paul.
Paul looked into Mason's eyes, then felt his pulse. 'No. Maybe on the edge, but-'
'You're not getting rid of me that easily,' Mason said.
'Shock's not a bad way to go,' Anna said. 'A dying soldier's best friend.'
'Where in the world did that come from?'
'I don't know. Just popped into my head.'
Paul stood up and rubbed at his eyes. 'I guess we're all suffering from disorientation. Or maybe mass hysteria. Because my camera didn't lie.'
'All of it had to go,' Anna said. 'Because it all belonged to Ephram Korban.'
'Then how will we ever prove it was real?'
'I don't think we want to prove it,' Mason said.
'I wonder if they saw the smoke from down in the valley,' Cris said.
'Probably not,' Anna said. 'There would have been sirens or a Forest Service helicopter by now.'
It was strange to be reminded that another world existed off this mountaintop, a world of sanity and order, where the dead stayed in the ground for the most part and people drifted through ordinary lives. Anna stood, heading for the wreckage of the barn. 'Good thing the fire department didn't get here in time to put it out, huh? I don't think any part of Ephram should remain.'
'What are we going to tell them?' Mason said. 'I mean, what really happened here?'
'I've got a theory. But a theory's worth about as much as a match in hell. There's supposed to be some old trails that go down the side of the mountain. I'm going to find one and ride down to the river and follow it until it meets a road.'
'Need some company?' Mason asked.
'Not the kind that gets woozy from heights. Plus you need time to heal.'
'I'll go with you,' Zainab said.
Anna shook her head. 'No. They need you here. And I've had a lot of experience with horses. It'll be faster if I go alone.'
Paul nodded. 'The writer's having trouble breathing. Ate a little too much smoke. Good luck, Anna.'
Paul, Cris, and Zainab headed up the road, where Spence and Bridget gathered near the house's foundation like ghosts who felt an obligation to haunt. But there were no more ghosts at Korban Manor. They had all moved on, to wherever their destination had been before Miss Mamie copied them as crude little dolls and Korban hijacked their midnight flight to eternity.
Korban Manor was nothing but ash and charcoal and a sprinkle of embers. And Korban was nothing, just a burned memory, a flash in the cosmic pan. A dream that was already half forgotten, one that faded by the minute, and Anna was sure his magnificent marble grave marker was only a handful of dust, those words TOO SOON SUMMONED crumbled like the lie they were.
Just before sunrise, she'd hiked to Beechy Gap and visited the site of the cabin where she'd seen the strange little carved figures. The cabin was gone, a small pile of ash marking its passage. The figures must have exited, too, wended toward the heavens in smoke and fire. Free at last.
Anna sorted through the fallen barn timbers for a saddle and bridle. She lifted a shattered board and saw Ransom's blank face, a trickle of crusted blood at one corner of his mouth. The scrap of cloth from his charm was clenched in one rigid hand. She covered him before Mason noticed.
The dead deserved her respect. Death wasn't romantic or glamorous. She was through worrying about their motives, their hopes, their endless dreams. Her fascination had faded. She had no desire to ever see another ghost, especially her own.
Even Rachel's, though the two of them had shared an intimate bond that ran far deeper than mere mother and child.
Maybe this was how Anna was destined to belong. Those were her people, her connection, kindred spirits, however briefly. In an odd way, maybe they lingered inside her, invisible, in her blood, in the tainted, cancerous cells that corrupted her organs and pushed her inevitably toward the final darkness. She was as much a ghost as she was a mortal. A stranger in two strange lands.
But they all were. Every organic thing that had ever caught the spark of life. The dying begins with the birth.
So what?
Did she really expect that, by becoming a ghost, she would understand what being a ghost meant? She'd been alive for twenty-six years and had come no closer to the meaning of life in all that time. Why should death be any less of a mystery to those experiencing it?
As for today, the air was fresh and the pain inside was somewhere down around six, an arc and trick, or maybe a five, a broken wing. A hell of a long way from zero. She could live for those who had gone before, and those yet to come. Weeks or months, it was all a precious and fleeting gift.
Anna saw a flash of dull silver in the broken lumber, moved some timbers, and found a bridle, then a saddle and blanket. She pulled them from the rubble. Mason watched with interest as she harnessed one of the Morgans.
Some of the smoke that had collected in her lungs had started to rise. She cleared her throat and spat loudly. 'Is that how they do it in Sawyer Creek?'
Mason smiled at her. It wasn't such a bad smile, though it was surrounded by a face gray from smoke, ash, and weariness. She carried the blanket to him and covered him up.
'Better keep you warm, just in case,' she said.
'Go out frost?'
'That's not funny.'
'I know.'
