Free The Manor by Scott Nicholson Page A

up. He was like a beached whale—fun to poke while blood could be drawn, but shunned after becoming a bloated, gassy corpse.
    "I would think this place would be rather inspiring for a man of your genius," Roth said, barely disguising the taunt.
    Spence didn't rise to the bait. He'd probably read too many of his publisher's press releases, the ones that kept promising a coming masterpiece. "This is the one, Mr. Roth. This is the work that wil earn the Nobel Prize for Literature. It's about time an American brought home that particular piece of hardware. Nothing personal, mind you." Roth turned up one palm in submission. His British accent had fooled even Spence, a man who had trained himself to observe human behavior. Spence's girlfriend brought the writer his drink, put it in his hand, and du-tifully returned to his shadow.
    Roth smiled at her and then began the laborious task of drawing Spence into his trust.
CHAPTER 6
    I'm a ghoulie-chasing fool.
    Anna let the yellow beam of the flashlight lead her as if she had no will of her own. She found herself heading up a forest trail, onto one of the narrower worn paths crowded by laurel. The waxy leaves brushed against her face and hands. Crickets and katydids launched their choruses from the obscurity of the dark forest. You follow and you follow and you never catch up. You reach out and they dance away. You run and they run faster. You look in the dark and see nothing but darkness.
    Ghosts played by their own rules. Anna had a hunch that ghosts didn't need to unravel secrets, didn't de-mand explanations. Life's great mysteries must mean very little to those no longer living. Undoubtedly all spirits received the necessary explanations as a gift to welcome them to the afterlife. But perhaps the dead needed amusement. Eternity surely got tedious after a while.
    Anna wasn't worried about getting lost in the woods, even though Korban Manor's lighted windows had disappeared from view. After leaving the house, she'd stopped by the barn and found four horses in their stalls. She had massaged their necks and stroked the bristling hairs above their noses. She was comforted by their warm animal smel. The aroma of straw and manure brought back memories of one of her foster families, who had kept a farm in West Virginia. Anna had grown into a woman that summer. Her first sexual experience was with the handsome but dul boy who came every other day to colect the eggs. She'd also spent hours in the weedy local cemetery, sit-ting among the crumbling, ilegible markers, wonder-ing about the people under the ground and the part of them that might have survived the crush of dirt and decay.
    And still she wondered, her curiosity sending her into anthropology at Duke University and parapsychol-ogy at the Rhine Research Center, and now out into the night woods. Roads that never ended, a seeking that never found. The moon and a sprinkle of starlight gave vague shape to the landscape. She folowed the ridge to the point where the ground sloped rapidly away. Boulders gleamed like bad teeth in the weak light. Beyond the field of stone was a yawning gap of black valley, dusted silver by an early frost.
    The ribs and ripples of the Blue Ridge Mountains roled out toward the horizon, the distant twinkle of the town of Black Rock set among them like blue and or-ange jewels. A jet's winking red light cut a dotted line in the east. A little flying tin can of humanity, some passengers probably afraid of a crash, some munching stale peanuts, others longing for a cigarette. Most with thoughts of relatives, spouses, and lovers recently vis-ited or waiting at airport terminals ahead.
    All with places to go, things to look forward to. People to belong to. Hopes, dreams, futures. Life. She thought of that Shirley Jackson line, "Journeys end in lovers meeting." Yeah, right. Journeys end in death, and lovers never meet.
    She turned from the lights that were starting to blur in her vision and put aside her self-pity. She had