But now, MOW…
"Now we are ready," he said from the mirror. "Just as I promised."
Her heart accelerated and her palms grew moist. She placed a hand on the mirror's smooth surface. Ephram's face coalesced in the reflection of the firelight. A row of peeled apples hung drying on a string by the fire, carved into heads, with protruding ears and noses. The eyes and mouths glistened like scars. The faces would take shape as they dried, taking on their own unique features.
"How do you like them?" she asked.
"You've chosen well." Ephram's voice was low and sibilant.
"They will feed you, given time." Miss Mamie looked into those seductive eyes. She felt a flush of warmth. Her love had never faltered.
Her dead husband's eyes flared in a storm of red and gold. "Even now, their dreams give me strength. And the blue moon is coming again."
"Just like the night you died."
"Please, my love. You know I don't favor that word. It sounds so… permanent."
"What about Sylva?" Miss Mamie said, lowering her eyes, anticipating his anger.
"What of her? She's just an old witch-woman with a sack of feathers, weeds, and old bones. Her power is nothing but the pathetic power of suggestion. But mine "- his voice rose, thunderous, until she was afraid that the guests upstairs might hear-"mine is the power that shapes both sides."
"So many years." Miss Mamie ran her hands over the neckline of her lace nightgown. "I don't know if I can wait much longer."
"Patience, my heart's love. These are special. These are true makers. They carve me, they write me, they draw me into life. Their hands give me shape, their minds give me substance. They make me just as you make them. And soon, Margaret-"
Ephram reached up through the mist that swirled inside the mirror and placed his palm against the glass. Miss Mamie put her fingers on the mirror, craving the cruel and arousing electricity of his touch. Her dead husband smiled.
"Soon all those we have sacrificed will find their home, their true eternal life, in me. I will have what any lord and master deserves."
"What any lord and master deserves," she repeated in a whisper. Then the mists faded. Ephram collapsed into an ethereal smoke, and the mirror was again clear.
She studied her own face. She was a lucky woman. Her own hopes and dreams were about to be reborn. Soon Ephram could escape the mirror, these walls, this house. Soon she could touch his flesh again.
She went to bed, alone with her lust. Patience, she told herself. Ephram had promised her. And Ephram always kept his promises.
CHAPTER 7
"I need something stronger."
"You ain't supposed to come out here in broad daylight, Ransom. What if somebody seen you?"
"I'm scared. I ain't coming out here in the dark. It's bad enough when you can see, and it's getting worse."
"Was you followed?"
"Not by none of the guests. Miss Mamie told them they ain't allowed up Beechy Gap. But the others"- Ransom lowered his voice and hunched his head as if afraid that the cabin's knotty walls were listening- "you know, them-they's everywheres now."
Sylva Hartley bent and spat into her fireplace. The liquid hissed and cracked, then evaporated against the flaming logs. She ran the back of her leathery hand against her shriveled mouth. She looked past Ransom, staring down the decades that were as dark as the smoky stones beneath the hearth.
"Lord knows it's getting worse," she finally said in agreement. She pulled her frayed shawl up around her neck.
"The last charm worked right fair for a while. Kept them scared off. But now, they just laugh at me when I do my warding."
Sylva thought Ransom ought to have a little more faith. That was the key: faith. All the charms in the world didn't amount to a hill of beans if you didn't believe. Ransom had been raised Christian, and that was all fine and dandy. But when you got right down to it, some things were older and ran deeper than religion.
It was too bad about George Lawson. George was an outsider, not born on the mountain. He didn't know what he was up against. With the proper charms, he might have dodged Ephram's little games.
But maybe not. Ransom was right. They were getting stronger. Ephram was getting stronger. And now George was on their side, too. Along with all the other people Ephram had fetched over in the last hundred years.
"You mind flipping them johnny cakes?" she said.
Ransom crossed the floor of the cabin to the little blue steel cookstove. He turned the cakes in the skillet. The smell of scorched cornmeal filled the room.
"They don't stay invisible no more," he said, his back to her. "It used to be just Korban, and you only seen him in the Big House once in a while. But the others, they been walkin'."
"The blue moon in October. A time of magic. Right magic and wrong magic."
"What are you gonna do?" Ransom's voice trembled.
She didn't blame him for being scared. She was scared, too, but she didn't dare let it show. "First off, I'm going to have me a bite to eat. After that, I guess we'll just have to see what the cat drug in."
Ransom handed her a plate made of hammered tin. He had laid a fried piece of side pork beside the johnny cakes. Liquid fat pooled in the bottom of the plate and dripped out a small hole in the metal. Sylva put the plate on one arm of her rocker so the grease wouldn't stain her clothes.
"It's the people, ain't it?" Ransom asked, the firelight glittering in his eyes. "The people staying at the Big House."
Sylva said nothing, just worked the pig gristle between the stumps of her teeth. There was a generous hunk of meat in the fat. Ransom always made sure she got one of the better slabs whenever they slaughtered and smoked one of the manor's hogs. She figured she ate almost as well as the fancy guests.
She swallowed the pork, then drained a cup of sassafras tea. Finally, she spoke, gazing into the fire, at the yellow and orange and bright blue. "It's the people. And the girl. The one with the Sight."
Even though her voice was soft, the words were as thick as thunder in the damp air of the cabin. The whole forest had grown quiet, as if the trees were bending in to listen. She was sure a catbird had been warbling out a happy sunrise song only minutes before.
"First he claimed the dead ones, now he's going after the live ones," Ransom said. "They's got to be some kind of ritual or other you can use against him."
"You forget. We got to play by the rules. But Ephram Korban, he ain't beholden to nothing. Not man nor God nor none of my little bags of stoneroot and bear teeth and hawk feathers."
Ransom touched the pocket of his coveralls.
"But just keep right on believin'," she said. "The ashes of a prayer are mightier than the highest flames of hell."
"I'd best be getting back. Got the livestock to tend to. And Miss Mamie's been watching me awful close."
"Get on, then."
"You sure you'll be okay?"
"Been okay all along, ain't I? But it's good to be looking out for each other."
Ransom nodded. His face was in the shadows beyond the reach of the firelight and she wasn't able to see his expression. The sun filled the room as he opened the door and went outside. She winced at the intruding light and waited for the sound of the falling wooden latch. Then she turned her gaze back to the fire and forked up another chunk of corn cake. The fire…
If only they had listened to Sylva's mother. She had tried to warn everybody about the strange Yankee with the well-bottom eyes and the pocketful of money and the sneer that lurked between his lips, the snakish smile that you only saw when he'd let you.