Usher's Passing

Usher's Passing Page 17

AS THE WIND WHOOPED AND WAILED OUTSIDE THE GATEHOUSE, and tree branches clawed at the moon, Nora St. Clair Usher slowly gave up her secrets to Rix.

It was almost one o'clock, and Rix had been reading through her diary since before eleven, when he'd excused himself from the game room after Katt had whipped his tail in chess. She'd been thoughtful and precise in her moves, and had given no indication of what she and Walen had talked about that afternoon. Boone had come in and played darts by himself, trying to stir up some trouble by inquiring as to where Rix had gone riding, but Rix had successfully staved him off. After dinner, Boone had gone to the stables to check on the horses for the night. Rix had lodged a chair and a suitcase against his door to keep Puddin' from barging in.

Now Rix sat at his desk before the window, carefully turning the brittle pages. Nora's handwriting was clear, her prose direct and without flowery excess. Some of the pages were too faded to be legible, but the story of her life at Usherland was coming together in Rix's mind like a delicate watercolor. He could see the Lodge as she described it: the rooms, corridors, and chambers spotless, filled with priceless antiques from around the world, the hardwood floors waxed and shining, the myriad windows in all shapes and sizes framing only Usher earth. By January 1920, she was resigned to the constant presence of workmen - who started promptly at dawn and worked until dusk. The Lodge spread to even larger proportions.

On lazy spring afternoons she enjoyed boating across the lake, usually in the company of Norris Bodane, and watching the wild swans that nested on the northern shore. It was during one of those outings, in April 1920, when Erik was in Washington on business, that she noted a peculiarity about the Lodge. The workmen had cut away a stand of pines from the northern face of the house in order to erect their scaffolds, and there in the Lodge's stones, from roof to foundation, was a jagged crack, filled with mortar, at least two feet wide.

When she inquired, Norris had explained in his distinctive North Carolinian accent that the weight of the Lodge was making it slowly sink into the island. The crack had been there for years, and Erik was making sure it didn't widen by having the workmen balance the Lodge with new additions. Not to worry, he said; the Lodge would be standing for little Walen's great-great-grandchildren.

Nora had her own suite of rooms in the east wing, from which she rarely ventured. She'd been lost several times in the Lodge, and had wandered hopelessly through the maze of rooms until she'd been lucky enough to find a servant. Sometimes days passed without her even seeing Erik, and Ludlow was no more than a ghost heard long after midnight as he walked the corridors.

Rix was fascinated by her. He was watching a little girl become a woman. Her voice was breathless when she described banquets for three hundred people; seething when she berated Erik for flying the captured German Fokker - shipped over from England after the Great War - past the nursery windows and upsetting the baby; loving and tender when she wrote about little Walen.

Little Walen, Rix thought grimly. Oh, Nora, if you could only see him now!

Wind thrashed the trees outside. He was nearing the end of her diary. He was Nora's confidant, her final companion, and as he read, time shifted, cracked open, drew him into its whirlpool of people and events.

Nora stood on her balcony in her long white dress and watched the surly May sky. Rainclouds were rolling across the mountains like freight trains, each carrying a heavier load than the one before. Threads of dark purple veined the sky, and in the distance danced quick flashes of lightning. When raindrops began to ripple the lake's surface, Nora went into her bedroom and closed the balcony doors. Thunder boomed, shaking the windows in their frames.

She left her room and walked down the hallway to the nursery, where Maye Bodane was tending the infant Walen. The child played happily in his crib. Maye, a lively young Irishwoman with curly golden hair, stood at the large bay window, watching curtains of rain flap across the lake.

"How's my angel this morning?" Nora asked brightly.

"He's fine, mum." She came over to the crib and smiled at Walen. A lovely woman with calm gray eyes, she had a young son of her own whom she'd named Edwin. "Happy as a lark, he is."

Nora gazed down at her beautiful boy. Erik was already talking about having another child, but Nora was reluctant. In bed, Erik was cold and rough. She remembered her father's advice: "Stay with him, Nora. Give him time. If you let this chance slip through your fingers, you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

Walen was gurgling, playing with a new toy.

As Nora saw what it was, her face became a mask of shock.

The toy was an infant-sized, silver pistol.

She reached in and snatched the thing away. Instantly, Walen began bawling. "What is this?" she demanded. "You know how I dislike guns, Maye!"

"Yes, mum," she said nervously, "but when I came in this mornin', it was right there in his crib. Walen seemed so taken with it, I thought - "

"Who put this thing in there with him?"

"I don't know. Oh, he's awful upset, mum!" She picked up the squalling child and began cooing to him.

Nora's hand was gripped tightly around the offending toy. She'd told Erik that she didn't want her son associating with weapons - toy guns included - until he'd had a chance to see how destructive guns were. She was enraged that he had so openly flaunted her wishes. "Damn it to hell!" she snapped, and Maye looked at her openmouthed. "I won't let him treat me like this!" Storming out of the nursery, she stalked along the corridor toward the stairway that would take her up another level and into Erik's private domain.

Rain slammed against the leaded windows and streamed off the balconies. As Nora climbed the stairs a flash of lightning dazzled her, and thunder crashed so close to the house that she imagined she could feel the entire Lodge tremble like a ship in a tempest.

On the third floor, dim light filtered through the thick stained-glass windows, giving this section of the Lodge the atmosphere of an unholy church dedicated to some pagan god of war. On the walls were all makes of Usher rifles, pistols, and machine guns. Artillery pieces stood mounted in the wide corridors. A menagerie of stuffed animals - bears, stags, panthers, lions, tigers -  crouched in the shadows. Their glass eyes seemed fixed on Nora as she passed them, and more than once she turned to make sure none were tracking her. The hallways took her to the left, then to the right - and led her to doors that opened on stone walls, narrow staircases that ascended into total darkness. From far up in the attic drifted down the staccato rhythm of the workmen's hammers, like a laboring, never-ceasing heartbeat.

Thunder sounded like the cannonfire of that terrible July night almost a year ago. "Erik!" Nora shouted, and her voice rolled down the halls, distorting, echoing back to her in a whisper.

Within another few minutes, Nora realized she'd taken a wrong turn somewhere. Nothing was familiar. Lightning struck again, and harder still. A dozen crystal owls mounted on pedestals on the walls trembled; one of them fell and shattered on the floor with the sound of a gunshot.

"Erik!" she called, a note of rising panic in her voice. She continued on, this time searching for a staircase down. She saw no servants, and the windows she passed were covered with sheets of water. Still, the hammering went on and on, ebbing and fading, almost in cadence with the booming of thunder.

She was lost. Predators growled silently at her, and ahead a stuffed lion blocked her path. Its green, gleaming eyes challenged her to approach. She took another corridor, this one lined with perhaps a hundred suits of armor and medieval weapons. At the end of it was a heavy door; she pulled it open and called for Erik again There was no reply but the hammering, now even louder.

A wrought-iron spiral staircase ascended to a white door twenty feet above her head. She looked upward, the noise of hammers about to split her skull. If that door led to the attic, she told herself, she could at least get one of the workmen to help her find her way. She climbed the stairs, being careful of her footing, and reached out to open the door.

But then she stopped. The door was covered with thick white rubber, its brass handle discolored by sweat. When she touched it, a thrill of cold coursed up her arm. But the door was locked. She was about to pound on it and try to call for help above the cacophony of thunder and hammers when the lock disengaged with a metallic click.

Slowly the door began to open. Nora stepped back. The sickly-sweet aroma of decay was oozing through the door's widening crack. Within, all was blackness.

A soft, hoarse voice whispered, "What is it?"

"Oh," Nora said. "You startled me." She couldn't see a thing inside there. The hammers, the hammers! Why wouldn't they stop?

"Please," the voice implored, "speak as quietly as you can."

"I . . . didn't mean to disturb you." Realization dawned on her with a shock. "Is that . . . Mr. Usher?"

There was a silence. Then: "Are you lost again?"

She nodded. "I was . . . trying to find Erik."

"Erik," Ludlow Usher repeated softly. "Dear Erik." The door opened wider, and a hand curled around its edge. The fingers were withered, the nails long and ragged. The flesh looked unhealthy and mottled. It had been more than two months since she'd last seen Ludlow, and she'd assumed he was still living up in the glass cupola. She'd never seen this room before. "I'd welcome a visitor," he said. "Won't you come in?" When she hesitated, he asked, "You're not afraid, are you?"

"No," she lied.

"Good. You've got guts. I always admired you for that. Come in and we'll talk . . . just you and I. All right?"

Nora paused. To flee now would make her look foolish. And what did she have to fear from Ludlow Usher, anyway? He was an old man. At least he could tell her how to get down from this awful place. She entered the room, and Ludlow, an indistinguishable shape in the gloom, closed the door behind her. She caught her breath as the lock clicked shut.

"Don't be afraid," he whispered. "I'm going to take your hand and lead you to a chair." His hand embraced hers, and she restrained the urge to jerk away. His flesh was cool and slimy. He led her across the room. "You can sit down now. May I pour you a glass of sherry?"

Nora found the chair and sat down. "No, thank you, I . . . can stay just a few minutes."

"Ah. Well, you'll forgive me if I partake, won't you?" A bottle was uncorked; liquid was poured.

"How can you see in here? It's so terribly dark!"

"Dark? Not at all. Not to me, that is." He sighed heavily. "For me, light leaks through the seams in these walls. It creeps from every pore of your body, Nora. Your eyes are ablaze. And the wedding ring on your finger is as incandescent as a meteor. I could sun myself in its heat. Listen to those hammers, Nora. Isn't it a lovely music?" It was said with cutting sarcasm.

She listened. In this room she couldn't hear the hammering at all; instead, there was a different noise: a sound like soft, muffled heartbeats. There were many heartbeats, some louder than others, some more metallic, some crisper. The noises seemed to be coming from all around the room, or even from the very walls themselves. She heard the clicking of gears, the faint rattling of chains through some kind of mechanism.

"My clocks," Ludlow said, as if he'd read her mind. "There are sixty-two grandfather clocks in this room. I started out with more than a hundred, but alas, they do break down. Listen, and you can hear the air parting as the pendulums swing. The sound of time passing is comforting to me, Nora. At least it helps to mask the hammering and sawing. Oh, just listen to those workmen up in the attic! And the storm, too!" He sucked in his breath suddenly. When he spoke again, his voice was strained. "Lightning hit very close to the house that time. The thunder's getting louder."

Nora couldn't hear a thing but the ticking of the clocks This room was windowless, and evidently the walls were several feet thick. But exactly where the room was in the house, she couldn't say.

"Of course you know I'm dying," Ludlow said flatly.

"Dying? Of what?"

"It's . . . a peculiar disease. Oh, I would've thought Erik might have told you by now. He will. I won't spoil the surprise."

"I don't understand. If you're sick, why are you up here alone, in the dark?"

"That, my dear, is precisely why I'm - " He stopped. "The thunder," he whispered urgently. "My God, didn't you hear that?"

"No. Not a thing."

He was silent, and Nora had the impression that he was waiting for something. When it didn't come, he allowed his breath to hiss between his teeth. "I despise storms as much as that damned hammering. It goes on night and day. Erik destroys a room and rebuilds it. He constructs corridors that end at stone walls. He builds a staircase that ascends to empty air. All for my benefit, of course. Oh, Erik's a sly one! He's trying to kill me, you know."

"Trying to kill you? How?"

"With noise, my dear," Ludlow said. "Incessant, nerve-racking, demonic noise. The hammering and sawing that never stops. Even that ridiculous display on the Fourth of July was for me. The sound of those cannons going off almost drove me to suicide."

"You're wrong. Erik's trying to balance the Lodge. There's a crack that runs up the north face of the - "

Ludlow interrupted her with a mirthless laugh. "Balance the Lodge? Oh, that's a good one! Perhaps that's what he's telling the workmen, but it's a lie."

"The Lodge is sinking into the island," Nora said. "I saw the crack myself."

"Oh, the crack's there, all right. I've seen it, too. But the Lodge isn't sinking, my dear. An earthquake damaged the Lodge in - when was it? - 1892. Or 1893, I can't recall. We're in an area that's prone to tremors."

Nora thought of the crystal owls trembling on their pedestals, and the one crashing to pieces on the floor.

"Erik is trying to kill me," Ludlow whispered, "because he wants this."

Something touched her shoulder, startling her. She ran a hand along it, feeling the slick smoothness of the ebony cane that was always in Ludlow Usher's grip.

"He's on fire inside for it, Nora. Do you know why? It's power. Over the estate, the factories, everything. Even the future. I have no choice but to pass it to Erik, though I dread the consequences." The cane moved away from her shoulder. "Erik wants to hurry my death, you see, so he can - " She sensed his sudden tension, and he rasped, "The thunder! Oh God, the thunder!"

This time she heard it - a faint, distant booming, muffled by the stone walls. The storm, she knew, must be raging fiercely outside the Lodge.

"Wait," Ludlow breathed. "Don't move, just wait."

"What is it?"

"Quiet!" he hissed.

Silence stretched between them. Nora heard the sherry bottles clink together. In another few seconds she could feel a vibration in her chair, traveling upward through her body to the top of her skull. The wooden floor creaked and groaned. Around the strange room, chimes in some of the grandfather clocks tinkled, off key and dissonant. Then, just as suddenly, the vibration stopped.

"That fool draws the lightning with those rods on the roof," Ludlow said hoarsely. "Did you feel it? The tremor? It's gone now, but I'd say a good deal of the kitchen crockery is broken and a dozen windows shattered. That fool! He doesn't know what he's tampering with!"

He's insane, Nora thought. Ludlow was jabbering like a madman.

"That pistol, there in your hand. Why do you carry it? I thought you hated guns."

"Someone put it in Walen's crib." Her anger resurfaced. "Erik knows how I feel about exposing my son to weapons, and I won't lie down for this."

"I pity your son," Ludlow said. "Erik wants another child, I understand. He wants to breed children like fine thoroughbred horses. Resist him, Nora. For your own sanity, resist him."

"Why?"

"Why? Why? Why?" he mocked her savagely. "Because I tell you! Listen to me well; if you have two children, one of them is going to die. If three, two will perish. In the end, only one will be spared execution." She winced at the use of that word. "And that one," Ludlow whispered, "will inherit the gates of hell. Save yourself grief, Nora. Refuse to bear another child."

"You're . . . you're out of your mind!" Nora objected. The room's darkness was closing in around her, trapping and suffocating her. She smelled Ludlow's decay, like the aroma of damp green moss.

"Leave Usherland," he said. "Don't ask why. Leave today. This minute. Forget Walen, there's nothing you can do for him. You don't deserve to be dragged down into damnation!"

Nora rose from her chair, her face flushed with anger. She cracked her shin on a table, backed away, and hit another piece of furniture.

"Run, Nora. Get out of this house and never look back. Oh, the hammering, the hammering!"

It was clear to her that Erik was keeping his father up in this room because he was going insane. She groped toward the door, stumbled over a table, and kicked at it. Bottles tumbled off. When she reached the door, she fumbled for the lock but couldn't find it. She thought she heard him coming up behind her, and she said, "Keep away from me!" into the darkness. "Don't touch me, damn you!"

But Ludlow was still across the room. He gave a pained, soft sigh. "I didn't want to tell you this," he said, his voice almost kind, "but I will. It might save your sanity, and possibly your soul. God knows, I need to do a good deed."

"Let me out of here!" Nora fumbled for the lock.

"Erik doesn't love you," the old man said. "He never has. He needed a wife to breed children - the Usher future. And you came with an extra bonus. Erik's always been obsessed with his racehorses. Your father's stables have a sterling reputation. Erik and your father agreed on a contract, Nora. He bought you, along with four horses to be used in breeding a Kentucky Derby champion. Your father received three million dollars on your wedding day, and he will get an additional million for every child you breed for Erik."

Her hand was frozen on the lock. "No," she said. She remembered her father saying, "Stay with him, don't turn your back on this chance." Even though he'd known she was unhappy, he'd strongly urged her to stay with Erik Usher. Why?

"I signed the check that went to St. Clair Stables," the voice said from the darkness. "You're meat to Erik. Breeding flesh. When he has no more use for you, he'll cast you out to pasture. Believe me, Nora. I'm begging you to get away from Usherland!"

"This is my house," she told him bravely, though tears were stinging her eyes. "I am Erik Usher's wife."

"You're his mare," Ludlow replied. "And don't believe for a second that one inch of Usherland will ever belong to you."

She got the lock disengaged and wrenched the door open. The murky light that filtered in dazzled her eyes. She turned to look at Ludlow Usher.

He was emaciated to the point of freakishness, a skeleton in a black pinstriped suit and a gray ascot. His face was yellowish white but splotched with what appeared to be brown scabs. Thin gray hair curled over his shoulders, though the top of his scalp was bald. The Usher cane was clenched in his right fist. Staring at the master of Usherland, Nora felt a strange rush of pity -  though she was horrified by the sight. Ludlow's deepset eyes were fixed upon her, and in them was a red glare like the depths of a blast furnace. "For God's sake," he said with a liquid rattle of phlegm, "get away from Usherland!"

Nora dropped the toy pistol on the floor and fled. She almost fell down the tricky stairs, then ran through the corridors and descended the first staircase she found. After about twenty minutes she came across a pair of gossiping maids.

At dinner that night, Nora sat at the long dining table and watched Erik consume his beef stew. It had spattered his coat and shirt. He rang for a second helping and a bottle of cabernet.

During a dessert of baked Alaska and sugared strawberries, Erik interrupted his feasting to tell her that the new colt he'd been working with, a fine chestnut stallion called King South, was already showing the kind of speed and determination that made Kentucky Derby champions. King South, he reminded Nora, had been sired by Donovan Red - one of the prizewinning stallions that her father had given them as a wedding gift. Erik, bits of stew clinging to his mustache, poured himself a glass of wine and vowed that the Usher stables would bring home the 1922 Derby cup.

A servant approached Nora with a silver tray. The object on it was covered with a white silk handkerchief. He set it down before her and left without explanation.

"What's that?" Erik asked. "What'd Foster bring you?"

Nora lifted the corner of the handkerchief. On the tray was the toy pistol she'd dropped in Ludlow's chamber. Beneath the gun was a folded piece of paper. She slid the toy to one side, picked up the paper, and opened it.

It was a canceled bank draft for three million dollars, dated the second of March, 1917. Ludlow Usher's spiky signature was on it. St. Clair Stables had received it.

"What's there, damn it? Don't keep secrets from me!"

Clutching the check in her fist, Nora took the toy pistol and slid it with all her strength down the long table. It spun toward Erik, glinting under the magnificent crystal chandeliers, and after a journey of some thirty feet it clinked against his plate.

"Explain that," Nora said, "you bastard."

Erik laughed. Laughed and laughed. When he was through, he lifted his glass in a toast. "To our second child," he said.

And there Nora's diary ended. Rix closed it. There had to be another volume down in the library, he thought. Surely Nora's story continued somewhere, down in those cardboard boxes. The tale had left him with several unanswered questions: What was Nora's response after she learned that Ludlow was telling the truth? How did she stave off Erik's desire to have more children? And, especially, what was the meaning of Ludlow's strange warnings to her? In all probability, Rix mused, Nora had been correct about Ludlow being insane. It was obvious that living in the Lodge's Quiet Room had unhinged him, and his fear of thunder was simply due to his heightened senses - but what was all that stuff about earthquakes and a crack in the Lodge's north face? Rix decided he'd have to go over tomorrow and check it out for himself.

He took the diary and quietly went out into the hallway. He looked both ways, as if he were about to cross railroad tracks and expected a roaring diesel at any second. Then he went downstairs, through the game room and smoking room, and unlocked the library's doors.

Rix returned the diary to one of the boxes, then began browsing through more materials. A small leatherbound book he picked up fell to pieces in his hands, and he muttered, "Damn it to hell!" He bent down to gather the pages together and stuff them back into the binding.

"Well, well," the voice floated from behind him. "Found me a prowler, didn't I?"