Usher's Passing

Usher's Passing Page 5

Two

THE MOUNTAIN BOY

4

THE SUN WAS DESCENDING IN AN ORANGE SLASH ACROSS THE HORIZON.

A chilly wind had strengthened, whispering through the pines, scarlet oaks, and dense whorls of inch-long thorns on Briartop Mountain.

A fifteen-year-old mountain boy named Newlan Tharpe stood on the smooth, jutting boulder he knew as The Devil's Tongue. In each hand he held a plastic bucket brimming with blackberries. His fingers, lips, and chin were stained vivid blue; his alert, dark green eyes were fixed on the vista almost seven hundred feet below.

The thick forests and black lakes of Usherland were dappled with deep shadow and orange light, like an intricate quilt woven with Halloween colors. And on an island at the center of the largest lake stood the biggest house in the world. Usher's Lodge, it was called. New had decided long ago that the whole town of Foxton could fit inside it, and there'd still be room for a horse ranch. His ma said even the Ushers themselves couldn't stand to live in it, and the house had been empty for a long time - except for the thing that dwelled in it, all alone, in the dark.

But what that thing was, she would not say.

For a few minutes now, the dying sun would paint the Lodge's walls the color of fire. New could see the sparks of light on the dozens of weathervanes and lightning rods mounted on the slanted slate roofs. On a granite ledge running beneath the roofs were statues of lions, some resting, some stalking. When the sun caught them just right, as it did now, the tawny marble cats seemed to stretch and move, pacing the ledge as if guarding their territory.

New watched a flock of six wild ducks feeding in the high weeds on the lake's northern shore. The lake was ebony even in bright sunlight, and in all the many times he'd come to this place to look down, he'd never seen a fish jump from its surface.

The Lodge took up almost the entire island. A stone bridge over the lake connected it to one of Usherland's paved roads. Once, after a particularly hard rain, New had come here and seen the water lapping against the Lodge's foundations. He let his mind wander over the blue mountains that were the boundary of his world, and he always came back to the same question: What would life have been like, he wondered, if his ma had been an Usher instead of a Tharpe? What if he'd been able to roam those forests, ride horses across the gentle green slopes, see that massive Lodge from the inside? Sometimes he felt a stirring of envy when he saw figures on horseback down there, riding the forest trails. Though he lived on the northern edge of Usherland, he knew he might as well be a hundred miles away. He saw the Lodge in his dreams, and his yearnings to enter it were getting stronger; he never told his ma about the feelings, though. She forbade him and his ten-year-old brother, Nathan, to follow any of the meandering paths from Briartop deeper into Usherland. It was a haunted place, she said. The Ushers were a depraved breed best left alone.

With the Pumpkin Man and his black familiar running in the woods, New kept his curiosity about the Lodge in check. Though he'd never seen any of them, he knew the tales by heart. There were things in the woods that roamed at night, things that should be avoided at all costs. He'd found large, bestial footprints in the soil before, and once on a cold January night he'd heard something big moving on the cabin's roof. He'd taken a flashlight and Pa's shotgun outside - because now he was the man of the house, no matter how scared he was - and had shone the light up on the roof, but there was nothing there at all.

Suddenly he saw the ducks flap their wings and rise from the lake almost as one. They made a V formation and began to fly across the lake, passing the Lodge.

Fly faster, New thought. Faster.

The ducks gained altitude.

Hurry, he urged them mentally. Hurry, before it wakes up and -

The ducks' formation was suddenly disturbed, as if by turbulence in the air. Four of them flapped wildly as they began to spin in a confused whirlpool. The other two dropped lower, skimming across the surface of the lake.

Hurry, he thought, and held his breath.

The four ducks veered off course, toward the Lodge's mountainous north face.

One after the other, they smashed into the wall and cascaded down in a shower of feathers, where they lay amid the rotting carcasses of other birds and wildfowl.

New heard the distant calling of one of the ducks that had escaped - then silence, but for the prowling wind. The Lodge had no windows; all of them - hundreds, in what had been every conceivable shape and size - were bricked up. New guessed why: over the years, birds had probably smashed all the glass out, and the Ushers had decided to seal them over.

"Gettin' dark," Nathan said, standing beside his brother. He carried a single bucket heaped with blackberries, and he kept snapping that doggoned blue whistling yo-yo that Ma had bought him in Foxton. "Better be gettin' home, or Ma'll pitch a fit."

"Yep," New replied, though he didn't retreat from the Tongue's edge. He kicked a loose stone off into space. They'd been picking blackberries for the better part of the afternoon. Ma used them in the pies she baked for the Broadleaf Cafe in Foxton. They hadn't had to pass near The Devil's Tongue, but New had wandered this way, and had been standing here for ten minutes, staring down at the Lodge. Corpses of birds lay like snow on the many balconies. Perched atop the Lodge, among the chimneys and turrets, was something that looked like a huge discolored lightbulb, opaque and dirty. Why was that house so godawful big, he wondered, and why did he feel the need to come here, day after day, as if in answer to the dreams that beckoned him at night? He saw one of the ducks still jerking at the base of the house, and turned away. The image of the Lodge, bathed in fading sunlight, stayed in his mind. "Okay," he said. "I guess we'd best get home."

"Gotta hurry, too. Gettin' dark."

They left the Tongue - New looked back for only a few seconds - and started walking along the narrow, rocky path that would eventually lead them home, about a mile and a half away. They were supposed to have been home long before dark, and they would have been, New realized, if he hadn't wanted to stop at the Tongue. Some man of the house, he thought.

The families who lived on Briartop's winding dirt roads had been there for generations. Nestled in shady hollows or clearings where the wilderness had been forced back were several hundred clapboard cabins, just like the one owned by the Tharpes. Briartop was a massive mountain with a rocky peak collared by a jungle of thorns. Those thorns, some said, could creep around you when your back was turned, could trap you so you'd never find your way out again. It was well known that many hunters who'd gone out after the deer on Briartop had been seized and buried by the thorns, and even their bones were swallowed up.

Briartop was part of Usherland, and stood on the northern edge of the thirty-thousand-acre estate. The families inhabiting it were of hardy Scots-Irish stock; they protected their privacy and lived on an abundant supply of deer, rabbits, and quail. Outsiders -  anyone who did not live on the mountain - were quickly run off by a few warning shots, but then again, outsiders had no use for the mountain, either. The hardships of mountain life were understood, and taken as part of life. Still, the people stayed away from untrodden paths, and made sure their doors were bolted after sundown.

"I woulda got as many berries as you if I'da had another bucket!" Nathan said as they walked. "I coulda filled up three buckets!"

"You cain't carry but one bucket without spillin' the other," New told him. "Like last time."

"Can so!"

"Cain't."

"Can so!"

"Cain't."

The yo-yo, Nathan's prized possession, whistled impudently.

New noted that their shadows were getting longer. Darkness was going to catch them, for sure. They should've started for home an hour ago, he thought, but they'd eaten a lot of the blackberries as they picked them, and the sun had felt so good on their backs that they'd forgotten about time. It was harvest season - and that meant the Pumpkin Man might be near.

He comes out when the pumpkins are on the ground, New's ma had told him; he can ride the wind and slither through the brush, and he comes up on you so fast you'll never know he's there until it's too late . . .

"Let's walk faster," New said.

"You got longer legs than me!"

"Quit playin' with that damn yo-yo!"

"I'm gonna tell Ma you cussed!" Nathan warned.

A strong cold wind had risen, sweeping past the boys and stirring the thick foliage on either side of the path. New shivered, though he was wearing his brown sweater, patched jeans, and a brown corduroy jacket that used to be his pa's. The man-smell was still in it, the aroma of bay rum and a corncob pipe.

New was tall for his age. He looked a lot like his father, lean and rawboned, with a sharp nose and chin, a scatter of freckles across his cheeks, and reddish brown hair that curled over his ears and collar. His eyes were large and expressive, and at the same time curious and wary. He was at an awkward age, and he knew it. Standing at the gate of manhood, New couldn't decide whether he wanted to rush through or back away. Nathan, on the other hand, resembled their mother more. His frame was smaller, and he had a pale complexion, except for two ruddy spots on his cheeks. The kids at the school on the other side of the mountain picked on him because he was little, and New had busted more than one boy in the chops for taunting his little brother.

New stopped to wait for him. "Come on, Christmas!" He was trying to keep his voice calm, though unease was tickling his belly. The darkness was spreading like a blanket over Briartop. Ma said the Pumpkin Man had eyes that shone in the dark.

"Quit walkin' so fast!" Nathan complained. "If we hadn't stayed so long at the - "

There was a sharp squeaking cry. Suddenly the air around Nathan's head was filled with fluttering forms that had burst from the underbrush. The smaller boy let out a startled holler and dodged, dancing in a circle. Something was in his hair. He cried out, "Bats!" and flung the blackberry bucket at them in scared desperation. They scattered and wheeled into the sky.

New had been almost startled out of his britches, but now he watched the things flying away and laughed at his own quick jig of fear. "Quail," he said. "You scared up a covey of 'em!"

"They were bats!" Nathan insisted defiantly. "They got in my hair!"

"Quail."

"Bats!" He wasn't going to admit that a few measly quail had made his heart knock like a woodpecker. "Big ones, too!" He still had the yo-yo in his hand, but suddenly he realized he'd flung the blackberry bucket into the woods. "My berries!"

"Oh Lordy. I bet you threw blackberries from here to Asheville." They were all over the path.

"Ma'll skin me if I don't bring that bucket home!" He started searching through the brush, saying "ouch" every time a thorn nicked his fingers.

"No, she won't. Come on, we've gotta get - " He stopped when Nathan looked at him. His brother was about to cry from frustration; he'd worked hard all afternoon, and now a few quail had made him mess everything up. Life took a mischievous delight in tormenting Nathan. "All right," New said, and set his buckets down. "I'll help you look."

The shadows were deepening. New pushed into the brush, thorns jabbing at his clothes. "Why'd you do that?" he asked angrily. "That was a stupid thing to do!"

" 'Cause they was bats and they was tanglin' in my hair, that's why!"

"Quail," New said pointedly. He saw something a few feet away and approached it. Snagged in the thorns was a bleached-out piece of cloth. It looked as if it might once have been a shirt. A thorn scraped New's cheek, and he swore softly. "I don't know where the thing went! It might've gone to the doggone moon, the way - "

He took another step forward, and the ground went out from under his feet.

He fell, his body tearing through kudzu vines, dense weeds, and ropes of thorns.

He heard Nathan cry out his name, and then he heard the sound of his own screaming.

He'd stepped over the edge of the mountain, he realized. He was going to fall to his death.

Then he was rolling over and over, his flailing hands being torn by thorns. The back of his head smashed into something hard - a rock . . . hit a rock . . . damn it, my head! - and he didn't know anything else until he heard Nathan calling his name from above.

New lay still. He was gasping for breath, and there was blood in his mouth.

". . . hear me, New? Can you hear me?" Nathan's voice was frantic.

Tears of pain coursed down New's cheeks. He couldn't see, and when he tried to wipe his eyes he couldn't get his arms free. He was hung in something. There was the strong odor of earth -  and a sharper, sweeter smell. The aroma of something dead, very close to him.

"Nathan?" he called. Didn't think he'd spoken above a whisper. "Nathan?" Louder.

"You all right?"

Just fine, he thought, and almost laughed. Every joint in his body was on fire. He wrenched his right arm as hard as he could, and heard cloth rip; then he wiped the wetness and gummy dirt from his eyes, and he saw in the faint purple light where he was.

He hadn't stepped off Briartop, but only into a hollow that had been hidden by underbrush. It was about thirty-five feet deep, he figured, with steeply sloping dirt walls, and angled down into darkness. New was caught in a barbed-wire prison of thorns that had tangled around his chest and legs, manacling his left arm at the wrist. Ugly, inch-long barbs curled all around him, in loops and coils and knots. If he moved, he realized with a shock of fear, they might grab him even tighter.

But the worst part was what lay caught in the thorns with him.

There were moldering carcasses in various stages of decay, from fresh bloat to yellow bone. A stag's skeleton reared its rack of horns toward the sky, hopelessly tangled. There were raccoon, skunk, fox, snake, and bird bones everywhere. A fresh deer carcass was tangled on his right; it had recently burst open. As New twisted his head to the left, barbs scraped across his neck.

Not six feet away, enmeshed in the tangle, was a human skeleton. It wore the rags of a red flannel shirt, fringed buckskin pants, and boots. Its mouth gaped wide, as though in a final gasp or scream. Thorns grew along the spine, kudzu vines burst through cracks in the skull. The skeleton's right arm was twisted backward at a sharp angle, the bone clearly snapped. Several feet away was a rusted rifle, and the hunter wore an empty knife sheath around his waist.

New struggled violently to free himself. The coils snaked more firmly around his chest.

"Help!" he shouted. "Nathan! Go get help!" His head throbbed mercilessly.

Nathan didn't respond for a few seconds. Then: "I'm scairt, New. I thought I heard somethin' just then. Somethin' walkin'."

"Go get help! Get Ma! Hurry, Nathan!" A thorn was spiked deeply into his cheek.

"I heard somethin', New!" The boy's voice was shaking. "It's gettin' closer!"

The moon was rising. Like a pumpkin, New thought - and he went cold inside. "Run," he whispered. Then he shouted, "Run home, Nathan! Go on! Run home!"

When Nathan's voice came floating back, there was new determination in it. "I'll run get Ma! I'll save you, New! You'll see!" There was the sound of him struggling through the brush, and then a faint cry - "You'll see!" - and silence.

The wind moved. Dead leaves floated down into the hollow.

New listened to the sound of his own harsh breathing. The smell of death wafted around him.

He didn't know how much later it was, but he suddenly shivered as a terrible, aching cold passed through his bones. Something was watching him - he could sense it as surely as a hound on the track of a redtailed fox. He looked up toward the lip of the pit, his heart pounding.

Touched by moonlight, a figure stood thirty-five feet above him, on the pit's edge. It was shrouded in black, and carried something that looked like a sack under its right arm.

New almost spoke - almost - but his blood had turned icy, and he knew what he was looking at.

The thing was motionless. New couldn't tell what it was, but it seemed . . . vaguely human. Whatever was under its arm didn't move, either, but New thought for a terrifying instant that the moonlight shone upon a white, upturned face. The face of a small boy.

New blinked.

The thing was gone. If it had ever been there. It had slipped noiselessly away in the space of a heartbeat.

"Nathan!" he shouted. He continued to call his brother's name until his voice was reduced to a weary whisper. In his soul he felt the same black despair as when he'd watched Pa's coffin being lowered into the ground.

Run, run as fast as you can, 'cause out in the woods walks the Pumpkin Man . . .

A shuddering cry of anguish left his lips. Around him, bones rattled when the cold wind swept past.