She did not cry out or try to flee. Instead, she took a step forward so that her bare feet entered the black water. Her long cloak fell open, and I saw that she stood naked beneath it. The moonlight caught the dome of her belly and her white thighs, but shadows preserved the modesty of her sex. They cloaked her skin like a garment, save for the parts I have mentioned and the tips of her breasts, which stood forth in vivid contrast to the darkness inside her open cloak.
Something from the tarn extended itself toward her. At first I thought it was a serpent raising its head from the bulge of black water that shivered and gleamed at her feet, but it was too long and thin to have supported its own weight as it touched and seemed to caress her belly. I felt the blood flush in my face as this snake-like tentacle moved lower and passed between her thighs. The sense that I was witnessing a union forbidden by all the laws of God and nature surged within me. A mingling of outrage and shamefulness warred in my heart, but I could not turn my eyes away as she let her head fall back on her neck in a posture of ecstasy. The loose cloak slipped from her shoulders and fell behind her to the grass.
Her body shuddered and a soft moaning sounded through the night, like the cry of some forest creature mating in mingled pain and delight. In moments the serpentine extension of the water withdrew itself and the rounded bulge moved back to the centre of the tarn and descended, leaving its surface again a starry mirror as the ripples settled.
For more than a minute Madeline stood motionless. Then she shook her head, as though to clear it, and turned to pick up and put back on her cloak. Without a backward glance she returned along the margin of the black pool the way she had come, making toward the bridge and the front door—but before she reached the bridge she passed around the corner of the house and was lost to my sight.
I stepped away from the window, badly shaken. When I drew my hand across my face, I discovered that it was covered in a chill sweat. Did Usher know about his sister’s nocturnal visits to the tarn? I had no illusions that this was the first time: she had conducted herself with too much self-assurance. Had I seen what I thought I had seen or was it some trick of the moonlight?
When I returned to my bed, I anticipated a sleepless night, but it could not have been more than a few minutes before I drifted into unconsciousness, my fatigue at last overpowering the heated workings of my imagination.
6
My next awareness was that of a housemaid, gently shaking me awake by the shoulder to inform me that Mr. Usher wished to see me in the drawing room at my earliest convenience. I washed in the basin of fresh water provided and quickly dressed myself before descending the stairs.
A short and rather corpulent man wearing gold-framed eyeglasses and a faded brown travel suit was in conversation with Usher in the hall. Both men turned at my approach, and Usher introduced me. The little fellow was William Hoffman, Usher’s family physician. His round face bore an expression of watchful slyness, and there was an impudent smirk on the thick lips beneath his bristling salt-and-pepper moustache. With reluctance I accepted his hand and found it moist. I guessed his presence in the house so early in the morning could not bode any good thing, but held my silence as Usher finished his words of parting and allowed the physician to make his way out the door.
“It’s bad, Randolph. It’s very bad, I’m afraid.”
His face was haggard. All the lines and hollows across it were accentuated by a new sorrow that left him like a damned soul, staring back at the fading shore from the boat of Charon.
“Madeline?”
“She’s dead. Her maid found her this morning. We called Doctor Hoffman immediately, but it was quite pointless. Her body was already cold when she was discovered.”
I put my hand on his shoulder but he did not seem to notice the touch. He seemed dazed, like a man not yet recovered from the stunning effect of some blow to the head.
“I am terribly sorry, Roderick. Did Hoffman venture an immediate cause for her sudden death?”
“A fit in the night, he called it, but I believe he was only guessing.” His face hardened. “He wanted to take her body back to Benton for an autopsy, but I absolutely forbade it. I will not have my sister cut open for the puerile study of fools.”
“What will you do?”
He blinked and seemed to see me for the first time. He attempted to force a smile, but the effect was ghastly and I was glad when he ceased the effort.
“Her death was hardly unexpected, although it came sooner rather than later. I have her resting place prepared in the family crypt beneath this house. I even have her coffin. It arrived from the maker last week. If I might prevail on your good graces …”
“Of course, old friend, anything you need. You have but to ask.”
“Will you help me to prepare her corpse and carry the coffin into the crypt? I could have the servants do it, but somehow that seems too remote and heartless. She deserves better than to be handed off to servants, don’t you think?”
To me it seemed that the tasks he mentioned were best left to the trained staff of a mortuary, but I held my tongue and nodded.
“You mean to inter her without embalming?”
“It was her wish. She had a morbid horror of being embalmed, and I shall respect it, as irrational as it may have been.”
“Of course, as you should.”
The corpse of Madeline lay in her bed. Her cheeks were pale, but still so filled with life that I expected her breast beneath the cotton sheet to rise and fall. She was quite cold to the touch. I noted that after returning from her visit to the tarn, she had put on a nightdress of white silk.
We prepared the corpse as best we could. I withdrew to allow Usher to clothe his sister in her funeral dress, then returned to help him place her in the coffin. His cheeks were still wet with tears, but he seemed unaware of it. He informed me that Madeline had chosen the dress herself—an elegant garment of grey silk trimmed with black. Usher spent an inordinate amount of time brushing her hair with a silver hairbrush, and I received the impression that it was not the first time he had performed this function. At last he closed the lid of the coffin and latched it
“Help me to carry it to the crypt.”
“Is there to be no funeral service?” I asked in surprise.
He looked at me. It was like gazing at a skull with two dark eyes set deep in its sockets, and a mask of skin stretched across its bony ridges.
“What would be the point? I am the only family she had in the world, the only one left to mourn her. When I die, there will be no one at all.”
It was not the time to discuss the matter. Usher’s mind was less than wholly rational. I reasoned that it would do no harm should the corpse rest in the crypt for a few days, until he regained some of his composure. Then he might reconsider a more conventional funeral arrangement for her. But it would be folly to try to bring it up this day.
The coffin was well made and consequently quite heavy. Even so, Usher would not ask his servants for their help. They watched in silence as we wrestled the box down the main staircase and into the entrance to the cellars. It was fortunate for us that the silver handles at each end of the coffin had been fashioned for more than mere display.
By the time we got it to the crypt, I was covered in sweat and had to resist the impulse to curse in frustration. Usher seemed unperturbed. Despite his thinness, he retained the strength of limb that had distinguished him at Miskatonic. He bore up under the work much better than I, at least in a physical sense.
We set the sealed coffin upon a stone table that to my fanciful mind resembled an altar. There were other similar long boxes in recesses in the walls, presumably occupied by dead members of the family. Some of them showed signs of great age. The air in the crypt had a smell that was impossible to define, but in some way cloyingly repulsive. It was not the smell of decay. It may have been the lingering scent of long-dead flowers that had worked its way into the very stones of the place. It made my stomach roll.
“Usher, I must get
out of this cellar. The smell …”
For the first time that morning, he looked at me with something resembling human feeling.
“Of course, old man. Thank you for your help. I couldn’t have managed it without you.”
He gripped my arm in his hands with sudden enthusiasm and drew me close, staring into my face. The light from the oil lamp gave it a ghoulish strangeness.
“You do see that I couldn’t let that oily little fool, Hoffman, touch her? You don’t know what vile creatures like him do with the dead. I’m a man of the world, and I’ve heard stories and seen things in Europe that would freeze your blood. He would have defiled her, Randolph. At least here she is safe from his touch.”
What could I say in response to this? I pressed my lips into a smile and waited for him to release my arm.
“You go,” he said, waving me out of the crypt with a flick of his pale fingers. “I will stay for a time and talk with my sister.”
I left him standing over the coffin, staring down at it as though he could see through the polished rosewood planks of its lid. His lips moved silently, but whether in prayer or in speaking her name, I know not.
7
In the late afternoon, while Usher lay asleep in his room from the effects of the laudanum given to him by Hoffman, I went outside and slowly traced a semicircle around the margin of the tarn, moving from the bridge at the front door around to the side overlooked by the window of my bedroom. There was a kind of path worn in the long grass, indicating light but regular traffic.
As I walked along, I was conscious of the water at my left side, like black oil. The sunlight penetrated it no more than a few inches. From the rotting vegetation that floated on its surface there arose a faint but loathsome odour of decay. It was the scent of funeral flowers left too long untended. I suddenly realised that it was the same scent I had detected in the crypt, only stronger. Occasional clusters of bubbles burst upward, as though from the exhalation of some submarine creature, but they may have been caused by expanding methane gas.
So I told myself, as I tried not to let my imagination get the bit between its teeth and run away with me. How a woman could follow this path in the depths of night was beyond my comprehension. It tried my nerves to the limit in broad daylight, having seen what I saw from my window. Nothing in the universe would have induced me to walk here after dark.
I came to the tilted stone and stopped to study it. In the soft mud at the edge of the water I saw the imprint of her naked feet, still quite clear. The stone was a kind of menhir or standing stone. It projected some four feet above the sod, though how much of it extended below the ground I have no way to know. On the side fronting the house I found markings that looked like writing of some sort, but the characters resembled no alphabet with which I was familiar, either in this world or the dreamlands. They were greatly worn by the action of the elements, and I judged them at least several centuries old.
I straightened my back and looked slowly around, with the distinct crawling sensation between my shoulder blades of being watched. There was no movement in the line of shade trees at the edge of the lawn other than a slight trembling of the golden and orange leaves in the mild breeze. I turned to study the black windows of the house. No face confronted me in their blind eyes, which seemed to gaze blankly down with an expression of startled surprise from under the Gothic arches of their stone brows.
Movement drew my attention to the water at my feet. There was something in the water, just far enough below the surface that I could discern none of its details, other than that it was round and about the size of a dinner plate. It appeared and disappeared with regularity. A kind of yellowish-grey border surrounded a coal-black centre the size of my clenched fist. Drawn by an irresistible curiosity, I leaned my face down toward the inky surface of the tarn, standing as far out over the water as I could manage without slipping into the wet mud.
The object rose nearer to the surface. I regarded it in silence for a minute or so, unable to place its vague outline with any object or water beast in my memory. It was then that it blinked at me, its broad lid descending slowly and then opening again with more quickness as the black circle in its centre expanded in size.
I very nearly tumbled into the tarn when I jerked my head away. I did fall over backwards into the grass and struck the back of my head against the corner of the standing stone. There was a flash of light inside my skull. When I opened my eyes on the cloudless blue sky, it was to the sound of my name being called. I sat up slowly, and my head began to pound with a vengeance. When I felt the back of it, there was a lump but fortunately no blood. I pushed myself to my feet, leaning on the stone for aid, and saw that the elderly butler, Simmons, was hailing me from the open front door, asking if I wished to take afternoon tea with Usher.
I waved my hand to show him that I was unhurt and shouted that I would return to the house momentarily. He stood as though uncertain for several seconds, then withdrew and closed the door.
My vision was double. Blinking, I pressed my thumb and index finger to the corners of my closed eyelids, then focused my eyes on the surface of the water. The eye, if such a thing it was, had withdrawn. Was it possible that I had merely imagined it? Could a frog or a fish have caused such a bizarre fancy? The mind sees what it expects to see. I remembered in the past how often I had caught a glimpse of my cat from the corner of my vision, or seen her shape curled in the semi-darkness among the rumpled blankets at the foot of my bed, only to realise later that she was in another part of the house, and that I could not possibly have seen her. Such is the power of expectation. But why would I expect to see a gigantic eye in the tarn?
I looked again for the footprints of Madeline Usher, and to my surprise found that they had been obliterated. I must have scraped them out with my heels when I fell. Yet I saw that my shoes were not covered in wet mud. Leaving this riddle for later consideration, I returned to the house to take tea with my sorrowing host.
8
Hoffman returned with his little black leather bag the next day to examine Usher. As he was leaving, he motioned me aside with a discreet wave of his chubby hand and indicated with a jerk of his head that he wanted to speak with me outside the house. I told Usher that I would see the doctor off and went with him to his automobile, which was parked on the lawn at the far end of the footbridge.
“It is most fortunate that Roderick has a friend visiting with him at this trying moment in his life,” the little man began by way of preamble.
“I would rather my visit had taken place under more agreeable circumstances.”
The sly face of the portly little man did not inspire me with confidence. I could well see why Usher distrusted him. He stared up at me with a sidelong tilt of his head, like a bird eyeing a worm.
“Roderick’s mental state is most precarious. It stands balanced on a precipice above a fathomless abyss. He was never what one would call strong of mind, and his obsessive affection for his sister has only aggravated the shock of her loss.”
“Obsessive affection?”
He smiled and licked his thick lips beneath his bristling moustache, which resembled a shaving brush.
“Roderick and his sister have been cut off in this house from the society of others of their social standing for many years. Her brother tells me that she has received no male admirers for a very long time, yet her physical condition at the time of her death speaks otherwise.”
“What physical condition?” I asked with some heat. “See here, Doctor, what are you driving at?”
He shrugged and raised his thick eyebrows.
“But surely you noticed when you saw her? Madeline Usher was with child.”
I stared at him, shocked beyond words.
“She was pregnant?”
“About six months, I should say. Perhaps seven months.”
I remembered noting the rounded dome of her lower abdomen, but nothing so outrageous as pregnancy had even entered my thoughts. I could not find words.
“The servants have told me that Madeline received no male callers for over a year. The butler and the two other male servants are well advanced in years. I suppose it is possible that one or the other of them could be the father, but it seems unlikely.”
Outrage built slowly within me as I stared at his toad-like, smiling face, so knowing in its slyness. What he suggested was unthinkable. The effort to hold myself back from striking him down made my entire body shake.
“Leave this estate immediately,” I said in a low tone. “If you delay, I will not be responsible for my actions.”
He blinked in owlish surprise. “What do you mean?”
“If you don’t leave at once I shall throw you into the tarn.”
A look of sudden fear passed over his features. It was oddly intense and seemed more extreme than was justified by my very real threat. Without uttering another word, he rounded the rear bumper of his Nash and almost leapt into the driver’s seat. The rear tires spun on the gravel, casting several stones into the black water, and he vanished in a cloud of dust over the crest of the hill and in among the trees.
9
By this time I wanted nothing more fervently than to leave this ghastly house of sorrows, with its black tarn and looming evergreens, behind me forever. I stayed on as Usher’s guest; I could not desert him at so tragic a passage in his life. He had no one except the servants, and after two days not even them, because all of them—even the silent, silver-haired Simmons—turned in their resignations and left the Usher estate.
I found myself cooking for both Usher and myself. He was in no fit state to do anything. The death of his sister almost unhinged his finely balanced brain. He wandered through the rooms of the empty house like a ghost, seldom speaking to me. I feared that the slightest disturbance in his life might cast him into complete madness. He did not say why the servants had left the house. Perhaps he did not know the reason himself. I wondered if it had anything to do with the creature in the tarn. Had they known about the creature? Did Usher himself know about it? On the day of my arrival he had alluded to seeing something stir beneath the black waters. I dared not mention the matter lest I sever his last link with reality.
Gothic Lovecraft Page 13
