I considered running away, even if I had to jump from the carriage, but Mother expects me to behave like a young lady. And so, even in the grip of terror I felt at my first glimpse of the House of Usher, I did not shame her.
She tried to maintain her optimism, but as we approached the house her face lost its rosy color, and her hand fluttered at the collar of her dress.
“The house appears to have fallen into some disrepair.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“It’s looking at us,” my younger sister said. “I think it wants to eat us.” This might’ve been amusing; many of the things she says are.
But Mother fainted dead away, and nothing we could do would revive her.
22
MADELINE IS FIFTEEN
It is time to leave the house and explore. Not my gardens, but the front of the house, the grand entrance. Lisbeth described it, but for the life of me, I cannot remember looking upon it. A coldness sweeps over me. Cassandra barks once, and then pads after me. Her presence calms me, though my hands are shaking.
“I am going outside.” The housekeeper makes a sign against evil as I walk past. She doesn’t say anything. I wasn’t expecting her to.
Lisbeth’s description made me want to look upon the entrance. The house is waiting, as it so often does. I need to see what Lisbeth saw, to help make sense of her horror as she came to the House of Usher. The outside air is so cold that I can see my breath.
A walkway runs along the side of the house, around the tarn. Cassandra falls into step behind me.
I proceed to the front of the house and look up. It’s a glance, really, and then I’m staring at my boots. I can’t look directly at the front of the house. My head is driven down, as if someone is behind me, pushing me. I try to raise my eyes, but they burn and begin to water.
I have to piece the thing together in my head like a jigsaw puzzle. It is dark, a sort of gray color, faded stone. There is a great front door, and a causeway that has been built to replace the drawbridge. There are the windows, the roofs, each one taller than the last, a stone gargoyle.
My eyes are forced away.
Mother told me once that no matter how brave you think you are, how sure you are of your faith or your convictions or of the rules of science and nature, you can barely glance at the House of Usher. Your eyes won’t let you take it in.
She was right. And when my weak eyes slide to the ground, they are assaulted by the stinking, rotting tarn, black and lurid. Some long-ago Usher tried to drain it. He drowned and is buried below the house, not in the vault with the rest of the Ushers, but in a sort of coffin that was sunk into the water. At least that’s what someone wrote in a ledger in the library. I do not disbelieve it.
Did I ever think that the house was benevolent? That it was warm?
Its windows are like eyes. A sort of electricity buzzes in the air, moving across my skin. What does it want? Why have I been pushed to come here? Does it expect me to be frightened? Amazed? I am, but maybe not in the way that the house intends.
Looking up again, I see a face, achingly familiar, through an attic window. A ghost?
The stones are crumbling, though none have fallen. The house is so stark, so massive and unnatural against this landscape. Not so in the back. Over the years I’ve nurtured plants from the very stones, have used the crumbling stones and the many cracks and crevices to support vines. Perhaps it is time to start on the front of the house. I hum softly, a habit when I think thoughts that might anger the house.
Cassandra puts her nose into my hand and breaks my concentration. I find that I have moved forward. The toes of my boots are nearly touching the fetid water.
23
FROM THE DIARY OF LISBETH USHER
I’ve come to believe that everything is a distraction. I realize that I must find answers, but then a fit comes upon me and I am unable to read. I find an interesting passage in the library, something that might relate to the curse or the history of the house, and my sister shows up, with two servants and a tea set. She says she wants to play at being grand ladies. I know she’s bored here. Mother says she is too old for a governess, and yet she is still very young. Too old for games, not ready to decide what to do with her life.
The same things about the house that horrify me fascinate her. The ancient weapons that line the entranceway, the morbid oil paintings, the crypt.
Sometimes she cocks her head as if she is listening to voices or seeing something in the corners, beyond heavy dust that shimmers in the air.
Even Mr. Usher is a distraction, with his white smile, the slight half-formed dimple that makes him seem dashing, somehow. He’s sworn to help me, but he loses focus, begins pacing and reading, tracing the family’s lineage on great sheets of paper that cover the tables in all of the parlors.
What is it that I’m not supposed to find, and will I recognize it when I find it?
24
MADELINE IS TEN
“Your husband is ill,” Dr. Peridue tells Mother.
I crouch outside her sitting room, listening.
“He hasn’t opened his eyes for three days.” Dr. Peridue sounds angry, as if Father’s illness is an affront to him.
“His trances can last for weeks.” Mother is calm.
“And his arm is broken.”
An audible intake of breath tells me that Mother is surprised.
“His arm is broken?”
“Was he doing something strenuous? Lifting something?” Dr. Paul asks.
“He was helping Madeline with her reading and writing,” Mother says. “It is difficult for her, but he has so much patience. For her.” Her voice drips bitterness. Over the last months, since Roderick left, Father has roused himself from his apathy. He has been spending a few hours with me in the evenings.
Dr. Paul’s ledger creaks as he opens it, probably realizing he should be recording the conversation, particularly if Father is dying. Which I don’t believe. The house won’t let it happen.
“He wouldn’t have broken his arm teaching her how to write,” he says.
Mother gives him a wry smile. She and I both know that the house was showing its displeasure. Because when we practice writing, he tells me secrets. He writes down the things that he cannot say, because of his illness. And if I try, sometimes I can read Father’s messages.
I love that he pays attention to me, but I’m not sure I can believe the secrets he shares. He whispers that the house will harm me, but how could my house hurt me? It loves me like a parent . . . more, because it’s always with me. It wouldn’t hurt Father if he would listen to it.
The doctor shuts the ledger and leaves, and Mother turns her irritation on me.
“Your father is sick to dying and your brother doesn’t love you. Not enough.”
Mother’s teeth are sharp and glittery in the light of the slender white candles she prefers.
I press my thumbnails into the flesh of my palms and try not to cry.
“Look!” Mother holds up Roderick’s latest letter. She is so angry; she is shaking. “If he loved you, Madeline, he would come home for the holidays instead of visiting the home of a friend. Why should he need a friend when he has you?” In a lower voice she says, “I need him well, but he must return eventually. He can’t stay away too long. He is an Usher.”
Mother wants to protect Roderick for as long as she can, but in the end, he’s still an Usher, and he must have ties to the house, whatever that means. Ties to me . . .
I am too afraid to respond. Staring into my lap, I study the needlepoint I was supposed to be practicing before the doctors interrupted. I was supposed to be stitching the black tailfeathers of an ominous-looking bird. I wish Father could come and protect me, but Mother is right. He’s injured, and it’s my fault.
Ghosts shimmer around Mother, feeding on her viciousness. They are translucent, like strands of mist. Mother isn’t aware of them. If she breathed them in, would she choke? And would choking keep her from saying such things to me?
“You sent Roderick away,” I say. She spins toward me, faster than I thought she could move, and rakes her fingernails down the side of my face. I cry out, but now that I’ve found my courage, I don’t stop. “You wanted him to go to meet other young men. Aren’t you glad that he has made friends?”
She steps back, surprised that I’ve stood up to her.
“Friends aren’t important. Your father chose me. I had sisters, but he chose me. Roderick must return to this house of his own free will. I don’t think that will happen.
You and Roderick don’t have the luxury of choice. If he doesn’t return, you will fade away, here among all these ghosts and dusty corners, all alone, Madeline Usher, faded away to nothing. What will we do when we can see the wallpaper through you? How will we even find you?”
She glides away, and I glare after her.
“I won’t fade away,” I whisper.
Because Roderick is my brother, and I know he will come back to me.
25
MADELINE IS FIFTEEN
The house is unsettled. A new doctor has arrived. As though we need another; we are already overrun with physicians. I must write to Roderick, no matter how difficult putting pen to paper is for me.
Opening a drawer in my desk to retrieve my ink bottle, I find a bit of parchment. I need you, it says. I wad it up, careful not to touch the clotted brown words, and let it fall to the floor. Beneath where it lay is a collection of tiny bones. A mouse . . . a mouse died within my desk. The bones are dry and crumbling. It must have happened a long time ago, and as I peer closer, I find something else—a dried human finger. It looks delicate, slightly bent at the joint, and so white that it glows in the semidarkness.
I scoot back from the desk, still considering it. I wrote a letter to Roderick last week. I write to him every week. How then, did a mouse decompose in my desk drawer? And fingers don’t just appear. . . . The house is not just whispering in my mind. It’s warning me, only I don’t understand. My fear is a deep thing, like a cough that lingers, the symptom of an illness that you know you will live with until you die.
“Miss Madeline?”
I slam the drawer closed, concealing the bones as if they are some treasure. Perhaps they are. Regardless, I don’t want the servants to remove them until I’ve examined them further.
“The doctors are waiting,” the maid says. She’s new. Maids don’t last long, only the older servants like the housekeeper, Miss Billingsly, and her sister the cook, gnarled by age. Neither of them ever leave the house. Like me, except I won’t ever get to be old.
The doctors are always waiting. But today is different. Today I’ll meet the new doctor. He’s quite young, an apprentice studying under the other doctors.
I caught a glimpse of him as he carried in his belongings. I tell Cassandra to stay and then carefully close the door, forcing her to remain in my room.
“Watch your step,” the maid warns, but I trip over the rug anyway, distracted by the empty spaces on the wall.
“Where did the pictures go?”
“Pictures, miss?”
“The oil paintings that were on this wall.”
“I’m not sure, miss.”
She is new. Perhaps she doesn’t know. I try to remember the subject of the paintings, but can only call up somber dark hues and a fine layer of dust.
The memories tug at me and then disappear, leaving only frustration.
At least, as we climb the stairs, some paintings remain. I study each of them, determined to remember these, at least, in case they ever disappear. Bowls of apples, a pear on an ornate platter, vases filled with sickly flowers, white flowers, red flowers, a plate of fruit that surely rotted long years ago . . . then, amid the still lifes is a painting I’ve not seen before. A dead girl. She is lying with her hands folded, as if in prayer. Or perhaps she is not dead. Her cheeks are very pink, and her hair is long and fair. Like mine.
I lean closer, to be sure the painting is of some other Usher, not me, but the maid taps her foot. The doctors are waiting.
I tell myself that there is nothing to be afraid of, that the house is not threatening me with that painting. The girl’s hair was not the exact same color as mine, the exact same length. I should have brought Cassandra with me, but she hates the tower and the doctors. One more staircase, one more set of stairs. Exactly twenty-seven more steps. The maid pushes the door open.
Inside, the new doctor stands just across the threshold, smiling. He is young, with curly hair. Thanking the maid, who blushes and curtsies low, he gestures for me to enter the room.
The doctors sit comfortably in chairs, in a semicircle, wearing their spotless white coats, but they leave me standing.
“Dr. Winston has come specifically to study you and your condition,” Dr. Paul says. “Isn’t that wonderful? We may let him stay, since he’s so eager to work with you.”
“Why aren’t you disrobing?” Dr. Peridue shakes his head, annoyed. “Why did you make us wait for you? We shouldn’t have to send one of the maids.”
They’ve been here since I was a child, but they show me no fondness, and I’ve never expected it from them. I ignore Dr. Peridue’s querulousness and unbutton my dress with fumbling fingers. Stepping away from my clothing, I try not to let them see that I’m chilled and frightened.
The endless clanking and clicking of their machines in the next room makes me nervous, but I know from experience that when you are in the tower long enough, you stop hearing them.
The new doctor stares at me, and then looks at the floor, at the dress I was wearing just moments ago. It is surely still warm.
“I didn’t expect her to be beautiful,” he says.
The wallpaper in this room is curling away from the walls. I don’t know what color it was originally, but it has faded to the shade of dried blood. I look at it, rather than at him.
While I am used to being talked about as if I am not here, I hoped he would be different. He is not so much older than me, and he is handsome.
“Her delicacy is a symptom of the malady. Look at her pale skin. Translucent, as if she had been eating laudanum. Which, I assure you, she has not. We rarely medicate her. We tried morphine on her mother, but it didn’t work.”
“I expected from your description that she would be skeletal, and that her hair would stand out around her head like cobwebs. She is . . . ,” he falters.
I watch him watching me. He can’t look away. I see his struggle. He is trying to pull his gaze from me, but he is mesmerized. And there’s something in his eyes I have never seen before. Something warm and attentive.
“You are making a fool of yourself, Dr. Winston. It’s as easy to take blood from a pretty girl as it is from a homely one.” Doctor Paul’s voice is low; he’s annoyed.
My mouth curves up into a tiny little half smile. I may not like being talked about this way, but I am not impervious to flattery and attention, and the doctor is so very young. Would he like to kiss me? Is that what I see in his eyes? I am very curious about kissing.
“I beg your pardon, but if the symptoms progress as you have indicated, it will be hard to watch her, this beautiful creature . . . her fading will be a tragedy.”
My smile freezes and I narrow my eyes, still looking directly into his face. Forget staring demurely at the wallpaper; let him see that I am real. Our eyes meet. His cheeks flush, and I allow myself to imagine kissing him. Though his pity leaves me cold, his lips might be warm.
26
MADELINE IS ELEVEN
Thrusting my hands deep into the recently tilled soil, I dig out a hole, put in the bulb, cover it with earth, and pat down the soil to keep it secure. One of the gardeners gave me these bulbs. He warned me that they were poisonous, as though I might take a bite. I imagine sinking my t
eeth into one, simply to see what might happen. Would Mother be upset if I died?
Would the doctors rush down from their tower, and hook me to their machines?
I once saw Dr. Peridue drinking a vial that looked full of blood. When he noticed me watching him, he went back to measuring vials and mixing potions. But his mouth was stained red.
I continue my planning, hoping that these bulbs will grow into something beautiful. I want to see that something strong can grow with its roots in this house. I collect water in an urn, dark with age, that I took from a corner in one of the front rooms. There were ashes in the bottom, but I shook them out and discarded them. I carefully pour a splash of water onto the places where I planted each of my bulbs. Standing, I brush the dirt from my skirts.
At the edge of the garden, one of the doctors is watching me. It’s Dr. Peridue with his notebook. He writes constantly. He says that he will record everything, that he’s chronicling his own account of the accursed Ushers. If there was ever any kindness in him, it was lost long ago.
“Your mother would like to speak to you,” he says.
I follow him. Mother’s rooms are in the oldest part of the house. She and Father require complete and absolute silence. I know how to walk without making a sound. But sometimes the house itself won’t let you; it groans as if the placement of our feet causes it pain. To keep us from creeping about. To make us notice the house itself—it does not like to be ignored. So Mother had Roderick and I moved to another floor, and now that he’s gone, I’m alone.
“You are very lucky,” the doctor tells me. “Your mother tells me the malady struck when she was very young. You are eleven, and as yet have shown no signs of it.” His voice is disappointed. He composes himself as we pause at the threshold of Mother’s room. “Here we are,” he says.
I tiptoe inside. There is a painting of a pale-haired child beside her bed. Only one. Roderick. Beside the painting is an abandoned book. Sometimes she likes me to read to her, to prove that I still can. The Usher malady makes reading difficult.
The Fall Page 5
