The Fall (29 page)
Authors: Bethany Griffin
The house shimmers around me, and a ceiling beam crashes down. Ghosts follow in my wake. Lights flicker and shadows dance as I pass through the great room. Roderick once put a knife to my throat in this room. Hundreds of weapons line the walls. Swords, lances, axes, maces. A thousand blades, dark and dull with age.
The ghosts surround me. Every spirit and haunt that has ever wandered through these halls crowds in, and I stumble to a stop. A great family crest is painted on the floor. No matter how many Usher bastards the house can attract, Roderick and I are the only ones who matter. The line ends with usâor, if we fall under its spell, continues.
“This is the end of the House of Usher,” I whisper.
One moment I'm standing, proud and defiant. The next, every weapon, every shield falls from the wall, echoing through the house, and I'm on my knees. Pain overwhelms me, searing spikes in my head, as all my overtaxed senses collide. I throw back my head and scream, and then there is pain and blackness, and the house whispering in my mind that Roderick will find me here when he returns from his ride. That he will know what to do.
W
hat happens next isn't waking. It's simply a continuation of foul dreams. Except that, gradually, I realize it is real. Roderick's head is bowed. He stands over me, weeping. The image in my mind, and in his, is of the manacles in the attic.
The house tells him that I am mad. Suggests he confine me, as our father confined his own twin sister. The Usher line must continue.
Roderick puts his hand to my throat. The gesture is half caress, half clinical. If the doctors were here, they would tell him that sometimes, during my fits, everything slows, including my heart. They would tell him that even if he doesn't feel my pulse, that I still live. His fingers linger on my cheek. He leans closer, as if he will kiss me.
And then he pulls back, as if the touch of my skin burns him.
“No,” he says. “No.” He's speaking to himself. “I will be strong. For her.
“Noah,” he cries, his voice breaking as he summons his friend. “My sister is dead.”
The house is wroth with him, and with me. Darkness takes me again.
W
aking is slow, silent, and stiflingly dark. Tenebrous.
I'm disoriented as awareness returns, searching for my blanket, slowly feeling my eyes to make sure they are still there.
Trembling, in the compressed darkness, I realize where I am. Has there ever been any question? Roderick has buried me alive in the vault. I'm in one of the sarcophagi.
He found me, put me in the white dress. Emily's dress with the pearl sleeves, the lace inserts. Someone put up my hair.
I tear at the dress, at the collar that is strangling me. I tear at everything. I tear at my own eyes, frustrated by my pitiful relief that they are still there.
Blood trickles from my ripped fingernails, as I remember that I've been in one of these boxes before. Roderick was locked inside. Is it possible to get out?
I collect all of my strength, force myself to be calm, to ignore my claustrophobia and think.
In the silence, I can hear the wind blowing through the upper floors where the ceiling collapsed. I can hear the restlessness of the house; it feels injured and angry. Vulnerable. And I hear Roderick.
“I'm going mad,” he says.
“Roderick, please, let me take you away from here. . . . Come with me.” His friend is begging.
They will leave me. They will abandon me. Fear and anger are eclipsed by hope, I've been trying to get him to leave the house for months. Let Roderick leave. Let him live.
“I can't leave Madeline. I will die here, like her, be buried with her,” he insists.
Tears of frustration run down my cheeks.
“Madeline wanted you to go. She begged me to take you out of the house. Consider it her final wish.”
Does Roderick know that I am not dead? He must have suspected. The house must be whispering to him, even now. Somehow he's ignoring it.
Ever so slowly I begin feeling the walls of my prison, looking for a latch that will open the lid. As my fingers explore, my mind searches for Roderick's. I hear his thoughts.
Madeline. Oh, Madeline. I hear you.
His voice is clear in my mind.
I've heard you for days, nonstop. Please, be silent, Madeline. Be still, please.
He's crying.
I left you before, and I'm sorry. Don't let your ghost drive me to madness. Please, be at peace . . .
I throw back my head and scream my frustration. He thinks our connection is some sort of ghostly visitation.
My scream hurts him. He pleads with me, and I cannot stand it.
Please, if you love me even a little, I would have traded my life for yours. I'll be buried beside you soon.
“Let me read you a story, Roderick. It will soothe you.” Noah is searching for some way to calm him. They are in the oldest part of the house, protected from the damage of the collapsed roof. A storm is blowing in.
“Have you seen it?” Roderick asks. “Have you?”
He means the storm. Noah shakes his head. “I'm so sorry, Roderick,” he says. “I can't imagine your pain.” And then to himself, “I should have stayed and tried to help her.”
He opens a window. A whirlwind outside blows dead leaves and debris about. The clouds are so low that they press against the turrets.
“There are no stars,” Roderick croons. “No stars ever again, today is the last night, the last night ever. The stars have all gone away.”
He is right. I see through his eyes, and there are no stars. There is no moon. There is thunder, but no flash of lightning. A glowing green light enshrouds the mansion.
“You are being silly, my friend. It's some sort of electrical force, some sort of cloud that's come up from the tarn. We will leave in the morning, after the storm has blown over. Come away from the window.”
Roderick paces, his movements feverish and erratic.
“We'll read
The Mad Trist
, by Sir Launcelot Canning. It's the story of a tragic maiden, and a knight, and a hermit who has evil intentions.” He clears his throat and begins to read. “âAnd Ethelred, who was by nature doughty, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in truth, was obstinate and malicious, but, feeling the rain on his shoulders, he uplifted his mace and, with blows, made room in the planks of the door for his gauntleted hand, and cracked and ripped and tore it asunder.'”
Roderick cowers. Like the boy he was, afraid. He said once that he would die of his own fear.
I've listened long enough.
I reach up. I am not powerful, but my afflictions have made me able to withstand great pain. Pressing both hands against the lid of the sarcophagus, I push upward. Wood splinters, and cool bits of ceramic crumble and rain down.
They should not have stored these death boxes for so many years in this place of rot and decay.
I stand, letting the crumbling stoneware fall from my body like water trickling from some drowned artifact that has been brought to the surface.
The wind is blowing, blowing. I hear it in the house above and wish that I could feel it, could feel anything in this stifling vault. My mouth is thick with something that feels like cotton. Emily's white dress clings to me.
Noah is reading, trying to soothe him.
“âBut the good champion Ethelred, now entering the door, was enraged, but instead of the malicious hermit, he came upon a dragon. And Ethelred uplifted his mace and struck upon the head of the dragon, and it fell upon him with a shriek so horrid and harsh that Ethelred put up his hands to cover his ears. . . .'”
I stand still, surprised by how even the dry underground air revives me after the horror of the coffin. Usually there is not a hint of moving air in the vault, but tonight something is different. Perhaps it is the force of the wind; perhaps the fissures in the house are opening, like pores, absorbing the violence of the storm.
I do not move toward the stairs. I am not going up. Instead, shuddering and repulsed, I go deeper into the crypt. I haven't the strength to get Roderick out. He'll have to do that on his own.
A sleepwalker is what I am, a reanimated corpse. I am afraid of failing in what I have to do, but I'm not terrified of death.
I push through the last gate, to the hidden place, the deepest chamber under the darkest part of the house. Here is the foundation stone.
I put both hands on the wooden handle of the sledgehammer.
Above, Noah continues to read.
“âAnd now the champion, having escaped the fury of the dragon, approached the silver shield that hung upon the wall, but as he moved closer, it fell, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound.'”
I lift the sledgehammer and tremble. It is so heavy. I twist, using every muscle and all of the strength in my body to bring it down, hard on the stone.
Nothing happens.
M
y entire body is quivering from the first hit. I lift the sledgehammer again, and bring it down with a crash that reverberates through me.
“Did you hear that?” Noah asks, afraid now.
“I have heard it, and heard it, and heard it, for days on end. We have put her living in her tomb!”
Ignoring Roderick's faraway sobs, I bring the sledgehammer down for the third time. It takes all of my strength, everything that I have in me, or have ever had.
The house shakes and quivers, pain washes over and through me, and stones crash down. The foundation stone shatters into a million pieces.
I've succeeded. Done the impossible. And all I feel is the need to find my brother.
I don't want to die in this dungeon, not alone. There may still be time to save Roderick and his friend, but only if I'm very fast. I run away from the secret room and the vault with my coffin, through the copper tunnel, up the steep stairs, following the bond I share with my brother.
The house is hemorrhaging. Cracking. The house is dying.
Can either of us outlive the house?
I don't know, but I must try.
Running as walls collapse around me, I reach the studio. I know they are inside.
I throw the door open, and Roderick is there, gasping my name. We don't have time for an embrace, but still he wraps his arms around me, tightly, like he will never let me go.
“Run,” I say over my shoulder to Noah. And then, when he doesn't seem inclined to obey, louder.
All three of us run. As we reach the end of the corridor, the ceiling begins to collapse inward. A lone beam seems to be holding what's left of this passage in place. We have to crouch to enter the stairwell.
“I told you I would die of fear,” Roderick gasps. He takes a step down, but I grab his arm.
The smell of burning is all around us. Untended candles must have lit the curtains and rugs. A chandelier crashes and shatters, just as the floor beneath our feet begins to shake, and I feel the house collapsing, feel it as if my very bones are crumbling. But the arm that supports Roderick remains strong and steady. The house is dying, but I'm not.
In the corridor ahead, I see a wide arched window, but no light comes through, only great unnatural darkness. The house is being swallowed by the cavernous earth below. I won't go back underground. I reach out to stop Noah before he goes down the stairs.
“If we go lower, we will be crushed under the weight of the house. We have to go up.”
The three of us turn. We must try to reach the doctors' tower. It's the highest point in the house. As we crest the next set of stairs, I see light ahead. Not the burning light of the house afire, but natural light from above. Sunlight? I feel a burst of optimism. It must have been near dawn when I crawled out of the coffin.
As we turn the last corner, a beam crashes down. Roderick falls beneath twisted and trapped.
“Go!” Roderick shouts. “Both of you, go.”
“No.” I kneel beside him. “If we can get out, we can escape. The curse is broken.”
“All the more reason for you to leave me. I left you often enough.”
Noah is trying to move the beam, hitting it with his shoulder. It only moves a tiny bit, and when that happens, Roderick screams.
He's broken. Noah hits the beam again, and this time it shifts away from Roderick, freeing him, but at the same time, tiles from the ceiling two floors above rain down, blocking the tunnel. We are on one side, Noah is on the other.
“Go up,” I call to him. “To the tower. The house is collapsing inwardâat least up there, you won't be crushed. The heights must still be aboveground. . . .”
“What about you?” He's starting to dig through the rubble that's separating us, but it's no use.
“We're going back down, to the vault.”
“To bury him alive?”
Like he did to me? I don't acknowledge the shock of the question. The sudden pain. But the doctor hid in the burrows under the house. There is still a chance.
“The vault is reinforced with copper, and there are tunnels there that may lead outside.”
He's still digging.
“You've done enough. More than any friend could be expected to do. Go now. Get out. Please, go.”
Roderick clings to my hand, but I twist it away and wipe it on my skirt before sitting down and calmly retaking his hand in mine.
“We're Ushers,” he says, and his voice sounds stronger than it has in a long time.
T
he earth rumbles, and trees fall, splintering like toothpicks.
A great fissure opens. The house trembles on the edge of the chasm, and the tarn empties itself. Waves crash over the slate tiles of the roof, and two tentacled arms wave in the air before they disappear into the fissure.
