Authors: Bethany Griffin
“I'm Madeline,” I say. “I suppose you are an Usher.” His hair is particularly pale. The same color as mine. I hold out the checkered board, an invitation. He shakes his head and then flashes out of existence. No evaporating fog, no wispy bits, just suddenly gone.
The wooden board falls from my hands, crashing to the floor, and at the same time chess pieces pour in through the doorways on opposite sides of the room, the cracks in the walls. Some are heavy marble in green and gold. Others are faded ivory, or perhaps bone. Shaped metal, gold and copper and age-darkened silver. They stream through the doors in a relentless tide, covering the ebony floor, the rug, the tip of my own slipper. A wealth of game pieces, and no one to play with.
What will the servants think of this, when they come to dust this room tomorrow?
I sit for a long time, wondering at the house, at what I've done wrong. From now on, I'll ignore the ghosts, as they ignore me.
“S
tay with me,” I beg Roderick. “Don't go back to school.” But I don't mean it as much as I did before. With Roderick here, I've barely caught a glimpse of the young doctor in days.
We are in the dining room. I am at one end of the table, and he is at the other. Just like Mother and Father used to sit.
“You know I can't. I promised Mother that I would finish. It's only two more years.”
We sit in cold silence. I didn't think he would stay, but his refusal still hurts.
“When I'm away from here, I'm always telling my friend about you.”
His friend.
“He is fascinated by you. I tell him how beautiful you are, how imaginative. He's jealous that I have such a wonderful sister.”
I have an odd sinking sensation, a combination of nausea and happiness.
“Mr. Usher?”
I feel Roderick's start of surprise at this unexpected and unwelcome intrusion.
Dr. Winston is peering through the gloom of the hallway into the gloom of the dining room.
“What?”
“Dr. Peridue has suggested that while you're home, I might do a quick examination. He wants me to look specifically for signs of the family illness.”
“No,” Roderick says.
“It should be helpful to you, to work with doctors who are aware of your family history. . . .” He trails off as Roderick's face turns purplish red.
“I said no. Absolutely not. I do not have the family illness.”
“Of course not.”
Dr. Winston turns away but doesn't leave.
“I remember you,” Roderick says. “From somewhere.”
Dr. Winston gives a little smile. “I'm the apprentice doctor.”
“Yes, but I know you from someplace else.”
“We have passed before, at a country house. But I don't believe we had ever spoken. I would remember if we had. Can I get you some water, sir?” Dr. Winston steps into the hall and returns with a glass of water.
Roderick's eyes are narrowed to slits. “You've been here for months. When will you finish your apprenticeship and become a real doctor?”
“Oh, I won't leave when I finish my apprenticeship.”
My young doctor turns toward me and smiles.
“Unlike you, Mr. Usher, I want to be here.”
“M
iss Madeline?”
I look up from my planting to see Mother's maid, Agatha. Her face is shiny with sweat, though the day is cool.
“Yes?”
“The physicians sent me to tell you that your mother is dead.”
I am kneeling with my hands in the earth while an emotionless servant tells me that my mother is dead. I will never have a chance to make her love me. She will never again braid my hair, or tell me stories of when she was a girl.
I touch the slimy petal of one of the flowers. If the stems weren't covered with a creeping fungus, I would gather them for her. She loved flowers.
“Go upstairs and put on one of your black dresses,” the maid says.
I don't remember walking to my room. On my bedside table, there is a sheaf of writing paper. I had begun to write a letter to my brother but had given up in frustration when the words kept dancing around the page. As of last night, there had been nothing interesting to say. And now I won't have to finish it, because Roderick will be coming home. He must. Our mother is dead.
Pressure builds at my temples, growing until light explodes behind my eyelids. I scream. Before I'm done, my ears are ringing. I take a step forward. The sound of my footstep echoes, and the light, the light in the room has become unbearable. I roll myself in a blanket and hide underneath my bed, sure that, like Mother, I am dying.
I cry from pain rather than sadness.
T
onight is Roderick's last night home. We sit together in an alcove of the library. His eyes are closed, as if he's half asleep, while I flip through a book. A headache threatens, and with the headache, perhaps a fit. I fight it down and hand the book to Roderick.
Cassandra lies in front of the door. She has been lethargic for the last few days. I walk over and rub her head. She gazes up at me lovingly. I want to lie down and put my head on her back, like a child. But Lisbeth Usher claims the library holds the answers that I need, so when I can, I search.
“Look, Madeline.” Roderick is pointing at an illustration in the ancient tome. “This is our house,” he whispers. “But it isn't.”
The House of Usher? Surely not, for the house in the drawing sits on a dark cliff, and waves pound the sand below. But what did Father say the night he took me to the widow's walk, about being away from the sea?
Roderick drops the book to the floor. I kneel down to retrieve it, hoping, as I look up into his eyes, that there is something here, something that will make him believe, but he is already shaking his head, retreating to his precious logic.
“Roderick, it even says it is the House of Usher.” I point down at the words.
THE LEGENDARY HOUSE OF USHER.
It shows the family crest. In spite of myself, I feel a brief bit of pride. This house is so astonishingly old, and our family line, so ancient.
The scions of Usher picked up the very stones of the ancient mansion and removed them from the sacred land, taking them to the new world, even the dungeon and all of the instruments therein. The only thing that was lost was the goblet, and without the goblet, they could not mitigate the curse.
My eyes blur.
“Perhaps they moved it,” Roderick insists. “Maybe that's why it's so creaky and all the angles seem wrong, as if it might be ready to collapse. But it isn't haunted.”
What will it take to make him believe?
A
s soon as the light and sound of the house grew bearable again, the doctors sent for me. It's only been a few days since Mother died.
“You've come to your heritage,” Dr. Peridue says. Paunchy and bald, he is the oldest of the doctors. In his voice I hear happiness; he is pleased to have a new specimen to study. Before I came into my “heritage,” he had little interest in me, but now that I've had my first fit, his eyes sparkle and he watches my every move, ready to capture me and add me to his horrible book.
“What will happen to me?” My voice echoes, and I feel small. This room has vaulted ceilings and three dank fireplaces.
“It won't be so bad.”
He is lying.
Dr. Paul stares at me from across the room. His eyes are red from crying. He caresses a syringe.
“Your brother will be staying home for the duration of the summer, won't he? That will be nice for you,” Dr. Peridue says. “You've missed your brother.” Then, to Dr. Paul, as if I can't hear him, “Remember how we thought she might come into the family illness when she was separated from her twin? Instead it was caused by her mother's death.”
“Odd,” Dr. Paul says. “I thought it would affect the male specimen first.”
Dr. Peridue laughs. “It should have.” He stares into his book, blinking. “The pattern has been broken. I believe that the house has chosen the female twin as heir.”
Dr. Paul gives him a look. Either he doesn't believe what Dr. Peridue just said, or he doesn't believe in the curse.
“What is going to happen?” I repeat in a louder, stronger voice. “Will I go mad?”
Dr. Peridue smiles. He is enjoying this. “Like your mother, you will suffer fits. During these spells, your senses will become morbidly acute. The most insipid food will be unendurable, your clothing will be painful to your skin, and the quietest of sounds will inspire you with terror. You will have headaches, and you will lose consciousness.”
“I don't believe you,” I say, trying to be like Roderick when he is pretending to be brave.
But I do believe him. I believe every word.
U
p in his room, finally recovered from his illness, Roderick is packing, preparing to catch the coach, which passes the property once a day. He will leave, once again, determined not to listen to my worries about the house and the curse.
I sit in the chapel where Mother's funeral was held. And perhaps Father's. The light coming through the stained glass dances over the stonework. The windows are tall, peaked at the top, framed in old wood that has become silverish with age.
Sitting here, I can feel the majesty of the house. It is so old. Looming over and around me. How can I stand up to it all alone? When I become too determined, I fall into longer trances, sometimes for days at a time. And I forget things. Or do I remember things I never knew? Like the stories of long-ago Ushers that play behind my eyes when I'm trying to sleep . . .
Cassandra pads into the room. She eyes the window suspiciously, and then pounces on something. I can't tell what until she pounces again. The weak sunlight is moving across the floor, sparkling through the window, and the silly dog is trying to catch it.
This unexpected foolishness from a dog that usually looks so wise startles a laugh from me. And somehow the darkness in the house retreats.
“W
hat happened to the chess set?” Roderick asks, home from school for the summer.
He doesn't really care about the chess set. I don't tell him how it was buried by game pieces. How the servants left the pieces piled up in the parlor for weeks, and then one day it was just gone.
He does want to know more about the stories I have always told him. Where do I find them? I didn't know that everyone couldn't see them. They are like the ghosts that float about the corners of the house, ephemeral unless you reach out to them. And even after I see a story, live it in my head, I still don't know if it's real or fiction.
Are there other things that only I can do? I tested the servants, and it seemed that all of them could hear and speak. Even the gardeners, who were mostly silent, could speak when they had to. Can everyone hear whispers of thought? Can everyone feel the touch of something or someone lingering on their skin? Next I must learn if they see the ghosts.
The stories are not unlike fireflies. In the summer evenings, fireflies swarm around the tarn, making something hateful almost beautiful.
Father once said they were the memories of ghosts, lingering about. Maybe. But I'm not sure.
Grasping them requires living them, even if the story is long, and terrible.
So I mostly avoid them, unless Roderick asks for one. I want my own memories, my own stories.
D
ressed in his traveling best, Roderick waits for me in the corridor. We stroll through the lower galleries, stopping to admire the Usher coat of arms. The walls are lined with ancient weapons. This room makes Roderick proud of the house, proud to be an Usher. But I can't pretend I'm not distressed. The madman's body was removed from the parlor, but I can't stop thinking of Father.
“It's like the house swallowed him whole,” I whisper.
But I have a sinking, unspeakable suspicion about what truly happened to him.
My words provoke Roderick's temper. “I'm going to prove to you that this house is not watching us,” he says. “Once and for all, and then I'll never have to hear you talking about what the house likes, what the house wants, again.”
“Do you hate to hear me speak so very much?” I retort, for what else do I have to talk to him about? I haven't visited important cities or read thick books. I have the garden and the house. I would think, since he doesn't believe it is haunted, that he would be proud to be the master of such an ancient and stately home.
We reach the wall of mounted weapons, and in a movement so fast I cannot follow it, Roderick takes a knife from the wall and holds it to my throat. The blade is cold, and shaking because his hand is trembling.
“What are you doing?” My voice is choked and slightly high-pitched. Roderick would never hurt me, but the knife is cold . . . colder than it should be. Poisoned?
“I'm trying to show you. The house cannot protect you. The house doesn't know you or care about you.”
“It does, Roderick,” I say, because I believe it, and because I'm not going to let him think that I'm afraid.
He presses the knife harder against my flesh. There's a look in his eyes that reminds me of Father, when Father was mad.
But he will not scare me into abandoning the truth.