Authors: Bethany Griffin
“I would like to live my life in peace,” I say. “I would like to be happy.”
She leans forward, as if ready to confide in me, but then lifts her teacup and takes a sip. Collecting her courage?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask.
She cocks her head to the side and takes a deep breath.
“Since Victor has not proposed marriage and doesn't seem likely to, I have to find a job, to pay my way. And I thought . . . we could live together, Madeline, find a tiny place in the city. It wouldn't be like this place, but . . . it wouldn't be haunted.”
Is she sincere? Or is she just distracting herself from dreams of Dr. Winston? But she is watching me eagerly, waiting for my answer.
“Unhaunted sounds perfect,” I say in a quiet voice.
M
y eyes burn. I am being blinded.
“It's too bright,” I cry, surprised by my voice. It is high-pitched, afraid.
“Hush, Madeline.”
Father is holding me, cradling me like a baby. Blinding light streams through an open window. The walls in this room are white. Where are we? I reach out my hand to touch the unfamiliar wall. It's a sort of plaster.
Allowing my fingers to rest against the wall, I feel . . . nothing. No emotion, no warmth. We are not in the House of Usher.
“Where are we?”
“I'm going to write to Roderick, at school,” Father says. “I'm going to tell him to meet us here.”
I pull away from Father's arms, put my feet on the floor. I'm wearing shiny black shoes. I click them,
tap tap tap
, against the unfamiliar floor.
When I try to stand, my legs are wobbly.
“I gave you some of your mother's medicine,” Father says. “It was the only way I could take you away.”
I look around, fearful, suddenly, that Mother is here.
“She stayed at the house,” Father says. “She loves you, but she wanted to remain under the care of Dr. Paul.” I know that at least part of what he has just said was a lie.
Hours pass. Father falls asleep while I sit in the corner, wrapped in all the blankets from the bed. Through the window I can hear the rhythmic sound of the sea. I do not find it soothing.
I
t is a bright cold day, and I study us in the mirror. Emily is dark, and I am light. Her hair is dark and curly, and her eyes are lively. I am very still and solemn compared to her. My hair is so fair it is nearly silver. My eyes are violet. All of my winter wear, my coat, my hat, my gloves, are white. If it wasn't for the red of my lips and the brightness of my eyes, I could blend right in with the snow and never be seen again.
“Put on your hat,” she says. “Victor will never forgive me if I allow you to catch cold.”
“No, he wouldn't,” I agree.
The snow is deep. It hides the blighted earth around the house as we wait for the grooms to bring the horses from the stable and attach them to the sleigh. There are four white horses with bells on their harness.
The sleigh has two bench seats, one in the front and one in the back. I start to climb into the back, but Dr. Winston stops me.
“There's enough room for all of us on one bench, Madeline.”
“Yes, sit between us,” Emily says. “We can keep one another warm.”
The doctor shakes the reigns, and the horses pull us out into the snow.
“Your brother should be home soon for Christmas, shouldn't he? I long to meet him again,” Emily says.
The sleigh glides over the snow, up and down hills. Emily squeals and holds on to my arm. I understand the urge to scream, as we rise and fall, so quickly. My heart quickens, but I don't want to cheapen this moment. The land looks so clean and fresh under the blanket of snow. So beautiful. And I am here with friends. Tonight, perhaps, we will drink cocoa, and they will tell me about their childhoods, about places they have visited, lives that are different than anything I've ever imagined.
I wish this sleigh ride could last forever.
“Victor!” Emily screams as we begin the descent down a rather sharp incline. “What is that?”
It's one of the white trees, fallen from where a forest once stood. Dr. Winston is already turning the sleigh, forcing the horses around the fallen log. But he's not fast enough. The sleigh tips to the side, and I slide, falling into the snow. For a moment I lie stunned, but then I laugh, because the snow is soft, and nothing hurts.
The young doctor is calling out and the horses are spooked, still running, dragging the overturned sleigh behind them.
A figure on a black horse appears at the top of a hill. I've never seen the horse before, but there is no chance that I would not recognize the rider. He is holding a riding crop, though I don't remember Roderick ever carrying one before. His face is so very, very white, but his cheeks are pink with the coldâand with rage.
He rides down the hill, straight at Dr. Winston.
“What are you doing?” he shouts. “Those horses haven't been exercised in months, and they aren't trained to pull a sleigh.”
“I know how to handle horses.” Dr. Winston stares into Roderick's face.
“You are a fool, and if you had hurt Madeline, I would have killed you where you stand,” Roderick says in a low voice.
There is a whimper behind us, oh, noâEmily! I turn toward her and gasp. She's lying on the ground, and blood is staining the snow red.
Dr. Winston rushes to her side.
“You'd best be glad that isn't Madeline,” Roderick says through gritted teeth. Yet even before he's done saying it, he's kneeling beside the girl, lifting her onto his black horse to take her back to the house.
I
t is time for dinner, so all enmity must be forgotten. I dress carefully and go downstairs to stand in the great hall under the shriveled mistletoe. Roderick joins me.
“When the sleigh tipped, I was terrified,” he admits. “If you'd been hurt . . .” His face is still pale, and I can feel his anguish. I struggle to understand why this experience was more traumatic for him than when I nearly drowned in the tarn.
Emily comes downstairs, followed by Dr. Winston. Her bandage is only a shade paler than her forehead. She looks from Roderick to me. Her brows come together for a moment before she smiles a dazzling smile.
“It's amazing how alike you are,” she says.
Roderick returns her smile. He obviously approves of her, even though he has always despised Dr. Winston.
“How is your head?” he asks her politely.
Since Roderick is talking to Emily, I take Dr. Winston by the arm as the servants usher us into the dining room.
“And how are you feeling, Madeline?” he asks. His emphasis is upon the word “you.” Both Dr. Winston and Roderick somehow caring more about my well-being than Emily's makes me uncomfortable.
“Quite well,” I say, because I don't want him fussing over me too much, not in front of Roderick.
“You look well,” he says. “But maybe we should take a blood sample to be sure.” He stares across the room at my brother, who is taking his seat as we cross the room.
Dr. Paul and Dr. Peridue come into the room. They look uncomfortable; their formal clothing is dusty and ill-fitting, remnants of the lives that they lived before they ended up here.
The servants fill our goblets with wine.
Dr. Paul rubs his hands together, eager for the first course. I lift my fork, examining a chunk of roasted meat in a heavy sauce. It tastes like sawdust. I rearrange the food on my plate so that it looks like I've eaten some of it. Dr. Winston watches me, but for once he's not taking inventory of what I am eating.
“Something is going to happen,” he whispers. “Can you feel it?”
I pretend not to hear him and turn to Roderick. He is dressed all in black, we both are, and he looks particularly handsome. Emily has been admiring him all evening. I hope he has not turned her head enough that she will abandon me so she doesn't have to become a governess. Roderick is the heir to the Usher fortune, after all, even if I am the favorite of the house.
The servants parade into the room with platters of food. As they put the next course on the table, every clock in the place begins to strike. It is an awful, discordant racket that echoes through the house and through my head.
Dr. Peridue struggles to bring his watch from his pocket so that he can check the time. Twelve strikes sound, but it is certainly not midnight. When I last checked, it was ten past seven, though clocks in this house aren't always accurate.
The candles flicker out, one by one, and a loud creaking sounds from all around us, as if the room is rearranging itself. Roderick grasps my shoulder in the sudden darkness. At the same time, Dr. Winston's hand brushes my side and then falls away.
One of the servants drops a tureen of broth, and it shatters when it hits the floor.
“Well, well,” Dr. Peridue begins in his raspy ancient voice, but the creaking continues. Something groans from above us, and with a sudden gust of air against my face, something falls.
Dr. Winston yanks me back, out of my chair and toward him, but Roderick has already thrown himself protectively over me. All three of us topple to the floor.
One candle lights, and then another, and soon we can see Dr. Paul lighting the candles on the sideboard. Emily steps around the three of us on the floor and moves to help him. The servants have disappeared.
An enormous wooden ceiling beam has crushed the table.
Roderick's chair is shattered. If he had not flung himself at me, and if Dr. Winston had not reached for me, both of Roderick's legs would have been broken. And then he would have had to remain here, as an invalid.
The house wants Roderick, wants to keep him here.
Dr. Winston squeezes my arm as he helps me to my feet.
Roderick notes it and turns away.
“B
ut why must you leave now?” I ask Roderick for the fifth or sixth time. I hate that my voice is plaintive. I hate the hurt. We haven't even exchanged presents.
The morning sun streams into his bedchamber, and I sit by his window, enjoying its warmth. A magazine lies beside his bed, the
Southern Literary Messenger
, with stories and articles and a few illustrations. In my hands the crisp paper feels like something foreign and precious.
“Because I must,” Roderick says stiffly. And I hear something, the same desperation that I heard a year ago, when he told me he was haunted. He's desperate to get away from the house. From the unknown. From me.
“I'll return sooner than you think. I'm not dependent on the coach now that I have my own horses.”
Since Roderick is the master of the Usher fortune, he enjoys buying things for himself, like horses that he rarely rides. The one he takes to school and the others that wait for him to return, neglected and unexercised. Horses untrained to pull a sleigh through the snow.
“We should discuss what happened last night,” I say flatly.
He sees that I am shaken, and for a moment I think that he will hug me, like he did when we were children. But instead he says, “Don't be afraid, Madeline.”
“Of course I'm afraid. The house was trying to maim you.”
He shakes his head. “It is a coincidence that ceiling beam came down right over my chair. I wish it would have crushed a few of the doctors.” He means Dr. Winston. For a moment I thought he was beginning to believe, but he's only making a poor joke.
“Roderick!”
“I'm sorry. I know this is upsetting to you, but I wasn't hurt.”
“You could be. If you don't believe. If you don't take precautions.”
“Oh, Madeline, you know Iâ” He pauses. “You know I believe that you are the most creative . . . that you can come up with the best stories in the world.”
His face registers disdain. No belief, not even the ability to listen.
“Stay away from that doctor,” he says. “The young one. I don't like the way he watches you.”
Should I tell him that I am no longer fond of Dr. Winston? But then he would know that I was, for a time.
“I love you, Roderick,” I say, but instead of answering, he hunches his shoulders and turns away.
90
F
ROM THE
D
IARY OF
L
ISBETH
U
SHER
I
have crept up to the attic, and as I write this, I watch Mr. Usher's mad sister. She ignores me most of the time, staring at the wallpaper or tracing the cracks in the walls. She seems to be looking for something. As her finger follows the cracks and the designs in the wallpaper, I begin to see a design. Like a language I can't read.
She escaped from her keepers this morning.
I would have missed the excitement, but I was in the nursery minding my younger sister. The attic rooms don't have doors, and even though Mr. Usher insists we stay away from his sister, the maids don't care, so I was half watching from the other side of the arched doorway.
The maid with broad shoulders, who helps carry barrels from the wine cellar, brought a wooden tub up the stairs. Another servant brought hot water, and washcloths, and then they unlocked the manacles with a key kept on a long silver chain.
The maids forced her to sit in the tub of water, and I wondered if it was too hot, because tears were running down her face. I wondered if I should tell Mr. Usher. After the bath, while they were drying her, she pushed the skinny maid into the big one and ran.
I didn't want to get in the way, but I followed the maids. The poor girl made it all the way from the top of the house to the crypt.