Usher's Passing (27 page)

She left her room and walked down the hallway to the nursery, where Maye Bodane was tending the infant Walen. The child played happily in his crib. Maye, a lively young Irishwoman with curly golden hair, stood at the large bay window, watching curtains of rain flap across the lake.

"How's my angel this morning?" Nora asked brightly.

"He's fine, mum." She came over to the crib and smiled at Walen. A lovely woman with calm gray eyes, she had a young son of her own whom she'd named Edwin. "Happy as a lark, he is."

Nora gazed down at her beautiful boy. Erik was already talking about having another child, but Nora was reluctant. In bed, Erik was cold and rough. She remembered her father's advice: "Stay with him, Nora. Give him time. If you let this chance slip through your fingers, you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

Walen was gurgling, playing with a new toy.

As Nora saw what it was, her face became a mask of shock.

The toy was an infant-sized, silver pistol.

She reached in and snatched the thing away. Instantly, Walen began bawling. "What is
this?"
she demanded. "You know how I dislike guns, Maye!"

"Yes, mum," she said nervously, "but when I came in this mornin', it was right there in his crib. Walen seemed so taken with it, I thought—"

"Who put this thing in there with him?"

"I don't know. Oh, he's awful upset, mum!" She picked up the squalling child and began cooing to him.

Nora's hand was gripped tightly around the offending toy. She'd told Erik that she didn't want her son associating with weapons—toy guns included—until he'd had a chance to see how destructive guns were. She was enraged that he had so openly flaunted her wishes. "Damn it to hell!" she snapped, and Maye looked at her openmouthed. "I won't let him treat me like this!" Storming out of the nursery, she stalked along the corridor toward the stairway that would take her up another level and into Erik's private domain.

Rain slammed against the leaded windows and streamed off the balconies. As Nora climbed the stairs a flash of lightning dazzled her, and thunder crashed so close to the house that she imagined she could feel the entire Lodge tremble like a ship in a tempest.

On the third floor, dim light filtered through the thick stained-glass windows, giving this section of the Lodge the atmosphere of an unholy church dedicated to some pagan god of war. On the walls were all makes of Usher rifles, pistols, and machine guns. Artillery pieces stood mounted in the wide corridors. A menagerie of stuffed animals—bears, stags, panthers, lions, tigers— crouched in the shadows. Their glass eyes seemed fixed on Nora as she passed them, and more than once she turned to make sure none were tracking her. The hallways took her to the left, then to the right—and led her to doors that opened on stone walls, narrow staircases that ascended into total darkness. From far up in the attic drifted down the staccato rhythm of the workmen's hammers, like a laboring, never-ceasing heartbeat.

Thunder sounded like the cannonfire of that terrible July night almost a year ago. "Erik!" Nora shouted, and her voice rolled down the halls, distorting, echoing back to her in a whisper.

Within another few minutes, Nora realized she'd taken
a
wrong turn somewhere. Nothing was familiar. Lightning struck again, and harder still. A dozen crystal owls mounted on pedestals on the walls trembled; one of them fell and shattered on the floor with the sound of a gunshot.

"Erik!" she called, a note of rising panic in her voice. She continued on, this time searching for a staircase down. She saw no servants, and the windows she passed were covered with sheets of water. Still, the hammering went on and on, ebbing and fading, almost in cadence with the booming of thunder.

She was lost. Predators growled silently at her, and ahead a stuffed lion blocked her path. Its green, gleaming eyes challenged her to approach. She took another corridor, this one lined with perhaps a hundred suits of armor and medieval weapons. At the end of it was a heavy door; she pulled it open and called for Erik again There was no reply but the hammering, now even louder.

A wrought-iron spiral staircase ascended to a white door twenty feet above her head. She looked upward, the noise of hammers about to split her skull. If that door led to the attic, she told herself, she could at least get one of the workmen to help her find her way. She climbed the stairs, being careful of her footing, and reached out to open the door.

But then she stopped. The door was covered with thick white rubber, its brass handle discolored by sweat. When she touched it, a thrill of cold coursed up her arm. But the door was locked. She was about to pound on it and try to call for help above the cacophony of thunder and hammers when the lock disengaged with a metallic
click.

Slowly the door began to open. Nora stepped back. The sickly-sweet aroma of decay was oozing through the door's widening crack. Within, all was blackness.

A soft, hoarse voice whispered, "What is it?"

"Oh," Nora said. "You startled me." She couldn't see a thing inside there. The hammers, the hammers! Why wouldn't they stop?

"Please," the voice implored, "speak as quietly as you can."

"I . . . didn't mean to disturb you." Realization dawned on her with a shock. "Is that . . . Mr. Usher?"

There was a silence. Then: "Are you lost again?"

She nodded. "I was . . . trying to find Erik."

"Erik," Ludlow Usher repeated softly. "Dear Erik." The door opened wider, and a hand curled around its edge. The fingers were withered, the nails long and ragged. The flesh looked unhealthy and mottled. It had been more than two months since she'd last seen Ludlow, and she'd assumed he was still living up in the glass cupola. She'd never seen this room before. "I'd welcome a visitor," he said. "Won't you come in?" When she hesitated, he asked, "You're not afraid, are you?"

"No," she lied.

"Good. You've got guts. I always admired you for that. Come in and we'll talk . . . just you and I. All right?"

Nora paused. To flee now would make her look foolish. And what did she have to fear from Ludlow Usher, anyway? He was an old man. At least he could tell her how to get down from this awful place. She entered the room, and Ludlow, an indistinguishable shape in the gloom, closed the door behind her. She caught her breath as the lock clicked shut.

"Don't be afraid," he whispered. "I'm going to take your hand and lead you to a chair." His hand embraced hers, and she restrained the urge to jerk away. His flesh was cool and slimy. He led her across the room. "You can sit down now. May I pour you a glass of sherry?"

Nora found the chair and sat down. "No, thank you, I . . . can stay just a few minutes."

"Ah. Well, you'll forgive me if I partake, won't you?" A bottle was uncorked; liquid was poured.

"How can you
see
in here? It's so terribly dark!"

"Dark? Not at all. Not to me, that is." He sighed heavily. "For me, light leaks through the seams in these walls. It creeps from every pore of your body, Nora. Your eyes are ablaze. And the wedding ring on your finger is as incandescent as a meteor. I could sun myself in its heat. Listen to those hammers, Nora. Isn't it a lovely music?" It was said with cutting sarcasm.

She listened. In this room she couldn't hear the hammering at all; instead, there was a different noise: a sound like soft, muffled heartbeats. There were many heartbeats, some louder than others, some more metallic, some crisper. The noises seemed to be coming from all around the room, or even from the very walls themselves. She heard the clicking of gears, the faint rattling of chains through some kind of mechanism.

"My clocks," Ludlow said, as if he'd read her mind. "There are sixty-two grandfather clocks in this room. I started out with more than a hundred, but alas, they do break down. Listen, and you can hear the air parting as the pendulums swing. The sound of time passing is comforting to me, Nora. At least it helps to mask the hammering and sawing. Oh, just listen to those workmen up in the attic! And the storm, too!" He sucked in his breath suddenly. When he spoke again, his voice was strained. "Lightning hit very close to the house that time. The thunder's getting louder."

Nora couldn't hear a thing but the ticking of the clocks This room was windowless, and evidently the walls were several feet thick. But exactly where the room was in the house, she couldn't say.

"Of course you know I'm dying," Ludlow said flatly.

"Dying? Of what?"

"It's . . . a peculiar disease. Oh, I would've thought Erik might have told you by now. He will. I won't spoil the surprise."

"I don't understand. If you're sick, why are you up here alone, in the dark?"

"That, my dear, is precisely why I'm—" He stopped. "The thunder," he whispered urgently. "My God, didn't you
hear
that?"

"No. Not a thing."

He was silent, and Nora had the impression that he was waiting for something. When it didn't come, he allowed his breath to hiss between his teeth. "I despise storms as much as that damned hammering. It goes on night and day. Erik destroys a room and rebuilds it. He constructs corridors that end at stone walls. He builds a staircase that ascends to empty air. All for
my
benefit, of course. Oh, Erik's a sly one! He's trying to kill me, you know."

"Trying to kill you?
How?"

"With noise, my dear," Ludlow said. "Incessant, nerve-racking, demonic noise. The hammering and sawing that never stops. Even that ridiculous display on the Fourth of July was for me. The sound of those cannons going off almost drove me to suicide."

"You're wrong. Erik's trying to balance the Lodge. There's a crack that runs up the north face of the—"

Ludlow interrupted her with a mirthless laugh. "Balance the Lodge? Oh, that's a good one! Perhaps that's what he's telling the workmen, but it's a lie."

"The Lodge is sinking into the island," Nora said. "I saw the crack myself."

"Oh, the crack's there, all right. I've seen it, too. But the Lodge isn't sinking, my dear. An earthquake damaged the Lodge in—when was it?—1892. Or 1893, I can't recall. We're in an area that's prone to tremors."

Nora thought of the crystal owls trembling on their pedestals, and the one crashing to pieces on the floor.

"Erik is trying to kill me," Ludlow whispered, "because he wants
this."

Something touched her shoulder, startling her. She ran a hand along it, feeling the slick smoothness of the ebony cane that was always in Ludlow Usher's grip.

"He's on fire inside for it, Nora. Do you know why? It's
power.
Over the estate, the factories, everything. Even the future. I have no choice but to pass it to Erik, though I dread the consequences." The cane moved away from her shoulder. "Erik wants to hurry my death, you see, so he can—" She sensed his sudden tension, and he rasped, "The
thunder
!
Oh God, the
thunder
!"

This time she heard it—a faint, distant booming, muffled by the stone walls. The storm, she knew, must be raging fiercely outside the Lodge.

"Wait," Ludlow breathed. "Don't move, just wait."

"What is it?"

"Quiet!" he hissed.

Silence stretched between them. Nora heard the sherry bottles clink together. In another few seconds she could feel a vibration in her chair, traveling upward through her body to the top of her skull. The wooden floor creaked and groaned. Around the strange room, chimes in some of the grandfather clocks tinkled, off key and dissonant. Then, just as suddenly, the vibration stopped.

"That fool draws the lightning with those rods on the roof," Ludlow said hoarsely. "Did you feel it? The tremor? It's gone now, but I'd say a good deal of the kitchen crockery is broken and a dozen windows shattered. That fool! He doesn't know what he's tampering with!"

He's insane, Nora thought. Ludlow was jabbering like a madman.

"That pistol, there in your hand. Why do you carry it? I thought you hated guns."