Usher's Passing (37 page)

New walked around to the side of the house. The light revealed nothing.

As he started to turn, something grabbed him by the back of the neck. He could feel claws digging in, and his finger almost squeezed a shot off—but then he reached back and closed his hand around the small treebranch, still bearing a few dead leaves, that had fallen onto his neck. He flung it away in angry disgust.

"New!" his mother called. "Come on back in the house!"

He shone the light up into the trees. Most of the branches still held leaves and defeated the flashlight's beam. The treetops swayed back and forth in the wind's relentless currents.

New continued around to where his mother waited. He passed the discarded old washing machine and stood near the pickup truck, shining the light along the roof again.

"You see anythin'?" Myra called, her voice thin and nervous.

"No, not a thing. Whatever it was is long gone by now."

"Well, come on in out of the cold, then! Hurry!"

New took a step forward—and then his blood turned icy.

He smelled Greediguts, very close to him—the musky rank scent of a hunting cat.

New stopped, aimed the light upward into the trees. The wind roared past, almost throwing him off balance. Branches bent and swayed. Dead leaves tumbled down. It was close, very close . . .

And then he heard his mother scream,
"New!"
and he whirled around toward the pickup truck.

Something was slithering out from underneath the truck; it moved so fast that New had no time to aim the shotgun. He fired wildly even as he leaped backward, and the truck's passenger door dented in as if punched by a huge fist. But then the monster—a sinewy dark shape that moved like velvet lightning— had burst out of its hiding place, and as it suddenly reared up on its hind legs, towering over New by more than a foot, it was caught for a second in the glare of the light.

The creature was a black panther from a madman's nightmare. Its massive head was misshapen and elongated, its sharp-tipped ears laid back along the skull, its chest ridged with muscle. The beast's eyes were an incandescent, hypnotic golden green, the pupils rapidly shrinking to vertical slashes in the light. As New staggered backward in shock, he saw the creature's claws extend; they were three inches long and curved into vicious hooks. Its mouth opened, exposing yellow fangs—and from the mouth came a high, bloodcurdling cry that sank to an eerie rattle. The body was covered with short jet-black hair, though on its underbelly the skin was gray and leathery.

Still balanced on its hind legs, the monster leaped forward in a blur of motion.

New was ready with the shotgun. The second shell exploded— but the panther had twisted suddenly to one side, ducking the pellets. It landed on all fours, whirled to attack New's rear, and hurtled toward him.

He had no time to protect himself. Three hundred pounds of animal fury were about to crash into him.

Through his panic, a vision in his mind shone with diamond clarity: the panther flinging itself toward a wall of rough stones that stood between them. The wall was a phantom construction of crooked blue lines and angles that pulsated in the air; through it he could see the panther, and their eyes locked

The wall's THERE!
he shouted to himself.

A guttural grunt of pain came from the beast's throat, as its leap was blocked in midair. Some of the blue phantom stones were jarred out of place—but then Greediguts was tumbling backward. It slammed into the pickup truck's side and whirled around in a mad circle, snapping at the air. New caught a glimpse of its tail, writhing wildly back and forth, and heard the menacing buzz of a snake's rattles.

The blue wall was fading quickly. Holes broke open as if through smoke. On the porch, Myra was screaming for help. Greediguts shook its head violently, blinking its eyes in dazed confusion, and sprang toward the boy again.

This time New visualized pieces of jagged glass in the wall, and made it four feet thick. He could hear his brain humming and cracking like a machine. The wall strengthened, throbbing with power.

Greediguts hit it headfirst. For an awful instant the wall shook, and New feared the beast was going to rip right through. He felt the shock as if someone had struck him hard in the forehead.

The beast howled and fell back, sprawling on its side. When it scrambled to its feet, its eyes were glazed and wary, its head lowered. Through the fading wall they faced each other. New's heart was hammering, but he stood his ground; the panther lifted its head to smell the air, and New saw a long black forked tongue dart quickly from its mouth.

The wall was as thin as silk. Threads of pain were beginning to run across New's skull. All his attention was focused on the animal; he heard his mother's frantic shouts as if from within a dark, distant well.

Greediguts lifted a foreleg and clawed at the air. The beast began to pace back and forth, darting in and then feinting back. Its gaze was fixed on him, and New felt the rage sear through to his soul. The panther's eyes flared like bursts of fire.

The wall was almost gone, wisping rapidly away.

Build it back! New told himself. The wall is
there,
strong and thick!

It began to take on definite lines once more, stone by stone. His head was pounding, and he felt the panther's stare on him; the thing was trying to hypnotize him. As their eyes met and locked again, New felt a terrible, cold power puncture his resolve. A dark whirlpool of dizziness began to spin around him.

Greediguts was motionless. Its tongue flicked out, disappeared again.

The wall between them trembled and started to fall apart.
No!
New said mentally, trying to visualize it as he had before. Build it back, strong and thick! But it was fading away, and the disrupting pain in New's head was savage.

The panther was waiting, ready to leap.

—
little man—

The soft, mocking voice had curled around New's throat like a velvet whip.

—
little man of the house—

It came from nowhere and everywhere, so cold it ached in his bones. The wall was full of holes, swaying like a spiderweb.

—
little man of the house what are you going to do?

The panther sprang, its jaws opening wide. It ripped through the smoky wall, claws stretched toward the boy who stood frozen before it.

Less than three feet from slashing New's head off, Greediguts was hit by something in the air and lifted up over New, turning end over end. New felt a freezing wave of power strike him, flinging him to the ground as the panther's claws swiped at empty air above his head.

Greediguts was carried six feet past New, and slammed into the base of an oak tree with the sound of crunching bone. The animal roared in surprise and agony—and when it hit the ground again, it leaped into the underbrush.

New heard the thing crashing away; in another moment there was nothing but the noise of the wind in the trees. His nerves jangled, and as his mother reached him, he looked up into her stricken face and babbled, "Pa would've gone out long gone long gone Pa would've gone out. . ."

She sank down to her knees and held him in her arms as his mind continued to skip like a scratched record. When his feverish babbling stopped, he began sobbing hysterically.

Myra held him close. His heart was beating so hard she feared it was going to explode. Thai she caught a movement from the corner of her eye and she looked toward the road.

A thin figure stood time, right at the edge of the forest. The wind was whipping through a long dark coat.

Then she knew she was crazy, because she blinked and whatever it was had vanished.

"Come on, now," she said gently, though her voice was shaking. She could not understand what she'd seen—the monster panther leaping at her son and being knocked down in empty air—but she knew that tonight her son's life had been saved by something she dared not question: a powerful witchcraft that lingered in the unsettled air like the acrid odor of brimstone.

The wind swirled around them, keening and pulling, coming from different directions at once. Myra helped her son to his feet, and together they walked toward the cabin. She had seen the shine of the monster's eyes as it began to crawl from under the truck; whatever kind of thing it was, it had had sense enough to wait until New's back was turned. He was in danger; she knew that now, saw it clearly. Though she might close her eyes to the Pumpkin Man and the other things that roamed Briartop's woods, there was no mistaking that the creature had lured New outside to kill him. He was all she had now, and she didn't know how to protect him.

But there was one who might.

She helped her son stagger through the door, then closed and bolted it.

At the forest's edge, the Mountain King stood like a frail sapling, watching the Tharpe house. He had not moved during New's confrontation with the panther, but now his shoulders stooped forward wearily, and he leaned on his twisted cane for support. He was cold, and his nose was running. Frost lay deep in his bones; in his shallow breathing he could hear the rattle of phlegm.

He waited, listening to the wind. It spoke to him of death and destruction, the world in a state of passage. Dead leaves whirled around him, and some snagged in his beard. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and thought that years ago, when he still had good sense, he could've slammed Greediguts against that oak so hard the hide would've shredded right off its bones. As it was, he'd given the panther a good hard jolt—but Greediguts would find a place to hide and lick its wounds, and by first light it would be on the prowl again.

The panther wouldn't return here tonight. For now, the boy was safe.

But
who
was he? And what was his part in the battle that the Mountain King had been fighting ever since the night that comets had fallen on Briartop Mountain? Those were questions the old man couldn't answer.

He shivered and coughed repeatedly into his hand. His lungs had begun burning lately. When his spasm was over, he started the long trek home.

IN THE GATEHOUSE, RIX HAD MADE A DISTURBING DISCOVERY.

One of the books he'd brought up to his room from the library the night before was a ledger, dating from 1864, that listed the names, duties, and wages of every servant at Usherland. There were three hundred eighty-eight names, from apprentice blacksmith to master of the hounds, and everything in between.

But the volume that riveted Rix's attention was the casebook of a Or. Jackson Baird, director of a place called the Baird Retreat, in Pennsylvania. The Baird Retreat was a private insane asylum. The casebook, old and brittle, with many missing pages, monitored the month-to-month progress of Dr. Band's patient: Jessamyn Usher, Ludlow's first wife and the mother of Erik.

Rix sat at his desk, the casebook opened before him and light spilling over his right shoulder. For the past hour he'd been engrossed in a chilling account of madness, his reading interrupted only when an occasional ferocious blast of wind jarred his concentration. Jessamyn Usher, Dr. Baird wrote with a rigid hand, was brought to the Retreat in November 1886. Judging from a portrait Baird had seen when he'd visited the Lodge, Jessamyn Usher had once been an elegant young woman with curly ringlets of light brown hair and softly luminous gray eyes.

On November 23, 1886, a snarling madwoman in a strait-jacket was locked in a padded room at the Baird Retreat. She had pulled out most of her hair, her lips and tongue were mangled from being continually bitten, and her eyes were red-rimmed, burning craters in a moon-white face. Ludlow did not accompany his wife; she'd been brought by four servants, including Luther Bodane, Edwin's grandfather. When Jessamyn was admitted to the Retreat, she was twenty-six years old, and hopelessly insane.

Rix had continued to read, fascinated by this new-found skeleton in the Usher closet. Though Jessamyn was the well-educated daughter of a millionaire New England textile manufacturer, in the seven years of her marriage to Ludlow Usher she had deteriorated into something very nearly animalistic. It was four months before Baird could even stay in the same room with her and not fear an attack. Her symptoms, Baird wrote in December 1887, included profligate violence, profanity, gnashing of teeth, garbled and meaningless prayers shouted at the top of her voice, and physical seizures "during which the unfortunate Mrs. Usher had to be bound to her bed with leather straps, her mouth stuffed with cotton, lest she bite off her tongue."