Usher's Passing (50 page)

Boone knew he was on one of the uppermost basement levels. It was colder down here than at the top of the stairs—a bone-aching, fierce cold, unlike anything Boone had ever experienced.

He couldn't stand it, and he decided he'd be better off upstairs; he started climbing up again, shaking with the cold.

After seven steps, his head suddenly bumped the ceiling.

The staircase had come to an end.

"Oh Jesus," Boone croaked. Trapped! he thought wildly. The Lodge had sealed him up and he was trapped! "Help!" he shouted, and his voice cracked.

The Lodge's silence mocked him.

He slammed his fist against the ceiling. It isn't there! he thought. The damned thing can't be there! Tears stung his eyes, and as he stood trying to understand what was happening to him, he could sense the immense weight of the Lodge above him, like a huge, merciless beast.

"I love you," he whispered to the dark. Tears slipped down his cheeks, and froze on the point of his chin.

At the bottom of the stairs, Boone faced the corridor that led toward—what? he wondered. More stairs, hallways, and rooms that would shift and solidify behind his back? I can wait here until somebody finds me, he told himself. Sooner or later, somebody will get me out of here!

But he was freezing, and he knew he had to keep moving. Already his joints were stiffening, the breath rasping in his lungs. He had no choice but to enter the corridor, his light probing the darkness before him.

He'd gone perhaps twenty yards when he thought he could hear a faint throbbing—a distant rhythm, like the pulse of machinery. But there was no electricity—how could a machine be working? Farther along the winding corridor, Boone felt vibrations—slow and steady, like the beating of a massive heart— through the soles of his shoes. Whatever was working lay beneath him, on the level below.

His light fell on another archway, cut into the wall on his right. He was afraid to look over his shoulder, afraid that the way he'd come had closed itself behind him. And if that had happened, he would lose his mind. The Lodge was guiding him, he realized. Pushing him, manipulating him. Had it done the same to Rix?

He remembered why he and Rix had come into the Lodge: to play hide-and-seek with the Devil. He'd said it to scare his brother—but now something in the Lodge was playing hide-and-seek with
him,
and he knew that this game had turned deadly.

He went through the archway, and into an enormous chamber filled with beasts.

The light reflected off the eyes of lions, tigers, bears, cheetahs, pumas, panthers, zebras, antelopes. The room was full of them, frozen in postures of attack, packed closely together in an eerie menagerie. Their silent snarls seemed to be directed at Boone, who had realized after an initial shock that this was a storeroom filled with Erik's stuffed hunting trophies.

The room held hundreds of animals, their shadows scrawled on the walls by Boone's lantern. He backed away from them, and turned to get out.

But the archway was gone, blocked by stones, as if it had never been there at all.

Boone's knees almost buckled.

And from behind him came the rumble of something breathing.

He twisted around, stabbing in all directions with the light. Among the stuffed beasts, nothing moved.

"I'm Boone Usher!" he shouted, and the echoes
Usher Usher Usher
swirled around him in the frigid air.

A crouched tiger suddenly pitched forward and fell, its snarl rigid, its limbs still stiff. Behind it, something black caught the light before it darted away.

Boone began to sob. "I'm Boone Usher," he whispered. "Damn you, listen to me—" The tears froze beneath his eyes. He backed against the wall and slid down, crying softly, his nerves shattered. Another animal toppled over, followed by a third. Wetness spread at Boone's crotch; he huddled into a protective ball, shining the lantern straight ahead.

The noise of something breathing grew closer, coming from all directions at once.

And then a foul, icy breath touched Boone's cheek.

He twisted to one side, aiming the light.

A monstrous black panther with luminous golden-green eyes stood motionless, not five feet away. For an instant Boone thought it was another sawdust-stuffed trophy—but then its mouth slowly, slowly opened and a black forked tongue emerged to quiver in the air.

The panther was watching him. Across its skull was a raw red streak that looked like a burn.

Boone tried to scream, but no sound would squeeze out. He pressed his back against the stones, his face contorting with terror.

The panther settled On its haunches, its eyes never leaving his. There was a high rattling sound as its tail slowly moved back and forth.

Freezing tears gummed Boone's eyelids together. He began to laugh and wail alternately, as his terror split open and madness oozed out.

Silently the panther leaped.

It fastened its jaws around Boone's face and then clamped them together. The wall was splattered with his brains and blood, the lantern falling from Boone's hand to the floor. The panther dug its claws into Boone's shoulders, holding the writhing body down, and began to peel the flesh from Boone's head. Then it bit into Boone's throat, cutting off his voice in mid-squeal. It crunched into the ribcage, its fangs bursting through tissue and bone, until its snout found the beating heart. With a quick twist of its massive head, the panther wrenched Boone's heart from the chest cavity and devoured it with one shuddering gulp.

Steam rose from the corpse. The panther greedily lapped from a widening puddle of gore, then began ripping Boone's body into pieces and gnawing on the bones. Its eyes rolled back in its head with pleasure.

When it had consumed its fill, the monster turned away and, its belly distended with what had been Boone Usher, left the storeroom through the archway less than three feet distant.

LOGAN BODANE FOLLOWED THE BEAM OF HIS FLASHLIGHT, DEEP INTO
the Usher woods.

It had been raining for the past half hour, but now only a fitful mist swirled past the light. The forest held a thick, wet, earthy odor. Raindrops pattered from overhead branches, and the wind stirred restlessly through the treetops.

Logan walked noiselessly along the riding trail, slowly sweeping his light from one side to the other. Soon he was amid the crumpled cages of the ruined zoo, and he continued to the place where the animal carcasses were hung. Most of them had been stripped to the bone by flies and ants, but three new ones—a fox and two squirrels—had been added recently. Beneath them, the blood from their slit throats had formed crusted pools.

The hardest part of it had been climbing the trees to tie the wires around branches so the carcasses would dangle well above the path. Ever since he was a little boy, Logan had been a good hunter. If there was anything in the world that set him apart from other folks, he thought wryly, it was his ability to track animals—in his own very special way.

Logan retreated a few yards off the path and sat down with his back against a boulder. He switched off his light and sat motionless in the dark, listening to the roving wind.

Last night he thought he'd heard the thing, coming through the brush toward the hanging bait. Then, less than twenty feet from him, it had suddenly stopped. Logan's senses had sharpened, and he'd caught the distinct smell of a predatory cat. But when nothing had moved again for more than thirty minutes, he'd turned on his light and seen that whatever it was had silently gone.

Maybe it had been Greediguts, maybe not, Logan told himself. If there really was such a thing. But if a monster panther did hunt the forests of Usherland, sooner or later it would be drawn here by the smell of blood and meat. Logan had come to this spot every night to wait for several hours, and had seen bobcat and fox tracks in the dirt, but never pawprints of anything as big as the panther was supposed to be.

Greediguts was the main reason Logan had decided to take this job. He'd been wanting to try his skill at finding the panther for a long time, and being invited to live at Usherland put him right in what was supposed to be the monster's territory. His only weapon was a knife with a serrated blade, which he kept in a leather sheath on his right ankle. If there was such a creature as Greediguts, and the panther did come this way, Logan knew he'd have to be fast, faster than ever before. But it was more of a challenge this way, and he had faith in his own very special talents.

It was time now. He began breathing slowly and rhythmically, pressing his back against the boulder. Through his flannel shirt he could feel the ridges and hollows of the rock, and he mentally commanded himself to become part of it, to merge flesh with stone. Slowly his pulse rate began to drop. He shivered once as his body temperature lowered, then he overcame that lack of concentration and willed himself to stay perfectly still. His breathing slowed until it was almost imperceptible. In his motionless face, Logan's pupils had dilated to the size of dimes. His heartbeat had all but stopped.

If anything roamed near, Logan might appear to be an irregular outcrop of rock. He could remain in his frozen posture for hours, if necessary, but could also leap to his feet within seconds if he desired.

A few days before, he'd stood in the garden watching Kattrina Usher walk from the Gatehouse to the garage. He liked the promise of her tight, sleek body, her rear moving suggestively in her pink jumpsuit. She was the best-looking woman he'd ever seen, worlds away from the Taylorville girls he'd sometimes gone out with. As she passed him, he'd said hello, but she'd looked at him distastefully, and for an instant Logan had felt like something that slithered from under a rock. Then she was gone, on along the garden path. Logan knew that look: she thought she was too good even to speak to him. He'd watched her go to the garage, and desire had burned like coals under his ribs. She was like Granddad Robert's dog Mutt, Logan thought in the silence of his trance; it had bothered him how Mutt used to avoid him, once even snapping at his offered hand. So it was a challenge to practice his talents on Mutt, to make the animal come to him wagging its tail and fawning before he'd bashed it in the head with a ball-peen hammer.

Logan had figured out which window was Kattrina's, and sometimes he stood beneath it, peering up. Edwin had caught him doing that yesterday afternoon, and had told him he was supposed to be working in the laundry. Edwin watched him all the time, and Logan knew Cass didn't like him worth shit. Edwin had said he was abusing their "relationship of trust" —whatever the fuck
that
meant—and not showing up for the various jobs he was supposed to do on the estate. Logan didn't care; he wasn't planning on staying around Usherland very much longer. This chief-of-staff shit was stifling his freedom; all he wanted was enough money to buy a new car and head off to California.

But maybe, Logan mused, before he left he might have to try his talents out on a person. Like Kattrina. He remembered that look, and it twisted his insides. He'd make her come to him, fawning and begging and wagging her tail. Or maybe he'd try them out on that Rix bastard. Make that arrogant son of a bitch put a pistol barrel between his teeth and pull the trigger, or cut his wrists open in the shower. That'd be worth looking forward to, as long as he didn't have to clean up the mess.

Animals like domestic dogs and cats were the easiest. Wild animals took more control. Once, at the Asheville zoo, he'd stood in front of a cage where a wolf bitch was suckling her young. The wolf had stared coldly at him, and he at her. He'd suddenly known what he wanted her to do, and he'd carefully formed the picture in his mind of the bitch doing it. Beside him, a little kid had called excitedly for his mother, and that had jarred Logan's concentration so he'd had to start all over again. He'd repeated the picture again in his head, fixed it in his mind, and made it move. The she-wolf was strong, and for a while she'd resisted him.