Usher's Passing (53 page)

The man in the three-cornered hat slowly bowed his head. The flowers scattered to the floor. At his sides, his hands curled into fists. Who saw her last? he asked softly.

Her mother and me, came the answer. There was no sense in it! She went to bed and rose happy as a lark! Oh . . . she'd been troubled over a little traveling man selling knives and brushes who'd stopped for a cup of water. She'd spoken with him for a while, and after he was gone she said she wished wanderers such as he could find the love and happiness of a family. But why did she kill herself?
Why?

On the floor, the flowers were turning brown. They were dead when the man in the three-cornered hat turned and stalked out of the house.

"The coven . . . had killed her," the Mountain King said. "He knew it. They'd . . . sent one of their own . . . to plant the seed of hangin' herself . . . in her mind. He went back up the mountain . . . and he summoned all the power of death and destruction from his soul . . ."

Blinding, white-hot flames filled New's head. The intensity of it scared him, but when he tried to pull away, the Mountain King held him fast. He realized he was seeing scenes of the past from the Mountain King's mind. New could do nothing but hang on, as a firestorm of awesome proportions blazed behind his eyes. He saw stone cabins blasted to pieces, burning bodies hurled against walls, charred corpses melting into the scorched and glassy earth. A wall exploded in blue fire, and the stones tumbled straight for him with terrible speed . . .

"They fought him hard. But they . . . wasn't strong enough to match him. Most of 'em died . . . some ran. He'd figured out the truth . . . that evil existed . . . to destroy love. When he was through . . . he built himself a cabin on the mountain. He . . . took it on hisself to watch over them ruins . . . to make up for his sinnin'. That man," the Mountain King said, "was my great-great-grandfather."

"But . . . if he gave up what he was, how did he keep the magic?"

The Mountain King scowled. "He gave up evil . . . not what was
born
in him. The Devil didn't teach him magic . . . just used it. Magic's an iron chain . . . that links gen'ration to gen'ration. The man don't find Satan. Satan finds the man." He paused, breathing harshly. His voice was quieter, almost gentle, when he continued: "Boy. What I want to know is—why are you like
me?"

"I'm not," New said quickly.

"You are. The magic's in you somethin' fierce. Satan . . . finds the man. He's callin' you, like he called your pa . . . and like he called me, all these years. He wants the power that's in you . . . wants to twist it . . . wants to have you.
Tell me.
Are you descended . . . from one of those who ran from that coven?"

"No. I . . ." He stopped abruptly. His father had been like him. Who
was
his father? Bobby Tharpe had been raised in an orphanage near Asheville, but had chosen to live on Briartop. Who had his parents been? "My . . . pa was brought up in a state home," he said. "I don't know anythin' about his family. My ma . . ."

"A state home?" The Mountain King sounded choked. "How . . . old . . . was your pa when he died?"

"He wasn't sure what year he was born. But he said he was fifty-two."

The Mountain King released a soft, exhausted whisper. "Lord God . . . he was born in 1931. I've . . . killed my own son."

His grip weakened, and New wrenched his hand away.

RIX
WAS JARRED AWAKE BY PUDDIN'S SNORING. HER BODY WAS
sprawled across him, and she smelled like an animal. She'd attacked him feverishly when he'd come to bed, clawing at his back and biting his shoulders. She was used to roughness, and Rix had tried unsuccessfully to calm her down. Her thrusting was so hard it had bruised his pelvis. After the race to orgasm was over, Puddin' had clutched to him, alternately sobbing and asking him in baby talk if she wasn't the best piece he'd ever had.

My God! Rix thought, as a snake pit of guilt opened in his stomach. What's
wrong
with me? I just made love to Boone's wife! She lay heavily on him, a fleshy burden. He felt tainted and dirty, and knew he'd only used Puddin' for revenge. Still, she'd asked for it, hadn't she? She was the one who crawled into my bed! Rix told himself. I didn't go looking for her!

He tried to ease out from under her; Puddin's snoring stopped, and she mumbled something in the slurred voice of a little girl.

There was a quick, furtive movement in the room. Rix sensed it rather than saw it directly. He looked toward the chest of drawers, could see the vague shape of someone standing there.

Boone, he thought. His heart kicked. He could envision Boone coming at them drunkenly with a candelabra to bash in both their skulls.

But the figure didn't move again for perhaps twenty seconds. Then, very slowly, began inching toward the door,

"I can see you," Rix said. "You don't have to creep."

Puddin' shifted position. "Huh? Whazzat?"

Rix reached for a box of matches on the bedside table. As soon as he moved, the figure bolted toward the door and darted into the darkness of the corridor. Rix pushed Puddin' aside—she cursed, turned over and started snoring again—and lit a match, touching the wicks of the candelabra he'd brought up from the library. In the amber glow he saw that several drawers had been left open; his closet door was still ajar. He got out of bed, put on his jeans, and walked out into the hallway.

Nothing moved in the range of the flickering light. The Gatehouse was quiet. He walked slowly to the end of the long corridor, and stopped at the stairs that led to Walen's Quiet Room. His father's decay seemed to hang in the air in dense layers. Rix's stomach lurched, and he quickly retraced his path. He stopped before his mother's door and listened; there was no sound beyond. Next was Katt's room. He stood outside it, listening for any telltale noises, and then touched the doorknob.

It was damp.

Rix looked at his palm. His hand was slick with sweat. Slowly he turned the knob and cracked the door open.

The candlelight slipped inside and illuminated Katt's pink-canopied bed. She was asleep, her head on the pillow, her face turned away from him.

Rix closed the door. Walen's reek seemed suddenly, sickeningly worse. He crinkled his nose with revulsion and looked back along the corridor.

And the candlelight fell upon a walking corpse whose gray flesh had tightened and fissured, oozing yellow fluid, the eyes about to burst from the skull, the lower jaw hanging and exposing blackened gums.

Rix cried out in horror, almost dropping the candelabra.

The thing staggered backward on spindly legs, a shrill shriek escaping the ruin of a mouth. It grasped the rotted nubs of its ears—and Rix saw that it held the ebony cane.

It was his father.

By candlelight, Walen Usher was a hideous, contorted figure wearing a shroud of white silk. As his face stretched in a scream and his eyes glinted wetly, the flesh ripped alongside his misshapen nose, fluids dripping down onto the gown.

"What is it?"
Margaret shouted, about to emerge from her room.

"Get back!" Rix commanded. "Don't open your door!" The sound of his voice stopped her. Walen went mad, flailing with his cane, knocking over vases and fresh flowers.

"Oh God oh God—" Katt keened from her doorway.

Walen turned, hands clasped to his ears, stumbling toward the stairs to the Quiet Room. Before he'd taken three steps, he lost his balance and pitched forward on his face; his body lay twitching violently.

Mrs. Reynolds, wearing her mask and gloves, emerged from the corridor's gloom. "Help me!" she ordered Rix as she bent beside Walen. "Hurry!"

Rix realized that she wanted him to help her pick Walen up, and his flesh crawled.

"Hurry, damn it!" she snapped.

He put the candelabra on a table and forced himself to grasp his father's arms. The flesh was spongy and soft, like wet cotton. As they lifted Walen, the cane dropped from his hand to the floor. "Help me get him upstairs," Mrs. Reynolds said. They carried him back to the Quiet Room, and in the dark— where Rix held his breath and clamped a scream behind his teeth—returned Walen to bed. The old man instantly contorted into a fetal position, moaning softly.

Outside the Quiet Room, Mrs. Reynolds closed the door and snapped on her pencil flashlight, shining it into Rix's ashen face. "Are you all right? I can give you a sedative, if you'd—"

"What was he doing out of that room?" Rix asked angrily. "I thought he couldn't leave his bed!"

"Whisper!" she hissed. "Come on." She led him down the stairs. Katt and Margaret had both come out of their rooms and were huddled together. Down the hallway, Puddin' was shouting to know what was going on.

"Shut your mouth, you tramp!" Margaret yelled at her, and she was quiet.

"I'm sorry." Above her mask, Mrs. Reynolds's eyes were bloodshot. "I dozed off. I have to sleep whenever I can. Last night I woke up and found him out of bed. It must've taken every bit of his strength to get down here." She nodded toward the candles. "He must've panicked because of the light. The screaming didn't help, either." She took her mask off and wadded it in her fist.

"What'd he expect? Jesus Christ, I've never seen anything like that in my—" He was almost overcome by a surge of dizziness and nausea, and he had to lean against the wall to catch his breath. His pulse thundered.

"You're supposed to watch him every minute!" Margaret said stridently. Her face was coated with white cream, a plastic bag over her still-sprayed hairstyle. "You're not supposed to let him out of that room!"

"I'm sorry," she repeated, "but I have to sleep, too. One person can't watch him all the time. I've already suggested that you hire someone else to—"

"You're being paid what
three
nurses would charge!" Margaret told her. "And when you took this job, you understood you'd be working alone!"

"Mrs. Usher, I've got to rest. If I can only get a few hours sleep, I'll be all right. Can't someone else sit for him for a while?"

"Certainly not! You're the trained professional!"

"Edwin," Rix said, as his head began to clear. "Somebody call Edwin. He could sit with Dad."

"That's not his job!" Margaret snapped.

"Call him, damn it!"
Rix shouted, and his mother flinched. "Or would
you
like to go up there and sit in the dark with . . . that
thing?"

Her eyes bright with anger, Margaret marched forward. Before Rix could ward off the blow, Margaret had lifted her hand and slapped him hard across the face. "Don't you dare speak about your father like that," she seethed. "He's still a human being!"

Rix rubbed his cheek. "Barely," he replied. "Just thank God you didn't see him, Mother. I'll ask you again—do
you
want to go up and sit with him?"

She started to reply harshly but then hesitated, scowling at Rix and Mrs. Reynolds. She strode to the telephone down the corridor and dialed the Bodane house.

"Thank you," Mrs. Reynolds said. "I had no idea your father was strong enough to make it down those stairs."

"Where did he think he was going? Out for a walk?" Rix saw the ebony cane lying on the floor, and bent to retrieve it. As his hand closed around it, a powerful jolt darted up his spine. He straightened, examining the fine silverwork of the lion's face; it reminded him of the silver circle that flashed in his nightmares of the Lodge, but it wasn't quite the same; this lion wasn't roaring.

It was a beautiful cane. Here and there were nicks in the ebony, and exposed was a dark, glossy wood. It was lighter than he'd imagined it would be, and balanced so perfectly that he could probably hold it on the rip of his forefinger.

His hand had begun tingling; the sensation was creeping up his arm.

Ten billion dollars, he thought as he stared at the cane. My God, what a fortune!

An image formed in his mind, slowly strengthening: himself— older, with gray hair and a handsome, time-etched face—sitting at the head of a long boardroom table, the cane in his hand as subordinates displayed production graphs and charts; himself at the Pentagon, pounding a table with his fist and watching with satisfaction as grandfatherly men in military uniforms shrank from him; himself at a magnificent party, surrounded by beautiful women and fawning men; himself striding like a king down the long concrete corridors of the armaments factory as machines pulsed behind the walls like metallic heartbeats.