Usher's Passing (66 page)

New, looking for a way out, probed his light through one of the openings in the corridor. He found something he couldn't make heads or tails of. "Miz Dunstan," he said, and Raven came across the corridor to see.

It was a chamber at least fifty feet wide and forty or fifty feet high, its stone walls and floor split by deep cracks. Rock dust and grit filmed what appeared to be old electrical apparatus— weird iron machines with exposed tubes and intricate networks of wiring. On a long oak worktable were bundles of cables, dusty pieces of machines, and various dials and gauges. Cables ran along the walls and snaked across the floor.

But the chamber's strange centerpiece was a discolored brass pendulum about thirty feet long that descended from an arrangement of cables, pulleys, and wooden gears at the ceiling and hung five feet from the floor. Placed on iron pedestals in an exact circle beneath the three-foot-wide, half-moon-shaped pendulum bob were eight tuning forks of varying sizes, the smallest the size of a child's fist, the largest about a foot tall.

"What the hell
is
it?" Raven wondered aloud as she approached the pendulum. She shone her light up and down the mottled gray shaft. It looked to her like the interior mechanism of a huge grandfather clock. She stepped nearer, and reached up to touch the pendulum bob with her fingers.

"Don't do that, Miss Dunstan."

They turned toward the voice. In the chamber's entrance stood Edwin Bodane, holding a flashlight. Droplets of rain glistened on his cap and his long black raincoat. His light moved from Raven to New, and he smiled faintly, the hollows deep and dark beneath his eyes and jutting cheekbones. "Welcome to the Lodge, Master Newlan."

"You're . . . the man I saw in my dream!" New realized. "The coachman!"

"If you'd come to the Lodge then—and
alone
—
you could've kept Miss Dunstan out of this. It's between you and the landlord, not—" He frowned as his light picked out the gnarled stick that New held at his side. "That's
his,
isn't it? Did he give it to you?"

New nodded.

A savage grin suddenly rippled across Edwin's face. His eyes danced with joy, and Raven shuddered inwardly. She'd never seen such rampant, hungry evil on a man's face. "Good," he said excitedly. "That's good. Then . . . the old man's dead, isn't he? He must be dead, to have given up his wand."

"He's dead," New replied.

"And he gave the wand to you. Oh, that's grand!"

He's afraid of it, New thought. He's pretending not to be, but the stick scares him. Why? he wondered. Because it could do to him what it had done to Greediguts?

There was a deep boom of thunder that seemed to penetrate the walls like a mocking laugh. Edwin shone his light upward at the gears of the pendulum. "Ah, that one shook the house," he said, with clinical interest. "Miss Dunstan, you wanted to know what the machine does. You're about to learn. I'd step away from it, if I were you."

Above her head, the gears began to click and groan.

Raven stepped back, her heart pounding with dread, as the pendulum slowly began to move.

It swung back and forth, its arc widening as the clicking of the gears increased. Raven heard the air whistling around its bob as it passed directly over the circle of tuning forks.

"Listen to it sing!" Edwin said.

From the tuning forks came a cacophony of low, bone-jarring notes that merged to become the deep tone they'd heard in the tunnel and on the stairway. As the noise steadily strengthened, it became a physical force that shoved Raven backward, twisted her bones, and drove her to her knees. Behind her, she heard New cry out in pain as the tone invaded him as well. The entire floor was vibrating, and the stones in the walls grated together. Dust swirled through the air, the grit flying into Raven's eyes and momentarily blinding her. She fought for breath in what had suddenly become a chamber of horror.

The pendulum's arc began to slow. The moan of the tuning forks quieted. The floor and walls stopped vibrating, and as the pendulum came to a halt, the dust began to settle again.

"Thunder sometimes sets it off," Edwin said cheerfully, aiming his light through the gray dust at the machine. Raven was on her knees, gasping for breath, and New slowly shook his head from side to side to clear away the black motes that danced in front of his vision. Edwin seemed to have enjoyed the demonstration, but dust clung to his cap and raincoat and he busied himself in brushing it off. "Or rather," he amended himself, "the vibration of thunder through the walls. The pendulum's balanced so perfectly that the slightest vibration of the Lodge can set it in motion. I know its moods and caprices," he said proudly. "Isn't it beautiful?"

Whatever its purpose was, Raven had never felt such excruciating pain before, not even in the accident that had crushed her knee. She looked up toward Edwin, saw the dark holes of his eyes above the light. His grin was cold and malignant. Whatever evil force lurked here in the Lodge, Edwin Bodane was a part of it. "I thought you were helping my father!" she said. "I thought you wanted to help him write his book!"

"I offered my services, yes. But only to get close enough to him to control the project. There's no manuscript, Miss Dunstan.

Oh,
there was at first. Your father had already written some of it by the time I got to him. He believes he goes down into that study of his and writes a little more every day; he believes he can see it being written on the screen, and he also believes that the most important thing is to keep anyone else from seeing it. But there's no book, because I and the landlord don't want there to be one."

"The landlord? You mean . . . Walen Usher?"

"Walen Usher." He repeated the name with utter contempt. "No. I mean the true landlord. The one who summoned Hudson Usher to this place, a long time ago. Walen Usher was only a caretaker, and a poor one at that. He lacked imagination. You can see for yourselves how he let the Lodge deteriorate. But that's in the past now." Edwin reached out beside him in the chamber's entrance and drew Rix Usher closer. "Walen Usher has passed away. Long live his heir."

"Rix!" She saw that his eyes were dead, his mouth slack, the flesh of his face ashen. Clutched in his right hand was the ebony cane. He didn't respond to Raven's voice, and Edwin guided him into the chamber like a sleepwalker. Behind them, the black panther stood guard in the entrance.

"What have you done to him?" Raven asked, rising painfully to her feet.

"I've removed him. But he's fine. Or, rather, he
will
be fine. Oh, he can hear what we're saying and he knows where we are, but it doesn't matter. Nothing matters but that I'm here, and he knows I'll protect him. Isn't that right, Rix?"

Rix's mouth stretched open; a soft, terrible hissing came from his throat.

"Speak," Edwin commanded.

Rix replied, in a voice that sounded like a little boy's, "Yes sir."

New recognized the blank stare on the man's face; he'd seen it worn by his mother, when he'd made her help him lift the Mountain King into the pickup truck, when he'd forced her on a whim to fold her hands in her lap, when he'd sealed her mouth shut in the Foxton clinic. The tall, gaunt man who'd appeared as a coachman in his dream was the same as him, the same as the Mountain King. All three of them were linked by magic. "You're . . . like me, aren't you?" he asked.

"Yes. The Bodane family has served the landlord for generations. Long before the Ushers settled here, we were part of a colony that lived on Briartop Mountain."

"And when it was destroyed," New said, "the Bodanes got away."

"Ah." Edwin nodded, impressed. "You know as much about my family as I know about yours. But yours
was
part of mine once, when we shared the same coven. The landlord's been watching you, just as he watched your father and your grandfather. The landlord created the beast in his image, to be his eyes and ears."

New glanced at the panther. Greediguts was watching him balefully, standing completely motionless in the chamber's opening.

"The Mountain King resisted us to the end, didn't he?" Edwin's eyes flickered to the stick that New held. "Your father didn't have the strength of will to be useful to the landlord. But
you,
Master Newlan—you've answered us and come home, haven't you?"

"Come home?"

"The landlord only wants to love you," Edwin said gently, but his stare was dark and dangerous. "He wants to forgive you for turning away. He would've forgiven your father. He even would've forgiven the old man, if he'd come to the Lodge seeking forgiveness. All you have to do is use your magic for him—and he'll give you everything."

—
give you everything—

New could feel his mind being picked at like a rusty lock. He couldn't force himself to look away from the man's electric stare. Everything, he thought, and saw the great panorama of Usherland spread out like a feast before him—the rolling hills, the verdant forests, the beautiful world of horses and fine cars and wealth beyond New's imagining. He would never have to go back to the cabin on Briartop, where wind whistled through holes in the window frames and rain leaked from the roof. He could have everything Usherland offered, if he only used his magic.

"Consider it," Edwin whispered, and turned his attention to Raven.

In his eyes glittered the cold, dark power of a warlock, a force that almost pressed her to her knees. She knew he would never allow her to leave the Lodge alive.

"Pendulum," Edwin said with a faint smile. He kept his light aimed directly at her, pinning her like a moth. "Ludlow Usher built it when he was a young man. His experience in the Chicago Fire left him with a deep respect for the power of sound; the explosions, the shrieking of fireballs, the shaking of the earth as a building fell—all of that was burned into his mind. Ludlow tested Pendulum only once—in November of 1893."

"The earthquake on Briartop Mountain," Raven said. "This thing—"

"Created vibrations that simulated an earthquake, yes," Edwin continued, like a proud father. "During the test, electrical amplifiers were placed on the Lodge's roof. They directed the vibrations toward the mountain. After it was over, Ludlow was terrified by the results. He wanted to dismantle it, but my grandfather persuaded him otherwise. Its potential as a military device, Miss Dunstan, surpasses that of the atomic bomb."

"A . . . military device?" Raven asked, stunned. "Ludlow built it for Usher Armaments?"

"The landlord recognized its usefulness. The landlord has a hand in most of the weapons the business produces. The plans are communicated to me, and I pass them along to the Ushers." Edwin shone his light on the circle of tuning forks. "Pendulum is a sonic weapon, Miss Dunstan. It's a complicated physics theory, but actually the principle is simple: the pendulum's motion creates a disturbance in the air that affects the tuning forks; in turn, they combine to form a tone that—depending on the length and intensity of the vibrations—can cause intense physical pain, smash glass, crack stone, and simulate earthquakes. What you experienced a few minutes ago was the least of Pendulum's power; if Ludlow Usher hadn't stopped the mechanism when he did during that first test in 1893, Briartop Mountain would have been leveled." He aimed the light toward the far corner, where a heavy chain dangled down from the gears and pulleys. "That controls the counterweights. As I say, sometimes thunder sets it in motion. Ludlow Usher lived in terror of thunderstorms his last years, because he knew Pendulum's potential. You can see how it's affected the walls and floor over the years. Sometimes, Pendulum's tone smashes the glass from the Gatehouse windows, and makes the entire house shake. Unfortunately, that can't be helped."

"What's it going to do? Create earthquakes for the highest bidder?" Her voice trembled, but Raven stared defiantly back at Edwin Bodane.

"This is a prototype," he said. "Just one of Ludlow's many experiments with sound. He tried to get his sister to help him develop the combination of notes that would produce a sonic weapon, but she wouldn't leave her nunnery, so he did it himself. This is a curiosity, an antique. Right now, Usher Armaments is working on miniaturizing Pendulum. Imagine it the size of a cigar box, or a transistor radio. It could be hidden near enemy nuclear plants and triggered by remote control. It could easily be smuggled across borders and hidden in unfriendly cities. The longer the tone continues, the stronger it becomes— and the stronger its vibrations." He smiled like a death's-head. "Entire cities could be reduced to rubble, without the radiation of atomic weapons. Trigger Pendulum near a fault line—and who knows what would happen? Ludlow theorized that if Pendulum's vibrations were allowed to double and redouble, the entire earth itself could be split open."