Rix drank it down. The Scotch and bourbon in his system waged war in his stomach for a moment, and Rix squeezed his eyes shut so tightly that tears oozed out. When he opened his eyes again, the light was dimmer; Boone’s expensive-looking dark blue suit didn’t glow at him like a sapphire-painted lightbulb anymore, and even the wattage of his brother’s teeth had ebbed. The noises of the hotel were quieting, as was the thump of his heartbeat. His head still throbbed savagely, and his eye sockets felt as if they’d been gouged, but he knew he was coming out of it. Another minute or two. Calm down, he told himself. Breathe deeply. Take it easy. Breathe deeply again. Christ Almighty, that was a bad one! He shook his head slowly from side to side, his fine sandy blond hair plastered down with rain and sweat. “It’s almost over,” he told Boone. “Wait a minute.” He sat on his haunches, waiting for the low hum of overworked brain circuits to die down. “I’m better now,” he rasped. “Help me up, okay?”
“You’re not gonna puke, are you?”
“Just help me up, damn you!”
Boone took Rix’s outstretched hand and pulled him to his feet. When he was standing, Rix punched his brother in the face with all the strength he could summon.
It was no more than a weak slap to the jaw. Boone stepped back, his grin returning with full force as he recognized the look of black rage on Rix’s face.
“You dumb bastard!” Rix seethed. He started to rip the plastic skeleton with the bloody eyeholes—red paint, poorly applied—from its hook and throw it to the floor, but his hand stopped in midair. For some reason, he couldn’t bear to touch it. He let his hand fall. “What’s the idea of that!”
“A joke, that’s all. Thought you’d enjoy it, seein’ as how it’s right up your alley.” He shrugged and took the skeleton down, sitting it upright in a chair across the room. “There we go. Looks pretty real, huh?”
“Why did you hang it inside the Quiet Room? Why not in the bathroom, or a closet? You knew there’d be only one reason I’d open this door!”
“Oh.” Boone frowned. “You’re right, Rixy. I didn’t think of that. Seemed to be a good place to hang it, is all. Well, it all turned out fine, didn’t it? Shit, yes! That damned thing probably scared the attack right out of you!” He let out a braying laugh and pointed at Rix’s crotch. “Ha! There you go, Rixy! Peed your pants, didn’t you!”
Rix went to the chest of drawers for another pair of trousers and a clean shirt.
Boone sprawled his six-foot-two frame in an overstuffed easy chair and put his feet up on an Art Deco coffee table with blue glass legs. He massaged the side of his jaw where Rix’s fist had stung him. He’d rubbed his brother’s face in the North Carolina mud for much less an offense. “Smells like a wet dog in this hotel. Don’t they ever shampoo the rugs?”
“How’d you get in here?” Rix asked as he changed clothes. He was still shaking.
“Everybody jumps around here when you tell ’em your name’s Usher,” Boone said. He crossed his ankles. He was wearing beige lizardskin cowboy boots that clashed with his conservative suit. “Know what I’ve heard about this place? That some of the bellboys have seen a man dressed in black, wearing a black top hat and a white beard, and carrying a cane. Sounds like old Hudson himself, don’t it? Poor bastard’s probably doomed to spend eternity walking the corridors of the De Peyser. They say his presence makes the air freezin’ cold. Hell of a place to spend your afterlife, huh, Rixy?”
“I’ve asked you not to call me that.”
“Oh. Beggin’ your pardon. Shall I call you Jonathan Strange? Or what’s your name this week, Mr. Famous Author?”
Rix ignored the barb. “How’d you get into the Quiet Room?”
“Asked for the key. They’ve got a whole boxful in a safe downstairs. Old green things that look like they open mausoleums. Some of ’em have got black fingerprints on the metal. I wonder how many Ushers used ’em? Me, I wouldn’t spend one damned night in this old crypt. Jesus, why don’t we get some light in here!”
Boone stood up and walked across the room to the window; he pulled aside the curtain, allowing in dim gray light through the rain-specked glass. He stood for a moment looking down at the traffic. His broad, handsome face was almost free of lines, though he was only three months shy of his thirty-seventh birthday; he might easily have passed for twenty-five. His full, wavy hair was a darker shade of brown than his brother’s, and his clear, deepset eyes were amber with dark green flecks. He was husky and broad-shouldered, and he looked in the prime of health. “Sorry about your attack,” he told Rix. “I wouldn’t have pulled such a stupid trick if I’d been thinkin’ right. I saw the thing hangin’ in a magic shop’s window on the way over here, and I thought… I don’t know, I thought you might get a kick out of it. Do you know I haven’t had an attack for over six months? And the last one wasn’t too bad—it was over in about three or four minutes. Maybe I’ve forgotten how bad they can be.” He turned away from the window to look at his brother—and froze.
It was almost a year since he’d last seen Rix, and he was stunned at the way his brother had changed. In the light, all the fine wrinkles and lines on Rix’s face resembled cracks in porcelain. Rix’s pewter-colored eyes were red-rimmed and weary, his high forehead deeply furrowed. Though Rix was four years younger than Boone, he appeared to be at least forty-five. He looked emaciated and sickly, and Boone saw that gray was spreading at his temples. “Rix,” he whispered. “God Almighty! What’s happened to you?”
“I’ve been sick,” Rix replied, but he knew that wasn’t all of it. In truth, he didn’t exactly know what was happening to him—other than that his attacks were vicious and unpredictable, his sleep was continually jarred by nightmares, and he felt seventy years old. “I guess I’ve been working too hard.” He eased himself down into a chair—carefully, because his bones were still throbbing.
“Listen. You need to start eatin’ steaks to build up your blood.” Boone puffed out his chest. “I eat a steak a day, and look at me! Healthy as a stud hoss.”
“Great,” Rix said. “How’d you know I was here?”
“You called Katt and told her you were flying up from Atlanta to meet with your agent today, didn’t you? Where else would you stay but this old dump when you’re visiting New York?”
Rix nodded. The De Peyser Hotel had been purchased in 1847 by Hudson Usher, when it was a magnificent Gothic showplace towering over the rough harbor city. As Rix understood it, Hudson Usher’s gunpowder company, based near Asheville, North Carolina, shipped tremendous quantities of powder and lead bullets to Europe through New York City; Hudson had wanted to keep an eye on the middlemen, and had outfitted this suite with a rubber-walled Quiet Room, in case he was stricken with an attack. The Quiet Room had remained virtually unchanged, used by generations of Ushers, as the suite gradually became more tawdry. Rix surmised that his father, Walen, was only holding on to the De Peyser until he got a good offer from a co-op builder. The family rarely left Usherland, their rambling estate twenty miles north of Asheville.
“You shouldn’t work so hard. When’s your next book coming out?” Boone poured himself another drink of Scotch and sat down again. When he lifted the glass to his mouth, light sparkled off the large diamond pinky ring he wore. “It’s been a long time since Fire Fingers, hasn’t it?”
“I’ve just finished a new book.”
“Oh yeah? When’s it comin’ out?”
“Maybe next summer.” He was amazed that the lie came so easily.
Boone propped his feet up again. “You ought to write a real book, Rix. You know, something that could really happen. That horror shit is junk. Why don’t you write a book you’d be proud to sign your real name to?”
“Let’s don’t get into that again, okay?” Every time he got near Boone, he wound up defending his choice of subject matter.
Boone shrugged. “Suits me. Just seems to me there must be somethin’ a little wrong with people who write shit like that.”
“I know you didn’t come
here to discuss my literary career,” Rix said. “What’s going on?”
Boone paused to take a swallow of his drink. Then he said quietly, “Momma wants you to come home. Daddy’s taken a turn for the worse.”
“Why the hell won’t he go to a hospital?”
“You know what Daddy’s always said. ‘An Usher can’t live past the gates of Usherland.’ And lookin’ at you, brother Rix, makes me think he’s been right about that. There must be somethin’ in that North Carolina air, because you’ve broken down pretty badly ever since you left it.”
“I don’t like the estate. I don’t like the Lodge. My home is in Atlanta. Besides, I’ve got work to do.”
“Oh? I thought you said you’d just finished another book. Hell, if it’s anything like those other three, no amount of work can save it!”
Rix smiled grimly. “Thank you for the encouragement.”
“Daddy’s dying,” Boone said, a quick flicker of anger like lightning behind his eyes. “I’ve tried to do all I could for him. I’ve tried to be what he wanted, all these years. But now he’s askin’ to see you. I don’t know why, especially since you turned your back on the family. But I think he’s holdin’ on because he wants you at his side when he dies.”
“Then if I don’t come,” Rix told him flatly, “maybe he won’t die. Maybe he’ll get up out of that bed and start making deals for laser guns and germ-warfare bombs again, huh?”
“Oh Christ!” Boone rose angrily from his seat. “Don’t play that worn-out, holier-than-thou routine with me, Rix! The business brought you up on the finest estate in this country, fed you and clothed you and sent you to the best business school in America! Not that it did a damned bit of good! And who says you have to go to the Lodge if you come home? You always were scared shitless of the Lodge, weren’t you? When you got yourself lost in there and Edwin had to bring you out, your face looked like green cheese for about a—” He stopped speaking abruptly, because Rix looked for a second as if he might leap across the table at his brother.
“That’s not how I remember it,” Rix said, his voice strained with tension.
They stared at each other for a few seconds. The image came to Rix of his brother tackling him from behind when they were children, planting a knee in the small of his back so the breath was squeezed out of him and his face was pressed into Usherland dirt. Get up, Rixy, Boone had taunted. Get up, why can’t you get up, Rixy?
“Well.” Boone reached inside his coat and brought out a first-class Delta ticket to Asheville. He dropped it onto the table. “I’ve seen you and said what I was supposed to. That’s from Momma. She thought just maybe you’d have enough heart to come see Daddy on his deathbed. If you don’t, I guess that’s your little red wagon.” He walked to the door, then stopped and turned back. The hot light had returned to his eyes, and there was a curl to his mouth. “Yeah, you run on back to Atlanta, Rixy,” he said. “Go on back to that fantasy world of yours. Shit, you’re even startin’ to look like somethin’ out of the grave. I’ll tell Momma not to expect you.” He left the room and closed the door behind him. His lizardskin boots clumped away along the corridor.
Rix sat staring at the plastic skeleton across the room. It grinned at him like an old friend, the familiar symbol of death from a thousand horror movies Rix had seen. The skeleton in a closet. Bones buried under the floor. A skull in a hatbox. A skeletal hand reaching out from beneath a bed. Uneasy bones, digging free from the grave.
My father’s dying, he thought. No, no; Walen Usher was too stubborn to give in to death. He and death were friends of long standing. They had a gentlemen’s agreement. “The business” kept death’s stomach swollen—why should it bite its feeder’s hand?
Rix picked up the airline ticket. It was for a flight leaving around one the next afternoon. Walen dying? He’d known his father’s condition had been deteriorating for the past six months, but dying? He felt numbed, stranded between a shout and a sob. He’d never gotten along with his father; they’d been strangers to each other for years. Walen Usher was the kind of man who insisted that his children make appointments to see him. He had kept his sons and daughter on short leashes—until Rix gnawed himself loose, earning his father’s undying hatred.
He wasn’t even sure if he loved his father, wasn’t sure if he even knew what love felt like anymore.
Rix knew that Boone had always been a great practical joker. “Dad’s not dying,” he told the skeleton. “It’s just a story to get me back there.” The plastic bones offered a grin, but no advice. As he stared at the thing, he saw the cab driver’s skeleton earring swinging back and forth in his mind. His skin crawled, and he had to call maid service to get the thing out because he couldn’t force himself to touch it.
He made a second call, to Usherland’s Gatehouse in North Carolina.
Four hundred miles away, a maid answered, “Usher residence.”
“Edwin Bodane. Tell him it’s Rix.”
“Yes sir. Just a minute, please.”
Rix waited. He was feeling better now. He’d been overdue for an attack; the last one had hit him in the middle of the night a week ago, when he was listening to a record from his collection of jazz albums in his Atlanta apartment. After it was over and he could move again, he’d broken the record to fragments, thinking that the music might have helped trigger it. He’d read somewhere that certain chord progressions, tones, and vibrations could cause a physical response.
The attacks, he knew, were symptoms of a condition called—in several medical journals—Usher’s Malady. There was no cure. If his father was dying, it was the advanced stage of Usher’s Malady that was killing him.
“Master Rix!” the warm, refined, slightly sandpapery voice said from North Carolina. “Where are you?”
“In New York. At the De Peyser.” Hearing Edwin’s voice had released a bounty of good memories for Rix. He visualized the man standing tall in his Usher uniform of gray blazer and dark blue slacks with creases so sharp you could slice your hand on them. He’d always felt closer to Edwin and Cass Bodane than to his own parents.
“Do you want to speak to your—”
“No. I don’t want to talk to anybody else. Edwin, Boone was here a little while ago. He told me Dad’s condition is worse. Is that true?”
“Your father’s health is deteriorating rapidly,” Edwin said. “I’m sure Boone told you how much your mother wants you to come home.”
“I don’t want to come. You know why.”
There was a pause. Then, “Mr. Usher asks for you every day.” He lowered his voice. “I wish you’d come home, Rix. He needs you.”
Rix couldn’t suppress a strangled, nervous laugh. “He’s never needed me before now!”
“No. You’re wrong. Your father’s always needed you, and now more than ever.”
Rix paused, torn by emotional crosscurrents. He’d fought for a life of his own, apart from the Usher clan. Why should he expose himself to the mental games that would now be in motion within Usherland’s gates?
“He needs you, Rix,” Edwin said softly. “Don’t turn your back on your family.”
The truth sank in before he could block it out: Walen Usher, patriarch of the powerful Usher clan and perhaps the wealthiest man in America, was on his deathbed. Even though his feelings about the man were tied into tormented knots, Rix knew he should attend his father’s passing. He asked Edwin to meet him at the airport when his flight arrived, then hung up before he could change his mind. He would stay at Usherland for a few days, he told himself. No longer. Then he had to get back to Atlanta, to get his own life in order, somehow come up with another idea and get to work on it before his entire writing career collapsed under the weight of lethargy.
A Hispanic maintenance man with bags under his eyes came up to the room. He was expecting another dead rat, and was relieved when Rix told him to take the plastic skeleton away.
Rix lay down and tried to sleep. His mind was disturbed by images of Usherland: the dark forests of his
childhood, where nightmarish creatures were said to stalk through the undergrowth; the looming mountains black against an orange-streaked sky, clouds snagged like gray pennants on their rocky peaks; and the Lodge—it always came back to the Lodge—immense and dark and silent, holding its secrets like a closed fist.
A skeleton with bleeding eye sockets swung slowly through his mind’s eye, and he sat up in the leaden light.
A recurring idea had snapped on in his brain again. It was the same idea that had sent him to Wales, the same idea that had made him enter genealogy rooms in libraries from New York to Atlanta, in search of the Usher name in half-forgotten record books. Sometimes he thought he could do it, if he really wanted to; at other times he realized it would be a hell of a lot of work, probably for nothing.
Maybe now is the time, he told himself. Yes. He certainly needed a project, and he was going back to Usherland anyway. A smile flickered across his mouth; he could hear Walen’s shout of outrage over four hundred miles.
Rix went into the bathroom for a glass of water, then picked up the copy of Rolling Stone that Boone had folded and left on the tiles. When he took it back to bed to read, the fist-sized tarantula that Boone had carefully wrapped up within it dropped onto his chest, scuttling wildly across his shoulder.
Rix leaped out of bed, trying to get the thing off him. The attack that crashed over him like a black tidal wave drove him into the protection of the Quiet Room. With the door closed, no one could hear him scream.
Boone had always been a great practical joker.
One
USHERLAND
“Tell me a story,” the little boy asked his father. “Something scary, okay?”
“Something scary,” the man repeated, and mused for a moment. Outside the boy’s window, the darkness was complete except for the moon’s grinning orb. The boy could see it over his father’s shoulder—and to him it looked like a rotting jack-o’-lantern in a black Halloween field where no one dares to walk.