The Fall

The house wants Roderick, wants to keep him here.

  Dr. Winston squeezes my arm as he helps me to my feet.

  Roderick notes it and turns away.

  89

  MADELINE IS SEVENTEEN

  “But why must you leave now?” I ask Roderick for the fifth or sixth time. I hate that my voice is plaintive. I hate the hurt. We haven’t even exchanged presents.

  The morning sun streams into his bedchamber, and I sit by his window, enjoying its warmth. A magazine lies beside his bed, the Southern Literary Messenger, with stories and articles and a few illustrations. In my hands the crisp paper feels like something foreign and precious.

  “Because I must,” Roderick says stiffly. And I hear something, the same desperation that I heard a year ago, when he told me he was haunted. He’s desperate to get away from the house. From the unknown. From me.

  “I’ll return sooner than you think. I’m not dependent on the coach now that I have my own horses.”

  Since Roderick is the master of the Usher fortune, he enjoys buying things for himself, like horses that he rarely rides. The one he takes to school and the others that wait for him to return, neglected and unexercised. Horses untrained to pull a sleigh through the snow.

  “We should discuss what happened last night,” I say flatly.

  He sees that I am shaken, and for a moment I think that he will hug me, like he did when we were children. But instead he says, “Don’t be afraid, Madeline.”

  “Of course I’m afraid. The house was trying to maim you.”

  He shakes his head. “It is a coincidence that ceiling beam came down right over my chair. I wish it would have crushed a few of the doctors.” He means Dr. Winston. For a moment I thought he was beginning to believe, but he’s only making a poor joke.

  “Roderick!”

  “I’m sorry. I know this is upsetting to you, but I wasn’t hurt.”

  “You could be. If you don’t believe. If you don’t take precautions.”

  “Oh, Madeline, you know I—” He pauses. “You know I believe that you are the most creative . . . that you can come up with the best stories in the world.”

  His face registers disdain. No belief, not even the ability to listen.

  “Stay away from that doctor,” he says. “The young one. I don’t like the way he watches you.”

  Should I tell him that I am no longer fond of Dr. Winston? But then he would know that I was, for a time.

  “I love you, Roderick,” I say, but instead of answering, he hunches his shoulders and turns away.

  90

  FROM THE DIARY OF LISBETH USHER

  I have crept up to the attic, and as I write this, I watch Mr. Usher’s mad sister. She ignores me most of the time, staring at the wallpaper or tracing the cracks in the walls. She seems to be looking for something. As her finger follows the cracks and the designs in the wallpaper, I begin to see a design. Like a language I can’t read.

  She escaped from her keepers this morning.

  I would have missed the excitement, but I was in the nursery minding my younger sister. The attic rooms don’t have doors, and even though Mr. Usher insists we stay away from his sister, the maids don’t care, so I was half watching from the other side of the arched doorway.

  The maid with broad shoulders, who helps carry barrels from the wine cellar, brought a wooden tub up the stairs. Another servant brought hot water, and washcloths, and then they unlocked the manacles with a key kept on a long silver chain.

  The maids forced her to sit in the tub of water, and I wondered if it was too hot, because tears were running down her face. I wondered if I should tell Mr. Usher. After the bath, while they were drying her, she pushed the skinny maid into the big one and ran.

  I didn’t want to get in the way, but I followed the maids. The poor girl made it all the way from the top of the house to the crypt.

  The maids were frightened and didn’t follow. But I wasn’t afraid. Her wet footprints were clear as day against the dark floors.

  I followed her down the dark stairway, past the place where the floor is copper, to the big metal gate, which is locked with a key that Mr. Usher keeps on his own private key ring.

  She had her back pressed to the gate, and when I came down the stairs, she crouched down and bared her teeth at me. I paused, trying to find a way to communicate with her, but she just growled—and before I thought of anything useful, Mr. Usher was behind me on the stairs. The maids must have gone straight to him.

  “Here she is,” he called. Servants came down the stairs, timidly, carrying white sheets. He held out his hand to me.

  “Come here, Elisabeth.”

  The light was behind him, and he looked sinister for a moment.

  While I was staring at him, the servants wrapped the girl in the sheets, twisting them around and around her so that when they carried her past us, she was unable to fight.

  “She always goes to the crypt,” he says.

  Such sadness in his voice.

  “Why?”

  I stared through the gate, wondering what lay beyond. He could have unlocked it and walked through with me, but I didn’t know whether I wanted him to.

  “She had a little baby. It ended up in the crypt,” he said sadly.

  I wanted to ask him whether she had the baby before or after she went mad, but his face was turned away from me, toward the past, and the shadows from the torch made him look frightening again, despite the tears on his cheeks.

  91

  MADELINE IS SEVENTEEN

  “I’m ready to confide in you,” I say to Emily. I lead her up the stairs, past the suit of armor that always gives me chills.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asks.

  “It’s secret.” I shush her. I don’t want Dr. Winston finding this place. This room.

  We pass through the labyrinth of interconnected rooms. “Light the candles,” I say, and she uses the one she was carrying to light the others that we’ve brought.

  As before, the single window allows some light into the room, but for the first time I realize that the decorative latticework at the window is actually a series of delicate bars, thin, but made of steel. Designed to either keep someone out, or in.

  I gesture to the heaps of books that hide the floor, the furniture.

  “I can’t just leave,” I say. “And it isn’t just because of money. Or because it will be difficult, as a girl. My family is cursed. My father tried to take me away years ago, but it was terrible. We both nearly died. Long before that, my grandmother sent away for these.” I gesture to the books. “She was trying to discover something about the curse, about how to defeat the house, but I can’t read them, and if she discovered anything, she left no records. I did have a kinswoman who escaped,” I say, thinking of Lisbeth. “It must be possible.”

  “There are so many books,” she breathes, her eyes big. “What sort of knowledge was she searching for? The curse is a family illness?”

  “Yes. We are tied to this land. To the house.”

  “It would have taken years to read all of these books,” says Emily, the future governess. “So the house is haunted, and the inhabitants are cursed? How is it all connected? The house, it watches you—that’s what you, and even Victor, have suggested.”

  “Yes,” I say simply.

  She shudders, glancing at the curtains, which are moving slightly, though I don’t feel enough of a breeze to cause the disturbance.

  “If you all believe that, no wonder you go crazy in the end.” And so many of us do. I think of the girl Lisbeth wrote of, chained in the attics. At least father surrounded grandmother with comforts, here in this room. “Tell me about this grandmother who loved to read.” She stares at the heaps of books, her eyes round and slightly frightened.

  “They thought she was mad. Even her son, my father, thought so.” I glance back to the window, at the elegant cage they had created for my grandmother. “But I believe she discovered something important. A way to fight the curse.”

/>   “And did she succeed?”

  “She died. Here in this room.”

  Emily taps her foot against the faded carpet. I cross the room and push back the curtains, releasing decades’ worth of dust into the already dense air.

  “Let me see what I can discover.” She squares her shoulders and begins sorting through the volumes. “This one is about furniture making,” she says. “And this one is ancient.” Emily touches the pages reverently. “Look, Madeline, it’s handwritten.” The book falls open to an illustration of a girl hanging from a rowan tree. She closes it with a snap.

  An hour later, we are no closer to finding anything useful.

  “It’s as if they were chosen at random,” she says. “Or by a madwoman.”

  92

  MADELINE IS TWELVE

  They have restrained Father; he is strapped to a stretcher.

  “It isn’t your fault, Madeline,” he says over and over. But I know it is.

  I don’t want to ride in the conveyance—it isn’t quite a coach, isn’t quite a wagon—but being by Father is somewhat better than being alone. There are no windows. This is a conveyance for sick people. For the dead.

  “Don’t come near me,” he says. I think he’s talking in his sleep. What does he mean? “Madeline?” He squeezes my hand. “If I look at you without recognition, if I’m gone, if I’m mad, stay away. Don’t trust whatever the house leaves. It won’t be me.”

  They gave Father an injection. He opened his eyes once, but he didn’t seem to recognize me. Because of the medicine. It’s the sedative talking, not my father.

  I don’t like the rocking movement, or the jolting way the windowless coach passes over uneven places in the road. Through the window, I watch the trees pass. Healthy, strong trees with great branches bearing vibrant green leaves. I long for the white trunks and dead leaves that surround my home. And even if I hadn’t been homesick, Father was not well. He could not take care of me. I hold his hand but then realize that he isn’t aware of me, and drop it.

  93

  MADELINE IS SEVENTEEN

  The doctor’s huge machine pulses and stutters. I’ve stolen into their tower, and I sit on the floor beneath the window, trying to read by the light of the moon. The old doctors don’t know I’m here, and neither does Dr. Winston. In this room, where the house can’t spy on me, I find it a bit easier to make sense of the words in the books.

  What is the difference? I ask myself. Between me and Roderick. How are we different? I’ve always heard the house. Roderick never has. Or has never admitted to it. The house made my cradle rock of its own volition, made me swing without moving my legs.

  Roderick would close his eyes, put his hands over his ears, pretend he saw nothing, heard nothing, but I listened.

  That’s the difference.

  My curiosity.

  My need for love.

  I’ve brought this curse down on my own head. I’ve damned myself.

  Beside me are two books from my grandmother’s collection that Emily thought might be relevant—one about ghosts, and the one with the picture of the girl hanging from a noose. It turns out that book is filled with illustrations of dead girls.

  I hold Lisbeth Usher’s diary close. As I read the pages, they are crumbling. I place the scraps in a box with a lacquered lid—but I doubt I could ever piece the entries back together. It’s hard enough for me to read when the pages are whole.

  I showed some of the intact pages to Emily, in a tentative effort to introduce her to the realities of my life. Ancient journals. Ancient curses. She gasped and said the journal must be ancient.

  I agree. And yet part of me feels that there is something more sinister to the fact that it’s disintegrating as I read it. Like it was waiting for me. Unfortunately, my fits wreak havoc on my memory. I don’t always remember what I have read for more than a few days.

  Still, I feel that there are other forces at work besides the house’s will. I’ve fought the house in small ways, and succeeded. It is not all-powerful, or all-knowing. Lisbeth escaped the curse, and left this journal, forging a bond between us.

  Perhaps I can escape too.

  94

  MADELINE IS SEVENTEEN

  Resting my hand against the rough stone at the side of the house, I examine my vines. Wooziness tries to overwhelm me, but I push it back, holding a window ledge to brace myself. My vision clears. I push myself away from the support of the wall, even as a bit of vine caresses my hand. The pain subsides.

  I look up, marveling at the faint warmth of the sun, at the breath of a nearly icy breeze reminding me that winter is fast approaching. Marveling because I am still upright.

  It’s the first time in my life that I have truly overcome one of the fits. Not just held it off, but made it go away. I stand, a silly smile on my face, my hand pressed against a thick vine that twines up the side of the house, nestling into a crack and then out again. Butterflies flutter here and there, and I marvel at my own strength, to do this thing, to overcome a fit. Even the doctors think it is impossible.

  95

  MADELINE IS SEVENTEEN

  I sit in the garden with my feet in the winter snow, planning where I will plant flowers when spring arrives. In my hands I hold envelopes, carefully labeled with ink illustrations. Roderick gave me these packets of seeds, a Christmas gift—though he spends so little time here, even in the summer, who knows if he will even enjoy my plantings.

  Dr. Winston is nearby, sitting on a different bench. He was writing in his journal, but now he has kicked the snow aside and is staring into the dark soil beneath. “Everything is interconnected, isn’t it, Madeline?” he asks.

  It is the house speaking, really. It is greedy and wants us all to be a part of it. Not separate people with contradictory desires. Dr. Winston’s eyes are so dark, they nearly burn with unspoken emotion.

  Before he can speak to me again, Emily leaves the house in a bustle of coats and scarves.

  “Good afternoon,” she says, adjusting her fur-lined hat.

  Dr. Winston starts at her voice, and stands. “I’m sorry, I have to write a letter for Dr. Peridue. His eyesight is failing him.” He stumbles toward the house, veering away as he passes her, as if he doesn’t want to get too near.

  Emily pretends not to care. She’s trying to get past her desire to marry him, but I know it isn’t easy. She’s good at pretending. She pretends that she likes living here. Pretends not to be dismayed by the spiderwebs, or upset that she sees eyes whenever she looks into the depths of a mirror.

  “Oh, no, Madeline, Victor left his journal. . . .”

  For a moment she appears ready to follow him. It’s an excuse to be near him, after all. But then she considers the journal and sits down on the stone bench he vacated. She gives me a conspiratorial look, opens the book, and begins to read.

  “Look, Madeline, look what he wrote.” Emily has jumped to her feet, casting a long shadow over me.

  The words slither and I want to ask her to read it to me, but having to ask is so hateful. I hold up my filthy hands as an excuse.

  She gives a nervous laugh.

  “It says ‘Her skin is like alabaster.’ I don’t think my skin is like alabaster, do you?”

  An odd emotion prickles in the pit of my stomach. The severed stone head of an ancient statue stares up at us from the undergrowth at the side of the house. I lean forward. I’d investigate it further, as I’ve not noticed it, or the decapitated statue it must have originally been part of. Emily looks up, thinking I’ve moved because I’m shocked by what Dr. Winston wrote. Then she’s back to the journal.

  “His handwriting is hard to read. This next line says ‘I’ll never be attracted to a healthy woman again.’” Her brow creases.

  She stares into the journal.

  “I need to go back inside, out of the sun,” she says. Though she just got here, and there is precious little sun.

  She drops the journal as if it is poisonous, and hurries along the path, back to the house.
>
  I dust my hands on my skirts and pick up the book. It’s easy to find where she stopped reading; it’s still open to the page.

  I can’t wait to watch her die.

  His handwriting is not that difficult to read, even for me.

  96

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF LISBETH USHER

  Today I witnessed something truly terrible, proving that I must escape. I was following Mr. Usher, who goes to the attic once or twice a month. Those are the only times he can force himself to see his mad sister. He whispers in her ear that all will be well and that he’ll take her away from here. Afterward, she seems calmer. She stares out the window. Hopeful. Her escape attempts occur when he has been gone for long periods of time.

  Is she truly mad? Wouldn’t anyone be if they were chained in the attic?

  What was she like before they imprisoned her?

  I watch her through the doorway. She fights with the manacles and, in a fit of desperation, bit off one of her fingers. Slick with blood, the manacle fit over that hand. I wanted to cry out, to stop her, but even as she lifted the other hand to her mouth, I choked.

  She was stopped by a cry of anguish from the doorway. Her brother. My betrothed. He held her in his arms and cried over her maimed hand, wrapping bandages around the stump where the finger used to be. But before he left her, he twisted the manacle tighter, rendering her act of self-mutilation useless.

  He picked up the finger and wrapped it in his handkerchief, putting it in his pocket.

  And he gave me a look through the doorway. He knows that I witnessed everything.

  97

  MADELINE IS SEVENTEEN

  We’ve come back to my grandmother’s room. It’s a good place to hide from Dr. Winston, and I’m stubbornly convinced that there may be some answers here. I don’t want to believe that the madness of all these Usher women was in vain. They would want to leave some legacy, to help me escape the curse. I’m not sure Emily believes that I’m cursed, though she’s seen my illness. She tries to focus on more practical matters that she can understand. Money.