“Madeline,” she says. “What were you doing?”
“Planting my garden.”
She laughs.
“Poor child,” she says. “Poor lonely little girl.”
Her window is open. Usually she surrounds herself with heavy lengths of velvet. The servants make curtains and wall hangings and rugs so that all she has to touch is her beloved black cloth, so soft I can barely tolerate the way it feels against my skin. But today it is spring, and the air is balmy, and even Mother wants to let it in. A good day for planting a garden.
I picture the flowers growing in the light, in the fresh air, covered by butterflies. I can almost hear the humming of bees.
A butterfly flutters down to the window; it drifts, barely moving its wings.
“Kill it,” my mother demands in a low voice. “Smash it with your fist.”
“Mama,” I say, trying to distract her. “Would you like me to read to you?”
She ignores my question, a slight smile on her lips.
“I wasn’t born here, you know,” she says. “But my mother was an Usher, from generations back. We came for a visit, and the house was so grand, so mysterious . . . you sense the mystery of it, don’t you, Madeline?”
I nod, eyes still on the butterfly, wishing that I was so free of care that I could glide away.
“Gardening is for servants,” she says. “You should be reading, or painting. Those are appropriate pursuits. Our family has long been a patron of the arts. Your father used to paint. I found it charming.”
Will she forbid me to go outside? She must have seen me through the window. Any sort of happiness fills Mother with a slow, burning anger, because she’s here, trapped and sick.
“Our holiday lasted on and on,” she continues, “and I was glad. I wanted to live here in the big house and be a great lady. Now I sit here with you, and I look forward to dying. Smash it, Madeline.”
I don’t know what madness overtakes me. Perhaps it is her use of my name. She rarely uses it, and though her tone is cold, hearing it upon her lips warms me. Her eyes are upon me. She has the ash-blond hair that distinguishes Ushers, but she did not inherit our lavender eyes. Roderick and I got them from Father. The brown of her eyes is deceptively kind.
I bring my fist down and feel the butterfly’s wing rip. The tiny twiglike appendages snap as my hand smears them into the pitted stone of the windowsill. The intact wing flutters once.
Mother laughs, and I feel a thrill. It’s the house, feeding on her cruelty, and now mine. In the corner, the ghost of a stately gentleman smiles and then evaporates.
“You are as cursed as I am,” she says.
I look at my fingers. They are stained, not with blood, but with the colors of the butterfly, orange and yellow.
“You shouldn’t cry,” she says. “You should never cry. Sometimes it brings on the spells.”
She’s smiling. The house watches and listens. I glance at the bedside table. Surely it isn’t watching us through my brother’s portrait. But something flickers in the painted eyes. I look back to Mother, somehow expecting her casual cruelty to have diminished her beauty. But she is as lovely as ever.
I wipe my tears with my sleeve. If the house approves of Mother’s actions, then can it truly be on my side?
Can it truly love me, if she doesn’t?
27
MADELINE IS FIFTEEN
The young doctor has been with us for a week. From outside, I see his slender shadow pacing in front of one of the tower windows.
In a thicket on the west side of the house I find a bit of statue, the torso of a girl holding a pitcher. A long time ago, it might have been the base of a fountain. The interior of the pitcher is worn smooth, as if by running water. Though it is heavy, I pry the statue from the earth and use a small cart from the gardener’s shed to bring it to my garden.
Working here, I can forget for a little while my illness, the curse, my fears. I’m not Madeline Usher now; I’m just a gardener.
Standing, I look over the area. Bits of statues have been grown over with vines. Part of a stone bench is exposed beside a wild rosebush that I’ve been able to coax into growing.
“Good morning.”
I turn to see Dr. Winston, the apprentice doctor.
“Good morning,” I answer. A sickly sort of sun is shining down through the clouds, gleaming against his dark hair.
“This is beautiful.” He gestures to my garden. “I’m surprised you can get anything to grow here.”
Cassandra raises her head and bares her teeth at him, but I smile. His approval warms me.
“I search for plants that thrive in the shadow of the house.”
“You’ve done beautifully.” He sits down on the cracked bench. “Where did you find this?” He holds up the urn that I use for watering my plants.
“Inside, in the dusty corner of one of the unused rooms.”
I’m shoring up the dirt around a delicate little vine, encouraging it to join its fellows climbing the side of the house.
“I think it is a burial urn.” He runs his hands over its surface. “I saw one like this in a museum. Look how the ceramic glitters. It’s quite lovely.”
I stare up at him. Unlike the other doctors, who always look so out of place . . . as he stares up at the massive walls of the house, his eyes adoring, the sun brings out a few fair strands in his dark hair, and he seems like he could belong to the House of Usher.
28
FROM THE DIARY OF LISBETH USHER
The locals think that we are Usher bastards, that the current Mr. Usher’s father was our father as well. Though we look like Mr. Usher—our hair is the same odd shade—Mother only met him last year, when she was invited to visit the ancestral home. She returned to the city enamored with the house and the ancient family to whom she had discovered we are related. Mr. Usher invited her to come for an extended stay, and she was thrilled, but her excitement has soured.
“He will, surely, do some renovations,” she said in her breathless way, when we complained that there was a hole large enough for a person to disappear through the floor of one of the bedrooms, and the carpet was threadbare, and that there was a water stain on the wall of Honoria’s room.
Mother is less happy every day that we are here. To try to appease her, Mr. Usher bought us new dresses, and there are dozens of servants. In the city, we only had a cook and a boy who ran errands. Mother says that the more servants a person has, the more important they are.
But we hear terrible noises in the night, and Mr. Usher says odd things.
He is much younger than I expected, since I imagined that the master of such an ancient house should be elderly himself, and he is very interested in Honoria. She never smiles at him, but then, she never smiles at anyone.
Mr. Usher has a mad sister. They keep her locked up so that she doesn’t do herself damage.
I wish to see her, but Mother says that it is out of the question and has forbidden me to go up to the attics. We are guests here until Mr. Usher proposes marriage to Honoria. Then we will have a home.
I’m not sure that Mother is quite enthused with this plan now that we have arrived, but we have no other place to go.
My youngest sister frets, even as I comfort her. At thirteen years old, she is easily frightened, though old enough to know better. The servants in the city said she was touched in the head, but she isn’t simple. Just odd. Our mother is too distracted, too lost in her dreams, so I will be the mother that my youngest sister needs. She is the only beautiful thing in this terribly bleak house.
29
MADELINE IS TWELVE
Hesitating beside the kitchen door, I try to gauge the mood of the house. It is oddly subdued, as if it isn’t aware of me at all. Good. I’ve discovered that if I show no excitement about going outside, the house will generally allow me to walk through the doors and stand on the grounds. Since Father tried to steal me away, the house is especially wary, so I must be careful.
Mother says it s
tormed every day, from the moment Father took me to the day that we were caught. Then she laughed her cruel laugh. “You didn’t make it far, did you?” She claims Father hid me in one of the outbuildings. But why, then, do I remember hearing the sea? The entire thing seems like a dream, like one of the stories that float through the house, and I’m not even sure it was real. I’ve barely seen Father in the weeks since I woke up, back in my bedroom.
Sometimes, in the spring, the tarn, the stinking lake in the front of the house, overflows, and noxious water floods the grounds. I can see the unflooded part of my garden from my window.
Once again, all of my fragile happiness is encapsulated by my garden. It is all I’ve found to nurture. It is mine.
I created this seed of hope in the depths of a lonely winter, certain that if my flowers bloomed, it would prove that I am not cursed, that I might have life to look forward to instead of death. I’ve been building it in my mind, as important as any of my other rituals.
All around my clearing, there are rank black blooms, which seem to have burst from the vines overnight. The vines themselves are covered with rot, slimy to the touch. I pull them from the earth and discard them. In my flower garden is one lone dandelion, standing defiant against the army of roses. It is not one of my flowers; my bulbs and seeds lie dormant, lifeless, underground.
I kneel, clearing back the vines that grow over everything.
30
MADELINE IS ELEVEN
Father leans toward me. Before him is a canvas. He’s sketched out the Usher crest in meticulous detail and is mixing red and yellow paint for the dragons. He stirs the paint round and round, the colors of sunset encapsulated in a ceramic bowl.
He calls this room his studio. It has wide windows that let in a little light for painting, and beside us sits a grand piano with a metronome that clicks back and forth, one two, one two, over and over.
“The house is seductive,” Father says. “It reads our deepest desires.”
But if that’s true, then why was Roderick sent away?
Father laughs softly, still mixing the paint. “It doesn’t always give us our desires, Madeline,” he says, as though I asked the question aloud. Did I?
“And sometimes . . .” He glances at the doorway. Mother is resting across the hall. “What we desired so much doesn’t turn out to truly fulfill us.” Is that why he’s speaking so low? Because he’s insulting Mother? “You must learn to question,” he continues. “I know you are young, but you must not accept anything at face value.”
The paint in his bowl is the color of rust. Like the hinges on the doors and shutters of the gardener’s cottage.
Does he mean that I should question everything? Including what he’s saying right now? He must see the confusion on my face.
“Not what I say,” he clarifies. “You must be ready to trust me. On a moment’s notice. Any moment.”
I’m distracted from his words by a movement at the corner of my eye. A ghost.
Father laughs. “They aren’t important. Long-dead Ushers, they have no effect on the world around them. The house brings them back. It never shows us the ghosts of our dead loved ones. Perhaps because it doesn’t wish to drive us completely mad.” He blinks, refocuses. “The ghosts aren’t important. What is important is that you trust me, and are ready to go.”
“Father, were you reading my mind?”
“Of course not,” he says too quickly, as he splatters paint across the canvas, completely obscuring his intricate drawings in a blob of rusty near-red.
31
MADELINE IS FIFTEEN
In her journal, Lisbeth Usher claims that her beloved Mr. Usher kept his mad sister in the attics. I have never truly explored the attics where the nurseries are. Mother was afraid we would catch the maladies of former generations of Usher children and never allowed us up here. Though Roderick and I disobeyed her and crept up a few brief times.
The house was built over generations, with additions from various Ushers. The nurseries are nearly the highest part of the house. The doctors occupy the adjacent tower.
When Dr. Peridue offered to live in the house, Father agreed, so the doctor would always be available for Mother. The house is big enough for an army of doctors. I tiptoe up one of the staircases, avoiding their quarters.
The machine they keep going at all times, day and night, pumps endlessly, audible even from the stairs.
I pass the last of the doctors’ rooms and step into the nurseries. There are wide windows that face south, and big open rooms filled with dolls missing hair and other broken bits of childhood. A wooden rocking horse with a mane made of white thread stands in the corner. It only has one eye.
Low ceilings give the huge rooms a cavernous feel, full of shadows with open doorways through which you can see more rooms, and more still, like a house of mirrors, except instead of reflections, it’s some warped version of reality, more rooms than could possibly exist, even in a house this huge.
I step over a headless doll. Blocks are strewn across the floor, as if a child might be returning to finish his castle. A broken toy drum lies in the corner; a drumstick has been thrust through the leather membrane.
A spider the size of my hand scurries across the room and into the mouth of a doll with blue eyes and gold ringlets. The Usher children of the past had an abundance of dolls. Mother never bought me any, though I had a stuffed pink rabbit that was unbelievably soft.
I walk slowly through tea sets waiting for a party that will never happen, step over faded chalkboards. Abigail Usher, one of them says. I keep walking.
Heavy ropes have been hung from the rafters. They are decorated with paper flowers. I stand on tiptoe to peer at them. There are meticulously detailed cutouts of stars and moons, roses and tulips, created, perhaps, by some child who grew up long ago. Why would such coarse rope be used to hang these delicate papers? They all flutter as I pass.
In one of the dormers, a low area where the ceiling matches the slope of the roof above, I find a mattress and ugly manacles, black with age. Two pairs. One on each wall, directly across from each other. One manacle is misshapen, twisted to make it much smaller than the others.
Otherwise, the room is empty. There is an opening in the floor at the far corner of the room.
I touch the restraint, and the chill of this place settles over me. The house groans, and footsteps creak toward me, a lilting, dragging step that is oddly familiar. I whirl, but the room is empty. It’s impossible to tell where the footsteps are coming from in this deceptive and endless maze of doorways.
I listen closely, my heart pounding. Still the steps creak steadily nearer. One of the servants? Or has the house sent something terrible to punish me for coming up here? Anything—anyone—could be hiding in these attics. The opening in the corner leads to a staircase that spirals downward from this room, a thing of wrought iron, with a flowing design of roses and barbs. I don’t wait for the footsteps to reach me. I run, across the room, stepping once on the mattress. A noxious smell blooms from it, thick as a cloud. I don’t inhale, just grab the banister, iron thorns piercing my palm, and bound downstairs.
From one floor to the next, the staircase changes color. First black, then a dark green, then a flaking white that comes off on my hands. Three floors down, it ends with a stone floor. I rush through one arched doorway, and then another.
A voice calls “Hello?” and then, warmly, “Oh. Hello, Madeline.”
It is Dr. Winston. I’ve stumbled into the doctor’s quarters. He is lying sprawled across a couch, reading. Seeing him like that feels intimate, somehow. Already unnerved, I try not to stare. His dark hair is tousled, and his clothes are rumpled, casual.
He lets the book fall to the floor.
“I heard someone, upstairs. . . .” I try to catch my breath.
“It’s just the wind. It makes this old place creak. I hear a sound like footsteps limping back and forth nearly every night.”
He watches me intently. I don’t understand the l
ook in his eyes.
“I’m surprised to see you running,” he says. “With color in your cheeks, you almost look healthy.” Of course, the intense look is that of a doctor examining a patient. “I have theories,” he continues. “Ideas for a cure. We can’t allow a beautiful girl like you to fade away.”
His compliment takes me by surprise. I hope he thinks the flush on my cheeks is from running.
“What are you reading?” I ask, gesturing to the dropped book. But even then he doesn’t take his eyes off me.
“The Belphegor. I found it in your library.”
“I hope you are enjoying it.”
“Oh, I am.” He leans forward, smiling. “Madeline . . .”
Like the servants, he is supposed to call me Miss Usher. His familiarity is not as inappropriate as the way he’s watching me. He straightens his shirt, but his hair is still such a mess.
“I was hoping you would walk with me in your garden. Perhaps tomorrow afternoon?”
The thought of sharing my garden fills me with excitement. I feel myself lighting up from within, and I smile; he returns it.
Perhaps he mistakes my smile, because he reaches out, as if to touch me. I step back, but I don’t run. Maybe just a bit of the smile is for him, rather than the garden.
“I’m sorry,” he begins, but I never hear what he’s sorry for, because a familiar voice calls for me from downstairs. Roderick.
32
MADELINE IS FIFTEEN
Dr. Winston and I race to the entrance hall, where we are caught up in the commotion of Roderick’s arrival. The servants line up to greet him, but he barely notices. The school sent him home unexpectedly; he is ill.
He staggers up the stairs.
“Madeline,” he says. “I’m so glad to see you, so glad to be home.” Mother once said that Roderick wouldn’t return to me. That I would fade away. But here he is. Ill, but when you are ill, there is no place you’d rather be than your own home. Or so I’ve heard. I’ve only been away once, with Father, and I did, quite desperately, wish to return home when my fits overwhelmed me. Dr. Winston joins the other doctors in hurrying Roderick to his room.