Usher's Passing

RIX AWAKENED IN THE EMBRACE OF HIS GRANDMOTHER'S GHOST.

The room was a hazy gold, filled with sunlight that streamed through the trees outside. It was after ten o'clock; Rix was ravenously hungry, and he regretted that no one had awakened him for breakfast. Lunch wouldn't be served until twelve-thirty.

He rose from the bed and stretched. This morning he'd read in Nora Usher's diary until almost two o'clock, and scenes of Usher life in 1917 and 1918 stayed in his mind as vividly as the old sepia-toned photographs he'd found in the library. After the wedding, Nora's entries in her diary had become more and more terse and erratic. He could sense a change in her personality, from that of a sheltered child to that of a bewildered but awesomely wealthy woman. Whole months went by without a notation, or sometimes a month was summed up simply in a phrase describing a dinner party or some other activity. It was clear that Nora was bored out of her skull at Usherland, and that Erik -  once he had her under his thumb - had tired of her very quickly indeed.

Rix washed his face with cold water in the bathroom, and with a finger traced the deep lines around his eyes. But were they less deep than the day before? Was his complexion less pale, his eyes less weary-looking? He knew he felt fine, but he took his vitamins anyway.

There was a knock at his bedroom door, and Rix opened it.

"Rise and shine," Cass said, bringing in a tray of scrambled eggs, sausage patties, grits, and a small pot of coffee.

"Good morning. Sorry I overslept breakfast."

"I saved you some. Were you up late last night?" She set the tray down on his desk - right beside, Rix realized, the open diary of Nora Usher.

"Yes. Pretty late."

If she noticed the diary, Cass didn't react to it. Her smile was broad and sunny. "Your mother wanted to wake you up. She had to eat alone this morning, but I persuaded her to let you sleep."

"Thanks. The food looks great. Where was Boone this morning?"

"I don't think he came home before sunrise." Before Rix could reach the diary, Cass had turned and was pouring him a cup of coffee. "His love of poker is bad for his bank account. What's this?" She nodded toward the open book.

"Just . . . something I'm reading."

"It looks very old." Rix saw her eyes flicker across the page, and she stopped pouring. "Where did you get it, Rix?" she asked, and he heard from her tone of voice that she knew what it was. He didn't respond for a few seconds, trying to think of a good story, but then she faced him and he knew he couldn't lie to her.

"Edwin gave me the library key."

"Oh. Then . . . you know about the books that were brought from the Lodge."

"That's right, and I also know about the Usher history that Wheeler Dunstan's writing. Cass, why didn't you tell me about that?"

She set the pot aside, avoiding Rix's gaze. "I don't know," she said with a soft sigh. "I guess I just. . . didn't think it was important."

"Not important?" he asked incredulously. "Some stranger's been working for six years on a history of the family, and you don't think that's important? Come on, Cass! When Boone told' me about it, I almost hit the ceiling! If anybody should write that book, it should be me. Not a stranger."

"Dunstan will never finish it," she said calmly, and lifted her eyes to his.

"But it seems to have worried Dad enough to send a lawyer after him."

"Your father values his privacy. He wants to protect the Usher name. Can you blame him?"

Rix paused. On Cass's face was such firm resolve that he felt tugged toward her point of view. "No," he said. "I guess not."

"Right now," she continued, "any press coverage would be bad for your family's situation. Sooner or later the reporters are going to find out your father's dying. They'll swarm all over Usherland - God forbid. But I hope that'll be after the estate is settled and the business has changed hands."

Rix grunted, picked up his cup, and sipped at the coffee.

"Who's Dad got his eye on?" he asked, trying to sound casual about it. "Boone or Katt?"

"I can't say. Edwin thinks Mr. Usher favors your sister. She has the better education."

Rix shook his head. "No, I can't see her wanting it. She's too happy doing what she does now." The next question came out before he could stop it: "Is she staying straight?"

"As far as I know," she replied, and shrugged. "She's sworn off everything but an occasional glass of wine. She still smokes too much, though - just regular cigarettes, none of that funny stuff. After what happened in Tokyo, well - " She left the rest unsaid.

Katt had been caught entering Japan on a modeling assignment several years ago with twelve grams of high-grade coke and an ounce of Maui Wowie stashed in jars in her makeup case. The Japanese police had crashed down hard on her, and the mess had dragged on for almost a month. Rix, at that time busy working on a novel about witches, called Congregation, had seen the stories in the papers; in one front-page picture, Katt was wan and unkempt, being supported between her father and Boone as they entered a limo in front of a police station. Walen's cane was raised threateningly toward the photographers, and Boone's mouth curled in a snarled curse.

"So" - Cass motioned toward the diary - "are you reading that for pleasure . . . or research?"

"If I tell you that I really do intend to write the book, will you go to Edwin or Dad?"

She frowned, two lines deepening between her eyes, and thought for a moment. "I took an oath of loyalty to your father, Rix," she said finally. "Just as Edwin did. I'm bound by that oath to tell him if I feel something's going on he should know about."

Suddenly Rix was struck by a horrifying thought. Cass might not even have to tell Walen. If his hearing was sharp enough to pick up voices in the living room, he could certainly hear this conversation right now! Still, Walen wouldn't completely understand what they were talking about - or would he? "He can hear us, can't he?" Rix asked in a nervous whisper, his heart pounding. "Is that what you wanted, for him to hear?"

"No. He can't hear. I took Mrs. Reynolds her breakfast an hour ago, and he was asleep. She'd given him his tranquilizers, because he had a restless night."

Cass had never lied to him, and he could see in her face now that this was the truth. Still, he was wary. "Will you tell him?" he asked, keeping his voice low. Before she could answer, he grasped her hand. "Please don't, Cass. I'm begging you. Give me a chance. Ever since . . . Sandra died, things haven't been going too well for me. I can't make my ideas work anymore; everything comes out scrambled and screwed up. Sandra helped me talk things out, and she kept me going. Without her . . . I just can't get a handle on anything anymore." He squeezed her hand. "I have to start working on another book, Cass. If I don't, Dad will have been right about me - I'll be nothing but a hack who had a stroke of good luck."

"Why are you so sure you could write a family history? It seems to me that writing a novel would be so much easier."

"I'm not sure, but I've got to try it. The research will be hard, yes, but the story's already written! All I have to do is put it together. What if Wheeler Dunstan does finish it first? He's got a six-year head start on me! If I lose my chance, I don't know what I'll do."

Her face was a mirror of her conflicting emotions. "I . . . took an oath."

"You and Edwin are about to retire. You'll be long gone by the time I finish the book. All I'm asking of you is that you give me some time. If you tell Dad, he'll send all the documents back to the Lodge, and if that happens there's no way I can get to them. Please. Time is all I'm asking for."

Cass pulled her hand free. "I'll have to think about this. I can't promise you one way or the other."

Rix felt clammy, and his heart continued to pound.

"Are you all right?" Cass asked. "You look pale."

He nodded. "I need some breakfast, I guess."

"Well, eat it before it gets cold." She walked to the door and I paused before she went out. "You've put me in a bad spot, Rix," she said quietly. "I love you - but I love Mr. Usher, too."

"Whom do you love more?" he asked.

Cass left the room without answering.

Rix felt slimy inside; asking her to make a choice like that was a manipulation his father might have used. If she told Walen about his idea, though, he might as well forget about it. The idea rightfully belonged to him, not to a stranger! He touched his temple and felt a sheen of cold sweat.

The skeleton with bloody eye sockets swung back and forth, back and forth in his mind. Droplets of blood ran down the white cheekbones. Sandra's hair floated in the red water.

"Failure," he heard his father say. "You're nothing but a damned failure . . ."

Rix gripped the edge of the desk. His nerves were on fire.

The golden light that filled the room began to grow harshly yellow, so bright that it stung his eyes. He heard water gurgling through the Gatehouse pipes. Boone's snoring sounded like the rumble of a chainsaw through the wall. A noise like a mosquito's hum grew steadily louder. The hum became a whine. It was the Jetcopter, approaching Usherland.

He had to find a place to hide. The nearest Quiet Room was Boone's, but he'd have to get through Puddin' to use it. There was a closet in Katt's room, Walen had said. He'd have to hurry to get there before the full force of the oncoming attack hit him. His head was hammering as he stumbled toward the door and reached for the knob.

But as his arm stretched out for it, the doorknob changed. It was no longer a large octagon of cut crystal; now it was fashioned of polished silver, and embossed on it was the face of a roaring lion.

Rix pulled his hand back as if he'd been burned. A whipstrike of pain seared through his head, and at that instant he saw an emaciated body laying in darkness on a bed, and he realized it was not his father but himself, rotting in the Quiet Room.

And then it was over. The attack had passed, leaving him sweating and shivering, with his forehead pressed against the door. The intensity of the light faded, as did the Gatehouse sounds.

He looked at the cut-crystal doorknob. The silver lion's-face was gone. But he'd seen that silver doorknob before. He couldn't recall where. Perhaps, he wondered, in his recurrent nightmares of the Lodge?

He asked himself why the attack had stopped. The sweat was drying on his face, and his heartbeat was returning to normal. Usually, by now, he'd be crawling on his belly. Was what Walen said about Usherland true? he wondered. Now that he was back, was he getting better?

Still shaky, Rix dressed in a pair of khaki trousers, a white shirt, and a brown pullover sweater. In his closet had materialized three new suits in his size, pants, sweaters, and a dozen starched dress shirts. He sat down at his desk and ravenously ate the food Cass had brought.

Then, feeling a lot better, he paged through the diary.

He had no idea what Nora St. Clair Usher had looked like, but he remembered the photograph of the woman in white, standing on a balcony. She'd held herself with regal dignity, though there'd been something terribly sad about that picture: a single figure, standing alone against the grandeur of the Lodge, staring out across the black, solemn lake. He envisioned Nora as a woman of her time - childlike, innocent, maybe a little spoiled, but certainly beautiful. In his imagination he gave her a slender frame, ringlets of light brown hair brushed back from a high forehead, the large gray eyes of a curious waif. Surely she was a stylish woman, or Erik wouldn't have gone after her so ardently. She was charming, able to chat amiably with any of the guests Erik brought to Usherland, and probably a model hostess.

Rix drank his coffee and poured himself a second cup. He was feeling much stronger now. The breakfast had helped.

He stopped at what was written in the diary under "July 5, 1919." It was the first entry in more than six months. The handwriting was shaky, marred with untidy smears and blotches. Nora's strain was showing.

The first line read, "He is a murderer."

As he read, Nora St. Clair Usher began to speak to Rix over the decades. Her words sparked his imagination; they roamed over time and space, and suddenly he was attending the Fourth of July Gala held at Usherland more than thirty years before his birth.

A thousand Japanese lanterns winked with rainbow colors in Usherland's trees. Long tables covered with fine white Irish lace had been set up on the lakeshore for Erik Usher's guests. More than six hundred people had come to be fed on roast pig, thick slabs of Chicago beef, New England lobster, veal, lamb, and platters of raw oysters on ice, flown up from Florida. There were pickled quail eggs, pheasant's tongue in vinaigrette, smoked Peking duck, and Alaskan king crabs as big as Rolls-Royce wheels. Blazing torches embedded in the ground illuminated the scene as an army of waiters in red tuxedos scurried around the tables, pouring champagne into crystal goblets. On a white bandstand decorated with American flags, a brass band played regimental marching music. Cicadas hummed in the trees, and every so often a lion or some other big predator roared from Erik's private zoo.

Small American flags were placed beside every plate. The guests had dressed in accordance with a request on their gold-embossed invitations: all of them, from Washington diplomat to Asheville bank president, wore red, white, and blue.

At the head of the longest table, Erik Usher suddenly rose to his feet. Broad-shouldered and hulking, he wore a flaming red suit, a white bow tie, and a blue shirt. He lifted a megaphone to his lips, torchflame sparkling in his eyeglasses. "A toast!" he bellowed, and raised his champagne glass.

The brass band stopped in mid-cadence. The noise of six hundred, eighty-four people talking, eating, and drinking faded to a soft mutter. Waiters were stumbling over each other, trying to fill all the upraised glasses. Corks popped like firecrackers.

"Well?" Erik shouted through the megaphone. "Stand up, damn it!"

The guests rose as if at attention before the President of the United States - whose aide, Mr. Conyers, was placed beside a stunning, white-silk-clad Nora Usher. She wore blue gloves, and there were red ribbons in her hair. As Nora stood up, she saw the drunken gleam in her husband's eyes. He'd had too much champagne. If this party was like others Erik had hosted, it might continue for days, until people passed out on the ground or swam naked in the estate's fountains. She lifted her glass with the others. Across the table from her, Harry Sanderson - a middle-aged tobacco magnate from Winston-Salem - belched up a breath of crabmeat and garlic sauce.

"To the Fourth of July," Erik roared, "and to the principles on which this great nation was founded! Long may our flag wave over a country where any man can roll up his goddamned sleeves and make himself a millionaire!" Behind him, across the flat surface of the lake, the Lodge glowed with light. It was an awesome sight, and still Erik ordered the workmen to continue building. In the darkness that was Briartop Mountain, a few specks of light could be seen through the trees.

"My great-great-grandfather came here from Wales with his pockets full of coal dust!" Erik said. "But he had an idea. He designed a rifle that would knock a redskin from Kansas City into Canada, and that sonofabitch worked! The Usher Repeating Rifle opened this country's frontier, and without it we might be eating corn soup instead of roast beef, and jingling beads in our pockets instead of silver dollars!"

There was a murmur of laughter. Down the table, a young floozy who'd arrived hooked on the arm of a rich, elderly gunpowder merchant giggled like a hyena.

Nora was not a drinker. She detested the taste of alcohol, and so there was only icewater in her glass. Cigar smoke wafted through the air like a blue fog, irritating her sinuses. Over Erik's shoulder, she suddenly saw a shape move past the glass walls of the cupola that stood on the highest roof of the Lodge. Erik's father, Ludlow, had become all but a hermit in the two years she'd been an Usher's wife. She rarely saw him, and he never spoke to her. He stayed up in that glass cupola for the most part, but sometimes at night she could hear him walking the corridor outside her bedchamber. She could tell it was him, because she heard the cane tapping on the hardwood floor.

Suddenly, Erik put down his glass and grabbed Nora's arm, pulling her toward him. She stumbled, spilling water all over her dress. He smelled of the horses that he ran, hour after hour, day after day, on the estate's racetrack. "And I've got an announcement for you people!" he told them. "I'm gonna be a father!" There was a hearty round of applause and shouts of bravo. Erik patted Nora's stomach, and she felt her face burn. "Gonna be a father in February or March, the doctor says! So this toast is to the future, too, and all the Ushers who are yet to be born. Everybody can drink now!"

Nora pulled away from him and sat down. She'd planned on sending out announcements to a select group of friends, and thought Erik had agreed. By morning, the item would be in the Asheville newspaper, she knew. She caught Mrs. Van Doss watching her with a cold smile on her weasel features. Across the table, Harry Sanderson lit another of his seven-inch-long Havana cigars and shouted for more champagne.

The fireworks display began with an ear-cracking boom that echoed across the lake and back again off the walls of the Lodge. The sky lit up with fiery colors, red rockets, blue star-shells, gold pinwheels. The display, which had cost Erik more than sixty thousand dollars, went on for more than a half hour; when it was over and the last cinder had hissed into the lake, Nora was a trembling bundle of raw nerves. Erik grinned gleefully. The lights had gone out, Nora saw, in the glass cupola.

After the applause had died away and Nora forced herself to converse with an elderly Asheville social queen named Delilah Huckabee, Sanderson clapped his hands and called out, "Fine show, Erik! Damned fine! Couldn't have done better myself!" His blue bow tie was crooked, his eyes red-rimmed. His wife was trying to control him, but having little effect.

"You know the Ushers, Harry," Erik replied, cutting another slab of beef from the platter before him. "We always entertain with a bang."

"How much your daddy give you to put on that show, Erik?"

Erik glanced up. There was a thin smile on his grease-filmed mouth, but his eyes were like chunks of granite. "You're drinking too much, aren't you, Harry?"

"The hell I am, boy! See, I came to your daddy's fortieth birthday party, right here at Usherland. Now that was one hell of a party! Old bastard must've shot off a hundred thousand bucks' worth of fireworks! How much did he give you to buy yours?"

Sanderson was probing a sore spot, and he knew it. Erik Usher was still on his father's payroll. Though Ludlow's health was unsteady, the old man held the purse strings - and Nora had heard Erik rage like a madman over what he considered a paltry allowance.

"Yeah," Sanderson continued, with an exaggerated wink at Nora, "that old Ludlow really knew how to throw a party. Made people sit up and take notice, he did. When you went to one of his parties, you never forgot it. He must've spent a hundred thousand bucks on those fireworks. Went on for a goddamned hour, they did."

"Is that so?" Erik asked. Flames glinted in his glasses. About thirty people were listening to this exchange, and none of them but Nora knew what was seething inside her husband. "So you like fireworks, Harry?"

"Went on for a goddamned hour," he said. "Champagne over here, waiter!"

Erik slowly stood up. His chest was thrust forward like a fighting rooster's. Nora recognized it as a dangerous sign. "If it's fireworks you like, Harry . . . then it's fireworks you'll get. Enjoy the party. Drink up. And smile. Mr. Conyers, will you attend to my wife for a while, please? I'll return shortly." Before Nora could ask him where he was going, Erik strode briskly across the lawn to the cars parked along the drive. He slid into a Rolls-Royce limousine and it turned around, heading out of Usherland.

The band played on, and for the next hour or so Nora talked to Mr. Conyers about the social scene in Washington. Harry Sanderson progressively slid lower in his seat. A formally dressed couple leaped into the lake. Someone produced a pistol and began to shoot out the hanging lanterns.

Nora's conversation was interrupted by the rumble of engines.

Headlights stabbed through the woods. Three Usher trucks, each towing something covered with green tarpaulins, were approaching the Lodge. They stopped on the road, thirty yards from the tables. She heard a man shouting; it sounded like Erik's voice, but she wasn't sure. Other figures began to scramble out of the trucks. Erik materialized from the gloom, walking toward his guests, and Nora rose from her seat.

Erik's face was flushed, and as he walked right past Nora she heard him breathing hard, like an enraged animal. "Harry?" he asked, and the drunken man looked up, unable to focus. "I've brought you a present, Harry. Something to help you remember my party."

"Thass damn fine," Harry mumbled, and grinned stupidly.

The tarpaulins were being whipped back. Nora saw the men from the trucks straining to pivot the objects around. It took Nora a moment to make out what the tarpaulins had uncovered.

Guns. Usher field howitzers, similar to one in a battlefield photograph Erik had once proudly shown her.

"Fireworks," Erik said, smiling. People were already starting to leave their seats. The guns were being aimed right at the crowd.

"Ready, Mr. Usher!" one of the gun crewmen called out.

"Erik," Nora began, stunned. "My God, you can't - "

"Hope you like the show, Harry." Erik turned regally toward the trucks and shouted, "Fire!"

The first howitzer went off. Its shell streaked over the tables with a noise like a freight train, up into the air above the Lodge, and toward Briartop Mountain.

There was a roar such as might be made by the damned souls of Hades as party guests scrambled wildly away, crashing into each other, knocking over tables, food, and champagne. The other cannons began to fire, each blast shaking the earth, the concussion knocking scores of people to their knees. Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson flew out of their chairs like ragdolls, and Nora went down clinging to Mr. Conyers. Champagne bottles exploded in their cases. The Japanese lanterns swung wildly back and forth. As the shells continued to flash overhead, the sky was lit up with an eerie, pulsating red glow.

Still the blasts went on. Her head ringing, Nora sat dazedly on her knees, watching people in tuxedos and evening dresses running for the safety of the woods, being knocked down by the shockwaves, getting up and fleeing again. The air reeked of gunpowder. The band had left their instruments behind when the entire bandstand collapsed like cardboard. Some of the shells had been coated with phosphorus, and Nora watched one of them flare over the Lodge and into the night like a shooting star - and then she saw the red explosion on Briartop Mountain.

My God, she thought in horror. The cannons are aimed toward the mountain! He's firing toward people's houses!

And then she found her voice, and though she couldn't hear herself over the noise, she screamed, "Stop it you bastard stop it you murderer stop it!"

The artillery pieces were razing the mountainside. She saw leaping tongues of fire where the shells hit. Standing up, she groped through the descending pall of smoke, bumping into people, tripping over dazed bodies. A shape approached through the haze, and only when she was right in front of him did she realize it was Erik. "Why?" she screamed. "Why?"

He stopped, blinked at her. His smile was hanging lopsided from his mouth. "Because," he said, and it was then that Nora realized the cannonfire had ended, "I can."

Then he brushed past her, like a sleepwalker, into the thickening whorls and eddies of smoke.

She stood watching the fires burn on Briartop Mountain, and she began to sob. At her feet, tiny American flags blew across the ground in the scorched turbulence that the howitzers had created.

Someone knocked at Rix's door.

"What is it?" he snapped, looking up from the diary.

The door opened with no warning.

"You don't have to bite my head off," Kattrina Usher said with a pout.