Usher's Passing

BOONE WAS DRUNK ON CHIVAS REGAL, AND HE'D LOST SEVEN thousand dollars in two fleeting hours at the country club poker table. It was dawning on him that his old buddies were conspiring to cheat him. As they laughed and clapped him on the back and lit his Dunhill cigars for him, Boone silently mulled over how he would destroy them.

He took his red Ferrari through the quiet streets of Foxton at almost ninety, whipping past an old battered pickup truck coming from the opposite direction. For spite, Boone rammed his hand down on the horn; it blared several notes of "Dixie." As the car roared out of Foxton, Boone sank his foot to the floor and the Ferrari leaped forward like a rocket.

He would buy the Asheville Heights Country Club, he'd decided. For whatever price. Maybe the board members would put up a statue of him in the foyer. The least they could do was to name the club after him. In a few days he was going to be one of the richest men in the world. Dad can't hold on much longer, he thought - but he had mixed emotions, because he loved the old man. Walen had taught him how to be tough; he'd taught him that no one could be trusted, that everybody was out to make a killing. They'd had long talks, when Boone was younger, about how money was what made a man a success. Money is power, Walen had told him many times; without it, the world will run over you like a steamroller. He'd pointed to Rix as an example of what Boone should avoid: Rix, Walen said, was a dreamy, unrealistic coward who would never amount to his weight in shit. It had pleased Walen for Boone to beat on his younger brother.

Still, there was something about Rix that scared Boone. Something deep, something hidden away from everyone. He'd seen it spark in Rix's eyes several times in the last few days: a hatred and bitterness so twisted it could commit murder. And Rix had tried to stab him in the dining room. Boone regretted not having smashed his teeth out right in front of everyone. Rix would've gone crying to his room.

Boone slid the Ferrari around curves, barely tapping the brakes, grinning at the thrill of speed. Katt thought she was going to get everything, he knew - but she was dead wrong. He had Puddin' to thank for Katt's downfall: the last time Katt had jaunted off to New York for a weekend, Puddin' had rummaged through her closet for a dress to wear and had discovered the entrance to her Quiet Room. Puddin' had shown him what she'd found in there, and Boone had taken it straight to Walen, who at that time hadn't yet sealed himself in his own Quiet Room. Boone would never forget the old man's expression of shock and disgust. Prob'ly buyin' the shit in Asheville, Boone had said. Prob'ly spendin' a damned fortune on it, too.

Walen had told him to put it back where it had been, and that he would take care of Katt in his own way.

Boone knew what that meant. Dad might be stringing her along now, but she'd been cut out of the inheritance.

Rain began to patter on the windshield. Boone quickly slowed down. He wasn't so drunk he wanted to end up as a bloody smear on the road. As he rounded the bend and drove toward Usherland's gates, he hit the switch under the dashboard and the gates opened smoothly for him, then closed again when he'd passed through.

He couldn't bear to return to that room where Puddin' lay sleeping. She thinks she's got me by the balls! he snorted. Well, after he got his hands on all those billions, he could have his choice of beautiful women. Puddin' wasn't as pretty as she used to be. The beauty-queen gilt had rubbed off, and underneath was pure country cardboard. He drove slowly past the dark Gatehouse and followed the road toward the Lodge.

What a showplace the Lodge was going to be when he moved in! He was going to throw out all those damned dusty antiques and suits of armor and shit, put some nice new furniture in. There would be a whole floor full of video games, and in the basement he'd have grottoes of fake rock, where colored lights played on steamy water. He'd have a master bedroom with red walls and a huge bed draped in black fur, and there would be a mirrored ceiling. There would be no end to the parties, and if he wanted to, he'd ride his horses right up and down the corridors.

Boone often went to the Lodge to walk in it, visualizing how it would look once he lived there. Sometimes he told Puddin' and his mother that he was going to the stables, but instead he'd go to the Lodge. It was the most beautiful place in the world, he thought. Its majesty and immensity sometimes almost made him cry; and in the silence of the Lodge-he could sit in an overstuffed chair and know that soon - very soon - all of it would belong to him.

He'd never feared the Lodge. The Lodge loved him, too, and wanted him as its master. In the dreams he'd been having for the past few months, he'd seen the Lodge aflame with lights, and figures drifting past the windows as they would at the party Boone planned to give as soon as he moved in. Lately the dreams had been coming almost every night, and in some of them he'd heard his name called by a soft, beckoning voice that had brought him up from sleep in eager exhilaration.

The Lodge wanted him. The Lodge was waiting to embrace him, and he would love it all the days of his life.

Boone drove across the bridge and parked under the porte-cochere. Then he got out in the misty rain, stumbled around to the trunk, unlocked it, and retrieved his bull's-eye lantern and a map he'd made of the first floor. He clicked the lantern on and shone it up the steps.

The Lodge's front entrance was open. Several times he'd come out here before and found the door wide open. He'd mentioned it to Edwin, who'd promised to keep an eye on the place. There was little danger of someone breaking into the Lodge, Boone knew. Not with all those stories about black panthers and the Pumpkin Man roaming near the estate. Boone's guess was that the Lodge was shifting, and the door wouldn't shut properly anymore. From the looks of the deep cracks in the walls, the house was under a lot of internal pressure. Reinforcing the Lodge would have top priority when Boone took over.

He followed the beam of his lantern into the Lodge. At once he felt giddy with pleasure; he was back in his favorite world again, and he almost shouted with joy. He moved through the foyer, past the massive fountain with its carved statues, and into a cavernous reception area with royal blue sofas and chairs, mahogany tables, and flags from every country in the world hanging from the ceiling. The silence in the Lodge was complete as Boone continued through a series of huge rooms. Entering a winding corridor, Boone followed it for perhaps forty yards and then opened a large sliding door. Beyond it was the main study, and Boone's flashlight picked out familiar sights: several black leather chairs arranged around a low rosewood coffee table, a dark slab of a desk with lion's heads carved into it, a rug made from the hides of polar bears, and shelves filled with a variety of decanters and glasses. A short stairway led down to a door that Boone had found was securely locked. He crossed the room to the fireplace of black marble; the charred remnants of the last fire he'd lit in here still cluttered the hearth. Beside it was a brass barrel of wood left over from Erik's day, and some newspapers Boone had recently brought in. He spent a few minutes getting new pieces of wood arranged in the hearth - banged his head against the marble and cursed drunkenly - and then stuffed paper under it, touched his cigar lighter's flame to it, and stepped back as the fire quickly grew. The old, dried-out wood burned fiercely. The room took on a festive glow. Boone put his lantern aside and went to the shelves.

He'd finished off some damned fine whiskey the last time he was here at night. He sniffed at several decanters before the delicious aroma of cognac filled his nostrils; with a satisfied grunt, he poured himself a glassful and then sat down behind the desk. Going down, the stuff was as mellow as melted gold. He might sleep here tonight, he thought. Just pull up a chair in front of the fire, to help cut the chill, and he'd be fine. He thought of old Erik sitting at this desk, signing important papers. He and Erik would've gotten along just dandy, he was sure. They would've respected each other.

Boone drank his cognac and listened to the fire bum. He felt at peace here, safe and secure. He smelled woodsmoke instead of his father's decay. How much longer he could stand living in the Gatehouse, he didn't know. Sipping the last of the fragrant cognac in his glass, Boone paused. He put the glass down and cocked his head to one side.

Lying on the coffee table, next to a large cigar box, was something that hadn't been there this afternoon.

It was a bulky book, trimmed in gold. Boone stood up and went over to it, playing his fingers across the fine leather. He took it nearer the fireplace and opened it.

Inside were old photographs glued to the pages. Boone knew Erik had loved pictures; walls of the Lodge's first floor were covered with photographs from Erik's time. But what kind of photographs these were quickly became apparent. Boone's stomach clenched involuntarily.

They were pictures of corpses.

Soldiers, Boone realized. Frozen in every position of death. They were pictures taken on the battlefield, in field hospitals and morgues, closeups of soldiers tangled in barbed wire or blown apart at the bottom of muddy trenches, bodies almost denuded of flesh, ripped to pieces by land mines or grenades, crushed into the earth by trucks or tanks. As far as Boone could tell from the uniforms and the backgrounds, they were of World War I vintage. Another series of pictures showed decapitated bodies, followed by heads on slabs. Boone stared at death in all its grisly forms, and though the fire was strong and warm, he felt his skin crawling.

The book held several hundred pictures. Some of them, separated from the glue, drifted down around Boone's feet. Erik had loved pictures, Boone thought. And maybe these were the kind of pictures he loved the best.

Something slammed elsewhere in the Lodge, making Boone jump. A door, he thought, his mental processes sluggish. Did somebody slam a door?

And then it came to him with chilling, sobering clarity: the front door had slammed shut.

Boone stood very still, listening. Mutilated corpses with the faces of young boys stared up at him. Boone dropped the book on the floor and stepped away from it, wiping his hands on his pants. Then he took his lantern and went out into the corridor.

It seemed much colder now in the Lodge; he could see the faint plume of his breath, curling from his mouth. He retraced his steps along the corridor.

Then, abruptly, he stopped.

"No," he whispered, and his voice echoed around him no no no no . . .

His light had fallen upon a wall of rough stones, where no wall had been when he'd come through the corridor before. He approached it, touched it; the stones were cold, and very real. Stunned, he retreated and tried to think how he'd gotten turned around. Careful, Boonie old boy, he told himself. There's no problem. Just get back to Erik's study, right?

He walked to the study's open doors and stopped on the threshold. His light shone into the interior of the Lodge's elevator. The study was gone.

He looked into the room across the corridor, and found that it was a music room with a white grand piano, a pump organ, and a harpsichord. On the ceiling was a painted blue sky with fleecy clouds. In all the times Boone had come into the Lodge and strode down this corridor, he'd never before seen this chamber. The next arched doorway led into a large parlor decorated with feminine frills and painted pale pink. His map, which shook as he held it close to the light, showed no such room on the first floor. Shaken, Boone stood outside the elevator where the study had been a few minutes before. Okay, he said mentally, I've just gotten a little bit fucked-up here. No problem. I'll keep walkin' until I find a room that looks familiar, and then I'll figure my way out.

The corridor led him on, twisting and turning, branching off to each side, passing staircases that vanished beyond the range of the light. Boone saw no room he recognized through any of the dozens of doorways. His palms were sweating, his face frozen into a crooked, disbelieving grin. He was dizzy and disoriented. What had happened to Rix could happen to him, too, he realized. Oh Jesus Christ! he thought. I've got to find the way out!

And with a final twist to the left, the corridor ended at a wide staircase that ascended into darkness.

Boone examined the map. He'd found ten staircases in his explorations of the Lodge's first floor, but he'd never seen this one before. If he didn't know where he was, the map was useless. I'll go back, he decided. I'll sit my ass down in front of that elevator and wait for somebody to see my car out front. No problem.

Boone had taken only a few steps when his legs locked. He gave a soft, scared whimper.

His path was blocked by another wall, adorned with old framed pictures of the Lodge.

He laughed nervously, a strangled sound that echoed faintly around him. That wall hadn't been there before. The corridor had sealed itself behind his back. But the pictures indicated the wall might have been there for fifty years.

The air was turning bitterly cold, and Boone could see his breath whirling before him. He guided the light over the wall. Atop the picture frames was a thin layer of dust. He hammered at the bricks with his fist, but, like the rest of the Lodge, the wall had been built to endure for generations.

Now he had no choice but to climb the stairs. Except, when he returned to the staircase, he found it had changed directions, and now descended into the Lodge's depths.

He gripped the banister and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the stairs still led downward. Lost! he thought, tottering on the edge of panic. Lost like a rat in a maze! But the maze was being changed as he went along, Boone realized. Was this what it had been like for Rix, a long time ago? The corridors blocking themselves, staircases changing direction, rooms shifting from one minute to the next?

Fear flared in his belly. I've got to get out! he screamed inwardly. The only way open to him was the staircase, and he started down it.

Boone's teeth chattered from the cold. The stairway curved into the darkness, and Boone gripped the banister tightly to keep from slipping as the angle of the steps steepened. At the bottom, his lantern illuminated walls and floor of rough granite, an archway into a corridor that angled off beyond the light's range. Dead electric bulbs were fixed to the walls; above them were smears of soot where torches had once been the sole source of light.

Boone knew he was on one of the uppermost basement levels. It was colder down here than at the top of the stairs - a bone-aching, fierce cold, unlike anything Boone had ever experienced.

He couldn't stand it, and he decided he'd be better off upstairs; he started climbing up again, shaking with the cold.

After seven steps, his head suddenly bumped the ceiling.

The staircase had come to an end.

"Oh Jesus," Boone croaked. Trapped! he thought wildly. The Lodge had sealed him up and he was trapped! "Help!" he shouted, and his voice cracked.

The Lodge's silence mocked him.

He slammed his fist against the ceiling. It isn't there! he thought. The damned thing can't be there! Tears stung his eyes, and as he stood trying to understand what was happening to him, he could sense the immense weight of the Lodge above him, like a huge, merciless beast.

"I love you," he whispered to the dark. Tears slipped down his cheeks, and froze on the point of his chin.

At the bottom of the stairs, Boone faced the corridor that led toward - what? he wondered. More stairs, hallways, and rooms that would shift and solidify behind his back? I can wait here until somebody finds me, he told himself. Sooner or later, somebody will get me out of here!

But he was freezing, and he knew he had to keep moving. Already his joints were stiffening, the breath rasping in his lungs. He had no choice but to enter the corridor, his light probing the darkness before him.

He'd gone perhaps twenty yards when he thought he could hear a faint throbbing - a distant rhythm, like the pulse of machinery. But there was no electricity - how could a machine be working? Farther along the winding corridor, Boone felt vibrations - slow and steady, like the beating of a massive heart -  through the soles of his shoes. Whatever was working lay beneath him, on the level below.

His light fell on another archway, cut into the wall on his right. He was afraid to look over his shoulder, afraid that the way he'd come had closed itself behind him. And if that had happened, he would lose his mind. The Lodge was guiding him, he realized. Pushing him, manipulating him. Had it done the same to Rix?

He remembered why he and Rix had come into the Lodge: to play hide-and-seek with the Devil. He'd said it to scare his brother - but now something in the Lodge was playing hide-and-seek with him, and he knew that this game had turned deadly.

He went through the archway, and into an enormous chamber filled with beasts.

The light reflected off the eyes of lions, tigers, bears, cheetahs, pumas, panthers, zebras, antelopes. The room was full of them, frozen in postures of attack, packed closely together in an eerie menagerie. Their silent snarls seemed to be directed at Boone, who had realized after an initial shock that this was a storeroom filled with Erik's stuffed hunting trophies.

The room held hundreds of animals, their shadows scrawled on the walls by Boone's lantern. He backed away from them, and turned to get out.

But the archway was gone, blocked by stones, as if it had never been there at all.

Boone's knees almost buckled.

And from behind him came the rumble of something breathing.

He twisted around, stabbing in all directions with the light. Among the stuffed beasts, nothing moved.

"I'm Boone Usher!" he shouted, and the echoes Usher Usher Usher swirled around him in the frigid air.

A crouched tiger suddenly pitched forward and fell, its snarl rigid, its limbs still stiff. Behind it, something black caught the light before it darted away.

Boone began to sob. "I'm Boone Usher," he whispered. "Damn you, listen to me - " The tears froze beneath his eyes. He backed against the wall and slid down, crying softly, his nerves shattered. Another animal toppled over, followed by a third. Wetness spread at Boone's crotch; he huddled into a protective ball, shining the lantern straight ahead.

The noise of something breathing grew closer, coming from all directions at once.

And then a foul, icy breath touched Boone's cheek.

He twisted to one side, aiming the light.

A monstrous black panther with luminous golden-green eyes stood motionless, not five feet away. For an instant Boone thought it was another sawdust-stuffed trophy - but then its mouth slowly, slowly opened and a black forked tongue emerged to quiver in the air.

The panther was watching him. Across its skull was a raw red streak that looked like a burn.

Boone tried to scream, but no sound would squeeze out. He pressed his back against the stones, his face contorting with terror.

The panther settled On its haunches, its eyes never leaving his. There was a high rattling sound as its tail slowly moved back and forth.

Freezing tears gummed Boone's eyelids together. He began to laugh and wail alternately, as his terror split open and madness oozed out.

Silently the panther leaped.

It fastened its jaws around Boone's face and then clamped them together. The wall was splattered with his brains and blood, the lantern falling from Boone's hand to the floor. The panther dug its claws into Boone's shoulders, holding the writhing body down, and began to peel the flesh from Boone's head. Then it bit into Boone's throat, cutting off his voice in mid-squeal. It crunched into the ribcage, its fangs bursting through tissue and bone, until its snout found the beating heart. With a quick twist of its massive head, the panther wrenched Boone's heart from the chest cavity and devoured it with one shuddering gulp.

Steam rose from the corpse. The panther greedily lapped from a widening puddle of gore, then began ripping Boone's body into pieces and gnawing on the bones. Its eyes rolled back in its head with pleasure.

When it had consumed its fill, the monster turned away and, its belly distended with what had been Boone Usher, left the storeroom through the archway less than three feet distant.