Authors: Bethany Griffin
Skipping down the hallway, I enjoy the sound of my shoes against the wood floor. When I get outside, the wind will be ruffling the dead leaves, and I will hunt for flowers. I step down the dark stairway.
Thud.
A heavy battle-ax is buried in the wall beside me. My cheek stings where it grazed my face. I twist to face the suit of armor at the top of the stairs. Its gauntleted hand opens and closes, empty.
If I had taken one more step, if I had skipped any faster, the steel blade would be buried in my head instead of paneling. Ghosts rush up and down the hall, so dense that for a moment I cannot see.
I press my hands against the wall. It is cold to the touch, as chilly as the floor of my bedroom in January. Cold means anger. The house
is
jealous. Without meaning to, I put my hand to my cheek.
I imagine that I am a statue, concentrating on my breathing. I blink over and over, holding back tears. My fingers come away from my cheek stained with blood. The house hurt me. My legs give out, and I collapse to the floor in a heap of skirts and anxiety.
The planks of the floor grow unnaturally warm. I place my hands in my lap. I should have listened to Mother. The house was not trying to hurt me. No. It's so big, it lacks finesse. It wants me to stay close, so it can protect me. I sit completely still, showing the house that I do not plan to leave it, not now, not ever. The blade of the ax quivers back and forth. I do not move. I sit, watching the axe. Letting the house know that I trust it.
14
F
ROM THE
J
OURNAL OF
L
ISBETH
U
SHER
M
y young sister is in the garden, swinging on the garden swing. I will be strong. If I let this curse have the best of me, then it will fall to her. When I have my fits, she kisses my forehead. I don't tell her that even the touch of her lips is horrifying to me, everything is horrifying. I just close my eyes and wish the days of my life away.
Hyperesthetic fits. I fall, as if dead, in a trance, though I'm unbearably aware of everything that happens around me. My hearing becomes sharper. Light burns my eyes. The touch of a blanket is torture.
When the fits last more than a few hours, I lose consciousness. It's a mercy to be freed from the agony.
But coming out of the fit is an agony on its own. Slow, and ponderous. First my awareness returns. Then, perhaps, I might be able to move one finger. Eventually my hand can curl into a fist, and I might be able to bend my elbow, with intense concentration. Sometimes when I wake, I'm filled with rage and hate that I do not believe is my own. In stories, curses aren't like this. Princes are turned into frogs or beasts. Princesses are trapped in towers.
The princess is never the monster.
I worry about what I am becoming. In a fit, I can't protect my sister. It's just the two of us now. Our guardian, Mr. Usher, has gone to town for a few days. He isn't really a part of our family. He doesn't love us. It is up to me to make sure that we love each other. Otherwise she may grow strange, and starved for love, here in this dreadful old house.
I
t is evening, and I sit alone before the chess set, the one with little knights in armor that clank when you move them. I'm under the table in one of the parlors, because this is where Roderick and I last played. Being here makes me feel close to him.
There is no one to play chess with me. The ghosts don't know how. They can't concentrate long enough to care.
Father drifts into the room. He is wearing shoes and trousers. It's been weeks since I've seen him in anything besides his silk dressing gown and velvet slippers.
And he isn't shuffling. Sometimes he drags his left leg just a little, a memory of some old injury, he says. From under the table, with the threadbare tablecloth partially in the way, he looks to be putting one foot in front of the other masterfully, a man with a goal.
“Madeline,” he says. I peer up at him through the tablecloth. He puts out his hand, beckoning to me.
I push the game board aside, careful that the pieces remain upright, and crawl out. I brush the cobwebs off my dress, like Mother always tells me to do, and take the hand that he offers. Holding his hand feels safe.
We walk through the hall with portraits of silvery-haired men and women, all wearing black dresses, all so starkly young. Some of the portraits are completely obscured by cobwebs, layers and layers of heavy white curtains. But I know what's there. Ushers.
Ushers who married Ushers and had baby Ushers. The corridor's paneling is rotting, and in some places it has fallen completely away, revealing cracks like arteries in the stone.
“The house is grand,” Father says in the singsong voice he uses for lullabies and nursery rhymes. “No one else has a house quite like it.”
Following him, I consider the carved woodwork and the portraits through his eyes and try to appreciate their beauty. A feeling of safety flows into me when I put my free hand on the balustrade. Father is flattering the house, and it is pleased.
Father squeezes my hand. I smile up at him, and he smiles back. Like the men in the portraits, he is handsome.
At the top of the last set of stairs, we come to a place where Father can touch the ceiling. This is not unusual. In this house some doors lead to walls, and half staircases go nowhere. These stairs lead directly to a dark tiled ceiling. Father releases my hand and pushes. Through the trapdoor, more stairs lead up onto one of the roofs.
Oddly, there is no wind. The night is so clear and still that it makes me want to weep. There is a walkway, and a railing that comes to my waist. It seems a very low railing.
“It's a widow's walk,” Father says.
“What is a widow's walk?” I ask.
“A place where women used to come and pace and look out to sea.”
“But we aren't near the sea.”
“No. Not now,” he says. “It's been a long time. Too badâthe smell of the sea would cover the stench of the tarn, wouldn't it? This house has been away from the sea for far too long.”
I don't know what he means, so I don't say anything.
“You miss your brother.”
The loneliness is like a cloak that covers me from head to toe. Madeline the lonely, Madeline alone. I know they will not bring Roderick home. Mother won that battle, and there is no going back. Roderick spends his nights cowering in his bed and crying into his pillow, but still they will not bring him home.
“You miss your brother,” Father repeats in exactly the same way, as if he doesn't remember saying it the first time.
His eyes have gone wild, and I pray he doesn't have one of his fits here on the roof. If he does, I don't know how I would keep him from falling over the railing.
“You must promise me something, Madeline.”
“What?” I touch the skirt of my dress, where the lace has deteriorated. Something about a hole in lace asks to be touched and expanded. Like a half-healed wound.
“Promise that you will never think of jumping.”
We have come to the end of the walkway. When I lean forward, I can see flagstones in the courtyard, far below. To fall from here, or to jump, would mean certain death. My body feels heavy. It would be easy to fall. The world wavers. I cannot tell whether it is from my distress, or if the atmosphere has thickened since we've been standing here.
“I would never jump.”
“You say that now, but you don't understand.” He stares over the edge, seeing something that I can't.
But I do understand. I'm his daughter, an Usher. And I am completely alone, even here with him. Still, I do not want to die. Not today.
“This is a good place to go for a little cleansing air,” he says. And we stand, looking out over the decaying trees of the old forest, where clumps of moss hang from white trunks that lean insanely against one another, twisted, rotting, but still attempting to grow.
I look past the allure of the flagstones, across the hills and valleys of the roof, past a place where the black slate tiles meet and overlap. To the left is the forest, the trees ravaged, scorched by lightning, white as ghosts.
They will not bring Roderick home, but I have another request, since Father is considering me with compassion. It's such a small thing.
“A stray cat had kittens in one of the outbuildings,” I say quickly. It wouldn't replace Roderick, but it might alleviate some of the loneliness at night.
Father turns his wild eyes on me. “Madeline, you must never bring a pet into this house.” He is holding the rail so tightly that his knuckles have gone from their normal pallid white to the purple of fresh bruises. “Do you hear me?”
I nod, and he struggles to control his agitation.
“Mother said that I should be strong.”
“Before you and Roderick were born, I gave your mother a puppy. It adored her, but she didn't reciprocate. The puppy disappeared. There are some things, Madeline, that the house can't protect us from. Things that it's better not to even be aware of.”
I want to know everything, even if it's horrible. Even if it hurts. That's the way we learn, isn't it?
My attention is caught by the gardener's shed at the edge of the grounds. My mother loves flowers, but it is difficult to find them, here on the grounds. Father has them brought in at great cost, on the coach. Still, perhaps I could make something grow. Flowers, or some tenacious little vines. If I can't have my brother, who looks to me for bravery in the face of danger and distraction from his fear . . . if I can't have a kitten . . . at least I can care for something. I won't just walk in the gardens, searching among the overgrowth for flowers that might please Mother. I'll make my own. I'll ask for seeds.
P
ain builds behind my eyes, and Roderick blurs. I tell myself that I can wait, that I must wait. If I collapse now, he will think that I am trying to keep him from going back to school, and that must not be the reason he decides to remain with me. Not pity.
He stands beside his horse with the wind ruffling his hair. I put my hand against Cassandra. She is tall enough that I can lean on her. She presses against my legs, giving me the support I need. If it weren't for Cassandra, I would beg Roderick to take me away right now. I would admit that I cannot bear to be left alone. But Cassandra is a full-grown wolfhound, and how could I take her . . . where would we go? Not yet, I tell myself. Not yet. Even if Cassandra was sent by the house, to keep me hereâas I've come to suspectâI cannot abandon her.
“I'll be back soon,” he says. “For our birthday.”
But time moves slowly when you are alone in this house. Sometimes I suspect it doesn't move at all; I could be reliving the same monotonous days over and over, and I would never know.
Sunlight trickles through the clouds, but I refuse to shade my eyes. The light burns.
“I have something for you.” Roderick reaches into his vest pocket. Eager as a child, I hold out my hand, willing it not to shake, pleased that I can hide my weakness from him.
“I saw it in a store window and thought of you. I meant to save it for our birthday, but you seem so sad . . .” His gift falls, small and cool, into the palm of my hand. The sunlight glints off it, and the pain shooting through my head is agonizing.
Forcing a smile onto my face, I look up into his eyes.
He puts his hands on my shoulders. “Soon,” he says, and kisses my forehead. Then he turns away, as though if he doesn't leave me now, he won't be able to go.
“Take care of yourself, Madeline,” he says. And while I'm blinking from the bright sunlight, he gets on his horse and he leaves. I stand at the edge of the causeway, because he expects me to be visible as he rides away, but I don't watch. If he turns to wave, I don't see.
The trinket is cold against my skin. I open my hand, curious, despite the waves of pain engulfing me, to see what it is. But I am losing control. Cassandra whines, and I cling to her, desperate for balance, and the golden thing falls from my grip.
The echo, as it hits the stone tiles that line the courtyard, shakes my entire body.
My senses are overtaxed. I'm losing vision, but my hearing is acute and painful. Cassandra nudges me toward the house. But I've dropped . . . I fall to my hands and knees, searching, running my hands frantically across the cool, smooth stones. For a moment, I think I hear a faint ticking. Feeling along the stones, I find the trinket. A pocket watch? It's a tiny version with exposed clockwork, strung from a piece of black velvet. I close my fist around it. There are never enough pocket watches in the house. The one I'm carrying is the third that I've found, or stolen. I doubt there are any left in the house for me to swipe. Has Roderick noticed that I carry one in my pocket? Could my brother be more aware of the house, of its weaknesses, than he wants me to believe?
I try to make sense of his gift, but thinking is so difficult, and everything goes dark as I fall.
S
itting on the floor of Mother's sitting room, I wait for a doctor to arrive. Mother started one of her fits just a few moments ago. Dr. Paul, always ready to examine Mother, enters, places his satchel on the floor, and takes off his tweed jacket.
“You sent for me?” His voice has gone all high-pitched and wobbly. He probably hopes that she will need to be bled. He has a special little knife he uses for cutting, and a basin for catching the blood.
The bed creaks as he sits down beside her and places a hand on her forehead. “You have a fever.” His voice is gentle. Dr. Paul is always gentle with Mother. She is the reason he stays. Dr. Peridue stays because he wants to publish his book. Dr. Paul stays because of his admiration for my mother.