The Fall

by Bethany Griffin

  “I should go get her before she breaks something,” I say.

  Dr. Winston falls into step beside me. “Such a large dog,” he says. “And an unusual breed. Wherever did you find her?”

  I smile to myself and say nothing. He wouldn’t believe me, even if I told him.

  51

  MADELINE IS THIRTEEN

  Today is Christmas Day, and I am utterly and completely alone. Mother and Father are gone. Roderick is visiting the home of his school friend. He writes that he will come home before the new year, and we can celebrate together. The servants hung mistletoe in the main hall. It withered and died before morning. They replaced it a few times and then gave up. It is an unusually cold winter.

  My eyes are dry; there is no point in pitying myself. I am alive; there is hope.

  Dr. Paul came to my room to take some blood before he and Dr. Peridue left for the city, where they will visit pubs and make merry.

  Even though it makes me feel more alone, I am glad that they are gone.

  I sit in the study where my father used to try to write letters. Stirring the last embers of the fire, I hear something through the wall. A muffled snuffling.

  I go still, trying to contain all of my own sounds, even my breath. What could it be? I slip to the door. Should I summon a servant? I know the sounds of the house, even the terribly strange ones, but this is unfamiliar. Cowering in the doorway, I prepare to run.

  Laughter floats up from downstairs. The servants are drinking wine from the wine cellar. There is no one to stop them. No deterrent except their own fear. Last year one of them went down for a cask of something and was locked in. No one realized he was gone for nearly a week. Since then, they’ve been terrified of the cellars. As they should be. Though not enough to keep them from their holiday merriment, it seems.

  A low cry raises the hairs at the nape of my neck. It’s a harsh sound, like something frightened, something in pain. I step gingerly back into the room, running my hands over the wall. The scratching from within is only growing louder. I hurry back to the hallway and enter the next room, thinking perhaps someone is on the other side of the wall, playing some trick on me.

  It is empty. But the scratching and snuffling and crying from within the wall is getting more insistent.

  I pick up the poker that lies before the fireplace, and hold it, balancing the weight of it across my hands. Another cry. I prod the wall with the poker. It is paneled, but like most of the wood in the house, it is rotting. I punch a hole in the wall, and then another. There is a sharp yelp.

  Pulling at the paneling, I’m careful not to put my hand completely inside. If the sounds are coming from a mouse or a rat, I don’t want to inadvertently touch it. But a rat would not make those sounds, ones that make my heart contract with fear that an animal might be in pain.

  I pull the wood away, wincing as a sliver slides under my fingernail. The house doesn’t appreciate being attacked with a brass poker. But whatever is behind the wall, the house must have sent it.

  The air from inside the wall feels heavier than the air of the room, and it pushes against me like something solid. I fall back, the poker, my only weapon, clattering to the floor as something big leaps out of the wall and pins me to the floor.

  I let out a little squawk, though I don’t have the air to scream. My heart stops. Everything goes still and so silent that I can hear the pulse pounding in my throat. Then the animal whimpers, and everything comes back into focus.

  I’m lying on the floor all tangled in my skirts. A puppy licks my face.

  Her tongue is wet, and her fur is incredibly soft. Despite my surprise, my fear evaporates. When I lift my hand, she lets out a piteous whine. She’s a large puppy. One that will grow into a big dog. I’ve never held a pup before, and I’m not quite sure what to do, so I just sit for a long time and hold her, until she starts to wiggle. Then I take her back to the sitting room.

  I offer her a helping of roast beef from the plate one of the servants delivered an hour ago. She takes the food gently, careful of my fingers, but then gulps it down. Her ribs are showing. There is a sprig of holly on the plate, some servant’s acknowledgment of the season. I set it aside, and as the puppy still looks hungry, I give her the pudding that was supposed to be my dessert. She eats it in one gulp.

  She wags her tail and puts her enormous paws on my knees. I sit and look at her.

  I expected to spend this Christmas alone. The dog curls up, right on top of my feet, and goes to sleep, and I sit, as content as I have been in a long time.

  52

  MADELINE IS SIXTEEN

  I stop in front of a rather dismal oil painting and raise my candle to scrutinize the shadowy image, hoping absently that Dr. Winston will join me in the hallway again. In the weeks since he’s been here, he’s shown a great interest in the portrait gallery. What Usher commissioned an artist to paint this tiny, dark portrait of the house? I stare at it, squinting. I recognize the front of the house, but it seems unfamiliar. Has it changed, or have I? I lift my fingers to touch the painting but quickly pull them back. The texture makes me imagine that my fingertips might sink through the canvas.

  Here is the turret of the tower where the doctors live, and there are the windows. I suppose those are the ones I look through every day. Are they really so sinister? My eyes burn, and I feel mildly ill.

  I step away and consider the next painting. Equally dreary, it is a rear view of the house. I study it. The fissure, the great crack that originates above the kitchen door, is in the painting, but smaller. Did the earthquake lengthen the crack? I should check. Perhaps Dr. Winston will join me in the garden.

  I look even closer. Now I see my flower garden. A verdant clearing, and at its center, a lone dandelion. My own garden at the beginning of spring. The picture has changed to encompass the small changes I’ve made.

  Hope surges within me. I can shape the future, if I want to badly enough.

  53

  MADELINE IS THIRTEEN

  It is three days after Christmas, and I cuddle my puppy, Cassandra, determined to keep her safe.

  Roderick has finally arrived, looking handsome, and taller than before. He tells me about school pranks and stern teachers.

  “My favorite classes are mathematics and logic,” he says. He hands me a parcel of books. I admire the new and undeteriorated paper, touch the soft leather bindings. I run my hands over them, admiring these gifts that I will never be able to read. “This is an adventure story that I thought you would enjoy.”

  I have nothing for him, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

  He is wearing a medallion on his shirt, an ornate star upon a ribbon.

  “It was a gift from a friend,” he says. I narrow my eyes. Mother made it clear that I should be jealous of his friends, though I’m not sure why. “The house seems different, and so do you, Madeline.”

  I have no words for the changes in him. He is wearing spectacles like Father used to wear. His hair is cut neatly, and is not as bright as last time he came home.

  Roderick tells me about cities with buildings crowded together and of harbors full of ships. I try to imagine such things.

  “Perhaps I could come and visit you,” I suggest. “I would love to see your school, your friends.”

  His eyes dart to the hem of my dress. It is tattered, muddy from walking the grounds, planning where I will begin my spring planting when the ground thaws a bit. All of my dresses are threadbare and dark, out of fashion, ugly.

  “I would love to have you visit, but it is impossible.”

  I put my hands in my lap. His distaste shames me, even with Cassandra at my feet.

  An enormous spider drops down over Roderick’s head, dangling from a web more tattered than my dresses. I point up, too aghast to speak. Roderick follows my finger, then lunges from his chair, throwing himself over me as if to protect me.

  Cassandra whines. She was lying across my feet, and now he is pinning us both into the armchair.

  “Madeline?
” he says into my hair. “Other people don’t live as we do. Other people don’t . . .”

  The spider swings closer, but Roderick appears to have forgotten about it.

  He seems comforted by being so near me; we are twins, after all. But tomorrow he will be gone and there will be no one to care about me.

  Cassandra gives a sharp bark at the same time that the spider brushes the back of Roderick’s neck. He jerks away, but I am all tangled in his arms, and so as one person, we fall to the floor.

  The spider lands beside us with a thump. Cassandra nudges it with her nose. Roderick pulls me away, across the floor, while Cassandra pushes it the other way.

  “Tell me again, about finding her?”

  This isn’t the first time he’s asked. He wants to know all about Cassandra.

  I tell him. It’s nice to have a story to relate, though I’m not sure that he, or anyone else, believes me.

  She puts her big puppy paw on the spider, and then, while I watch, she bites into it. Two spider legs jerk back and forth as Cassandra chews and chews.

  “One of the servants must have lost track of her,” Roderick guesses. “The house is falling apart. It’s no surprise she got trapped in a wall.”

  He raises himself with one arm and looks down at me.

  “Roderick . . .”

  With his other hand, he’s stroking my hair, but I pull away from him.

  “You don’t believe anything.”

  “I do!”

  “About the house.”

  He kisses my forehead.

  “The house is angry with you,” I warn him. A year ago, these words would have terrorized him.

  His eyes are sad.

  “Don’t tell me you still believe the stories we told each other about the house watching us. Surely you must have outgrown those notions.” Cassandra turns her head toward us as she spits the remains of the spider onto the rug. “Use logic, Madeline. Logic tells us that a house cannot be alive. Therefore it is not.” Logic. He did say that was his favorite study at school.

  I watch him sadly. Logic has no place in my life. We no longer speak the same language.

  “Father said that I must not ever have a pet, that it would make the house jealous.” Our parents may have been mad, but they knew things about the house.

  Roderick half frowns, and I can tell he’s frustrated with me, his provincial sister with dark superstitions.

  “You say the dog came from inside the house,” he says, though of course he didn’t believe my story. “So the house must want you to have the dog. You can stop worrying about that.”

  When I don’t say anything, he changes the subject. “I did ask the doctors if, in the future, you could come for a visit to my school. They said that you were not well enough, but maybe next year. Try to keep yourself well and ignore all these superstitions, and maybe you can visit me in the future. Would you like that?”

  I wait for the house to do something, to prove to Roderick that it hears him and cares, but nothing happens. Cassandra pads back to us and sits down on the floor, waiting.

  “Good dog,” I say. She has the face of some sort of old forest gnome, homely and bearded.

  “She’s a wolfhound, I think,” Roderick says as he leans forward to pet her. “We’ll know better when she’s fully grown.”

  “I adore her,” I tell him.

  “She is altogether unsuitable, you know,” he says. “She’s going to be huge.”

  “I don’t care. She’s perfect,” I answer.

  “So are you,” he says. He is looking at me strangely. The house is holding its breath in anticipation, and the emotion that flows into me, when I touch the woodwork, is somewhere between happiness and awe. Is this the moment when I am supposed to convince him to stay with me? I sense that he might be open to the suggestion. But he is happy at school, and if he refuses to believe in superstition, then he will not be safe here.

  Roderick climbs to his feet, and the moment passes.

  54

  MADELINE IS SIXTEEN

  Slipping up the stairs to the doctors’ tower, I hope that if anyone notices me, if I find myself in an awkward chance encounter, it will be with Dr. Winston. I’m not supposed to have an exam today, so it would be odd for me to turn up here, but the hours stretch away endlessly, and I wish for someone to talk to. If I run into him, I can ask about some new symptom I’m having, ask him to walk with me, perhaps.

  Dr. Paul is away, so only Dr. Winston and Dr. Peridue are in the house. Dr. Winston checks in on me every night to make sure I’m not walking in my sleep, but I haven’t seen much of him—at least, not as much as I would like.

  Dr. Peridue rarely leaves the house, not to visit family, or to go to the city. I suspect he has nowhere to go.

  As I reach the third floor, an odd noise comes from the room overlooking the west side of the house. I tiptoe over to the door and press my ear against it. It sounds like some enormous beast is sleeping inside. I put my hand on the doorknob.

  Should I?

  I turn the door handle, carefully, quietly. Intent on not waking whatever is inside. The room glows green. Phantasmagoric, thick air spills out the door and surrounds me.

  One entire wall has been redesigned. It is now some sort of . . . machine.

  I have seen their machines before. They spend hours constructing them. But nothing on this scale.

  I take a step closer. There are tubes and vials. Something is being pumped around and around, through what appear to be copper pipes, to lead pipes, and into big glass vials that look like hourglasses, but instead of sand, there is red liquid within. A great bellows, acting as the heart, pumps and pumps, and every few moments, a burst of steam comes out of the top.

  I step backward.

  It is ingenious. No matter what it does, all the noise keeps the house from looking into this room. They have confounded the house. In this room, they could do anything. Their power—the power to defy the house—terrifies me. How can these doctors, these strangers, be so much more clever than any Usher who has ever lived here? How can I use this discovery?

  I scurry back, careful to shut the door, leaving no evidence that I was here.

  55

  MADELINE IS SIXTEEN

  Leaving me in the examination room, Dr. Peridue has stepped into the room with the machines, mixing some medicines together to make a concoction that won’t make any noticeable difference to my condition. Dr. Winston leans close, watching the door for Peridue’s return. As if he’s about to say something that’s secret and wrong.

  “I’ve been hearing things. Feeling things, emotions that are not my own. The house . . . ,” he whispers.

  He can only speak this way because the machines keep the house distracted. And if the other doctors knew he was suggesting such a thing, I’m sure they wouldn’t let him stay.

  He takes another furtive look at the door, afraid of Dr. Peridue returning. Louder, he says, “Step up on the scale. You’re down a pound from last week. Are you eating?”

  I sit down on one of the uncomfortable chairs. Our doctors scorn basic comfort like cushions and pillows.

  “There’s something in the darkness here,” he says under his breath. “All the history in this house, something that calls to me. And won’t let me go.”

  His eyes shift, right to left.

  I watch him carefully.

  I know exactly what he means about the darkness.

  Still, his intensity melts my fear, melts the reticence that took over me when he started talking about the house with admiration verging on love. Like the house, I react to strong emotions. I put out my hand to touch his arm.

  “Meet me here later, tonight,” he says, just as Dr. Paul comes in from the hallway, using the door Dr. Winston wasn’t watching. Dr. Paul’s eyebrows go up, and he looks back and forth between us. Dr. Winston busies himself among the medical instruments, humming softly.

  “The servants say you aren’t eating,” Dr. Paul says.

  My stomach rebels
at the thought of food.

  “Have you fallen into any trances this week?” Dr. Paul asks.

  The doctors have been distracted lately. Dr. Peridue has had a series of toothaches. They have had to remove several of his teeth. The servants whisper that he keeps them in a bloody box under his bed.

  “If I had been in a trance, the servants would have told you,” I say. The servants love making reports of my illnesses and odd behaviors. And they would also report if they had seen me creeping up to the tower in the middle of the night, wouldn’t they?

  56

  FROM THE DIARY OF LISBETH USHER

  I am married. It was like a dream, something that happened to long-ago Ushers. The house became a palace, filled with flowers imported from who knows where, even though it is the dead of winter. We approached the front door in a sleigh. Mr. Usher tucked furs all around us, and then he led me inside, through scores of white lilies in crystal vases that mirrored the ice outside.

  Mother was ecstatic, her hand over her mouth and tears running down her face.

  My sister, who is almost grown, wore her own white gown. I enjoyed her amazement, but beneath it was envy, and that I did not enjoy. What is happening to her? All of her sweetness and innocence seems to have slipped away.

  Mr. Usher had promised me a trip to the city, where we might find books that could shed light on the curse, on my illness, but instead he circled the property in the sleigh, calling softly to the horses.

  “Now that it’s time, I don’t really want to leave,” he said, and I agreed, because the way he was looking at me, full of admiration and longing, the rest of the world seemed unimportant, even finding a way to fight off the illness. I have not had a spell in ages. Perhaps marriage was the cure. Or love. Beneath my feet, the house seems to be singing a low, happy rumble of a song. Today was the best day of my life.

  57

  MADELINE IS SIXTEEN

  I skip the third stair, the one that creaks, only to discover that the fourth stair creaks now. Every single stair groans with each of my light footsteps.