The Fall

by Bethany Griffin

  I try to move my arms. Sometimes, when I can’t come out of a fit, the struggle helps me to wake up. Something is weighing me down. The blankets? It’s completely dark in my room. As it should be. When the fits come, any light, the tiniest flicker from a candle, intensifies the pain.

  “I’m going to put this dark cloth over your eyes to protect you from the light, my dear, my Madeline,” he says. I try to say no, because I’m afraid that somehow the cloth will smother me, but I cannot speak to tell him so. Perhaps he knows.

  The bed creaks, he must’ve been sitting beside me, and I hear him moving about. I hope he isn’t going to take blood. With as much as the doctors have collected, it surprises me that I am still alive.

  I find that I am able to move my fingers, just a bit. I stretch them forward, and back. I breathe in and out, and in and out. I wish I could move my head to dislodge this cloth. The spell has passed, my eyes do not burn, and the side of my head is not on fire. The smell of the cloth is gagging me.

  The heat in this unlit room is unbearable.

  If my hearing were still heightened, as it becomes during my spells, I could hear a spider spinning its web or the cook drop a slice of crusty bread in the kitchen far below.

  I can move my elbow a little. My arm will be next. My body is coming back to life. I remember him coming upon me in the attics. His madness.

  I realize that I’m still wearing Emily’s dress. The lace inserts at the sleeves bruise my inner arms.

  Footsteps sound in the hallway. Can the doctor hear them? The door flies open, and the cloth covering my eyes slides away. Roderick stands framed by the doorway. He is wearing his boots, and his breeches are muddy.

  Always, when he returns to the house, he comes straight to me. I want to say something to him, but I can’t.

  “Get out,” he says to Dr. Winston.

  His lavender eyes are all ablaze. He is so tall, and even though he is too slight to take up the entire doorway, he seems to fill the space with his anger and his energy.

  “Get out,” he says again. I am surprised that Dr. Winston doesn’t argue. I’ve seen the way he and Roderick size each other up. The barely veiled hatred.

  I expect violence from Dr. Winston, my keeper. Instead he shuffles out the door. I cannot turn my head enough to see him, but my eyes are trained on my brother.

  He kicks the door closed behind him, and we are alone.

  121

  MADELINE IS EIGHTEEN

  When I wake, I’m alone in my room. The slant of the light says that it’s morning. Emily’s white dress hangs over a chair. I pick it up, nearly recoiling, and put it far back in the recesses of my wardrobe, where at least I don’t have to look upon the hateful thing.

  I walk to my window and look outside. I can see Roderick’s shadow, and I know that he is standing in the garden, and he is not alone.

  Roderick doesn’t know about Emily. Doesn’t know that Dr. Winston is a murderer. I must get to them as quickly as possible.

  “Madeline!” Dr. Winston calls in his friendliest voice as I rush out the side door, and I remember, with a sense of sorrow, when hearing his voice excited me. “Your garden looks better than ever. Have you done something different?”

  There is little to change, he knows that. I walk through my flowers, nudging the stones with the toe of my white boots, imagining what might grow if the soil on our land wasn’t so dead. I would rather wait to recount Dr. Winston’s crimes to Roderick when we are alone.

  “You’ve done amazing things,” Roderick says.

  “Amazing,” Dr. Winston repeats. The house casts a huge shadow over all of us.

  “What are those white flowers?” Roderick asks. “Are they new?”

  I turn to see what he is referring to, and a finger pokes up from under the soil beside my newly planted rosebush. I think for a moment that I must be dreaming. It happened too easily—a little pressure from my foot, and there it is. The doctor put her in my garden. I nudge the finger with my toe, and the rest of the hand is exposed, palm up and open. I shudder. Her hand is crusted with thick dark mud, and I imagine the rain hitting it.

  I scream once, my brother’s name, and then the world wavers. But I cannot let it. Not now, not again. I focus on the flowers, on my garden, pulling my strength from outside the House of Usher.

  Then something hits me in the back of the head, and I’m falling to the soft earth beside Emily’s body.

  122

  MADELINE IS EIGHTEEN

  When I come to, I’m in the parlor. I raise my hand to the bandage on the back of my head. It comes away with just a slight residue of blood. The pain is sharp, but better than a fit, because I have control of my limbs. Through the gloom I can make out the candle on the small table where Roderick puts books after he reads them, but everything else blurs as I turn my head too quickly. My stomach lurches.

  Something odd catches my eye, and I go cold. Dr. Winston sits, very still, on a chair in front of the window. Not so different than all the other mornings I woke, watched over by my keeper. Except I’m lying in the parlor, my head is bleeding, and Dr. Winston’s posture is very unnatural.

  Has he defeated Roderick somehow? Has he brought me here to kill me?

  He realizes that I am awake.

  “I’m leaving,” he says. It sounds practiced, like a speech.

  Something isn’t right about this. He’s completely still, like he’s been entranced or is trying to entrance me with the intensity of his eyes.

  “Then why are you sitting there?” I ask, wondering what he’s done to Roderick.

  “I’m going to leave in just a moment. In just a . . . Madeline, do you think you could untie me? So I can go?”

  I sit up slowly. Dr. Winston is tied to a chair. He is facing away from me, toward the window.

  There is a piece of paper on the table behind Dr. Winston, where he cannot see it.

  Madeline, I have gone for the magistrate. The villain is tied securely, and I gave him a sleeping draught of his own devising. Be safe, I love you. R.

  I sit on the side of the sofa, collecting my strength, and then I stand slowly, testing my balance. He strains to turn his head toward me. The sleeping draught does not appear to be working.

  Roderick did tie him well, using a lot of rope. Still, it won’t hold Dr. Winston. Not in this house. Not long enough.

  “I’ll go get a knife from the kitchen,” I say, “so I can cut you free.” I make my voice subservient, scared.

  This won’t convince him for long. Once I’m out of his line of sight, I grab my skirts, take a deep breath, and run. My head throbs and I’m still wobbly, but I have to bring down the house before Roderick returns. I have to be strong enough.

  The key ring is in the bottom of Roderick’s trunk. He’s kept it there since he became master of the house, years ago. My hand is shaking, but I grasp it as securely as I can and stumble down to the heavy copper-sheathed door. Behind it is the crypt. There’s no time for thought. No time for fear or doubt.

  The sledgehammer is where I left it, in a dark alcove where the servants are unlikely to venture. Wrapped in the flowered blanket, it’s avoided the house’s notice, as well as Dr. Winston’s house-mad eyes.

  Lifting it awkwardly, still in the blanket, I lurch down the stairs, bumping against both sides of the passageway. They are so narrow. The metal head of the sledgehammer swings and makes contact with the stone wall, jarring my entire body. The blanket makes carrying this too difficult, so I let it fall away. My shoe catches on a wide crack in the stone that wasn’t there a moment ago, and my arm scrapes the rough stone wall. The stonework is icy, and bits of debris rain down on me from someplace above. Oh, the house is not pleased with me.

  Soon it will free Dr. Winston, using him to stop me. Roderick does not understand this; if he did, he would not have left the doctor in this house, not even drugged and tied up. I should have killed him while he was tied. The thought occurs to me even as I hurry, dragging the sledgehammer behind me.

&
nbsp; I fumble with the key, imagining that the doctor is untying himself right now. The keyhole has been warped by long years and seeping water. At first I think the key isn’t going to turn. Is he still in the parlor, or is he searching for me already? I reposition the key, pushing as hard as I can. Finally the lock clicks.

  It’s open. The air from within is hostile and foul, a mix of warm and cold that is thicker than normal air.

  My hands shake. I push the door slightly and turn sideways to slip through. When Dr. Winston comes for me, the screech of rusted hinges will give warning that he is close.

  The rows of empty sarcophagi hold no fascination for me now. I hurry past them and into the room dominated by the square stone. It squats in the center, malignant, ugly, pitted. This is what I must destroy.

  The stone is the gravestone of my ancestor, the one who built the house. The one whose consciousness is the consciousness of the house, which laps at me, even now. It is the heart of everything.

  A movement attracts my attention to one of the holes in the earth, a burrow leading somewhere. What creatures hide down here, under the house?

  Footsteps creak above me. Dr. Winston. I know his every movement, from long afternoons in trances. So he is free. A knife would have fallen into his hands, or the ropes that tied him would have disintegrated, rotted. The house is on his side. Whatever has happened, I must succeed before he gets here.

  Something slides out of one of the tunnels, and I have to blink the vision away. The house is taunting me. Threatening me. As I turn my head, the bandage falls away and blood seeps down, warm droplets on my shoulder, something thicker in my hair. The injury must have been worse than I imagined.

  I wrap my hand around the handle of the sledgehammer, put my foot against the foundation stone, and blow out the candle to keep my position secret as long as possible.

  If he has a light, I will see it as soon as he enters the vault.

  “Madeline?” His voice echoes all around me. So, he didn’t bring a light. “I’d like to see what’s inside you. . . .” He’s in the room with me. The door didn’t screech. The house is on his side.

  “I’ve always wanted to see what’s inside you,” he says in a singsong voice. “That’s why I became a doctor. To cut people open. I’ve always wanted to examine the internal organs of an Usher.”

  I shift the handle of the sledgehammer, wanting to be sure of my grip. Blood drips down from my head wound, but I hold tight to consciousness.

  “I could just cut myself open, to see, but dissecting you and Roderick will be much more fun.”

  “You aren’t an Usher.” I say it involuntarily. Foolish, foolish. As if I hadn’t already determined that everyone in the house has a dash of Usher blood. And if he didn’t already know where I am, he does now.

  He laughs. “I can see you, Madeline. Your silvery hair gives you away. Even here in absolute darkness, it shimmers.”

  I square my shoulders. If I can do it correctly, hitting and breaking the stone will take one good hit. There are already cracks in it, fissures from the center leading outward. I raise the sledgehammer.

  “Who was your mother?” I ask, to distract him.

  He’s so close that I can smell him. The wooden handle burns my hand. If I turn, I can hit him, but will I have the strength then, to lift it once more, to bring it down onto the stone?

  Someone pounds across the floor above. Roderick is upstairs.

  I’ve never harmed another person, even one as deranged as this doctor. The shadows try to suffocate me. Ghosts weave their way through the miserable atmosphere around me.

  “Madeline, Madeline, Madeline!”

  It’s Roderick. If I bring down the house now, he will die with me. So I turn and swing the sledgehammer at Dr. Winston. He thrusts his arm at me, and there is a searing pain in my shoulder. Then his hands are around my throat, squeezing, even as the sledgehammer makes contact and he screams.

  Roderick rushes toward us. His movements are so much louder than the doctor’s stealthy entrance just a few moments ago, as if a hundred Rodericks are coming to my rescue.

  But I don’t need to be rescued. In fact, he just ruined everything.

  In the darkness, I can’t tell where Dr. Winston went or how badly I hurt him.

  “Madeline!” I turn to Roderick, allow him to wrap his arms around me.

  With the light of his torch, we search the room. The young doctor is gone, but there is a trail of blood leading to one of the burrows.

  123

  MADELINE IS EIGHTEEN

  The magistrate was away when Roderick reached his home, so we have to deal with this situation on our own, which may be for the best.

  My arm hangs uselessly at my side. Roderick carries me upstairs and puts me on a sofa before rebandaging my head. When he’s done, he turns on me, angry and shaking.

  “Why did you untie him?” he asks, over and over, as if my answer will change if he keeps repeating the question. He’s holding a sword that he took from the weapon display in the main hall. The blade is covered with the dust of a century or more.

  “I didn’t,” I say. “Why would you leave me with him? He could have killed me.”

  “Not if you had left him tied! Did you even read my note?”

  “Of course. And I did leave him tied. The house freed him.”

  He doesn’t believe me. I turn away from him, seeing that I won’t be able to convince him.

  “Did you love him?” he asks quietly. “Did he manipulate your feelings?”

  “No!”

  “Perhaps just a little bit?” He asks this with such gentle conviction that I do not know how to argue. I’ve never known how to argue with Roderick. How to convince him of anything.

  124

  MADELINE IS EIGHTEEN

  Roderick has forgiven me, but he still doesn’t believe, and in a way, that is worse than his anger. It’s early evening, and we’re walking together near the edge of the gardens. I search for signs of Dr. Winston, unsure whether any of the burrows under the house tunnel up to the Usher grounds or just go down and down and down.

  “I nearly brought you home a puppy.” Roderick interrupts my dark thoughts. “I’ve thought about it for a long time, but I was afraid of your displeasure.”

  “Good,” I say, dropping his arm. “I don’t want a puppy.” Cassandra can never be replaced. I think of the dark recesses of the house, of hungry eyes watching. Of Cassandra coming from inside the walls. Father was right. No pets. When the house is destroyed, I might consider such a thing.

  “You are so often alone.”

  “You’re home now.”

  He takes my arm again. His hand is reassuring, so I don’t pull away.

  “It wouldn’t necessarily end in tragedy.”

  It would, but I can’t tell him what I’m planning.

  “I worry for you.” He wraps my cloak tighter around my shoulders. Have I traded Winston for a new keeper? No. It’s just that he’s finally all mine. I give myself one week to enjoy this victory and to regain my strength.

  “Would you like to go back?” I ask. We’ve avoided my garden; it’s tainted now, the burial place of my friend. But we can’t stay inside all the time.

  “No. I’d like to go all the way to the forest, the cursed bog, the cursed tarn, the cursed house. . . . It’s all cursed.”

  “All save the two of us?” Perhaps I’m testing him, perhaps teasing.

  He pushes his hair back from his face. “Oh, we’re cursed.”

  I don’t say anything. It’s the first time he’s acknowledged our looming fate.

  He pivots toward me. “Don’t you ever think of fighting it?” he asks.

  Anger washes over me. What does he think I’ve been doing all these long years? What does he think I was doing last night? Yes, I was seduced by the house as a child, but I am fighting. I think of the sledgehammer in the vault. Perhaps a week is too long to wait.

  125

  MADELINE IS EIGHTEEN

  The parlor is n
early unrecognizable. Workmen carry in couches, rugs, tapestries, tables, shelves, books. Roderick has decided that we will move into the apartments shared by our parents. He stands in the center of the activity, rubbing his hands together.

  I touch the velvet of a new fainting couch. Step lightly across a new rug, something deep and Oriental. Elegant, expensive things. I don’t want to touch anything. My fingertips feel tainted, as if the dust of all my fears in the house has accumulated on them, so they are not suited for any of Roderick’s new things.

  “It’s going to be marvelous,” he says. “We’ll replace the woodwork, and the curtains and even the flooring. This is hideous.” He taps his foot against the dark planks. The house responds with a hollow sound. “Oh, yes, new flooring. When this part of the house is finished, we can move on to the other parts. We can make the House of Usher into what it once was. What it was meant to be.” Is the house listening? Surely it is pleased by his attention. Distracted from what I tried to do. From my plans.

  I touch a bauble that he’s bought for one of the end tables. It is so unusual to see something without dust, something fresh and new. What is the house thinking? It is hiding from me, more and more since my threats in the vault.

  “This is lovely,” I say. I hope against hope that tomorrow he is not disappointed.

  His smile is like the sun, brilliant and fierce.

  Five workmen struggle under the weight of an enormous candelabra. They climb up on ladders and attach it to the fretted ceiling. Roderick is as proud as if he had designed the room, the ceiling, and the candelabra himself.

  “Wait until you see what I have for your new bedroom.”

  His excitement is infectious, but I’m unsure about leaving the room of my childhood. Unsure about the new bed he has bought for me, the delicate pink bedspread, the silk sheets, and the lovely new dresses.

  A loud crash makes both of us jump. I keep looking over my shoulder for Dr. Winston. For a demented suit of armor or a descending ceiling beam. But it was only the workmen dropping a trunk the size of a coffin. I settle closer to Roderick. Dr. Winston knows the house well, but even if he is still alive, he is not our greatest threat. Let the house think that I have been subdued. That I am willing to live here, forever, with Roderick.