He shook his head. “I swear to you, I—”
“Don’t lie, damn it!” Her smile faded, replaced by a twisted, angry sneer. “Why else would you have stolen it if you weren’t going to blackmail me with it? I saw the way you held Dad’s cane! You know as well as I do what having that cane means! You want it just as much as I do!”
“You’re wrong,” Rix said, stunned at how little he really knew about his sister. “I don’t want anything, Katt. For Christ’s sake, why heroin? You’ve got everything anybody could want! Why are you trying to destroy yourself?”
She turned away from him and went to the window, staring out across Usherland with her arms crossed over her chest, hugging herself. The sky was plated with dense, low-lying clouds, shot through with purple and scarlet. The wind keened sharply, and a scatter of red leaves swirled against the window. “Don’t pretend you care,” Katt said hollowly. “It doesn’t suit you.”
“I do care! I thought you were off drugs! After what happened in Japan—”
“That was nothing. Just bad publicity, because I’m Walen Usher’s daughter. What were you doing in my Quiet Room? No one ever goes in there but me.”
“I had an attack. I didn’t rummage through your room, if that’s what you mean.”
“What now?” She shivered, and looked at Rix. “Are you going to Dad?”
“I said I wasn’t. But you’ve got to get help, Katt! Heroin’s a damned serious—”
She laughed. It was a silky laugh, but the sound grated on Rix’s nerves. “Right. Pack me off to a sanitarium. Is that the idea? Then you and Boone can fight over the estate without little Katt getting in the way. Same old Rix, so goddamned predictable. You and Boone were always at each other’s throats, and both of you were so intent on killing each other that you pushed little Katt aside. Little Katt was pushed and shoved so much that she went into her shell—and she stayed there for a long, long time.”
Katt smiled, the sweat sparkling on her cheeks and forehead. “Well,” she whispered, “little Katt’s grown up now. And it’s my turn to shove. I’ve always wanted the business, Rix. I got into modeling because it was easy, and because Mom encouraged me. But I wanted to prove the point that I can handle responsibility—and I know what to do with money.”
“Nobody ever doubted you were intelligent. And God knows you’ve made more money than Boone and me put together!”
“So,” Katt said, staring intently at him, “why couldn’t you love me?”
“What? I do love you! I don’t understand why—”
“I let them find the pot, that time in Tokyo,” Katt continued. “When I called home, I asked for you to come and help me. I didn’t want Dad or Boone or the lawyers. But you didn’t come. You never even called to see if I was okay.”
“I knew Dad and Boone would bring you home! Besides, there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could’ve done to help you!”
“You never cared enough to try,” she said softly. “I admired you so much when we were children. I didn’t care about Boone. It was you I loved, most of all. But you never made time for me. You were too busy hating Dad and Boone for the things you thought they’d done to you, and later—when we were teenagers—you were too busy brooding over the business.”
“I’ve always had time for you!” Rix protested, but even as he said it he knew he was lying. When had he really listened to his sister? Even when they’d gone out riding together, he’d manipulated her into going over to the cemetery. He’d always used her as a pawn in his struggles against Boone and Walen, used her to spy on Margaret for him, all without regard for her feelings.
“You lucked out when we were kids. At least you had Cass and Edwin. Mom bought me dolls and dresses and told me to go play in my room. Dad set me on his knee once in a while and checked my teeth and fingernails. Well…that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe I wasn’t the best brother in the world,” Rix said, “but that doesn’t have a damned thing to do with you shooting heroin!”
She shrugged. “The drugs came along when I had the agency. I started with tranquilizers, because I didn’t want to have an attack on a location shoot. Then for fun I tried LSD, PCP, coke—whatever was handy. The heroin started for a different reason.”
“What?” Rix prompted.
“Then… I wanted to see what the junk would do to me.” She ran her fingers over her flawless cheekbones. “What do you see when you look at me, Rix?”
“A beautiful woman, whom I feel very sorry and scared for right now.”
She took a step closer to him. “I’ve seen other beautiful women who got hooked on drugs. Within a couple of years, they were wrecked. Look at me; really look.” She traced a finger under her eyes. “Do you see any wrinkles, Rix? Any sign of sagging? Can you see anything that might tell you I was thirty-one, instead of ten years younger?”
“No. Which is why I can’t understand the heroin. For someone who takes such meticulous care of—”
“You’re not listening to me!” she said fiercely. “I don’t take care of myself, Rix! I never have! I just don’t age!”
“Thank God for your good genes, then! Don’t try to kill yourself!”
She sighed and shook her head. “You’re still not listening, are you! I’m saying that the heroin should have had a physical effect on me. Why hasn’t it? Why doesn’t my face ever change, Rix?”
“Do you know how many women would kill to look like you? Come on! If you expect me to give you back that junk so you can continue some kind of stupid experiment on yourself, you’re crazy!”
“I’ll get more. All I have to do is drive to Asheville.”
“You’re committing slow suicide,” Rix said grimly. “I’m not going to stand by and watch it.”
“Oh no?” She raised her eyebrows, her smile mocking him. “My suicide would suit your purpose, wouldn’t it? You want the estate and business for yourself. I saw it on your face when you held that cane. Why else would you have come home? Not for Dad. Not for Mother. And certainly not for Boone and me. You’ve pretended not to be interested; maybe, all those years, you were pretending to turn your back on the business so you could find out how Boone and I felt. I see the real you now, Rix. I see you very, very clearly.”
“You’re wrong.” Rix was stung by Katt’s accusation, but he saw she’d made up her mind about him and there wasn’t much he could say or do.
“Am I?” She stepped forward until she was only a foot or so away. “Then you look at me and tell me you can walk away from ten billion dollars.”
Rix started to tell her he could, but the images of power he’d felt when he held the cane whirled through his mind. Ten billion dollars, he thought—and felt something deep inside him, something that had hidden and festered far from the light of his convictions, writhe with desire. Ten billion dollars. There was nothing he couldn’t do with that much, money. Hell, he could buy his own publishing company! Katt had been right, he realized with sickening clarity. If Usher Armaments didn’t build the bombs, missiles, and guns, somebody else would. There would always be wars and weapons. His days of marching in peace parades suddenly seemed ludicrous; had he ever believed a few dissident voices could make a difference? The radical heroes of that era were now Wall Street businessmen, establishment politicians, and greedy merchandisers. Nothing had been changed, not really. The system had won, had proven itself unbeatable.
Had he come to Usherland, he asked himself, because he wanted a share of the inheritance? Had he been waiting all these years, hiding his true personality, in order to seize some of the Usher power?
The skeleton swung slowly through his mind.
Like a pendulum, he thought—and shunted the image aside.
“It’s blood money,” he said, and heard the weakness in his voice. “Every cent of it.”
Katt was silent. Behind her the sky was turbulent, a gray and scarlet sweep of ugly stormclouds advancing over the mountains. The sun’s rays probed through for an instant like an orange spot
light, and then the clouds closed again. The grim dawn grew darker.
“When Dad signs everything over to me,” Katt said quietly, “I’m going to give you and Boone a yearly allowance of a million dollars. Mom will get five million a year. She can stay in the Gatehouse if she likes. So can Boone. I’m planning on living in New York. I wanted to tell you what I intend to do, because I’m not cutting anyone out. You can write pretty damned comfortably on a million a year.”
“Yes,” he replied tonelessly. “I guess I can.”
“Bring the stuff to me, Rix. I need it.”
Why not? he thought. Why not cook it for her and jam the needle in her vein? If she wanted to kill herself, why not help her? But he shook his head. “No. I’m sorry. I won’t do it.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to prove—but you’re not proving it.”
“I don’t know, either,” he said, and left the room so her tormented, desperate stare wouldn’t drive him insane.
In his bedroom, he ordered Puddin’ out. She whined to stay, then cursed him when he shut the door in her face. He took the metal box from beneath the bed and flushed the heroin down the toilet.
He looked at himself, by candlelight, in the bathroom mirror. Since he’d returned to Usherland, the lines around his mouth and in the corners of his eyes had faded dramatically. His eyes were clearer than they’d been in years. There was color in his cheeks. His premature aging had seemed to reverse itself in the space of only a few days. Even his hair shone with new vitality.
But his face unsettled him. It was like looking at another face that had gathered around the bones—the face of someone who’d been lurking within his flesh and was finally emerging into the light.
It was the composite, he realized, of the faces in the library’s oil paintings. Hudson, Aram, Ludlow, Erik—they had merged within him like a dark stranger in his soul. They lived inside him, and no matter how hard he fought against their influence, he could never really banish them. Didn’t he deserve some of that ten billion dollars just for being born an Usher?
He didn’t want Katt’s handouts, he told himself. There was no way she could handle the pressure of Usher Armaments—not with a drug problem and a death wish! She was trying to buy his silence and cooperation. But maybe she could be persuaded that she needed an advisor?
My God! he thought, shocked at the turns his mind was taking. No! I’m my own man! I don’t need any blood money!
Ten billion dollars. All the money in the world. Someone would always make the weapons. And, as Edwin had said, the Usher name was a deterrent to war.
Rix took off his jeans and stepped into the shower. When he’d finished, he dressed in a pair of dark blue pants and a white shirt from his closet. He chose a gray cardigan sweater—one of the new items that Margaret had provided for him—and put it on. The buttons were burnished silver, and were stamped with the Usher coat of arms.
He went downstairs to continue his research in the library. His mind was still confused, torn between the opposite poles of idealism and reality. The past seemed the only safe place to hide.
It was the future that he dreaded.
36
I’VE KILLED MY OWN son, the mountain king had said.
New Tharpe sat in the clinic’s waiting room with the old man’s cane across his knees. On the other side of the room, Raven was using the pay phone, and Myra Tharpe sat in a corner and hadn’t moved for almost an hour.
New stared at his mother. Conflicting emotions raged inside him. She hadn’t wanted Nathan to be found. The men who’d gone out searching hadn’t really wanted to find him, either. Nathan had been a sacrifice to the Pumpkin Man, like all the other children who’d disappeared over the years. But could the Pumpkin Man send an earthquake to destroy Briartop if he was denied? Was there a way to destroy him, or would he have the run of the mountain forever? His mother was afraid. He could smell her fear, as sour as buttermilk. Stretch, he ordered her mentally, and pictured it in his mind.
She hesitated for a couple of seconds, then stretched like a marionette on a string. When she was through, she sat exactly as before. Her lank hair hung down and obscured half of her face.
New turned his attention to Raven Dunstan. Scratch your head, he commanded.
She glanced at him, but was engrossed in her conversation. Her left hand casually came up and scratched the back of her scalp.
Was there any limit to the magic? he wondered. He thought of the knife rising from the tangle of thorns; of the lamp lifting from the mantel; of the blue wall of stones that had protected him from Greediguts; of his mother, sitting with her hands clasped in the truck on the ride down to Foxton. If this magic had been in him from birth, as the Mountain King seemed to believe, then New thought it might have been unlocked by his rage in the thorn pit. There had never been a reason for him to need the magic before that day—and now he realized that if the Pumpkin Man had not taken Nathan, he might never have been aware of what lay dormant in his mind.
And if what the Mountain King had told him was true, then New was descended from a line of warlocks and witches that stretched back hundreds of years.
The old man, dying now in a room down the corridor, was his grandfather.
The comets had fallen on the Fourth of July, when he was ten years old, the Mountain King had told him and Raven. Lizbeth had been six, and the year was 1919. The comets had shrieked down from the sky, their blasts shaking the cabin. Shocked from sleep, he’d run out to the front porch and seen the surrounding forest on fire. His father was shouting that they had to gather up what they could and flee. A red streak flashed overhead, and when the explosion tore trees from the ground, the boy who would later be called the Mountain King knew the end of the world had come.
His mother put Lizbeth in his arms and told him to get away, then ran back in to help her husband. Holding his sister tightly, the boy ran from the house through the flaming woods as Lizbeth cried in terror. There was a high, piercing wail that grew deafeningly loud. He looked back and saw the figures of his mother and father coming out of the cabin.
And then there was a blinding flash of fire and the cabin exploded, timbers spinning through the air. Something hit him in the face, knocking him on his back as the hot Shockwave swept past. His next memory was of Lizbeth’s hair and night clothes on fire, and himself trying to put out the flames with his hands. His hands were covered with blood, and when his sister saw his face, she screamed.
He couldn’t remember how they’d gotten to the ruins. It might have been hours or days later that they huddled together in the stone structure that would become their home. His father had brought him up here and told him the story of his family’s past, and the boy remembered how quiet it was, how desolate, how no one else would come up here because it was thought to be a haunted place.
Lizbeth was badly burned. Her mind had slipped away, and most of the time she sat crouched in a corner, rocking herself and crying. He was half blind, tormented by pain, fearful of every noise in the woods. But later—and how much later he didn’t know—he left Lizbeth and went down the mountain to where their home had stood. Only a pile of rubble remained. He went through the ashes, found a few scraps of clothes that he and Lizbeth could wear, a pair of his father’s boots, a few cans of food that had survived—and his father’s charred corpse. The only thing recognizable about it was the gold tooth at the front of his father’s skull. Clutched in one hand was the crooked walking stick that had been carved from a piece of hickory by his great-great-grandfather. The stick, though badly scorched, had withstood the fire. It had been passed from generation to generation, his father had told him, and contained within it was both his ancestor’s rage and the love he’d felt for the girl in the valley. It was an awesome thing that had to be handled carefully, for it held depths of power that were as yet unfathomed.
He worked the stick loose from the corpse’s grasp, and returned to the ruins. Soon afterward, his injured eye hardened and rolled out of his head like a gr
ay pebble. His wounds puckered and scarred. He returned one day from gathering firewood to find Lizbeth playing with the stick. Her trance had broken, but the only thing she recalled was the shriek of the falling comets.
As the years passed, blurring and merging with each other, they rarely left the ruins. They grew closer; their love changed from that of a brother and sister, though the Mountain King couldn’t say when or how it had happened.
In May of 1931, Lizbeth delivered a baby boy—her only infant that hadn’t been born dead or miscarried. She was eighteen, and the Mountain King was twenty-two. In the autumn of that year, Lizbeth was seen with her baby at a creek near the ruins. Before a week was out, the sheriff came up the mountain and found them.
New could imagine how they’d appeared: an emaciated, filthy man and girl in rags, the infant playing on the littered floor. The sheriff had called the county seat to find out what to do, and some people came to take the child to a state home.
The Mountain King had said he almost killed them; he could have, he said. It would have been easy. But deep in his heart, he knew the baby would be better off. The state people tried to coax them down from the mountain, but neither would leave. They took the child away in a brown Ford after promising to bring them food and clothes, but as far as the Mountain King knew, those people never set foot on Briartop again.
But, New wondered, why had his father chosen to settle on the mountain after growing up in the state home? Had the place of his birth been rooted somehow in his subconscious? Had he been drawn back to it because he sensed the same evil that the Mountain King now said held sway over Usherland? New remembered what his mother had told him about his father’s nightmares: he saw the end of the world in his mind. Was it some kind of dim ancestral memory of the coven’s destruction? He’d never know for sure; but whatever had been calling his father was now beckoning to him, from Usher’s Lodge. What lay in wait for him, inside that house? And what would happen to him if he dared face it?
Usher's Passing Page 37