Usher's Passing

by Robert R. McCammon

  It ripped and fell away.

  “I knew you were beginning to remember,” Edwin said softly, standing behind Rix in the doorway. Rix stared blankly into the darkened chamber, but a pulse had begun beating harder at his temples. “When you told me the plot of Bedlam over the telephone, I knew it was coming back to you. Something must’ve triggered a memory—I don’t know what. But when you mentioned the skeletons hanging in the basement of your fictitious building, I knew you were remembering what you’d found in this room, when you were a little boy. Yesterday, I was certain when you told me about the skeleton you kept seeing in your mind—and what you thought was a silver doorknob…”

  Rix released a quiet, agonized gasp.

  He remembered the black shroud ripping, falling away to the floor.

  The skeleton swung like a pendulum over Rix’s head. There were still bits of flesh and muscle clinging to the bones, and its eyes were red holes of crusted blood and tissue. A hook had been driven through its back, and its mouth gaped open. The skeleton was about Rix’s size.

  He had backed away and slowly collapsed to his knees as the grim visage of death continued to swing back and forth, the chain rattling. Then he had fallen on his side, curling his knees to his chest, his eyes sunken and staring.

  “I found you in here,” Edwin said. “I told you to stand up, and I held you in my arms. I made you forget what you’d seen, and I took you out of the Lodge. I didn’t want you to find it, Rix. I was trying to find you first, but it was the body of a boy I’d taken the same day you and Boone came into the Lodge. I hadn’t had time to prepare it properly.”

  Rix’s bones had become a cage of ice. He knew where he was, and who was with him, but he couldn’t concentrate beyond Edwin’s soft, soothing voice. Images streaked through his mind like meteors: the Rastafarian cabdriver’s skeleton earring, the plastic skeleton that Boone had hung in the Quiet Room’s doorway, Sandra’s hair floating in the bloody bathtub. He remembered what had happened here, he remembered Edwin being with him, he remembered the small hand reaching out to cover the silver button embossed with the face of a roaring lion…

  “It was later,” Edwin continued, “that I realized I’d lost a button from my blazer. I found it in your treasure box, the day I returned the furniture to your room from the Lodge. You must’ve twisted it off that day, and I think your mind fixed on it to block out what you’d seen. You were looking for it today, weren’t you? I think that stupid trick Boone arranged for you at the De Peyser Hotel helped trigger your memory even more.” He grasped Rix’s arm and led him into the chamber. New followed dazedly, and the panther’s advance forced Raven in.

  A match flared. Edwin began to light a series of oil-dampened torches set in the walls. His shadow grew larger. Orange light jumped and capered, flashed on the ends of the hooks that hung on chains from the ceiling, gleamed off the collection of knives over the bloodstained table, illuminated the metal bathtub and the rectangular box in the corner. As the light strengthened, Raven looked at New’s face; his eyes were bright green, and he was staring straight ahead. She feared that he was already lost.

  There was a pile of clothes against the wall a few feet away. Raven stood looking numbly at the little sneakers, faded jeans, sweaters and shirts, socks and underwear.

  “This is where I bring them.” Edwin’s voice curled silkily across the room, echoing off the stones. “Most of them I can find on Briartop Mountain. Sometimes I take one of the old cars from the garage you and Master Newlan found, Miss Dunstan, and I drive a safe distance, where no one’s ever heard of the Pumpkin Man. It’s no different from hunting small game. Except I’m slowing down now, and sometimes they get away.” He looked at Raven, a thin smile spreading across his mouth. “When I was a young man, I could freeze them at thirty yards. Stop them dead in their tracks. I could catch them within shouting distance of their houses. The landlord helped me refine the power I was born with, Miss Dunstan. I can even blind the people who come out to search for their lost children. They may look right at a footprint, and never see it. I can stand in a shadow, close enough to touch them, and they’ll never know I’m there.”

  “You…bring the children here…and kill them.”

  “Prepare them,” he corrected. “It’s part of what the Bodanes do for the Ushers.” He crossed the room and stood with his hand on Rix’s shoulder. “Can you hear me, Rix?”

  “Yes sir.” Pumpkin Man’s in the woods, he thought crazily.

  “Something else has to be passed,” Edwin said, his face close to Rix’s. “First the wand that was created for Hudson Usher’s great-great-grandfather. Then the responsibility of Usher Armaments. Then the knowledge. For centuries, your ancestors have worshiped the landlord. The true landlord of this world, not only of Usherland. The wand was a gift, a symbol of trust given from the landlord. It will protect your life, Rix, but to fulfill that trust you must do as the landlord pleases. You’re his hands, Rix. I’m his voice. He’s given Usher Armaments to you, because of Walen’s three children you’re the one most suited to carry out what the landlord wants done.”

  Sandra’s hair floated in the bloody water. Pumpkin Man’s in the woods. Edwin was there to protect him, and he had always loved Edwin very much.

  “You can use the anger that’s bottled up inside you for the landlord,” Edwin whispered smoothly. “I watched that rage grow over the years. I know what you’re capable of, and I think you’re just understanding it yourself. There’s a cold fire inside you, and you can use it for Usher Armaments. I’ve been helping you, all along…”

  “Helping…?” Rix rattled.

  “Sandra,” Edwin said. “She wasn’t good for you, Rix. She was teaching you to use your anger in those books of yours. You were wasting a valuable resource that should be channeled through Usher Armaments. We talked over the phone, and I told her what I wanted her to do. I knew it would disrupt your writing. Do you understand that I did it for you?”

  A tear slid down Rix’s cheek. “I…loved…”

  “That wasn’t love. It was waste. What you’re going to do for the landlord, for me, and for Usher Armaments…that’s love.”

  Something twisted within New’s soul. From a terrible distance, what the Mountain King had said to him started to come back: Evil…evil exists…evil exists to destroy love.

  There was a long, sliding sound in the corner beside the rectangular metal box, the bone-crushing machine that Edwin had been operating when Boone blundered into the Lodge early that morning. Edwin turned—and a bloody shape with a battered face rose up from the shadows. Logan’s head twitched, and one arm dangled uselessly. His eyes were bright with madness. When he opened his mouth to make a pitiful, garbled noise, blood leaked from the corners.

  Edwin had brought him here from the woods two nights before, when he’d found Logan waiting for Greediguts near the ruins of the zoo. He’d decided to give the boy a demonstration of the powers he used as the Pumpkin Man—abilities that Logan had as well, but that were still raw and unrefined in him. Here in this room, Logan had acted like a kid in a candy shop as Edwin let him examine the knives. Edwin had told him everything, and Logan had been stunned to realize that he could spend the rest of his life using those knives, and that even his own father and mother and his grandparents, too, had already given their approval.

  Edwin had sent him to the garage with strict instructions: he was to hold Kattrina there for the panther, but he was not to touch her. Logan’s abilities were still apt to be affected by his passions, and Edwin had always liked Miss Kattrina; there was no need to defile her before the landlord’s judgment was carried out.

  From the Gatehouse, Cass had watched Kattrina die. When Logan hadn’t returned, Edwin had gone to the garage and found blood on the concrete. A tire-iron lay nearby; one end of it was bloody, with clumps of hair and scalp on it. The hair was not the color of Kattrina’s. Edwin knew something had gone wrong, probably due to Logan’s refusal to obey orders.

  Now, as Edwin stared col
dly at the young man, he saw how much damage Kattrina had done with the tire-iron. Logan was a ruined masterpiece, and Edwin shook his head with disgust.

  “So,” he said, “you dragged yourself back down here, did you?”

  Logan, grinning witlessly with blood dripping from his chin, shambled forward.

  “I was wrong about you,” Edwin continued. “You don’t have the discipline that’s needed. I thought I could shape you…because I was just like you as a boy. But I was wrong, wasn’t I?” He glanced quickly at the panther.

  Greediguts rose from its haunches and ran across the room toward Logan. With a blurred leap, it drove the young man to the floor. Logan’s legs kicked, his mangled mouth making an awful choking noise. Raven put her hands to her ears and backed away until she met a wall. Around her feet were the children’s clothes. The panther’s jaws began to crunch bone, and Logan was silent.

  “I…loved…her,” Rix whispered. Cold beads of sweat were surfacing across his face.

  Edwin watched the demonic panther feed on Logan’s body.

  Then, satisfied, he turned toward Raven. “You’ll be its next meal, Miss Dunstan. It’s always hungry.”

  “New!” she whispered weakly. “Please…help me…”

  “Master Newlan has come home, where he belongs. He’ll be the next Pumpkin Man. The landlord and I will teach him very well. You see, the Usher diet is very important. If they don’t eat properly, the Malady ages them before their time. Hudson Usher and his brother, Roderick, and their father, Malcolm, were trapped in a caved-in coal mine in Wales. It was weeks before they were found. But Hudson and Roderick survived by…sharing their father between them. The Ushers are cannibals, Miss Dunstan. For years they got their meat from a butcher shop in Chicago. Uriah Hynd also served the landlord. But, alas, the Chicago Fire destroyed his business—and the man himself.”

  “They…eat…”

  “The children, yes. My wife makes a wonderful Welsh pie.”

  Her knees buckled. Before the Chicago Fire, she realized, there’d been no need for a Pumpkin Man. It was only after the fire, when the Ushers couldn’t buy more human flesh, that the Pumpkin Man had come to Briartop Mountain.

  New’s clenched fist felt an object in his pocket. Nathan’s toy. This man had brought Nathan here, and carved the meat off his bones.

  His soul was shriveling. Everything, he thought. Everything…and all I have to do is use the magic. Evil exists to destroy love. Everything. All I have to do is…

  Satan finds the man, the Mountain King had said. It’s not where you live, but what lives in you…

  Everything…use the magic…

  “Master Newlan?” Edwin offered his hand. “Come to me.”

  He tried to resist, tried to make his feet root to the stones.

  “Come to me. Take my hand.”

  New was pulled forward. His green eyes glowed like lamps, his face chalky and strained.

  “Come home,” Edwin whispered. “Let the landlord love you.”

  Step by step, New approached him. He was powerless to turn away. Edwin’s face hung in the orange light like a misshapen moon.

  Everything, he thought. Use the magic.

  Their fingers met. Edwin’s hand clamped solidly around New’s, and the older man smiled.

  New felt himself being dragged down, down into a volcanic pit; and in that steaming pit were images of hell: cities collapsing through tremendous fissures, blocks of stone crushing people running in the streets, exploding fireballs and mushroom clouds and charred bodies lying in tangled heaps, a scarlet sky full of missiles and rising screams that became the laughter of the thing that lived behind Edwin Bodane’s face: a dark, leathery beast with yellow, catlike eyes and a forked tongue that darted out to taste the sulfurous air.

  “Come home,” Edwin urged.

  New’s mind was about to crack: Evil…evil exists…evil exists to destroy love… God help me…give you everything…use the magic…it’s what lives in you… God help me…

  USE THE MAGIC!

  The snare! he realized. The smiling monster that was the Pumpkin Man had just put his arm into the snare!

  USE THE MAGIC! New shouted inwardly. He thought of Nathan being slaughtered here in this chamber, of the hundreds of children who had died in this room to be served on fine silver plates on the Usher dining table. USE THE MAGIC! Rage boiled in his blood, steamed through his pores, swept away the illusions of the rich life at Usherland like pieces of rotten tapestry. New’s head cleared; he tightened his hand around Edwin’s, felt the man’s knuckles grind together.

  Edwin’s smile froze. In his eyes was a quick red glint of fear. He started to wrench his arm away.

  USE THE MAGIC! New’s hair danced with blue sparks.

  And from the jacket sleeve of his outstretched arm, the magic knife ripped loose of the tape that had held it to the inside of his forearm. It tore along his wrist like a projectile, leaving a path of scorched flesh.

  Before Edwin could deflect it, the magic knife drove itself to the hilt beneath his arm. It corkscrewed violently, powered by the sheer force of New Tharpe’s rage, and as Edwin screamed and staggered backward, the knife disappeared into his body like a drill, spewing bone and tissue. Edwin gurgled and danced as the knife continued to drive through his body; it exited from his back in a gush of blood and hit the stone wall so hard its blade snapped off.

  Edwin collapsed, but his body continued to writhe. His eyes were open, his mouth gray and gasping. Cold shockwaves of power crashed back and forth between the walls. The hooks swung violently on their chains. The knives left their wallhooks and ricocheted viciously from wall to floor to ceiling. One snagged Raven’s jacket, another flashed past her face. The metal tub reared up from the floor and tumbled toward New, narrowly missing him as he leaped aside.

  A blade grazed Rix’s cheek with a noise like a hornet. A trickle of warm blood ran down, and the pain cracked the ice that had closed around him. As he stared at the swinging hooks, reality flooded back into him. Edwin was the Pumpkin Man. Edwin had caused Sandra’s suicide. Cannibalism kept the Ushers young, warding off the Malady as long as possible. The Ushers worshiped evil, and had built Usher Armaments as an altar to the force that lived within the Lodge—the great malengine that had gathered around him and shaped him to be fuel for the furnace of destruction.

  Edwin contorted on the floor in a spreading pool of blood. When a spasm jolted him, the Shockwaves shook the walls. Like an animal snapping madly in its death throes, he was striking in all directions with his awesome, evil magic. The chamber’s door blew off its hinges. The freezing crosscurrents of energy whipped back and forth, staggering Raven to the floor and throwing Rix against a wall as if he were caught in a hurricane.

  New heard Raven’s warning cry, and as he whirled around the black panther leaped for him, its claws extended.

  He dodged aside, at the same time directing a burst of his own magic like a sledgehammer blow that struck Greediguts in the ribs and sent the beast hurtling against a wall. The panther scrabbled to its feet and attacked again, its eyes blazing with bloodlust.

  New stood his ground until the panther was almost upon him, and then summoned a burst of energy like an iron spike driving itself into Greediguts’ skull. The panther howled in pain and was thrown backward, crashing into the metal tub. Again it leaped up, its muscles shivering.

  As the panther tensed for a third attack, New brought the table flying end over end and smashed it across Greediguts’ back. The table was heavy, and New realized that much of his coiled strength had gone into driving the magic knife through Edwin Bodane. He was rapidly weakening.

  Greediguts rolled on the floor, snapping at its reptilian tail—and then jumped for New with a burst of speed he hadn’t expected.

  He tried to aim another blow, but was drained like an overheated engine. As he flung himself to one side, talons ripped through his jacket and dug into his ribs. He cried out and fell to his knees, blood streaming down his side. Greedigu
ts spun to face him, its tongue flicking out, and New saw the red flash of triumph in its eyes. The monster knew he was almost used up, knew his mind was now clouded with pain.

  Greediguts went back on its haunches to propel itself forward, and as its jaws opened wide to smash his skull, New smelled its breath of blood and brimstone.

  New glanced up. The hooks! he thought. If he could find enough strength…

  Greediguts suddenly rose on its hind legs and hurtled toward the mountain boy.

  New strained with every fiber of his body to summon and direct enough power; pain hammered through his head, and as he cried out he felt a bolt of energy ripple through him, blasting from the same molten core of rage that his long-ago ancestor had possessed. It tore through his bones like a fireball, and for a terrible instant New thought that he had exploded into flames.

  New’s last surge of magic met Greediguts in midair. It threw the panther toward the ceiling—then, as the beast fell, it was brought violently down upon one of the swinging hooks.

  The spike pierced its underbelly. As the panther shrieked and struggled, the hook plunged deeper. The weight of its body stretched the chain and bent the rafter to which it was secured. And then Greediguts began to slide along the hook toward the floor; its stomach split open, spilling coal-black organs from the gaping wound. The rafter cracked like a gunshot.

  New was exhausted, unable to rise from the floor. He clasped his bleeding side, as the panther snarled and thrashed to free itself.

  Cold waves of energy continued to shake the chamber as Edwin refused to die. And from the corridor, Raven heard a chilling bass moan, gaining volume and strength.

  Pendulum! she thought in horror. The warlock’s death throes had set the sensitive machine in motion!

  Rix, fighting for balance on the trembling floor, reached Raven and helped her up. His face was gaunt and gray, except for the line of scarlet that crept down his cheek. He blinked heavily, still leaden with shock.

  “We’ve got to get out!” she shouted at him. Across the chamber, knives that were scattered on the floor whirled up like a deadly storm and stabbed against the walls. “Can you find the way?”