The Fall (21 page)
Authors: Bethany Griffin
He picked up the finger and wrapped it in his handkerchief, putting it in his pocket.
And he gave me a look through the doorway. He knows that I witnessed everything.
W
e've come back to my grandmother's room. It's a good place to hide from Dr. Winston, and I'm stubbornly convinced that there may be some answers here. I don't want to believe that the madness of all these Usher women was in vain. They would want to leave some legacy, to help me escape the curse. I'm not sure Emily believes that I'm cursed, though she's seen my illness. She tries to focus on more practical matters that she can understand. Money.
“You could take some things with you to sell, in the city,” Emily suggests. “When we leave.”
I laugh. “It would fall to dust.” At least that's what happens when maids steal our candlesticks. “Roderick says that we can buy things, but that our wealth is tied to the house, somehow.”
“Still, there must be some way. The Usher family supports a good many charities,” Emily says. “You are quite well known for extravagant generosity. Your family gives money to various orchestras. They pay the upkeep on an entire cemetery. A hospital. Why can't their philanthropy support us?”
I wonder if she's asking because she doesn't want to become a governess. It is a precarious way to live.
“I don't want to leave you here,” she says. “It doesn't seem . . . safe. But I don't have the means to find a place for us to live. The world can be unkind to young women on their own.”
She is completely sincere, but I fear if Dr. Winston stops fussing over me and beckons to her, she'll return to him.
“Since you believe so completely that you must be sedated, I think that would be best. But first we must set up the accounts. . . .”
She believes more than Roderick. She at least thinks the house is haunted, that it affects me and makes me strange.
“But what about the consciousness?” She keeps coming back to that. “It must
want
something.”
“It wants to control us. And for the family line to continue.” I don't explain how far that control goes, how the two are linked. She doesn't need to know everything.
“But why? Why would a house want that?”
“Because we've lived here all these years?”
“Still, it isn't like it's grown fond of you; it isn't gentle or kind to you. It uses the Ushers like a nasty old grandfather trying to preserve his family's preeminence. Pulling strings and forcing miserable progeny into situations to prosper the family.”
A nasty old grandfather? I would laugh at her choice of words, except that they ring true. If I wasn't remembering a story, an image that haunts my dreams. Dead children laid out on a flat stone, like the one in the room beyond the vault.
Emily shakes her head and goes back to flipping through her books. Making her plans. But all of a sudden, I'm afraid. She seems to believe the curse, but does she understand how deep it goes? How much a part of me it is?
Does she believe that once we're away from the House of Usher that I will behave like a normal girl? That I will be a normal girl? Do I believe it? I let her set up the fake charity so that we will have money. I let her collect gold and silver from throughout the house; I don't care if she converts it to cash in the city.
I ignore my fear. With her help, the key to leaving may well be within my grasp. . . .
A
ll I ever do is watch people leave.
We watch Emily ride away from the window at the front of the house. It's snowing, so I'm glad she has the fur muff to keep her hands warm, but I'm sorry to see her go, even if I will be joining her soon.
She carries several letters with my signature, others that I've forged with Roderick's name. A small fortune. She will rent a cottage and send for me. Before that happens, I have to find a way to leave. I have to harness the power that allowed me to fight down that fit, and use it. To remember how Father managed to take me away. Or perhaps the hint I need can be found in the last pages of Lisbeth's journal. Hope wells upâwhat I think might be optimism. Perhaps its own form of madness.
It's nearly spring, and this is perhaps the last of the snow.
“It'll be better now,” Dr. Winston says from behind me. “Now that she's gone. We can spend more time together. In the room upstairs, with the machines . . .”
I put my hands against the window, feeling the cold seep through the glass. The house wants me to step away from him, and for once I agree. He's standing too close.
“It'll be better with her gone,” he repeats.
“She reminded me of other places, of cities and places far away.”
“You don't need to think of other places,” he says.
He puts his arms around me.
I step back, away from him, out of his arms.
“Madeline?”
It would be so easy to pretend to love him, even if he does want to watch me die. We are here alone. He is the only one who shows any interest in me. He offers a sort of companionship. A secondary plan, if Emily fails me. And I am still intrigued by kissing. It would be easy to pretend. He doesn't ever look into my eyes. He would never know.
But I would know.
“That isn't what I want.”
“No?”
“No.”
His jaw clenches. He is not accustomed to rejection.
“Emily is very fortunate, that you care for her so much.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. His hands are strong, and he's gripping so tightly that my shoulders feel small.
Through the window we can barely see Emily, riding through the light snow. She's wearing a red coat over her white dress.
99
F
ROM THE
J
OURNAL OF
L
ISBETH
U
SHER
Y
esterday I died.
Or at least that's what everyone believed. I fell into a deep trance, and the servants, believing me dead, put me in my best gown and brought me downstairs. They lit candles around me and put coins on my eyes.
It was like my other trances, but different, more complete. I lost consciousness, and the servants couldn't tell that I was still breathing.
Mr. Usher was away, though he returned as soon as he could, perhaps ready to celebrate his release from our marriage. I ask too many questions, am too inconvenient.
Now I sit in my bed, weak, shaking.
He wishes he hadn't married me. He loves my sister. I knew when it happened, when the curse passed.
While I was lying there, I forced the presence of the house out of my mind. I have not heard it since.
I will not stay here. I cannot. I am no longer a part of this thing.
I
place the last pages of Lisbeth Usher carefully in the lacquered box. The lid is made of mosaic tiles. Looking at it confuses my eyes, and I know that such things confound the house.
A piece of paper falls to the floor. I pick it up. Unfold it slowly. What message is Lisbeth imparting to me?
My heart sinks; it is nothing but scribbling. She has written her name over and over.
Elisabeth Rose Usher.
My middle name is Rose. And then I see something odd. Elisabeth Rose Usher. Daughter of Emmaline, sister of Honoria and Annabel.
My mother's name was Annabel. That doesn't mean anything; it's a common name. This is nearly too much reading for me. My mind whirls round and round, like water swirling downward. At the bottom of the page it says
Elisabeth Rose Usher, beloved of Charles Usher.
Charles was my father's name.
All this time I've been imagining that Lisbeth lived decades ago, perhaps a hundred years before meâwhen all along, she was just one generation away. She was my aunt, my mother's older sister. She isn't here. She must have escaped, and she could still be alive.
I think about my parents. My mother's bitterness. Lisbeth didn't save her, as she promised. Mother was always so bitter, hating the house, and her life, and the malady that came on her when she was only six years old. Hating me for being the first child, the cursed one. There is no point loving the one who is cursed, is there?
And Father, he was always the gentle one. Poor Father, who disappeared . . .
I remember him taking me to the widow's walk, warning me never to consider jumping. Like his Honoria, I am somber.
I
read by the light of the window, though the bars cast narrow shadows across my book. When I opened it, hundreds of slips of paper fell to the floor.
I love you. I watch you. I need you.
Messages from the house? To the house? They are written in her blood, and so many of them must mean something. That she sat with this book in front of her for many hours?
It's a volume about ghosts and curses. Perhaps, out of everything my grandmother collected, this might be the most useful. The accounts of hauntings are vague, and I skim them, since our ghosts are so feeble and useless. But an entire chapter is devoted to curse origins.
I remember the story of our ancestor, the slaughter. When I close my eyes, I can feel his maliciousness. Archibald Usher. His consciousness is the consciousness of the house, the nastiness that watches and seeps in through the cracks.
And I remember something that Emily said. “The house isn't exactly proud, is it? It doesn't seem to maintain itself.” We were in my garden, looking up at one of the many smaller cracks. “Doesn't care about beauty or dignity, though it could have both. What does the house value? What does it protect?”
And I think of the depths below the house. The vault, and the room with the wide flat stone. Only Ushers are supposed to go there. I remember how Roderick and I found the hidden door and made our way there when we were quite small. We were distracted by the crypt, by the horror of the sarcophagi, but that wasn't what the house was trying to show us.
The house is so huge, and has held its secrets for so long. I need Emily to write, to say that she's found a place and that I can join her. I need to get away from here. Away from these horrors. The carefully wound clock in my pocket ticks as the minutes pass. I feel, suddenly, as if time is running out for me.
S
he isn't coming back. Emily. It has been weeks. She hasn't written, like she promised. Hasn't contacted me with an address, hasn't sent a coach.
I will not let this latest abandonment destroy me. And I won't stay here with Dr. Winston.
I make my plans carefully. It would be better if I could be sedated. But that isn't possible, because I have no one to help me. Since I will be alone, I must not collapse. I must be strong. I must push the house out of my mind. If Lisbeth Usher accomplished it long ago, then I can too.
I am leaving.
I write a note in bold black letters. It says:
My name is Madeline Usher. If I am incapacitated, please take me to an inn or an officer of the law. I beg of you, do not take me back to the House of Usher.
I will pin it to my coat as I walk away from the house.
I collect gold coins and pieces of jewelry. Emily took an entire suitcase full, but plenty of riches are lying around, and I never showed her the treasure trove of jewels in Mother's room. I destroy Mother's necklaces, rip out the gemstones, and put them in a little bag with a drawstring, which I hang around my neck.
I place as much gold as I can reasonably lift into a bag and fold a spare dress over the coins. Then I wrap some bread in a cloth napkin and place it in the bag as well.
Whenever the house tries to invade my thoughts, I push it away. Grandmother's books say you must invite spirits in. The house has been with me since I was born, but I did not invite it. I listened, but I won't anymore.
My preparations are made, and the house has not responded.
Nothing. I feel nothing. It makes me nervous.
This morning I have an examination with the doctors. I must go; otherwise they will know the moment I go missing. If I leave later, then no one will notice my absence for hours. I leave my bag just inside the door of my bedroom.
When I reach the doctors' rooms, Dr. Winston tells me to undress, but I refuse.
“Today should just be a quick examination,” I tell him, holding my chin high.
He scowls. “I'll take blood,” he says.
I need all my energy today, but I give him my arm obediently.
He lays the needle on a table and picks up a small knife.
“This will be faster,” he says. “More efficient.” He caresses me gently with the blade behind my ear, then on my cheek before finally placing it against my forearm. The blade is cold against my skin.
“This blade is perfect for you, Madeline.”
So, he is no longer content to wait to see me die.
“The house is telling me to do things. I don't want to kill you. I never wanted to kill you. I want you to love me. It's not the same knife I used on Emily.”
I freeze. I am always still when the doctors are poking at me, but now I might as well be dead. I've forgotten how to breathe.
That he used on Emily? She didn't abandon me. . . .
I rear back away from him, but he knows what he's doing. The knife opens my flesh, but the cut is so shallow, there's barely any blood.
I throw back my head and scream for Dr. Paul and Dr. Peridue. Footsteps pound in the hall.