“It’s not the kind of word a famous author ought to use, is it, Momma?” As always, Boone leaped on every opportunity to score points with their mother against Rix. “Now you just sit right there and I’ll run get you a sweater.” When he passed Rix on his way to the door, Boone flashed a quick, tight smile.
“Boone?” Margaret called, and her older son paused. “Make sure the sweater won’t clash, dear.”
“Yes, Momma,” Boone replied, and left the room.
Rix walked toward her. As he neared, he again caught a whiff of that foul aroma, like a dead rat moldering in one of the walls. Margaret picked up a can of Lysol pine air freshener from a table beside her chair and began to spray clouds of mist around her. When she was through, the room smelled like a pine woods full of dead animals.
Rix stood beside his mother. She was still trying to stall time. At fifty-eight, Margaret Usher was desperately fighting to remain thirty-five. Her hair was cut stylishly short and dyed a coppery auburn. Several trips to a California plastic surgeon had left the skin stretched so tightly over her sharp cheekbones that it looked as if it were about to rip. Her makeup was thicker than Rix recalled, and the shade of lipstick she’d chosen was much too red. Tiny lines were creeping around her mouth and nesting in the corners of her pale green eyes. Her body remained sleek except for a bit of heaviness around the hips and stomach, and Rix remembered Katt telling him his mother feared unsightly flab like the Black Plague. On her slim, graceful hands she wore a stunning variety of rings—diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Pinned to her gown was a brooch whose diamonds glittered in the firelight. Sitting motionless, she appeared to Rix as yet another perfect furnishing of the Gatehouse, never meant to be touched.
Her expression was disconsolate and helpless. A feeling of sadness for her came over Rix. What price had she paid, he wondered, to live as the mistress of Usherland?
Suddenly she turned her head and looked at him. It was the same kind of vague stare one would give a stranger. “You’ve lost weight,” she noted. “Have you been sick?”
“I’ve felt better.”
“You look like a walking skeleton.”
He shrugged uneasily, not wanting to be reminded of his physical ailments. “I’ll be all right.”
“Not living the way you do. Hand to mouth in a distant city, without your family. I don’t see how you’ve stood it this long.” A light glimmered in her eyes, and she reached out to take his hand. “But you’ve come home to stay this time, haven’t you? We’ve needed you here. I’ve had your old room readied for you. Everything’s just as it used to be, now that you’re home to stay.”
“Mom,” Rix said gently, “I can’t stay. I just came for a few days, to see Dad.”
“Why?” Her grip tightened. “Why can’t you stay here, where you belong?”
“I don’t belong at Usherland.” He knew it was pointless to be drawn into this discussion yet again. Inevitably there would be an argument. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“You mean that writing you do?” Margaret released his hand and stood up to admire her new pearls in the mirror. “I’d hardly call that work, Rix. At least not the kind of occupation you’re capable of. Did you see these pearls your brother brought me? Aren’t they nice?” She frowned and ran a finger beneath her chin. “My God, I’m looking like an old woman, aren’t I? I should sue that last doctor who tucked my chin. I should sue him right out of business. Aren’t I just the ugliest old woman you’ve ever seen?”
“You look fine.”
She regarded herself and smiled wanly. “Oh, you don’t remember what I used to look like. Do you know what my daddy always called me? The prettiest girl in the whole of North Carolina. Puddin’ thinks she’s pretty, but she doesn’t know what real beauty is.” Margaret mentioned the name of Boone’s wife with an undisguised disgust. “I used to look like Katt. I used to have fine skin, just like hers.”
“Where is Katt?”
“Didn’t your brother tell you? She’s gone down to the Bahamas somewhere on an assignment for a magazine. It was something she couldn’t get out of. She hoped to get back either tomorrow or the day after. Do you know what they’re paying her now? Two thousand dollars an hour. They’re going to put her on the cover of Vogue next month. I used to look like Katt when I was her age.”
“And what about Puddin’?”
“What about her?” Margaret shrugged, uninterested. “She’s up in her room, I suppose. She sleeps all the time. I’ve tried to tell Boone his little beauty-queen wife is beginning to drink a bit too much, but will he listen? No. He goes running off to the stables to clock the horses.” She picked up the Lysol can and misted the air again. “At least you’re a free man. Your brother’s made a mess of his—”
The doors slid open and Boone entered, carrying a pale gold sweater. The way Margaret immediately closed her mouth and stiffened her spine was a clear message that she’d been discussing him. Boone wore his toothy grin like a mask. “Here’s your sweater, Momma.” He draped it around her shoulders. “What mischief you two been talkin’ about?”
“Oh, nothing that concerns you,” Margaret said sweetly, her eyelids at half-mast. “Rix was just telling me about all the ladies in his life. He’s playing his cards right.”
Boone’s mouth stretched wider, and Rix could almost hear the flesh crack. In his eyes was a familiar warning glint; Rix had seen it many times when they were children, just before Boone attacked him for some imagined slight. “What Momma means to say, Rixy, is that I’m the disgrace of the family—next to you, that is. Because I’ve been divorced twice and I’ve married a young chickie, Momma seems to think I ought to go through life carrying a ball and chain. Isn’t that right, Momma?”
“Don’t make a fool of yourself in front of your brother, dear.”
“Know why Rixy’s got so many ladies, Momma? ’Cause none of ’em go out with him a second time. His idea of a fun date is to amble over to the nearest graveyard and hunt up the spooks. And let’s don’t forget that little lady of Rix’s who decided to take a nice warm—”
Rix wheeled toward him. He felt the rage contorting his face. Boone stopped dead. “Don’t say it,” Rix whispered hoarsely. “If you say it, you bastard, I’ll have to kill you.”
Boone stood like stone. Then he laughed, the note sharp and short—but there was a tremor in it.
“Boys,” Margaret chided softly. “Is there a draft in this room?”
Boone ambled over and warmed his hands before the hearth. “Know what, Momma? Rix says he’s finished another book.”
“Oh?” Her voice was stiff with frost. “I presume it’s another disgusting bloodfest. I swear, I don’t know why you write those things! Do you actually think those books of yours please people?”
Rix had a headache. He touched his temples, fearing an attack. My God, why did I come home? he asked himself. Boone’s reference to Sandra had almost sent him over the edge.
“You’ve got to understand Rixy, Momma,” Boone offered, his gaze flicking back and forth between them. “He was always scared of his own shadow when we were kids. Always seein’ the Pumpkin Man under his bed. So now he writes horror books so he can kill off the bad ol’ demons. And he thinks he’s Edgar Allan Poe. You know, the sufferin’ art—”
“Hush!” she said sharply. “Don’t you dare mention that name in this house! Lord knows, your father would have a fit if he heard it!”
“Well, it’s true!” Boone insisted. He grinned at Rix, rubbing his hands together. “When are you gonna write somethin’ about us, Rixy? That’s about what I’d expect of you next.”
From the corner of his eye, Rix saw his mother blanch. He responded with a smug smile of his own. “You know, brother Boone, that might be a fine idea. I could write a book about the Ushers. The history of the family. How about that, Mom?”
She opened her mouth to reply, then abruptly clapped it shut. She sprayed the air again, and Rix smelled the new, almost overpowering stench that had crept in un
der the doors.
“It’s so hard,” Margaret said as she followed the mist around the room, “to keep an older house fresh and clean. When a house reaches a certain age, it starts to fall to pieces. I’ve always cared about keeping a good house.” She stopped spraying; it was clear the disinfectant wasn’t strong enough. “My mother raised me to care,” she said proudly.
Rix had delayed the moment as long as possible. “I’d better go up and see him now,” he said resignedly.
“No, not yet!” Margaret clutched his hand, a tight false smile across her mouth. “Let’s sit down here together, both my fine boys. Cass is making a Welsh pie for you. She knows how much you like them.”
“Mom, I have to go upstairs.”
“He’s probably sleeping. Mrs. Reynolds says he needs his sleep. Let’s sit down and talk about pleasant things, all right?”
“Oh, let him go on upstairs, Momma,” Boone said silkily, watching Rix. “After he sees what Daddy looks like, he can go write himself another one of those horror—”
“You shut your mouth!” Margaret whirled toward him. “You’re a cruel boy, Boone Usher! At least your brother wants to pay his respects to Walen, which is more than you’ll do!” Boone looked away from his mother’s wrath, and muttered something under his breath.
Rix said, “I’d better go up.” Tears glinted like tiny diamonds in his mother’s eyes, and he reached out to touch her cheek.
“Don’t,” she said, quickly pulling her head back. “You’ll muss my hair.”
He slowly withdrew his hand. It never changes here, he thought. They draw you in some way or another, and then they try to crush the feelings out of you, like stepping on a bug. He shook his head and walked past her, out of the living room and along the hallway to the central staircase. It wound upward to bedrooms and parlors that had been used by Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and a score of government and Pentagon luminaries, both famous and infamous.
As he climbed the stairs, dread at seeing his father gnawed at his insides. He didn’t know what to expect. Why did Walen want to see him, he wondered. The old man hated him for leaving Usherland, and Rix despised what Usher Armaments stood for. What could they possibly have to talk about now?
On the second floor, the smell of decay was stronger. He passed by his old room without pausing to look inside. Brightly colored flowers and greenery were placed in crystal vases all along the corridor, in a vain attempt to mask the stench. Moody oil paintings—including War Clouds by Victor Hallmark, After the Battle by Rutledge Taylorson, and Blood on the Snow by George H. Nivens—lined the walls as testimonial to Walen Usher’s bleak taste in art. At the end of the corridor, another staircase ascended to a single white door—the Gatehouse’s Quiet Room.
Rix stood at the foot of the stairs, gathering his courage. The odor of decomposition drifted around him, a foul miasma. Nothing that smelled like that, Rix thought, could still be alive.
The last time Rix had seen his father, Walen Usher had been the tall, ramrod-straight figure of authority that Rix knew from his childhood. Age had done nothing to diminish the power of his gaze or the strength of his voice, and his rugged, rough-hewn features might have been those of a man in his early forties except for swirls of gray at his temples and a few deepening lines across his high, aristocratic forehead. Walen Usher’s jaw jutted like the prow of a battleship, and his mouth was a thin grim line that rarely broke into a smile.
Rix had never been able to understand how his father’s mind worked. They had no common ground, no means of easy communication. Walen ran the estate and the business with a dictator’s firm control. He had always kept his various business projects a secret from the family, and when Rix had been a child, there were long periods of time when Walen locked himself into his study and didn’t come out. Rix knew only that a lot of military men visited his father behind locked doors.
When Walen was around, he treated his children as if they were soldiers in his private army. There were predawn military-style inspections, strict codes of conduct, dress, and manners, and savage verbal attacks if his children failed in any way. His most vicious assaults had been against Rix, when the boy was deemed lazy or uncooperative.
If Rix “talked back,” failed to keep his shoes brightly polished, was late to the dinner table, or committed some other infraction of the unwritten rules, then the broad leather strap that his father called the Peacemaker raised red welts across his legs and buttocks—usually with Boone smirking in the same room, behind Walen’s shoulder. Boone, on the other hand, was a master at playing the perfect son, always dressed immaculately, always neat and clean and fawning around his father. Kattrina had learned the art of bending to whatever wind Walen blew, and so escaped much of the abuse. Margaret, ever busy with planning parties and charity events, knew it was best to stay out of Walen’s way, and had never taken Rix’s side against him. Rules, she would say, were rules.
Once, Rix had seen Walen knock a servant to the floor and kick him in the ribs for some imagined dereliction of duty. If Edwin hadn’t intervened, Walen might have killed the man. Sometimes, late at night when the rest of the house had gone to sleep, Rix had lain in his bed and heard his father walking the corridor outside his room, pacing back and forth in some mindless expenditure of nervous energy. He feared the night when his father would throw open his door and set on him, rage burning in his eyes, with the same fury that had made him break the servant’s ribs.
But in mellow moods, Walen would summon Rix to his huge bedroom, where the walls were painted dark red and the furnishings were heavy black Victorian monstrosities brought from the Lodge, and order Rix to read to him from the Bible. What Walen wanted to hear were not chapters that had to do with spiritual things, but instead were long, tongue-twisting lineages: who begat who begat who. He demanded them over and over again, and sometimes the ebony cane he carried would smack the floor with impatience when Rix stumbled over the names.
When he was ten, Rix had run away from home after a particularly nasty meeting with the Peacemaker. Edwin had found him at the Trailways bus station in Foxton; they’d had a long talk, and as Rix collapsed into tears, Edwin held him and promised that Walen would never hit him again, so long as Edwin lived. The vow had remained intact for all these years, though Walen’s taunts had increased. Rix was still the failure, the black sheep, the weakling who whined that the Ushers had thrived and gotten fat on generations of the dead.
Rix’s heart was pounding as he forced himself up the steps. A hand-lettered sign had been taped to the door: TAP QUIETLY. Beside the door was a table bearing a box of green surgical masks.
He put his hand on the doorknob and then abruptly drew it back. Corruption oozed out of that room; he could feel it, like furnace heat. He didn’t know if he could take what was waiting in there for him, and suddenly his resolve slipped away. He started back down the stairs.
But in another second the decision was made for him.
The knob turned from the other side, and the door opened.
3
A UNIFORMED NURSE WITH a surgical mask over the lower half of her face peered from the Quiet Room at Rix. She wore skintight surgical gloves as well. Above the mask her eyes were dark brown and set in webs of wrinkles.
A wave of decay rolled out of the Quiet Room and struck Rix with almost tangible force. He gripped the banister tightly, his teeth clenched.
Mrs. Reynolds whispered, “A mask should help,” and motioned toward the box.
He put one on. The inside was scented with mint, but it was not much help.
“Are you Rix?” She was a big-boned woman, possibly in her mid-forties, with curly iron-gray hair cut short. Rix noted that her eyes were faintly bloodshot.
“Of course it’s Rix, you damned fool!” came the hoarse, barely human rasp from the darkness. Rix stiffened. His father’s melodic voice had degenerated to an animal’s growl. “I told you it would be Rix, didn’t I? Let him in!”
Mrs. Reynolds opened the doo
r wider for him. “Quickly,” she said. “Too much light hurts his eyes. And remember, please keep your voice as soft as possible.”
Rix stepped into the high-ceilinged, rubber-walled room. There were no windows. The only light came from a small green-shaded Tensor lamp on a table next to the chair where Mrs. Reynolds had been sitting. It cast a low-wattage circle of illumination that extended for only a foot or so into the room. He had an instant to see his father’s grim bedroom furniture arranged in the room before Mrs. Reynolds closed the heavy rubber-lined door, sealing off the corridor’s light.
He’d seen his father’s canopied bed. There had been something lying in that bed, within a clear plastic oxygen tent. Rix thanked God the door had closed before he’d been able to see it too well.
In the darkness he could hear the soft chirping of an oscilloscope. The machine was just to the left of his father’s bed; he saw the pale green zigzag of Walen Usher’s labored heartbeat. His father’s breathing was a pained, liquid gasping. Silk sheets rustled on the bed.
“Do you need anything, Mr. Usher?” the nurse whispered.
“No,” the agonized voice replied. “Don’t shout, goddamn it!”
Mrs. Reynolds returned to her chair, leaving Rix to fend for himself. She continued where she’d left off in her Barbara Cartland novel.
“Come closer,” Walen Usher commanded.
“I can’t see where I’m—”
There was a sharp inhalation. “Softly! Oh God, my ears…”
“I’m sorry,” Rix whispered, unnerved.
The oscilloscope had started chirping faster. Walen didn’t speak again until his heartbeat had slowed down. “Closer. You’re about to stumble into a chair. Step to your left. Don’t trip over that cable, you idiot! More to the left. All right, you’re five paces from the foot of the bed. Damn it, boy, do you have to stomp?”
When Rix reached the bed, he could feel the fever radiating from his father’s body. He gripped one of the canopy sheets and felt sweat trickling down under his arms.