Her head was bent over at a terrible angle, neck horribly askew. She had to turn her whole body to face the door, while her head flopped sideways. She hitched up one shoulder to keep it partly upright and something about that small gesture was so dreadful that it stopped me in my tracks.
“Alex,” she said. Her voice was shallow and breathy, as if she could not draw in much air. Were her lungs felted with fungus, like the hare? Was it simply that her neck was broken? Did it even matter?
“Madeline.” Roderick was still lying on the bed, on his side. I could not tell if he was breathing. Had she killed him?
And if she has, was it murder or simply justice?
“Shooting … me … won’t … do much…” she whispered. Her hair was loose and fell over her eyes, white hair on bone-colored skin. When she lifted her hand to push it away, her fingers were violet-black and a long line ran down the underside of her arms. You see that in dead men sometimes, when the blood has pooled. Whatever the fungus was doing to her, Madeline’s heart had stopped beating days ago.
She coughed and her voice gained a little strength. “I suppose … I wouldn’t enjoy it, though.” She smiled ruefully at me, and it was her familiar smile, the one I’d known since we were children.
“Oh God, Maddy,” I said. I lowered the gun. Did I really think I could shoot her? “Oh God. What’s happened to you?”
“The broken neck was … a problem,” she said musingly. “The tarn had just been in … my brain … and my skin. Now va had to grow all the way down … past the break. It took … days.” She shook her head at me, flopping it from side to side. I could see the sharp angle of her windpipe. Nausea clawed at me. “Clever … of Roderick. He never understood … the tarn.”
Denton had come up beside me, his eyes on the bed. “Is Roderick alive, Madeline?”
“I didn’t … kill him.” She coughed again and her head slipped off her shoulder, bouncing in time. I had to look away. When I looked back, she had reached up to her mouth and was tugging. Long white strands came out and she wrapped them around her hand, then let them fall carelessly in her lap. “There,” she said, her voice stronger. “There, that’s a little better. Va filled my lungs, you see. To save me, but now there’s too much.” She pushed her head back up onto her shoulder.
“Va?” Who was she referring to like a child?
“The tarn.” She smiled up at me. “It’s always been the tarn.”
Denton took a step forward. “May I examine Roderick?” he asked. It was the right thing to do, of course, but I was desperate to find out what Madeline meant, and why she was referring to the lake as one would a child.
“Yes.”
Denton circled the bed as cautiously as if it contained an unexploded shell. Madeline ignored him. I wondered how fast she could move. I caught myself rubbing the trigger guard with my finger and stopped. Terrible habit. Angus would have yelled at me.
“Maddy,” I said, hoping to hold her attention. “What do you mean, it’s always been the tarn?”
“Va’s been reaching out for so long,” she said wistfully. “Va could get into the animals. Va learned van senses that way. I can’t imagine what that must have been like, the first time. Think of it, if you had no sight and not even the sense that sight existed, how would you get there? Hearing was easier. Va understood vibrations, and that’s all hearing is. And va already knew smell.” She pointed to her eyes. “But how would you ever think that these two round sacs of jelly did anything? But the tarn figured it out!”
I swallowed. Behind Madeline, Denton gave me a thumbs-up. Roderick was still alive. Thank Christ.
“You’re telling me that the tarn is intelligent,” I said.
She smiled up at me. “More than you or I are. Think of all va’s managed to learn.”
“And…” Denton was tugging on Roderick’s wrist, possibly trying to get him out of bed. “The tarn talks to you? Communicates with you somehow?” Half of me thought that she’d gone mad. The other half pointed out that I was already having a conversation with a dead woman. Mushrooms don’t think. Yes, and the dead don’t move either.
“Speech was the hardest,” said Madeline. She plucked another puff of hyphae from her lips. “I had to teach van a kind of sign language first. Va didn’t understand speech at all.” She giggled again, the papery rasping giggle that set my teeth on edge, made even worse by the impossible angle of her windpipe. “When you think about it, we talk by coughing up air and wiggling our lips through it. How could anyone ever understand that, if you weren’t born to it? But va grasped it eventually!”
Breath moving hard, I thought. Not Maddy. Maddy one and me one …
Oh God, it was the tarn talking. She taught the fungus to talk.
There had been clues in front of me, but how could I have possibly guessed the truth? How could I have known that when Maddy was naming the wall and the candle and counting, it was actually a vocabulary lesson?
How could I possibly have known that she would treat the fungus like a child?
Denton had gotten Roderick out of bed. The last male Usher looked groggy and leaned against Denton like a drunk, but he was moving. I heard him mumble a question and Denton shushed him.
Madeline started to turn and I stepped forward hastily to distract her. “You taught … van … the tarn … how to talk?”
It worked. She beamed at me. “Once va realized we were using sound to communicate, va almost taught vanself. So smart! My maid and I—va’d take over Alice and then I’d teach van what I could. But then Alice killed herself, that silly creature, and it got harder.” A flash of something crossed over her face, sorrow or anger or disappointment, I couldn’t tell.
“She killed herself?”
“She didn’t understand.” Madeline started to stand. One hand snaked out to grab the bedpost, almost as if it were disconnected from the rest of her. “She didn’t understand what va was trying to do, and then her fool brother took her body away and burned it, can you imagine? So she couldn’t even come back!”
Fire stops it, then, I thought, and a wave of unutterable relief passed over me. If it got into me, as long as Angus burned my body, it would be all right. The dead may walk, but I will not walk among them.
“But you understand, Easton. You can take over teaching the tarn. Va can’t keep my body going much longer, I’m afraid. I’m starting to fray at the edges. Some things break down after a while.” She smiled ruefully again and took a step forward.
She moved like the hares and finally I understood.
Maddy’s control of her body stopped at the neck. Below the break, the tarn was controlling her body like a puppet.
I stood frozen for far too long, watching her approach. “Madeline,” I said carefully, “this thing … whatever it is … it’s what was killing you. Devouring you alive.” I would not call the fungus va. Never that. It was a horror and it had eaten my friend.
“I know, I know,” said Madeline. She dismissed this with a roll of her eyes. “Of course va did. Va doesn’t mean to. Va slowed the process as much as va could, but va couldn’t help but feed a little. Of course I died eventually.”
Denton and I looked at each other over her head. I hope my face was expressionless. His was not.
“You know that you are dead,” I said.
Madeline’s smile was beatific. “Easton,” she said, as kindly as if I were a child, “I’ve been dead for at least a month.”
The tarn stretched out one of her hands and I recoiled. There were puffs of hyphae like cotton wool growing from under her fingernails, shockingly white against the bruise-black skin. Her touch had alarmed me days ago. Knowing what I knew now … Christ’s blood. At least fire works. If I can get the lamp oil on her … no, this can’t be nearly enough. It took so much to burn the hare. Oh God, why are bodies so wet?
Denton was half leading, half carrying Roderick back around the bed. I eased myself a little to one side, trying to place myself between Madeline and the other two. “How is that possible? You were breathing. You had a heartbeat.”
“The tarn kept my heart beating as long as va could. My body knew what to do, va just had to give it the orders. But after Roderick broke my neck, the orders didn’t travel anymore.” She pushed her head upright again. “It doesn’t matter. What was I, when I was alive? I was no use to anyone, least of all myself. I was a pretty doll for my mother to dress up and for men to look at, and then she died and eventually I came here, where there were no men to look at me. And at last, I found a purpose.” She smiled up at me. There were white threads at the corners of her mouth and when she spoke, I could see flashes of her tongue, coated in pale wool. I took another step back.
Evil, Roderick had said. But it wasn’t evil that I was seeing here, it was alien, a monstrous alienness so far removed from what I understood that every fiber of my being screamed to reject it, to run, to get it away.…
“Dear Alex,” she said, a line forming between her eyebrows. “You understand, don’t you? You have to understand. You have to help me save van.”
“Maddy, I…”
“You have to.”
“I could never help anything that killed you.” Which sounded better than the real truth, which was that I wanted to shoot the thing she had become and then burn the body and sow the fields with salt.
“You’re helping Roderick.”
Shame blossomed in my gut. She wasn’t wrong.
“The tarn hasn’t hurt anyone,” she said. “Not deliberately. Va doesn’t feel pain, so how could va understand? Now va knows better.” Another step forward. “It won’t hurt now. And if I hadn’t been so weak, the little bit va has to take to feed wouldn’t have mattered.”
Denton had Roderick almost to the door now.
“Maddy, are you asking me to let that thing infect me?”
“Not infect.” She looked offended at the word. “Just give van a home. Va’s like a child, va needs someone to care for van, and I know you’ll protect van and stand up for van, like you always did for me.”
She walked forward and I backpedaled. I had a gun and fire and I was probably close to a hundred pounds heavier and still I retreated.
“Alex…”
Denton reached out and grabbed the back of my jacket. He hauled and I scrambled backward and the last I saw of Madeline was the door slamming in her face.
There were no locks on the outside. I leaned my weight against the door. “Get something to block it,” I said to Denton. Roderick was propped up against the wall, like a drunk holding up the bar. The doctor bolted down the hallway.
“Alex?” Maddy knocked on the door.
“That’s the sound,” mumbled Roderick. “That’s the sound. She’s still moving. I can hear it from the crypt. Can’t you hear it?”
“I hear it,” I assured him.
“Alex. Let me out. You have to help me.”
The door shook under a blow and actually shoved me forward an inch. I set my feet and braced my back against it. The tarn was far stronger than Madeline had ever been.
“Alex, I’m begging you!”
“It’s not her,” said Roderick. He was listing sideways but I didn’t dare reach out to catch him. “Easton, sir, it’s not really her.”
“I know,” I told him. “I know it isn’t.”
“Alex, you have to help me save the tarn!”
“Sir … I hear her.…”
“So do I, Usher.”
Blows rained against the door. How was it so strong? I imagined Madeline’s fragile wrists beating against the wood. Surely the skin would split under such punishment—but perhaps the tarn didn’t care. Why would a fungus care about broken flesh? It didn’t feel pain, and now, neither did she.
“Alex!”
Tinnitus roared in my ears, drowning out everything. I welcomed it. It didn’t last nearly long enough.
“I’m sorry, Maddy,” I said. I don’t know if she heard me.
“It sounds like her,” Roderick said, “but it’s not. It’s the other thing.”
“I know.”
Loud scraping noises heralded the arrival of Denton with a long bench. “Here,” he said. “This ought to be big enough to brace on the opposite wall.”
It was. Barely. The door opened a crack as he shoved it into place and I saw Madeline’s blue-black fingers slide around the edge. Bits of hyphae caught in the rough edges of the wood. The bottom of her hand had been hammered raw, dangling gelid bits of flesh and long white threads.
Her hand caught the door and shoved. The bench struck the wall and I heard the groan of wood—but it held.
“Eaaaastonnn…” said the voice from behind the door, no longer Maddy’s. “Eaaastonn…?”
“Get the servants out,” I told Denton. All one of them, probably. I shoved my arm under Roderick’s and dragged him to his feet. My back screamed at me that I was no longer young and I would pay the price. Later, I told it. Later I can fall apart from the knees on up.
Roderick sagged against me. “I knew I would have to kill her,” he whispered. “I knew it. I never expected you to come here.”
“It’s all right,” I told him. “It’s all right.”
We got down the stairs somehow. Roderick started to take more of his own weight. My back was grateful, even if he was slow.
“I meant to have Denton visit then leave,” he said. “When he saw how sick she looked, no one would be surprised that she had died after.” He lifted a shaking hand to his face. “I’m so sorry, Easton. I’m sorry. I had to end that thing.”
I nodded. It was unthinkable, but after what I had seen, I no longer questioned his motives. “It’s all right, Roderick. I understand.” I thumped him on the back as if he were a dog I was seeking to reassure. Oddly, this seemed to soothe him. “It will be all right.” Which was a lie, but one we both needed.
Denton had the servants in the courtyard by the time we reached it. There were only two of them, the ubiquitous manservant and a woman that I supposed was the cook. “I sent the stable boy to the inn with my horse,” he said, and I nodded.
Roderick stood on his own, swaying. He nodded to the two servants. “Aaron. Mary. It’s over. Please go to the village. I’ll…” He swallowed. “I’ll catch up to you when I can.”
Mary turned away, expressionless. Aaron lingered. “Sir … may I assist you?” He eyed me with cautious distrust, clearly not sure if I was the architect of Usher’s condition or his salvation.
“Not this time.” Roderick smiled weakly. In the morning light, his skin was a ghastly shade. “Please, go with Mary. So I don’t worry.”
“Very well, sir.” Aaron drew himself up and bowed, then followed the cook down the road and away from the house.
And then it was only Denton and Roderick and me, standing in the courtyard looking up at the cursed house, at the windows gazing down like alien eyes. The tarn flickered with light and woke reflections in the glass.
“How long until she gets out, do you think?” asked Denton.
I swallowed, remembering those hammer-like blows against the door. “Not long. If it doesn’t just break her body apart trying.” And even that might not stop it. Why should it? I scanned the archway that led to the garden, looking for hares.
“It is simple,” said Roderick. “The Ushers have allowed this monstrous thing to grow. The last Usher will see that it does not get out.” He nodded quietly to himself.
“You can’t go alone,” I said at once.
“Yes, I can.” He gripped my shoulder. “I still hear her,” he added. “I can hear her now. She’s in there. She isn’t dead. She isn’t dead enough. And I can hear the thing in the tarn talking back.”
“But what if it…”
He smiled angelically at me. “Go, Easton. You are the last of my friends, and the best. Do only this for me.”
I swallowed. And then I thumped his back one last time and stepped away and Denton and I staggered away from that accursed house, while Roderick Usher went back inside.
We were halfway down the road, still in sight of the manor house, when the first flame reached the roof.