The next day was good. I say this because it stands out so starkly alongside all the rest. The house was still damp and dark and falling down around us, Maddy and Roderick still looked like a pair of corpses headed for the bier, Denton still didn’t know whether to stand up when I entered the room or not, but still … it was good. Roderick played the piano and we sang badly together. Maddy’s voice was barely a thread and I can just about belt out the chorus to “Gallacia Will Go On” if somebody else handles everything past the first verse. Denton didn’t know most of our songs, and we knew none of his. But none of that particularly mattered. He sang something about John Brown’s body, and I picked up enough to bellow, “Glory, glory, hallelujah!” at the appropriate moments.
Roderick was a genius on the piano, though. When we had exhausted ourselves mangling popular tunes, he played dramatic compositions by great composers. (Mozart? Beethoven? Why are you asking me? It was music, it went dun-dun-dun-DUN, what more do you want me to say?)
It was fun. People get hung up on happiness and joy, but fun will take you at least as far and it’s generally cheaper to obtain. We had fun. Maddy laughed and clapped her hands and there was color in her cheeks. I hoped like hell that the beef had been having some effect, even if the cook had to use mortar fire to tenderize the beast.
Maddy went to bed and I broke out a bottle of livrit. Livrit is a Gallacian specialty, which means it’s uniquely terrible. It strongly resembles vodka, although vodka would be ashamed to acknowledge the connection, sweetened, as livrit is, with the cloudberries that grow in the mountains. That might actually be palatable, though, and we can’t have that, so lichen is also included. The resulting drink starts syrupy, ends bitter, and burns all the way down. No one actually likes it, but it is traditionally made by widows as a means of supporting themselves, so everyone drinks it because you can’t let little old ladies starve to death when they could be climbing mountains and scraping lichen off rocks instead.
Every Gallacian soldier I know carries at least one bottle of livrit with kan. It reminds us that we are part of a great and glorious tradition of people doing gallant things in the service of a country that can’t find its arse with both hands and a map. Being as I was an officer, I carry three, in case I run into some poor sod who’s drunk kan only bottle.
We toasted Gallacia and Ruravia, and Denton gagged and Roderick and I cheered on this completely normal response to livrit. Then we toasted America and the taste buds her son had lost that day. Then we toasted a couple more things, including Maddy’s beauty, fallen comrades, and the foolishness of armies.
And then we parted and went to bed, and that was the last remotely normal day in the house of Usher.
I was just sitting down on the bed to pull off my boots when I heard the creak of floorboards outside my room. Was it truly that late? We’d been carousing for a few hours, long enough that Maddy might have begun sleepwalking again. I shoved my foot back in the boot and threw open the door.
“Oh,” I said, startled. “It’s you.”
Denton looked at me in mild surprise. “You were expecting someone else?”
“I thought you might be Madeline.” Belatedly it occurred to me how that must sound, as if I was expecting Maddy to visit my rooms in the night. “I found her sleepwalking the other night.”
“Really.” Denton frowned. “I had not known that she did that. Roderick said something about her walking the halls, but I thought…”
“I know,” I said, closing my door behind me. “She doesn’t seem well enough to walk much of anywhere without help. I was afraid she would faint or fall down.”
“Did you wake her?”
“I did. I know you’re not supposed to wake a sleepwalker, but she thanked me. Said she’d been dreaming.”
“This place breeds nightmares,” said Denton, with unexpected savagery. “I need some air.”
“I’ll join you,” I said. The livrit was burning off and I had no desire to sober up in the closeness of my room. The balcony overlooking the lake had little appeal, but it was at the back of my mind that perhaps Denton would see the strange lights, too. “I haven’t been sleeping well myself.”
Once we were outside in the open air, I asked, “What did you mean, this place breeds nightmares?”
“Roderick,” said Denton, leaning against the stone railing. “He complains of nightmares. Says the walls breathe them out.”
I did not know about the walls, but I could definitely imagine the lake doing so. No matter how innocent the water looked right now, I could not shake the memory of those strange, transparent sheets and the outlines of rippling light.
“Have you had any?” It was not a question I would normally ask someone that I knew as little as I knew Denton, but there are things that two old soldiers can talk about in the dark after drinking that ka would never discuss in daylight.
“I had a nightmare last night,” said Denton, not looking at me. The lake reflected the stars back, dark and still. “I was back in the surgical tent, amputating. After a battle … the way the rifle bullets shattered limbs … we would take off dozens in a day. One of the orderlies would carry them away, but we had to move so fast, before the men bled out, so they would end up outside the tent, in a pile. I was looking at the pile, and there were so many severed limbs, but they were alive. They were moving.”
“Good God,” I said, horrified.
“They were still alive, and I realized we shouldn’t have cut them off. If I could just take them back to their owners, I could put them back. I could make those men whole again. But there were so many, and there was a crowd of soldiers begging me to help them, and I didn’t know which leg or arm went with which person and there were so many men, and I couldn’t help any of them.…”
His voice trailed off. I shuddered. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“I don’t dream about the war much anymore,” he said. “It was a long time ago. A lot longer for me than yours was for you, I imagine. But you won’t always dream of it. If you’re worried.”
I nodded. I certainly wasn’t going to bother to deny it. I had been good at being a soldier. Better than I had been at being anything else. And I had always thought that if you were going to have stupid bloody wars, it was better to have people who were good at it doing the fighting. People who knew what to expect and when to dive for cover and when to run. People who knew what it looked like when their buddy took a bullet and could staunch the bleeding instead of standing around with their mouths hanging open.
But there’s a price you pay for being good at some things. The war is the backdrop to most of my dreams. The house I grew up in, my grandmother’s cottage, and the war, as if it was a place that I lived. I can’t even say they’re all nightmares. Sometimes it’s just where the dream is happening.
Denton knew. Roderick might. I don’t know. He had always been jumpy. Nothing wrong with that. Jumpy means you survive. It also means you wear yourself out faster and drive the rest of your unit nuts, but everybody copes in their own way. He was never going to be a career soldier, but that’s fine. Not everyone should be. Ideally nobody would have to be, but that’s a bigger problem than I could tackle today.
I looked down into the still water. No glow tonight. I wondered if I could convince myself it had been a dream. This place breeds nightmares.
No. I knew what I had seen. I am not a particularly fanciful person. (A Frenchwoman once told me that I had no poetry in my soul. I recited a dirty limerick to her, and she threw a lemon at my head. Paris is a marvelous city.) If I was no longer able to distinguish between dreams and waking then something was wrong with me, as well as with the Ushers.
“What do you think of this lake?” I asked Denton abruptly.
“It’s a dismal thing,” said Denton. If he was surprised by my change of topic, he didn’t say anything. “You’d think a pristine mountain lake would be picturesque.”
“The ones in Gallacia are.”
“I only popped over the border once, I think. Place with the turnips on the shutters, right?”
I muttered something in defense of the turnips and stared into the water. “It’s like it doesn’t reflect right.”
“The lake?” Denton leaned forward over the balustrade and gazed down. “Possibly. Or what it’s reflecting is so depressing that it doesn’t help. I don’t know. Reminds me of some of the springs we have in the States. Fantastic colors from the minerals leached into it, and it’ll kill you dead if you drink from it.” He straightened up. “Though I suppose it would have done so by now, since I imagine it’s where all the water’s drawn from.”
I grimaced. I hadn’t given that any thought. If something in the tarn was poisoning Madeline, it was in all our veins now. I felt vaguely queasy, even though I knew it was my imagination. “I thought I saw lights in it, the other night.”
“Lights?” He looked over at me, surprised. I wished I hadn’t said anything. Clearly the livrit had loosened my tongue.
“Like reflections of the stars. Only it was overcast and there weren’t any stars to be had. I don’t know. And once I looked at them, they seemed to pulse. Reminded me of the lights you get in the sea sometimes.” I was downplaying it tremendously, but it sounded completely mad when I said it aloud. I should have spoken to Miss Potter first, and gotten some scientific words to use as a talisman. “The Englishwoman that’s been roaming around painting mushrooms thinks there’s some kind of algae in the water.”
“Huh.” Denton looked down into the water. “It doesn’t surprise me, I suppose. Any damn thing could grow in that lake, and it wouldn’t surprise me.”
I joined him in gazing down over the edge. It was dark and still and silent.
“Madeline nearly drowned in that lake a few months ago,” said Denton absently.
“What?!”
“Roderick didn’t tell you?” For a moment he looked as if he, too, wished he hadn’t said anything. Then he shrugged. “She claims she doesn’t remember. Had an episode and fell in. Roderick was certain she’d drowned when he pulled her out, but ironically, the catalepsy may have saved her. She didn’t draw any water into her lungs, you see.”
“Christ’s blood.” I remembered the white shape of Madeline on the shore of the lake. Why was she still visiting the thing alone? I should speak to her about it. Though surely she must be aware of the dangers.
I was caught up in my thoughts and almost missed a greenish flicker in the depths. “There! Did you catch that?”
“I saw something … there it is again! Be damned.” Denton leaned so far over the railing that I thought I might have to grab him and pull him back. “Huh.”
We both gazed into the water for a long time, but there were no more lights to be seen. Eventually we parted ways and went back to our respective beds. I don’t know how Denton fared, but for me, sleep was still a long time coming.
It was early morning when I heard the floorboards creak again. Christ, the bloody things were better than doorbells. This time the steps were halting and slow and I knew it wasn’t Denton.
I had actually managed to sleep a few hours, and I am ashamed to admit that for a moment I thought of simply ignoring the sounds and going back to sleep. Livrit has a bite like a distempered mule, even if you’re used to it. But chivalry demanded that I get up, because those light, tentative footsteps could only have been Maddy.
She had left the hall by the time I had pulled on my dressing gown, but it did not matter. I had a fairly good idea where she was going. I caught up to her halfway down the stairs.
Her walk was stiff and strange, starting and stopping the movements at odd places. It put me in mind of something, though I couldn’t think of what. More importantly, it meant that she was slow on the steps, and my stomach clenched at how easy it would be for her to fall.
“Madeline, you’re sleepwalking again.”
She turned to look at me, her eyes again bright but unfocused. “Whoooooo?” she breathed.
“It’s me. Easton. Remember?”
Madeline swung her head from side to side. It didn’t look like she was shaking her head, exactly. Her whole neck moved. I was reminded of the way that Hob swings his head to shake off flies. “Tooo…’annnyyy…” Another odd swinging motion.
Too any?
Realization dawned. Too many. Her lips moved as if they were stiff, and the “M” sound was barely there, while the rest were drawn out. Too many. Too many what?
“Whooo?” She stretched a hand toward me, pointing.
Too many words? I tried to simplify. “Easton. Eeeast-uhn.”
Madeline seemed to relax, as if I had finally grasped what she was asking. “Eeeestun.”
“Yes. That’s right.” Was it the catalepsy? Denton had said that she became paralyzed to the point of coma, but was this another symptom? Were her lips and perhaps the joint at the top of the neck unable to move? Could she not focus her eyes and see who I was? Or was she still sleepwalking, and this was all a symptom of the dream? I took her arm in case she might fall. I barely dared to touch the skin, but I could feel the fine, dead white hair tickling against my palm.
“One,” she said. “Two … thhhhreee…’our…’ive … sixsss…” She paused as if thinking. “Se’en … eight … nnnine … te-uhn.” She looked at me. “Gooood?”
“Very good,” I said, wondering what the hell was going on.
She nodded, throwing her head up and down as violently as a horse fighting a bit. “Hhharrd,” she said. “Vreath ’ooving hhharrd.”
Breath moving hard, I translated internally, after a moment of puzzlement. Was she saying it was hard to breathe? Had she been counting breaths?
Then she smiled and it was terrible.
Madeline’s lips pulled up at the corners in a terrible parody of good humor, her mouth stretching painfully wide, her jaw dropped so far that it looked almost like a scream. Above that awful grin, her eyes were as flat and dead as stones.
I do not delude myself that I have seen every way the human mind can fail, though I have seen a hundred ways that soldiers and civilians can break in war. But I had never seen a smile like that.
I stumbled backward, dropping her arm. There was the faintest of ripping sensations against my fingers. It was so unexpected that I looked down and saw my hand covered in the fine white hair from her arms. Dear God, had I closed my hand and pulled it out by the roots?
No. When I looked in horror at her forearm, there was a handprint of bare flesh left behind. Each finger was visible, and the outline of my thumb against her wrist, but I had not left a bruise. Had it been so shallowly rooted in the skin that my merest touch had torn it free?
The new horror replaced the old. I looked up and she no longer wore that horrible grin. “Oh, Maddy…” I said miserably, trying to wipe the hair off on my trousers. It stuck to my sweating palms like cat hair.
She shook her head again. “No ’Addy.”
“What?”
“No Maddy.” She was clearly trying to enunciate, even though the “M” came out more like “Uh-addy.” She banged her wrist against her sternum and I winced, expecting even that light pressure to leave bruises.
“No?” What on earth was she dreaming about?
Another flailing nod. “One,” she said. “Maddy one. Meee one. Maddy … Meee … two.”
“Two,” I agreed.
She seemed to sag. “Vreath ’ooving hharrd,” she muttered. I did not know whether to try to steady her or to avoid touching her again.
“You must be tired,” I said sympathetically.
“Tiiirrd,” she agreed.
“Let’s go back to your room,” I suggested. I took her shoulders, where the cloth covered them, reluctant to touch her bare skin again for fear of tearing more hair loose. “This way.”
Maddy allowed me to steer her back to her room. She pointed to things as we passed and named each one, like a small child learning to speak. “Waall. Stair. Cannndle. Eaaastonn.”
No maid greeted us when I pushed open the door to her room. Damnation. I led her to the bed, wondering how to get her to lie down without panicking her or leaving even more bruises. “Down,” I said, as if she were a dog. “Let’s lie down.”
“Dowwwuhn,” she agreed. The bed was a mess. I saw more hair everywhere on the sheets, as if she’d been shedding. Christ’s blood. It’s never a good sign when people’s hair falls out. I would have to tell Denton.
Unfortunately, once I’d gotten Maddy into bed, I realized that I had no idea which room was his. There were a hundred doors in this great hulk. I could go about yelling, I supposed, but what was Denton going to do tonight that he wouldn’t do in daylight?
I was halfway back to my room before I realized what Maddy’s stilted walk had reminded me of.
It was the hare.