Usher's Passing (22 page)

Rix gripped the edge of the desk. His nerves were on fire.

The golden light that filled the room began to grow harshly yellow, so bright that it stung his eyes. He heard water gurgling through the Gatehouse pipes. Boone's snoring sounded like the rumble of a chainsaw through the wall. A noise like a mosquito's hum grew steadily louder. The hum became a whine. It was the Jetcopter, approaching Usherland.

He had to find a place to hide. The nearest Quiet Room was Boone's, but he'd have to get through Puddin' to use it. There was a closet in Katt's room, Walen had said. He'd have to hurry to get there before the full force of the oncoming attack hit him. His head was hammering as he stumbled toward the door and reached for the knob.

But as his arm stretched out for it, the doorknob changed. It was no longer a large octagon of cut crystal; now it was fashioned of polished silver, and embossed on it was the face of a roaring lion.

Rix pulled his hand back as if he'd been burned. A whipstrike of pain seared through his head, and at that instant he saw an emaciated body laying in darkness on a bed, and he realized it was not his father but himself, rotting in the Quiet Room.

And then it was over. The attack had passed, leaving him sweating and shivering, with his forehead pressed against the door. The intensity of the light faded, as did the Gatehouse sounds.

He looked at the cut-crystal doorknob. The silver lion's-face was gone. But he'd seen that silver doorknob before. He couldn't recall where. Perhaps, he wondered, in his recurrent nightmares of the Lodge?

He asked himself why the attack had stopped. The sweat was drying on his face, and his heartbeat was returning to normal. Usually, by now, he'd be crawling on his belly. Was what Walen said about Usherland true? he wondered. Now that he was back, was he getting better?

Still shaky, Rix dressed in a pair of khaki trousers, a white shirt, and a brown pullover sweater. In his closet had materialized three new suits in his size, pants, sweaters, and a dozen starched dress shirts. He sat down at his desk and ravenously ate the food Cass had brought.

Then, feeling a lot better, he paged through the diary.

He had no idea what Nora St. Clair Usher had looked like, but he remembered the photograph of the woman in white, standing on a balcony. She'd held herself with regal dignity, though there'd been something terribly sad about that picture: a single figure, standing alone against the grandeur of the Lodge, staring out across the black, solemn lake. He envisioned Nora as a woman of her time—childlike, innocent, maybe a little spoiled, but certainly beautiful. In his imagination he gave her a slender frame, ringlets of light brown hair brushed back from a high forehead, the large gray eyes of a curious waif. Surely she was a stylish woman, or Erik wouldn't have gone after her so ardently. She was charming, able to chat amiably with any of the guests Erik brought to Usherland, and probably a model hostess.

Rix drank his coffee and poured himself a second cup. He was feeling much stronger now. The breakfast had helped.

He stopped at what was written in the diary under "July 5, 1919." It was the first entry in more than six months. The handwriting was shaky, marred with untidy smears and blotches. Nora's strain was showing.

The first line read, "He is a murderer."

As he read, Nora St. Clair Usher began to speak to Rix over the decades. Her words sparked his imagination; they roamed over time and space, and suddenly he was attending the Fourth of July Gala held at Usherland more than thirty years before his birth.

A thousand Japanese lanterns winked with rainbow colors in Usherland's trees. Long tables covered with fine white Irish lace had been set up on the lakeshore for Erik Usher's guests. More than six hundred people had come to be fed on roast pig, thick slabs of Chicago beef, New England lobster, veal, lamb, and platters of raw oysters on ice, flown up from Florida. There were pickled quail eggs, pheasant's tongue in vinaigrette, smoked Peking duck, and Alaskan king crabs as big as Rolls-Royce wheels. Blazing torches embedded in the ground illuminated the scene as an army of waiters in red tuxedos scurried around the tables, pouring champagne into crystal goblets. On a white bandstand decorated with American flags, a brass band played regimental marching music. Cicadas hummed in the trees, and every so often a lion or some other big predator roared from Erik's private zoo.

Small American flags were placed beside every plate. The guests had dressed in accordance with a request on their gold-embossed invitations: all of them, from Washington diplomat to Asheville bank president, wore red, white, and blue.

At the head of the longest table, Erik Usher suddenly rose to his feet. Broad-shouldered and hulking, he wore a flaming red suit, a white bow tie, and a blue shirt. He lifted a megaphone to his lips, torchflame sparkling in his eyeglasses. "A toast!" he bellowed, and raised his champagne glass.

The brass band stopped in mid-cadence. The noise of six hundred, eighty-four people talking, eating, and drinking faded to a soft mutter. Waiters were stumbling over each other, trying to fill all the upraised glasses. Corks popped like firecrackers.

"Well?" Erik shouted through the megaphone.
"Stand up,
damn it!"

The guests rose as if at attention before the President of the United States—whose aide, Mr. Conyers, was placed beside a stunning, white-silk-clad Nora Usher. She wore blue gloves, and there were red ribbons in her hair. As Nora stood up, she saw the drunken gleam in her husband's eyes. He'd had too much champagne. If this party was like others Erik had hosted, it might continue for days, until people passed out on the ground or swam naked in the estate's fountains. She lifted her glass with the others. Across the table from her, Harry Sanderson—a middle-aged tobacco magnate from Winston-Salem—belched up a breath of crabmeat and garlic sauce.

"To the Fourth of July," Erik roared, "and to the principles on which this great nation was founded! Long may our flag wave over a country where any man can roll up his goddamned sleeves and make himself a millionaire!" Behind him, across the flat surface of the lake, the Lodge glowed with light. It was an awesome sight, and still Erik ordered the workmen to continue building. In the darkness that was Briartop Mountain, a few specks of light could be seen through the trees.

"My great-great-grandfather came here from Wales with his pockets full of coal dust!" Erik said. "But he had an idea. He designed a rifle that would knock a redskin from Kansas City into Canada, and that sonofabitch
worked
!
The Usher Repeating Rifle opened this country's frontier, and without it we might be eating corn soup instead of roast beef, and jingling beads in our pockets instead of silver dollars!"

There was a murmur of laughter. Down the table, a young floozy who'd arrived hooked on the arm of a rich, elderly gunpowder merchant giggled like a hyena.

Nora was not a drinker. She detested the taste of alcohol, and so there was only icewater in her glass. Cigar smoke wafted through the air like a blue fog, irritating her sinuses. Over Erik's shoulder, she suddenly saw a shape move past the glass walls of the cupola that stood on the highest roof of the Lodge. Erik's father, Ludlow, had become all but a hermit in the two years she'd been an Usher's wife. She rarely saw him, and he never spoke to her. He stayed up in that glass cupola for the most part, but sometimes at night she could hear him walking the corridor outside her bedchamber. She could tell it was him, because she heard the cane tapping on the hardwood floor.

Suddenly, Erik put down his glass and grabbed Nora's arm, pulling her toward him. She stumbled, spilling water all over her dress. He smelled of the horses that he ran, hour after hour, day after day, on the estate's racetrack. "And I've got an announcement for you people!" he told them. "I'm gonna be a
father!"
There was a hearty round of applause and shouts of bravo. Erik patted Nora's stomach, and she felt her face burn. "Gonna be a father in February or March, the doctor says! So this toast is to the future, too, and all the Ushers who are yet to be born. Everybody can drink now!"

Nora pulled away from him and sat down. She'd planned on sending out announcements to a select group of friends, and thought Erik had agreed. By morning, the item would be in the Asheville newspaper, she knew. She caught Mrs. Van Doss watching her with a cold smile on her weasel features. Across the table, Harry Sanderson lit another of his seven-inch-long Havana cigars and shouted for more champagne.

The fireworks display began with an ear-cracking boom that echoed across the lake and back again off the walls of the Lodge. The sky lit up with fiery colors, red rockets, blue star-shells, gold pinwheels. The display, which had cost Erik more than sixty thousand dollars, went on for more than a half hour; when it was over and the last cinder had hissed into the lake, Nora was a trembling bundle of raw nerves. Erik grinned gleefully. The lights had gone out, Nora saw, in the glass cupola.

After the applause had died away and Nora forced herself to converse with an elderly Asheville social queen named Delilah Huckabee, Sanderson clapped his hands and called out, "Fine show, Erik! Damned fine! Couldn't have done better myself!" His blue bow tie was crooked, his eyes red-rimmed. His wife was trying to control him, but having little effect.

"You know the Ushers, Harry," Erik replied, cutting another slab of beef from the platter before him. "We always entertain with a bang."

"How much your daddy give you to put on that show, Erik?"

Erik glanced up. There was a thin smile on his grease-filmed mouth, but his eyes were like chunks of granite. "You're drinking too much, aren't you, Harry?"

"The hell I am, boy! See, I came to your daddy's fortieth birthday party, right here at Usherland. Now
that
was one hell of a party! Old bastard must've shot off a hundred thousand bucks' worth of fireworks! How much did he give you to buy yours?"

Sanderson was probing a sore spot, and he knew it. Erik Usher
was still on his father's payroll. Though Ludlow's health was
unsteady, the old man held the purse strings—and Nora had heard
Erik rage like a madman over what he considered a paltry allowance.

"Yeah," Sanderson continued, with an exaggerated wink at Nora, "that old Ludlow really knew how to throw a party. Made people
sit up and take notice, he did. When you went to one of
his
parties, you never forgot it. He must've spent a hundred thousand bucks on those fireworks. Went on for a goddamned hour, they did."

"Is that so?" Erik asked. Flames glinted in his glasses. About thirty people were listening to this exchange, and none of them but Nora knew what was seething inside her husband. "So you like fireworks, Harry?"

"Went on for a goddamned hour," he said. "Champagne over here, waiter!"

Erik
slowly stood up. His chest was thrust forward like a fighting
rooster's. Nora recognized it as a dangerous sign. "If it's
fireworks you like, Harry . . . then it's fireworks you'll get. Enjoy
the party. Drink up. And smile. Mr. Conyers, will you attend
to my wife for a while, please? I'll return shortly." Before
Nora could ask him where he was going, Erik strode briskly
across the lawn to the cars parked along the drive. He slid into
a Rolls-Royce limousine and it turned around, heading out of
Usherland.

The band
played on, and for the next hour or so Nora talked to Mr.
Conyers about the social scene in Washington. Harry Sanderson
progressively slid lower in his seat. A formally dressed couple
leaped into the lake. Someone produced a pistol and began to
shoot out the hanging lanterns.

Nora's conversation was interrupted by the rumble of engines.

Headlights stabbed through the woods. Three Usher trucks, each towing something covered with green tarpaulins, were approaching the Lodge. They stopped on the road, thirty yards from the tables. She heard a man shouting; it sounded like Erik's voice, but she wasn't sure. Other figures began to scramble out of the trucks. Erik materialized from the gloom, walking toward his guests, and Nora rose from her seat.

Erik's face was flushed, and as he walked right past Nora she heard him breathing hard, like an enraged animal. "Harry?" he asked, and the drunken man looked up, unable to focus. "I've brought you a present, Harry. Something to help you remember my party."