Usher's Passing (67 page)

If Pendulum could do what the man claimed—and there was no reason to doubt it—then Usher Armaments would have created the most fearsome weapon in history. "If it's just a curiosity," she said, "why don't you disconnect it?"

"Oh, I can't do that. Miss Dunstan," he replied politely. "If the outsiders ever brought their bloodhounds up to Briartop Mountain again, they might find the garage and tunnel I use. They might need another earthquake to teach them a lesson in respect all over again, wouldn't they?"

"You . . . use?" Raven whispered.

"We have another destination," Edwin told her. "It's just a bit farther along the corridor. Both of you will join us, won't you?" He motioned with his light.

New had heard Edwin speaking only distantly, and could not understand most of what was said. His dreams were still fixed on Usherland, and in his mind he walked through the magnificent rooms of the Lodge, and everything he saw was his. Everything. He could live in the Lodge, if he liked. All he would have to do is use the magic.

He was needed here at Usherland. They wanted him to be the man of the house.

"Master Newlan?" Edwin said quietly. "You can leave the old man's wand here, if you like. You won't need it anymore."

New's fingers began to loosen. The stick started to slip to the floor.

—
give you everything—

Edwin's voice was soft and soothing. "Leave it here, won't you?"

No! New thought. Don't give it up! He remembered what his mother and the Mountain King had said about the Lodge. It was insidious, tricky. It would destroy him. But suddenly it seemed to him that they were wrong, that both of them were afraid and wanted to keep him up on Briartop Mountain. His senses reeled— what was wrong, and what was right? He was needed here, and he could have everything. Edwin Bodane's soft voice and smile promised him everything. All he had to do was use his magic. Don't let go of the wand! an inner voice shouted. But Edwin Bodane's eyes were fixed firmly on him, and New felt the iron authority of his power—a cold power, as cold as midnight frost, as cold as the wind on Briartop. It swept his will away, and his hand opened.

The wand fell to the chamber floor.

The snare, New thought weakly. I've still got the snare, and I have to keep it.

Edwin stared at him, his head cocked to one side, a slight frown disturbing his features. He shone his light down at the wand, then into New's face again.

New realized he could not—must not—think about the snare. If the man in the cap knew . . .

He let himself be taken by the images of Usherland and the Lodge that played through his mind. Everything. Usherland would be his home . . .

'We'll go now," Edwin said, watching New's face through careful eyes.

In the corridor, Raven whirled to run. The black panther blocked her escape.

"No," Edwin whispered. The desire to flee drained out of her like water from a punctured bucket. "Come on, now, don't be naughty." She dropped her lantern to the floor. Edwin touched her hand with freezing fingers; she flinched, but let him guide her effortlessly along the corridor.

Edwin stopped before the closed slab of a door and aimed his light into Rix's face. Rix's pupils contracted, but his face remained gray and slack. "We're going through that door now. You've been through it once before, when you were lost and wandered down here. The landlord was testing you then, Rix. Trying to find out how strong you were, how much you could take without breaking. Boone and Katt broke, in their own ways. They were unfit, and had to be disposed of. But you survived." Edwin rubbed Rix's shoulder. "We're going in now. Can you hear me?"

"Yes sir," Rix said. He was a little boy, and he was having a bad dream of panthers and pendulums and loud noises that hurt his bones. But Edwin was here. Edwin would love him and take care of him.

Edwin put his hand on the knob—an ordinary one of brass, worn and discolored by many hands—and opened the door.

SOBBING AND TERRIFIED, THE LITTLE BOY HAD SEEN A CRACK OF LIGHT
at the end of a long, black tunnel. He ran toward it, his knees bruised from falling down a stone staircase. There was a gash across the bridge of his nose, and his eyes were swollen almost shut from crying. He reached the light, which edged beneath a door with a rough, splintery surface. His hand searched for the knob, found and twisted it.

He burst into a cold room with walls and floor of uneven gray stones. Two torches guttered on opposite walls, casting a dim orange light with long, overlapping shadows. Somebody was here! he thought. Somebody would find him at last! He tried to cry out, but his voice was a hoarse rasp. He had screamed his throat raw during the eternity that the Lodge had sealed its corridors and redirected its staircases behind his back.

But there way no one in the chamber. Someone had been here, though. They'd lighted the torches and then gone to look for him. He could wait right here, and somebody would be back to find him.

He was exhausted from running into walls, struggling with doors that refused to open, feeling his way along corridors that had taken him deeper into a world of cold and silence. He could see the gray mist of his breath before him in the chamber, and he shivered, wrapping his arms around himself for extra warmth.

And in the torchlight, knives of different shapes glittered on wall hooks over a long, dark-stained table.

On one side of the room was what looked like a metal bathtub on wheels. Above it, dangling on a chain that hung from a rafter, was something shrouded with a long black cloth. Big hooks with sharpened points hung at the ends of similar chains.

In a corner of the room was a large, rectangular metal box with a hand-crank on it.

The little boy walked toward the collection of knives. There were ten, ranging in size from one as thin as an icepick to one with a curved, sawtoothed blade. Next to the table was a grinding wheel to sharpen them with. The knives looked very sharp and well cared for. The little boy thought that the display belonged in a butcher shop. The tabletop was smeared with thick, encrusted scarlet clots. On it was a roll of brown wrapping paper and a ball of twine.

He approached the metal bathtub. The liquid in it was dark red. It was the color of one of his mother's favorite gowns. The liquid smelled like the old Indian-head pennies in his treasure box.

But in the liquid floated hanks of hair. Somebody got a haircut, he thought. Somebody got scalped.

He looked up at the black-shrouded object that hung directly over the tub. The shroud's edge was only inches above his head. He raised his arm, touching the cloth. It felt damp and slightly greasy. He pulled at it gently, but it wouldn't give. The motion of his arm made the object creak back and forth on its chain. Something dripped down info the metal tub.

Shouldn't touch, he thought.
Shouldn't!

But he put both hands on the shroud's edge and yanked sharply downward.

It ripped and fell away.

"I knew you were beginning to remember," Edwin said softy, standing behind Rix in the doorway. Rix stared blankly into the darkened chamber, but a pulse had begun beating harder at his temples. "When you told me the plot of
Bedlam
over the telephone, I knew it was coming back to you. Something must've triggered a memory—I don't know what. But when you mentioned the skeletons hanging in the basement of your fictitious building, I knew you were remembering what you'd found in this room, when you were a little boy. Yesterday, I was certain when you told me about the skeleton you kept seeing in your mind—and what you thought was a silver doorknob . . ."

Rix released a quiet, agonized gasp.

He remembered the black shroud ripping, falling away to the floor.

The skeleton swung like a pendulum over Rix's head. There were still bits of flesh and muscle clinging to the bones, and its eyes were red holes of crusted blood and tissue. A hook had been driven through its back, and its mouth gaped open. The skeleton was about Rix's size.

He had backed away and slowly collapsed to his knees as the grim visage of death continued to swing back and forth, the chain rattling. Then he had fallen on his side, curling his knees to his chest, his eyes sunken and staring.

"I found you in here," Edwin said. "I told you to stand up, and I held you in my arms. I made you forget what you'd seen, and I took you out of the Lodge. I didn't want you to find it, Rix. I was trying to find you first, but it was the body of a boy I'd taken the same day you and Boone came into the Lodge. I hadn't had time to prepare it properly."

Rix's bones had become a cage of ice. He knew where he was, and who was with him, but he couldn't concentrate beyond Edwin's soft, soothing voice. Images streaked through his mind like meteors: the Rastafarian cabdriver's skeleton earring, the plastic skeleton that Boone had hung in the Quiet Room's doorway, Sandra's hair floating in the bloody bathtub. He remembered what had happened here, he remembered Edwin being with him, he remembered the small hand reaching out to cover the silver button embossed with the face of a roaring lion . . .

"It was later," Edwin continued, "that I realized I'd lost a button from my blazer. I found it in your treasure box, the day I returned the furniture to your room from the Lodge. You must've twisted it off that day, and I think your mind fixed on it to block out what you'd seen. You were looking for it today, weren't you? I think that stupid trick Boone arranged for you at the De Peyser Hotel helped trigger your memory even more.'' He grasped Rix's arm and led him into the chamber. New followed dazedly, and the panther's advance forced Raven in.

A match flared. Edwin began to light a series of oil-dampened torches set in the walls. His shadow grew larger. Orange light jumped and capered, flashed on the ends of the hooks that hung on chains from the ceiling, gleamed off the collection of knives over the bloodstained table, illuminated the metal bathtub and the rectangular box in the corner. As the light strengthened, Raven looked at New's face; his eyes were bright green, and he was staring straight ahead. She feared that he was already lost.

There was a pile of clothes against the wall a few feet away. Raven stood looking numbly at the little sneakers, faded jeans, sweaters and shirts, socks and underwear.

"This is where I bring them." Edwin's voice curled silkily across the room, echoing off the stones. "Most of them I can find on Briartop Mountain. Sometimes I take one of the old cars from the garage you and Master Newlan found, Miss Dunstan, and I drive a safe distance, where no one's ever heard of the Pumpkin Man. It's no different from hunting small game. Except I'm slowing down now, and sometimes they get away." He looked at Raven, a thin smile spreading across his mouth. "When I was a young man, I could freeze them at thirty yards. Stop them dead in their tracks. I could catch them within shouting distance of their houses. The landlord helped me refine the power I was born with, Miss Dunstan. I can even blind the people who come out to search for their lost children. They may look right at a footprint, and never see it. I can stand in a shadow, close enough to touch them, and they'll never know I'm there."

"You . . . bring the children here . . . and kill them."

"Prepare
them," he corrected. "It's part of what the Bodanes do for the Ushers." He crossed the room and stood with his hand on Rix's shoulder. "Can you hear me, Rix?"

"Yes sir." Pumpkin Man's in the woods, he thought crazily.

"Something else has to be passed,' Edwin said, his face close to Rix's. "First the wand that was created for Hudson Usher's great-great-grandfather. Then the responsibility of Usher Armaments. Then the knowledge. For centuries, your ancestors have worshiped the landlord. The
true
landlord of this world, not only of Usherland. The wand was a gift, a symbol of trust given from the landlord. It will protect your life, Rix, but to fulfill that trust you must do as the landlord pleases. You're his hands, Rix. I'm his voice. He's given Usher Armaments to you, because of Walen's three children you're the one most suited to carry out what the landlord wants done."

Sandra's hair floated in the bloody water. Pumpkin Man's in the woods. Edwin was there to protect him, and he had always loved Edwin very much.

"You can use the anger that's bottled up inside you for the landlord," Edwin whispered smoothly. "I watched that rage grow over the years. I
know
what you're capable of, and I think you're just understanding it yourself. There's a cold fire inside you, and you can use it for Usher Armaments. I've been helping you, all along . . ."