Usher's Passing

Chapter 35

RIX WAS JARRED AWAKE BY PUDDIN'S SNORING. HER BODY WAS sprawled across him, and she smelled like an animal. She'd attacked him feverishly when he'd come to bed, clawing at his back and biting his shoulders. She was used to roughness, and Rix had tried unsuccessfully to calm her down. Her thrusting was so hard it had bruised his pelvis. After the race to orgasm was over, Puddin' had clutched to him, alternately sobbing and asking him in baby talk if she wasn't the best piece he'd ever had.
My God! Rix thought, as a snake pit of guilt opened in his stomach. What's wrong with me? I just made love to Boone's wife! She lay heavily on him, a fleshy burden. He felt tainted and dirty, and knew he'd only used Puddin' for revenge. Still, she'd asked for it, hadn't she? She was the one who crawled into my bed! Rix told himself. I didn't go looking for her!
He tried to ease out from under her; Puddin's snoring stopped, and she mumbled something in the slurred voice of a little girl.
There was a quick, furtive movement in the room. Rix sensed it rather than saw it directly. He looked toward the chest of drawers, could see the vague shape of someone standing there.
Boone, he thought. His heart kicked. He could envision Boone coming at them drunkenly with a candelabra to bash in both their skulls.
But the figure didn't move again for perhaps twenty seconds. Then, very slowly, began inching toward the door,
"I can see you," Rix said. "You don't have to creep."
Puddin' shifted position. "Huh? Whazzat?"
Rix reached for a box of matches on the bedside table. As soon as he moved, the figure bolted toward the door and darted into the darkness of the corridor. Rix pushed Puddin' aside - she cursed, turned over and started snoring again - and lit a match, touching the wicks of the candelabra he'd brought up from the library. In the amber glow he saw that several drawers had been left open; his closet door was still ajar. He got out of bed, put on his jeans, and walked out into the hallway.
Nothing moved in the range of the flickering light. The Gatehouse was quiet. He walked slowly to the end of the long corridor, and stopped at the stairs that led to Walen's Quiet Room. His father's decay seemed to hang in the air in dense layers. Rix's stomach lurched, and he quickly retraced his path. He stopped before his mother's door and listened; there was no sound beyond. Next was Katt's room. He stood outside it, listening for any telltale noises, and then touched the doorknob.
It was damp.
Rix looked at his palm. His hand was slick with sweat. Slowly he turned the knob and cracked the door open.
The candlelight slipped inside and illuminated Katt's pink-canopied bed. She was asleep, her head on the pillow, her face turned away from him.
Rix closed the door. Walen's reek seemed suddenly, sickeningly worse. He crinkled his nose with revulsion and looked back along the corridor.
And the candlelight fell upon a walking corpse whose gray flesh had tightened and fissured, oozing yellow fluid, the eyes about to burst from the skull, the lower jaw hanging and exposing blackened gums.
Rix cried out in horror, almost dropping the candelabra.
The thing staggered backward on spindly legs, a shrill shriek escaping the ruin of a mouth. It grasped the rotted nubs of its ears - and Rix saw that it held the ebony cane.
It was his father.
By candlelight, Walen Usher was a hideous, contorted figure wearing a shroud of white silk. As his face stretched in a scream and his eyes glinted wetly, the flesh ripped alongside his misshapen nose, fluids dripping down onto the gown.
"What is it?" Margaret shouted, about to emerge from her room.
"Get back!" Rix commanded. "Don't open your door!" The sound of his voice stopped her. Walen went mad, flailing with his cane, knocking over vases and fresh flowers.
"Oh God oh God - " Katt keened from her doorway.
Walen turned, hands clasped to his ears, stumbling toward the stairs to the Quiet Room. Before he'd taken three steps, he lost his balance and pitched forward on his face; his body lay twitching violently.
Mrs. Reynolds, wearing her mask and gloves, emerged from the corridor's gloom. "Help me!" she ordered Rix as she bent beside Walen. "Hurry!"
Rix realized that she wanted him to help her pick Walen up, and his flesh crawled.
"Hurry, damn it!" she snapped.
He put the candelabra on a table and forced himself to grasp his father's arms. The flesh was spongy and soft, like wet cotton. As they lifted Walen, the cane dropped from his hand to the floor. "Help me get him upstairs," Mrs. Reynolds said. They carried him back to the Quiet Room, and in the dark -  where Rix held his breath and clamped a scream behind his teeth - returned Walen to bed. The old man instantly contorted into a fetal position, moaning softly.
Outside the Quiet Room, Mrs. Reynolds closed the door and snapped on her pencil flashlight, shining it into Rix's ashen face. "Are you all right? I can give you a sedative, if you'd - "
"What was he doing out of that room?" Rix asked angrily. "I thought he couldn't leave his bed!"
"Whisper!" she hissed. "Come on." She led him down the stairs. Katt and Margaret had both come out of their rooms and were huddled together. Down the hallway, Puddin' was shouting to know what was going on.
"Shut your mouth, you tramp!" Margaret yelled at her, and she was quiet.
"I'm sorry." Above her mask, Mrs. Reynolds's eyes were bloodshot. "I dozed off. I have to sleep whenever I can. Last night I woke up and found him out of bed. It must've taken every bit of his strength to get down here." She nodded toward the candles. "He must've panicked because of the light. The screaming didn't help, either." She took her mask off and wadded it in her fist.
"What'd he expect? Jesus Christ, I've never seen anything like that in my - " He was almost overcome by a surge of dizziness and nausea, and he had to lean against the wall to catch his breath. His pulse thundered.
"You're supposed to watch him every minute!" Margaret said stridently. Her face was coated with white cream, a plastic bag over her still-sprayed hairstyle. "You're not supposed to let him out of that room!"
"I'm sorry," she repeated, "but I have to sleep, too. One person can't watch him all the time. I've already suggested that you hire someone else to - "
"You're being paid what three nurses would charge!" Margaret told her. "And when you took this job, you understood you'd be working alone!"
"Mrs. Usher, I've got to rest. If I can only get a few hours sleep, I'll be all right. Can't someone else sit for him for a while?"
"Certainly not! You're the trained professional!"
"Edwin," Rix said, as his head began to clear. "Somebody call Edwin. He could sit with Dad."
"That's not his job!" Margaret snapped.
"Call him, damn it!" Rix shouted, and his mother flinched. "Or would you like to go up there and sit in the dark with . . . that thing?"
Her eyes bright with anger, Margaret marched forward. Before Rix could ward off the blow, Margaret had lifted her hand and slapped him hard across the face. "Don't you dare speak about your father like that," she seethed. "He's still a human being!"
Rix rubbed his cheek. "Barely," he replied. "Just thank God you didn't see him, Mother. I'll ask you again - do you want to go up and sit with him?"
She started to reply harshly but then hesitated, scowling at Rix and Mrs. Reynolds. She strode to the telephone down the corridor and dialed the Bodane house.
"Thank you," Mrs. Reynolds said. "I had no idea your father was strong enough to make it down those stairs."
"Where did he think he was going? Out for a walk?" Rix saw the ebony cane lying on the floor, and bent to retrieve it. As his hand closed around it, a powerful jolt darted up his spine. He straightened, examining the fine silverwork of the lion's face; it reminded him of the silver circle that flashed in his nightmares of the Lodge, but it wasn't quite the same; this lion wasn't roaring.
It was a beautiful cane. Here and there were nicks in the ebony, and exposed was a dark, glossy wood. It was lighter than he'd imagined it would be, and balanced so perfectly that he could probably hold it on the rip of his forefinger.
His hand had begun tingling; the sensation was creeping up his arm.
Ten billion dollars, he thought as he stared at the cane. My God, what a fortune!
An image formed in his mind, slowly strengthening: himself -  older, with gray hair and a handsome, time-etched face - sitting at the head of a long boardroom table, the cane in his hand as subordinates displayed production graphs and charts; himself at the Pentagon, pounding a table with his fist and watching with satisfaction as grandfatherly men in military uniforms shrank from him; himself at a magnificent party, surrounded by beautiful women and fawning men; himself striding like a king down the long concrete corridors of the armaments factory as machines pulsed behind the walls like metallic heartbeats.
Katt's hand flashed out. She gripped the cane, and Rix's visions fragmented, faded away. They held the cane between them for an instant. Katt's eyes were fierce, her forehead beaded with tiny drops of sweat. Startled, Rix released his grip, and Katt clutched the cane to her with both hands. What was I thinking? he asked himself, as his stomach twisted with self-disgust. That I actually wanted Usher Armaments? The defiance slipped from Katt's face. She was his sister again, not the stranger she'd been a few seconds before.
"Edwin will be here in a few minutes," Margaret announced, returning from the phone. "Of course you realize, Mrs. Reynolds, that I will speak to Dr. Francis about this."
"Do what you please. You know as well as I do that Mr. Usher insisted on one nurse only. And I earn my salary, Mrs. Usher. If you don't think so, I'll pack my bag and leave right now."
Margaret's face tightened, but she didn't reply.
Mrs. Reynolds glanced at Katt. "He'll want his cane back. He hasn't been without it since I got here."
Katt hesitated. Margaret said, "Give it to her, Kattrina."
With what seemed to Rix like great reluctance, Katt handed the cane to Mrs. Reynolds. The nurse turned away and went back to the Quiet Room without a word.
Rix's hand was still tingling, and he rubbed it with the other. When he looked up, he caught Katt's gaze again - and he knew she'd been in his room, and why.
She said, "I'm going back to bed." Her voice was pitched slightly higher than usual.
"Lord, what a start that was! I'm going downstairs for a cup of coffee to steady my nerves, if either of you cares to join me." When neither of them answered, Margaret took the candelabra and walked along the corridor toward the staircase, flinging a scathing glance at Puddin', who stood wrapped in a sheet outside Rix's door. She stopped in her tracks, realizing at once what must have been going on. "My God," she said. "One of my sons isn't enough for you, is it?"
Puddin' answered by flashing the sheet open. Margaret muttered, "Filth!" and hurried to the stairs.
In the dark, Rix said quietly, "I have what you're looking for, Katt."
She paused in her doorway, framed against the faint blue dawn light that was beginning to creep through the bedroom windows. "I knew you must," she replied calmly. "I've already searched Boone's room. Where is it?"
"Under my bed."
"Get it for me, Rix. I need it."
"How long?" he asked.
"Does it matter?"
"Yes. How long?"
"Two years." The words fell like hammerblows across Rix's skull. "Get it for me."
"What if I don't? What if I flush it down the toilet where it belongs?"
"Don't be stupid. It's easy to get more."
After his attack had passed in Katt's Quiet Room, Rix had taken off the blindfold and returned it to the shelf behind his head. The metal box up there had drawn his curiosity, and he'd taken it out into the bedroom to open it. Inside were two hypodermic syringes, a half-burned candle, several thick rubber bands, a scorched spoon, and a small packet of white powder. "Why?" he said. "That's all I want to know."
"Come in and close the door," she said, a hard edge in her voice. Rix followed her inside and did as she asked. Katt struck a match and lit several candles around the room. The sweat sparkled on her perfect face like tiny diamonds, but her eyes were dark and deeply sunken, like the eyeholes of a skull.
"Why heroin?" Rix whispered. "Jesus Christ! Are you trying to kill yourself?"
"I'm not an addict." She blew the match out. "Why did you steal it? Were you going to show it to Dad? Or have you already?"
"No. I haven't, and I didn't plan to."
"Sure." She smiled tightly. "Tell me another one. You were going to show it to Dad, weren't you? You were going to go up there and tell him all about Katt the junkie, weren't you?"
He shook his head. "I swear to you, I - "
"Don't lie, damn it!" Her smile faded, replaced by a twisted, angry sneer. "Why else would you have stolen it if you weren't going to blackmail me with it? I saw the way you held Dad's cane! You know as well as I do what having that cane means! You want it just as much as I do!"
"You're wrong," Rix said, stunned at how little he really knew about his sister. "I don't want anything, Katt. For Christ's sake, why heroin? You've got everything anybody could want! Why are you trying to destroy yourself?"
She turned away from him and went to the window, staring out across Usherland with her arms crossed over her chest, hugging herself. The sky was plated with dense, low-lying clouds, shot through with purple and scarlet. The wind keened sharply, and a scatter of red leaves swirled against the window. "Don't pretend you care," Katt said hollowly. "It doesn't suit you."
"I do care! I thought you were off drugs! After what happened in Japan - "
"That was nothing. Just bad publicity, because I'm Walen Usher's daughter. What were you doing in my Quiet Room? No one ever goes in there but me."
"I had an attack. I didn't rummage through your room, if that's what you mean."
"What now?" She shivered, and looked at Rix. "Are you going to Dad?"
"I said I wasn't. But you've got to get help, Katt! Heroin's a damned serious - "
She laughed. It was a silky laugh, but the sound grated on Rix's nerves. "Right. Pack me off to a sanitarium. Is that the idea? Then you and Boone can fight over the estate without little Katt getting in the way. Same old Rix, so goddamned predictable. You and Boone were always at each other's throats, and both of you were so intent on killing each other that you pushed little Katt aside. Little Katt was pushed and shoved so much that she went into her shell - and she stayed there for a long, long time."
Katt smiled, the sweat sparkling on her cheeks and forehead.
"Well," she whispered, "little Katt's grown up now. And it's my turn to shove. I've always wanted the business, Rix. I got into modeling because it was easy, and because Mom encouraged me. But I wanted to prove the point that I can handle responsibility - and I know what to do with money."
"Nobody ever doubted you were intelligent. And God knows you've made more money than Boone and me put together!"
"So," Katt said, staring intently at him, "why couldn't you love me?"
"What? I do love you! I don't understand why - "
"I let them find the pot, that time in Tokyo," Katt continued. "When I called home, I asked for you to come and help me. I didn't want Dad or Boone or the lawyers. But you didn't come. You never even called to see if I was okay."
"I knew Dad and Boone would bring you home! Besides, there wasn't a hell of a lot I could've done to help you!"
"You never cared enough to try," she said softly. "I admired you so much when we were children. I didn't care about Boone. It was you I loved, most of all. But you never made time for me. You were too busy hating Dad and Boone for the things you thought they'd done to you, and later - when we were teenagers -  you were too busy brooding over the business."
"I've always had time for you!" Rix protested, but even as he said it he knew he was lying. When had he really listened to his sister? Even when they'd gone out riding together, he'd manipulated her into going over to the cemetery. He'd always used her as a pawn in his struggles against Boone and Walen, used her to spy on Margaret for him, all without regard for her feelings.
"You lucked out when we were kids. At least you had Cass and Edwin. Mom bought me dolls and dresses and told me to go play in my room. Dad set me on his knee once in a while and checked my teeth and fingernails. Well. . . that was a long time ago, wasn't it?"
"Maybe I wasn't the best brother in the world," Rix said, "but that doesn't have a damned thing to do with you shooting heroin!"
She shrugged. "The drugs came along when I had the agency. I started with tranquilizers, because I didn't want to have an attack on a location shoot. Then for fun I tried LSD, PCP, coke - whatever was handy. The heroin started for a different reason."
"What?" Rix prompted.
"Then . . . I wanted to see what the junk would do to me."
She ran her fingers over her flawless cheekbones. "What do you see when you look at me, Rix?"
"A beautiful woman, whom I feel very sorry and scared for right now."
She took a step closer to him. "I've seen other beautiful women who got hooked on drugs. Within a couple of years, they were wrecked. Look at me; really look." She traced a finger under her eyes. "Do you see any wrinkles, Rix? Any sign of sagging? Can you see anything that might tell you I was thirty-one, instead of ten years younger?"
"No. Which is why I can't understand the heroin. For someone who takes such meticulous care of - "
"You're not listening to me!" she said fiercely. "I don't take care of myself, Rix! I never have! I just don't age!"
"Thank God for your good genes, then! Don't try to kill yourself!"
She sighed and shook her head. "You're still not listening, are you! I'm saying that the heroin should have had a physical effect on me. Why hasn't it? Why doesn't my face ever change, Rix?"
"Do you know how many women would kill to look like you? Come on! If you expect me to give you back that junk so you can continue some kind of stupid experiment on yourself, you're crazy!"
"I'll get more. All I have to do is drive to Asheville."
"You're committing slow suicide," Rix said grimly. "I'm not going to stand by and watch it."
"Oh no?" She raised her eyebrows, her smile mocking him. "My suicide would suit your purpose, wouldn't it? You want the estate and business for yourself. I saw it on your face when you held that cane. Why else would you have come home? Not for Dad. Not for Mother. And certainly not for Boone and me. You've pretended not to be interested; maybe, all those years, you were pretending to turn your back on the business so you could find out how Boone and I felt. I see the real you now, Rix. I see you very, very clearly."
"You're wrong." Rix was stung by Katt's accusation, but he saw she'd made up her mind about him and there wasn't much he could say or do.
"Am I?" She stepped forward until she was only a foot or so away. "Then you look at me and tell me you can walk away from ten billion dollars."
Rix started to tell her he could, but the images of power he'd felt when he held the cane whirled through his mind. Ten billion dollars, he thought - and felt something deep inside him, something that had hidden and festered far from the light of his convictions, writhe with desire. Ten billion dollars. There was nothing he couldn't do with that much, money. Hell, he could buy his own publishing company! Katt had been right, he realized with sickening clarity. If Usher Armaments didn't build the bombs, missiles, and guns, somebody else would. There would always be wars and weapons. His days of marching in peace parades suddenly seemed ludicrous; had he ever believed a few dissident voices could make a difference? The radical heroes of that era were now Wall Street businessmen, establishment politicians, and greedy merchandisers. Nothing had been changed, not really. The system had won, had proven itself unbeatable.
Had he come to Usherland, he asked himself, because he wanted a share of the inheritance? Had he been waiting all these years, hiding his true personality, in order to seize some of the Usher power?
The skeleton swung slowly through his mind.
Like a pendulum, he thought - and shunted the image aside.
"It's blood money," he said, and heard the weakness in his voice. "Every cent of it."
Katt was silent. Behind her the sky was turbulent, a gray and scarlet sweep of ugly stormclouds advancing over the mountains. The sun's rays probed through for an instant like an orange spotlight, and then the clouds closed again. The grim dawn grew darker.
"When Dad signs everything over to me," Katt said quietly, "I'm going to give you and Boone a yearly allowance of a million dollars. Mom will get five million a year. She can stay in the Gatehouse if she likes. So can Boone. I'm planning on living in New York. I wanted to tell you what I intend to do, because I'm not cutting anyone out. You can write pretty damned comfortably on a million a year."
"Yes," he replied tonelessly. "I guess I can."
"Bring the stuff to me, Rix. I need it."
Why not? he thought. Why not cook it for her and jam the needle in her vein? If she wanted to kill herself, why not help her? But he shook his head. "No. I'm sorry. I won't do it."
"I don't know what you're trying to prove - but you're not proving it."
"I don't know, either," he said, and left the room so her tormented, desperate stare wouldn't drive him insane.
In his bedroom, he ordered Puddin' out. She whined to stay, then cursed him when he shut the door in her face. He took the metal box from beneath the bed and flushed the heroin down the toilet.
He looked at himself, by candlelight, in the bathroom mirror. Since he'd returned to Usherland, the lines around his mouth and in the corners of his eyes had faded dramatically. His eyes were clearer than they'd been in years. There was color in his cheeks. His premature aging had seemed to reverse itself in the space of only a few days. Even his hair shone with new vitality.
But his face unsettled him. It was like looking at another face that had gathered around the bones - the face of someone who'd been lurking within his flesh and was finally emerging into the light.
It was the composite, he realized, of the faces in the library's oil paintings. Hudson, Aram, Ludlow, Erik - they had merged within him like a dark stranger in his soul. They lived inside him, and no matter how hard he fought against their influence, he could never really banish them. Didn't he deserve some of that ten billion dollars just for being born an Usher?
He didn't want Katt's handouts, he told himself. There was no way she could handle the pressure of Usher Armaments - not with a drug problem and a death wish! She was trying to buy his silence and cooperation. But maybe she could be persuaded that she needed an advisor?
My God! he thought, shocked at the turns his mind was taking. No! I'm my own man! I don't need any blood money!
Ten billion dollars. All the money in the world. Someone would always make the weapons. And, as Edwin had said, the Usher name was a deterrent to war.
Rix took off his jeans and stepped into the shower. When he'd finished, he dressed in a pair of dark blue pants and a white shirt from his closet. He chose a gray cardigan sweater - one of the new items that Margaret had provided for him - and put it on. The buttons were burnished silver, and were stamped with the Usher coat of arms.
He went downstairs to continue his research in the library. His mind was still confused, torn between the opposite poles of idealism and reality. The past seemed the only safe place to hide.
It was the future that he dreaded.