What Moves the Dead (4)

“Yes,” I said, aware that I was lying. I did not want to go into that tired house dripping with fungi and architectural eyes. But Madeline had summoned me and here I was. “Is someone available to tend to my horse?”

“If you will step inside, I will send the boy to attend to it.” He opened the door, still not very wide. A shaft of gray daylight penetrated the darkness inside without illuminating much of anything. I walked down the shaft with my shadow taking point, and then the servant closed the door and I stood in darkness.

As leaden as the landscape outside had been, it was lit up like a burning city compared to the interior of the house. My eyes took a moment to adjust, and then there was a rasp of matches and the servant lit a set of candles on the side table by the door. He handed me one, as if it were completely normal for the house to be this dark at midday.

“Easton?” The voice was familiar, though the owner stood in the shadows of the hallway. “Easton, what are you doing here?”

I turned to face the owner of the voice just as he stepped forward. In the flickering light of the candle, I beheld my old friend Roderick Usher. He had been a friend of my youth and under my command in the war through an accident of fate. I knew his face as well as I knew my own.

And I swear to you, if I had not heard his voice, I would not have recognized him.



* * *



Roderick Usher’s skin was the color of bone, white with a sallow undertone, a nasty color, like a man going into shock. His eyes had sunk into deep hollows tinged with blue and if there was a spare grain of flesh left on his cheeks, I couldn’t see it.

The worst of it, though, was his hair. It floated in the air like spider silk, and I told myself that it was a trick of the candlelight that made it look white rather than blond. Either way, it was now all flyaway wisps, like strands of fog, drifting in a halo around his head. The very young and the very old have hair like that. It was unsettling to see it in a man a year my junior.

Both Roderick and Madeline had always been rather pale, even when we were children. Later, in the war, Roderick could be relied upon to burn rather than tan. They both had large, liquid eyes, the sort that are called doe-like by poets, although those poets have mostly never hunted deer, because neither of the Ushers had giant elliptical pupils and they both had perfectly serviceable whites. I could see rather too much of the whites of Roderick’s eyes right now, in fact. His eyes gleamed feverishly in that unnaturally pale face.

“Usher,” I said, “you look like you’ve been dragged arse-first through hell.”

He gave a choked laugh and clutched at his head. “Easton,” he said again, and when he lifted his head, there was a little more of the Roderick I knew in his expression. “Oh God, Easton. You have no idea.”

“You’ll have to tell me,” I said. I put an arm around his shoulders and thumped him, and there was no flesh on his bones at all. He’d always been rawboned, but this was something else again. I could feel individual ribs. If Hob had ever looked like that, I’d challenge the stable master to pistols at dawn. “My God, Roderick, I don’t think much of your cook if they let you go around looking like this.”

He sagged against me for a moment, then straightened and stepped back. “Why did you come?”

“Maddy sent me a letter saying that she was ill.…” I trailed off. I did not want to say that Maddy had written that Roderick thought she was dying. It was too bald a statement and he looked like a shattered man.

“She did?” His eyes showed even more white around the edges. “What did she say?”

“Just that you were afraid for her health.” When Roderick merely stared at me, I tried to make light of it. “Also her lifelong unrequited passion for me, of course. So naturally I came to sweep her off her feet and take her to live in my enormous castle in Gallacia.”

“No,” said Roderick, apparently ignoring my poor attempt at humor, “no, she cannot leave here.”

“That was a joke, Roderick.” I gestured with the candle. “I was worried, that was all. Do you want to keep standing in the hall? I’ve been on horseback all day.”

“Oh … yes. Yes, of course.” He passed a hand across his forehead. “I’m sorry, Easton. It’s been so long since I’ve had visitors that I’ve forgotten all my manners. Mother would be ashamed.” He turned, gesturing to me to follow him.

None of the halls were lit and all were cold. The lack of light did not seem to bother Roderick. I hastened to keep up, even with the candle. The floors looked black in the gloom, and I caught glimpses of ragged tapestries on the walls and carvings on the ceiling that belonged to the same Gothic sensibility as the door.

We turned into a newer wing of the building and I relaxed a little. Instead of tapestries, there were paneled walls, and some even had wallpaper. It was in poor condition, bubbled and swollen with damp, but at least it felt a little less like walking through an ancient crypt. Very few ancient crypts have plump shepherdesses and gamboling sheep on the walls. I consider this an oversight.

At last we reached a door that actually had light streaming under it. Roderick pushed open the door to a parlor with an actual fireplace, and though the windows were covered in moth-eaten curtains, a little light leaked around their edges as well.

There were several sofas drawn up close to the fire, and I got my second shock of the day, for reclining against one lay Madeline.