What Moves the Dead (26)

“The ground here is hard to dig,” said Roderick simply. “They blasted it to make the cellars. It was easier, I expect, to add the crypt as well.”

“Like a church.”

He grunted. The stairs down only reinforced my opinion, though, carved as they were with Gothic ornament. The old lords of Usher had no interest in simplicity.

The door itself was another one of the pointed arched doors, made of ancient wood, locked and barred. Roderick handed Denton the lamp and pulled the bar out of its sockets with a strength that belied the frailness of his arms. He set it down and we stepped inside the crypt.

Cold, it was cold. A long, rough-hewn corridor led away, presumably deeper into the crypt, but the chamber we stood in held a single stone slab, carved with crosses and a procession of mourners.

Madeline lay under a shroud, faceless and featureless. Roderick stood over her protectively, his whole body bristling. I had thought to approach more closely, to look on Maddy’s face one last time, but Roderick looked so forbidding that I refrained. Really, what good would it do? Have you not seen enough bodies in your time? Maybe it helps other people, but it’s just one more face to haunt your dreams.

I went to one knee and prayed instead. The Lord’s Prayer, dredged up from some long-ago memory of church services. When I was done, Denton waited for a short moment, then touched my arm and ushered me away from the crypt and the slim white form on the slab.

It came to me, as we made our way up the steps, that anyone could have been under that shroud. I could not tell that it was Maddy. I could not tell that it was anything human at all.



* * *



Roderick was so jumpy at dinner that he very nearly set me off. He kept jerking upright and looking over his shoulder, as if an enemy was going to emerge from the paneling and go for his back. “Steady on, old fellow,” I said. “You’re going to have me diving under the table at this rate.”

“I hear the worms,” he muttered. “Soon they’ll start on her. Unless they don’t.”

I told myself that it wasn’t my sister and I had no damn business being offended. Roderick stopped jumping, but began to wring his hands together. He had pale, long-fingered hands, but the way he scrubbed them, one over the other, began to redden them. I eyed this warily, but at least it didn’t make me want to dive for cover. Denton ate methodically through the food in front of him, not speaking. What he thought, I couldn’t guess.

I ended up in the library after dinner, accompanied by my second bottle of livrit. It was terrible, but a hangover seemed like a great idea. Headache is always preferable to heartache, and if you’re focusing on not throwing up, you aren’t thinking about how the friends of your youth are dying around you.

I didn’t know why Maddy’s death hit me so hard. I saw the Ushers a few times a season growing up, that was all. I could not say with any honesty that I thought of them often, before receiving Maddy’s letter.

Perhaps this miserable place had weighed down my spirit and left me vulnerable. Perhaps it was simply that she was the first person my age to die of illness, instead of in the jagged teeth of the war.

I slugged back the livrit straight from the bottle. My throat no longer burned, but the syrupy taste still made the hinge of my jaw ache. The room stank of moldy leather and the death of books, but I could no longer smell anything but livrit.

Angus found me eventually. He stoppered the bottle and pried me out of the chair. “Come on, child,” he said, “I’m too old to carry you. Feet forward.”

I muttered something about letting me lie on the floor with my booze and my grief.

“March!” Angus barked, and my hindbrain took over, pointed me in the correct direction, and marched.

I felt like hammered shit in the morning, of course. That was the point. The thought of food was nauseating, but if I didn’t eat, everything was going to be a lot worse. I splashed water on my face then braced myself on my hands, staring into the basin. Did it come from the tarn? Christ’s blood. Maybe I was better off with the livrit after all.

One of the few things I learned from the Brits who served with me was that if you’re feeling dreadful, it helps to dress well. I dragged on fresh clothes. My tongue felt like it needed a shave. Angus came in, looked at me, grunted, and handed me my boots, which had been freshly polished.

“Don’t say it,” I muttered.

He gripped my shoulder briefly, but didn’t utter a word. I shoved my feet in the boots and went to breakfast.

My hand was halfway to the knob when I heard Roderick say, “I heard her knocking last night.”

Denton said something, too quietly for me to hear.

“On the door of the crypt,” Roderick said. “Trying to get out. It can’t have been, though, can it? She’s dead. She’s really dead, isn’t she?”

“Of course she is,” I said, pushing the door open. “Your nerves are shot, and who can blame you?” I looked to Denton for confirmation.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “Only nerves.”

“Yes,” said Roderick. “Of course. You must think me quite mad, Easton.”

“Not at all. Névrose de guerre. We’ve all got it. It’d be more extraordinary if you weren’t overset.”

He began wringing his hands together again. His knuckles were so red that they looked as if they might start bleeding.