What Moves the Dead (42)
Angus and Miss Potter were silent when we reached the ruins. Smoke still rose in thin wisps from the wreckage. The lake was silent, deceptively placid.
We grabbed the bags. The powder struck the surface of the water and for an instant I feared that it would not sink, but then I watched the granules begin to settle, and then they mixed with the water, forming dark swirls that sank deeper into the tarn.
I had turned away to grab a second bag when green radiance flared around us. I saw the glow on the side of the wagon, and the stolid horses shied in sudden alarm. Angus moved to take their heads, murmuring soothing nonsense.
“I daresay that it knows it is under attack,” murmured Miss Potter.
“Huh,” said Aaron.
The tarn blazed up with sickly light. Pale, gelatinous shapes pulsed in the depths, but it had no power to reach us. I dumped out another bag, then another, my hands caked with the stuff. The tarn could not die fast enough. I even dared to walk over the causeway, among the cracked stones still radiating heat, and throw handfuls as far out into the water as I could reach. Oh God, I thought, will it be enough?
Slowly, slowly, the light dimmed. I came back for another bag, but Angus stopped me. “We’ve used it all,” he said.
“We need more.”
“No, look.” Miss Potter pointed. The light was almost gone. As we watched, it pulsed a few more times, and then … nothing.
We waited for over an hour, as the sun sank, and there was no change. No glow rose from the water. The jellylike shapes vanished under the darkness and everywhere was a heavy smell of burned things.
“Is it done?” I whispered.
She nodded to me, that fine, stern woman with the heart of a lion. “I believe, Lieutenant, that it is done.”
“I’ll keep an eye on it,” offered Aaron. “If there’s any more lights, we’ll do what’s needful.”
“All right,” I said. My voice was hoarse and rasping in my ears. “And if you see any hares … any animals coming to the water to drink … shoot them and burn the bodies. It’s important.”
“Aye, sir. We will.” He reached over and grabbed my forearm. I wondered how dreadful I must look that he was trying to comfort me, when his home was a smoking ruin behind us.
And then we drove away and left behind the dead lake and the smoldering timbers of the fallen house of Usher.
Author’s Note
So a while back I happened to reread “The Fall of the House of Usher,” as one does, at least when one’s horror career involves revisiting classic stories. I’d read it as a child—I was that sort of child—but remembered very little about it.
The first thing I noticed was that Poe is really into fungi. He devotes more words to the fungal emanations than he does to Madeline.
The second thing is that it’s short. Perhaps because it looms so large in the cultural landscape, I expected it to be much longer. But no, it’s short, and while there’s a lot to be said about economy of storytelling, I found myself wanting more. I wanted explanations. (I always want explanations.) I wanted to know about Madeline’s illness and why Roderick didn’t just move and why the narrator didn’t bother to check either of them for a pulse before screaming and running from the house.
Well, I couldn’t do much about not-checking-for-a-pulse, but it was blindingly obvious to me that Madeline’s illness must have something to do with all that fungus everywhere.
I pulled up a blank page and started to write about mushrooms, and all of a sudden Alex Easton was right there on the page, leading kan horse and encountering the fictional aunt of Beatrix Potter (who was herself a noted mycologist). I try not to be too precious about my process, fearing a slippery slope that ends in sighing and swooning and cryptic utterances about the Muse, but the truth is that every now and then a character will simply drop fully formed into my skull, as if they’d simply been waiting for their cue. So it was with Easton.
It’s a mixed blessing when that happens. It’s a delight for the writer, but such characters tend to warp the whole narrative around themselves. Fortunately Easton was fairly well-behaved—other than strong opinions about Americans—and kindly brought the history of Gallacia trailing in kan wake.
The Ruritanian romance was for many years a genre staple, the story of a small, fictional European monarchy, which really blossomed with The Prisoner of Zenda. (Ironically, Easton may actually have read The Prisoner of Zenda, since the scientific achievements date What Moves the Dead pretty solidly to the 1890s.) But I am much less interested in monarchs than I am in exhausted soldiers and desperate people trapped in falling-down houses, so while the name of Ruravia is a nod to those illustrious forbears, I don’t know if this can be said to fit in that grand tradition or if I am merely standing off to the side, giving it a respectful wave.
Well, I went along in fine style for about ten thousand words, learning about Easton’s tinnitus and Denton’s social missteps and Roderick’s decline and sworn soldiers and Gallacian turnip carving, and then I happened to read the magnificent novel Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and thought, “Oh my God, what can I possibly do with fungi in a collapsing Gothic house that Moreno-Garcia didn’t do ten times better?!” and shoved the whole thing in a virtual drawer and took heavily to the bottle. (Seriously, put down this book and go buy that one. Then pick this one up again, of course, God forbid anyone not finish the Author’s Note, but make sure you’ve put Mexican Gothic on your reading list first.)