Usher's Passing

Five



TIME WILL TELL THE TALE



26



GRAY CLOUDS WERE SCUDDING ACROSS THE SUN AS RAVEN DUNSTAN guided her stuttering Volkswagen up Briartop Mountain. An occasional strong gust of wind parted the trees and hit the car, and the tires slipped on a thick layer of decomposing leaves.



She'd found Clint Perry's house about an hour before, and told the man where she wanted to go. Perry - a lean, hawk-nosed man in overalls - had looked at her as if she were crazy. It was a long haul up there, he'd warned her, and the only road was so bad it had busted the bottom out of his truck when he'd gone up with Sheriff Kemp a couple of months before. Raven insisted that Perry draw her a map, and offered him twenty dollars to go with her, but he said - nervously, it seemed to Raven - that he had better things to do than to go running all over the mountain.



She'd already climbed well past the Tharpe house, passing other rundown shacks hidden in shadowy hollows. She came to the crossroads that Perry had indicated on the map, and took the road that branched off to the left. Almost at once the wheels of her car were being battered by potholes. The road reared up so steeply she was sure the car couldn't make it, but she fought the gears and was rewarded when the grade leveled off. To the left, through breaks in the forest, she could look over the side of Briartop onto Usherland. The chimneys and spires of Usher's Lodge speared through thin, low-lying clouds.



The torture to her car went on for another mile or more, and she cursed her stupidity at coming up here. Then, abruptly, she turned a wooded bend and the road stopped at a group of large boulders. A path snaked between the rocks and vanished into the forest.



Following the directions Perry had given her, Raven left her car and walked up the path. It was steep, and her leg was aching before she'd gone thirty yards. Coils of thorns curled from the woods; the vegetation on either side of the path was impenetrable. But then, at the crest of the rise, Raven caught her first glimpse of the ruined town that stood atop the mountain.



To call it a town, Raven realized, was a wild exaggeration. Perhaps it had been a small settlement of some kind more than a hundred years ago, but now all that remained were piles of stones, a jutting chimney here and there, and an occasional standing wall. A couple of stone structures were still mostly intact, but only one of those had any semblance of a roof, and the other had gaping holes in its walls. Oddly, the ruins were not overgrown with weeds, thorns, and kudzu vines; though a few straggly bushes had struggled up from the dark, bare earth, the ruins sat at the center of a clearing strewn with rocks. Even the sparse trees that had taken root around the ruins looked dead and petrified, their leafless branches frozen into weird angles. The place appeared desolate, totally deserted for many, many years.



Raven was cold; she lifted the collar of her corduroy jacket around her neck. If indeed an old man lived up here, she wondered, how in the world did he survive? Raven followed the path into the ruins. Her boots crunched on the brittle ground; she stopped, bent down, and scooped up a handful of earth.



Bits of glass glittered in her palm. She let the earth sift between her fingers, then stood up again. As she walked amid the ruins, Raven saw that most of the crumbling stones resembled lumps of coal. Sometime in the past, a fire of brutal heat had burned here. She moved aside fallen leaves with her foot, and looked down at clumps of glass in the ground.



And then she walked around to the far side of a standing wall, and stopped. On the black stones was the pale gray silhouette of a human being, arms splayed as if in impact with the wall. The body was contorted like a question mark. At the figure's feet was another shape, barely recognizable as a human being, lifting one arm as if in supplication.



A nearby jumble of loose stones caught her attention. She bent down carefully, because of the pain in her leg. One of the stones had a rusted nail driven into it. Another showed the outline of a hand and wrist.



Raven ran her fingers over the stone. She was reminded of pictures she'd seen in a book about Hiroshima. In those photos, outlines of the atomic bomb victims were left burned into walls -  just as these figures were. Whatever had happened here, Raven thought uneasily, the results - the silhouettes, the black stones, the ground burned to clumps of glass - were uncannily similar.



Raven rose to her feet. What kind of destruction had left its mark here? And when? Why was this town built on top of the mountain? Who were its inhabitants?



She was pondering those questions when she turned away from the rubble and found the old man standing about ten feet away, next to the scorched wall.



He was leaning on his twisted cane, his head cocked so that he could see through his good eye. His ragged clothes were filthy, and the wind buffeted the long dark coat he wore. "Find somethin' of interest?" he asked, his hard gaze drilling through her.



It was the same old man that Raven had almost hit on the road. "I . . . didn't know you were there."



He grunted. "Watched you look at that wall. Watched you bend over them stones. I been right here."



Impossible, Raven thought. If so, why hadn't she seen him when she'd walked around the wall in the first place?



"Who are you?" he asked. "What do you want here?"



"My name's Raven Dunstan. I own the Foxton Democrat.'' There was no recognition in that single staring eye. "The newspaper down in Foxton," she explained. "I've come up to find you."



"You've found me, then." He glanced in the direction from which she'd come. "You climb up the mountain in that little yaller car? Wind'll pick that thing up and toss it clear down to Usherland."



Again, Raven was puzzled. The car wasn't visible from here. How did he know it was yellow? "The road's not too good, but I made it. Do you live alone here?"



"Alone," he replied. "And not alone. What's troublin' your leg?"



"I . . . hurt it, a long time ago. In an accident."



"You were a little girl," he said, stating a fact, and touched her knee tentatively with his cane.



"Yes." She stepped away from him. A sharp spasm of pain pierced her knee.



He nodded, hawked, and spat phlegm on the ground. When he breathed deeply again, Raven could hear the rumble of fluids in his lungs. His complexion was a chalky yellow. She stared at the network of scars that covered almost all of his face; the right eye was gone. The left eye, though covered with a thin gray film, was pale green and held a gleam of crafty intelligence. He was very thin, shivering a bit in the cold, and she had no idea how old he was; he could be anywhere from seventy to a hundred. One thing she was certain of: he was sick.



"Chilly out here in the open," the Mountain King said, and nodded toward the sky. "Weather's changin'. Clouds creepin' in before the wind. Be a storm directly." He lifted his cane off the ground with a trembling hand and pointed toward the shelter that still had the remnants of a roof. "That's my house. It'll be warmer inside there." Without waiting for her, he turned away and started toward it, picking his path with the cane.



Raven was appalled by the old man's living conditions, but the walls did block the wind. There were a few charred pieces of wood in the cold fireplace. Empty cans littered the floor. A mattress on the floor was covered with a tattered orange blanket, and newspapers poked out from underneath it. The place, to Raven's way of thinking, was thoroughly disgusting.



The Mountain King eased himself down to sit on the mattress. Raven heard his bones creak. He had a fit of coughing that went on for a minute or so, then he spat in an empty peach can beside the bed. His face crinkled distastefully. "I can't pee," he said in a wounded tone. "I wish I could, but I can't."



"There's a doctor at the clinic in Foxton who might be able to help you."



"A doctor?" the old man snapped. He snorted and spat into the can again. "Doctors are licensed killers. They put pills and needles in you. I won't go to Foxton. Too many people. I'll stay where I am."



"How long have you been sick?"



"Since the comets fell," he answered. "I don't never recall not bein' sick. It comes and goes. Still cold in here, ain't it?" He cocked his good eye toward the fireplace.



Raven felt the rush of heat at her back before she heard the sudden whoosh! of flame. Startled, she whirled toward the fireplace. The logs were burning. The old man hadn't touched them, but they were afire. "How . . . did you do that?" she asked.



"Do what?"



"The fire. How did you . . . light the fire?"



"Hush!" The Mountain King grasped his cane and stood up. It took him a little while longer to straighten his back, and he hissed with pain. Cans and bottles rolled around his feet as he hobbled to the door and peered out. "Somebody's comin'," he announced. "Two people. Woman and man. No. Woman and boy. Comin' up the road. Boy's drivin'. It's him." He paused, his cane thrust out before him like an antenna. "Yep," he said. "It's him, all right."



Raven was still staring at the burning logs; her senses were spinning, and she'd barely heard what the old man had said. She held her hands out toward the heat to test its reality.



"The woman sees that yaller car," the old man muttered. "She knows it. She wants to go back down the mountain." He glanced quickly at Raven. "She don't like you worth a tinker's damn."



"Who?" Raven rubbed the side of her head with numbed fingers. "Mrs. Tharpe?"



"Yep. She's scairt of you." He paused, then grunted with satisfaction. "The boy's got more sense. They're comin' up the trail." The Mountain King hobbled out to meet them.



Left alone, Raven backed away from the fireplace. She felt oddly off balance, trespassing in an alien world that did not conform to her laws of reality. The old man hadn't touched those logs . . . yet they'd burst into flame; he'd known someone was coming from a distance of a hundred yards or more; he'd even verified that Myra Tharpe feared her. What kind of man was he, and why did he choose to live alone in these ruins? Raven looked around the disordered house. Buckets had been placed under holes in the roof to catch leaks. Dead leaves, bottles, and cans were scattered everywhere.



Her gaze came to rest on the mattress, and slowly she came to realize something that she hadn't before.



Beneath the orange blanket was the vague outline of a body.



Raven stared at it without moving. Then, slowly, she approached the mattress and pulled the blanket back.



Underneath was a hodgepodge of rags, newspaper and magazine pages. A damp, moldy smell drifted up. The figure was more apparent now, buried beneath the rags and papers. Raven allowed her hand to knock one of the rags to the floor. There were more papers beneath. She grasped the edge of a yellowed newspaper page and carefully lifted it.



She found herself looking at a frail, skeletal hand and arm.



The displacement of another clump of rags revealed part of a small ribcage.



The Mountain King, Raven realized as she stepped quickly away from the mattress, was sleeping with a skeleton in his bed.



The fire spat sparks. Raven looked over her shoulder and saw the old man standing just inside the doorway. How long he'd been there she didn't know, but he seemed uninterested in her now; he crossed the room to warm himself before the flames, and coughed several times to loosen the congestion in his lungs.



In another moment, New Tharpe came into the house; he was bundled in a sweater and brown jacket, his face very pale except for the faint red lines where the thorn scratches were healing. He carried a paper sack. Myra Tharpe stopped in the doorway, her mouth twisting bitterly. "Well now," she said, "looky here. I seen that car of yours down there. If New hadn't talked me into stayin', we'd be long gone by now. Seems you turn up like a bad penny, don't you?"



"I do my best."



Myra entered the house, her nose wrinkling. She stood near the door, her back protected by a wall. Her small, frightened eyes darted between Raven and the Mountain King. "Give him what we brung, New."



New offered him the sack. The old man took it tentatively, looked inside, and then carried it over to a corner where he dumped the contents on the floor. More canned food rattled out.



"Didn't have no peaches," Myra said nervously as he picked through the cans. "Brung you some mixed fruit, though. And a couple cans of beef stew."



The Mountain King had selected the mixed fruit. He shook it and held it to his ear.



"It's fresh," Myra assured him. "Bought it just a few days ago, down at the market in Foxton."



He grunted, obviously satisfied. His eye was fixed on the boy. "New. Is that your name?"



"Yes sir. Newlan Tharpe." New was trembling inside, but he was determined not to show it. When he and his mother were walking up the path, the Mountain King had suddenly appeared behind them. Then, without a word, he'd led them up through the ruins to this desolate old place. New's mother had raised hell when she'd recognized Raven Dunstan's car, but New had soothed her; since they'd come up this far, they might as well go on. What did it matter that the newspaperwoman was up in the ruins too? Myra had said it mattered a lot, but the appearance of the Mountain King had stopped further argument.



"How old are you?"



"Fifteen, sir."



"You know how old I am?" the old man asked, with a trace of pride. "I was born in . . . let me think . . . I was born in nineteen-ought-nine. When I was fifteen, I . . ." His voice trailed off. Then he said, "I was right here. That was after the comets fell. I'm not clear in the head no more. But I recall the year I was fifteen, because that was the year Lizbeth turned eleven . . . and he almost snatched her."



"Lizbeth?" Raven glanced toward the mattress.



"My sister. It was her and me, after the comets fell. We come up here together. That was in . . ." He frowned, trying to remember, and then shook his head. "A long time past."



"Who almost snatched her?" New asked. "The Pumpkin Man?"



"New!" his mother warned.



"Him," the old man said. "The Pumpkin Man. The Briartop Stalker. The Child Snatcher. Whatever you want to call him. I know him for what he really is: an agent of the Devil himself. Lizbeth and me set us some traps for rabbits. She went out near dusk to see what we'd caught. She come out through the woods and seen him, standin' so close she could've touched him. He grabbed at her, and she took to runnin'. She could hear him right behind her, gettin' closer and closer; she said he could run like the wind, and not thorns nor vines nor nothin' slowed him down. Lizbeth run so fast she couldn't hardly get no breath. And all the time he was callin' for her to stop, to lay down and rest because she was tired, and there wasn't no use in tryin' to get away."



"He spoke to her?" Raven asked.



The old man tapped the side of his head. "In here. She heard him in here. She said his voice was like a cool stream on a hot day, and he made you want to lay down and rest. But she knew who he was, and that he was tryin' to trick her. So she didn't listen; every time she wanted to stop runnin', she thought of that sound the comets made when they was comin' down, and that kept her goin'. She didn't stop till she'd come back here, and she never went out without me again."



"Lizbeth saw his face? What did he look like?"



"His face . . . changed." The old man had placed one finger atop the can of mixed fruit, pressing here and there as if he were trying to poke through the tin. "First he had a face, and then he didn't. Lizbeth said she seen the white of his skin . . . and then his face was gone. There was nothin' but a hole where his face should've been." He turned his attention to the boy again, tilting his head to one side. "You've seen him, too. Ain't you?"



"Yes," New replied.



"And his black cat, Greediguts. He come a-callin' last night, didn't he?"



"Yes." New felt as helpless as a lock under a key; he could sense the Mountain King picking and probing at him, gradually springing him open.



"Your ma's afraid," the Mountain King said softly. "Powerful afraid. There's been a fear in her heart for a long time. It makes her near 'bout blind. But you - you're just beginnin' to see clear, ain't you?



"I don't know."



"Tharpe," the old man whispered. His breathing was a low tumble of congestion. "Tharpe. The man who lived in that house was your pa?"



New nodded.



"And what was his name?"



"Bobby," Myra offered.



"Bobby Tharpe. I seen him, comin' and goin'. Sometimes I stood all night in the woods across the road from your house, just watchin'. I followed him to the Tongue, and saw him look down on Usherland. I knew what was in his mind, callin' and tauntin' him. I followed him many a time when he left his house and walked the woods. Oh, he never saw me - but I was there, all the same. Once he went down from Briartop to that Lodge, and he stood on the shore and he wanted to go inside so bad he could hardly stand it; but he resisted. I helped him resist, 'cause I knew he couldn't do it alone. Just like you couldn't get out of them thorns alone, boy. Nor could you hold back Greediguts alone."



"What?" New whispered.



"I don't know nothin' about you," the Mountain King continued, "just like I didn't know nothin' about your pa. But I do know the Lodge wanted him; and I know it wants you, as well. I seen you on the Tongue, too. I seen the way you stared down at that house, a-wantin' to walk its halls and run your fingers over that fine marble. Greediguts didn't come to kill you last night; it came to test you, to find out if you're stone or paper. Before your pa died, he was weakenin'. You ought to give thanks he is dead - 'cause he was about to go into that Lodge, and what he would've come back out as . . . you wouldn't want to know."



Raven shook her head, utterly confused. To her, the old man was speaking gibberish. Was he insane, or was she? "No one lives in Usher's Lodge," she said. "It's empty."



"I didn't say no person lived in there, woman!" the Mountain King told her scornfully. His gaze flicked toward her like a whip, then back to the boy. "Ain't no person wanted your pa. Ain't no person wants you. That Lodge is more than halls and fine marble, boy. It's got a black heart, and a voice like a knife in the night. I know - 'cause it's been workin' at me ever since the comets fell. Chidin', a-tauntin' and callin' me, slippin' through my dreams, tryin' to strangle me. Just like it did to your pa, and like it's doin' to you. Only I'm an old man, and pert' soon Greediguts is gonna slip up to my house and I'll be too weak to hold it off. That'll be the end of me; but the Lodge wants you now. Like it wanted your pa."



The old man gripped his walking stick tightly. His eye was unflinching. "He was about to give in, boy. The stones he'd built in his soul were comin' apart at the seams. That's why . . . I had to make sure he couldn't listen no more."



Myra sucked in her breath. New hadn't moved, but now his heart was pounding.



"I killed him, boy," the Mountain King said quietly. "Surely as if I'd put a gun to his head and blowed his brains out. He come upon me on his way down the mountain, the day it happened. I knew the kind of work he did. He was weak, so it didn't take much; all he had to do was fill up a tire with air - and keep fillin' it till it blew up in his face. He never even knowed what he was doin'."



New was silent; all the blood had rushed from his face, and blue veins throbbed at his temple. It was Myra who spoke first, in an incredulous, hoarse voice: "You . . . you ain't nothin' but a crazy old man!" She came up behind her son. "You didn't even know my Bobby! Ain't nothin' special about you! You're just a crazy old liar!"



"Look at me, boy," the Mountain King commanded. He thrust his cane out and rested it beneath New's chin. "You know if I'm lyin' or not, don't you?"



New brushed the cane aside. He looked helplessly at Raven, and started to speak, but then his voice cracked and he stood there dumbfounded, his sallow face mirroring the battle of emotions within him. He forced himself to return the old man's gelid stare. "You're . . . a crazy old man," New said, with an obvious effort. "Ain't nothin' to you a-tall!" Abruptly he turned and left the house; Myra shot a poisonous glance at Raven and hurried after her son.



The Mountain King sighed deeply. His lungs rattled, and he fended off a fit of coughing. "He knows," he said when he'd recovered his breath. "He didn't want to say it before his ma, but he knows."



And you're as nutty as a Christmas fruitcake, Raven thought. The shape of the skeleton under those rags and papers sent a shiver up her spine. She'd assumed it was the old man's sister -  but what if it wasn't? What if it was the skeleton of one of those children whose pictures were on the posters she'd had printed up? "When did your sister die?" she asked.



"I don't know the year," he said wearily, and rubbed his good eye. "She was twenty years old . . . or twenty-two. I can't recall. You seen her bones."



"Why didn't you bury her?"



"Didn't want nothin' gettin' to her. Swore I'd protect her, and that's what I did." He hobbled over to the bed, lifted the tattered blanket, and reached under a mass of rags. "Didn't want the thing that killed her to chew her bones." He withdrew a small skull that had been all but crushed; the lower jaw was missing, the nasal area smashed in. "The pant'er did this. Caught her in broad daylight, at the stream." Gently he set the skull down again and picked up the can of mixed fruit he'd set aside. "The boy knows," he muttered. "He knows."



"Knows what?"



The Mountain King stared at her, and smiled thinly. "That he's like me," he said, thrusting his forefinger through the top of the can as if it were wet cardboard. He withdrew the finger and licked fruit syrup off.



Raven had had enough. She fled the house. Behind her she could hear the old man laughing; his laughter erupted into spasmodic coughing. She ran past the figures on the wall, over the ground that had been scorched to glass, and she never looked back.



When she reached her car, she received a new shock.



The Volkswagen now faced downhill. Something had picked up the car and turned it around. She slid quickly under the steering wheel and started the car.



She was almost halfway down Briartop when she realized she'd run through the ruins.



Her limp was gone.