Usher's Passing

THE DRIVE TO AND FROM ASHEVILLE HAD BEEN A ROUTE THROUGH hell. At the wheel of her Maserati, as the rain slashed in gray sheets across the road, Katt's concentration had narrowed down to a burning candle, a spoonful of bubbling heroin, and a hypodermic syringe.



The windshield wipers didn't help much. She trembled for need of the junk; her skin felt raw, peeled open. Her nerves sputtered in little panics. Even the palms of her hands in her lambskin driving gloves felt flame-blistered. A flash of lightning startled her, and for the first time in a long while she feared an attack.



Taped beneath her seat was a packet containing a quarter-ounce of heroin, purchased an hour before from an Asheville investment banker that Katt knew as "Mr. Candy Garden." Margaret had introduced them at a party several years before, and later had confided to Katt that she hoped her daughter found him attractive; after all, he was one of the most eligible bachelors in North Carolina.



She guided the Maserati through Usherland's gates and swept past the Gatehouse toward the garage. She pressed the button under the dashboard that raised the door to the Maserati's stall, then drove into the cool darkness.



The garage lights hadn't come on, Katt noted, and assumed that the storm might have blown a circuit or something. She'd have it looked at. She cut the purring engine, deposited her keys in her purse, and took the precious packet from its hiding place. The anticipation of quiet, restful dreams soothed her. In them she was always a little girl whose main preoccupation was tagging after her older brother, or riding horses along the gentle Usherland trails, or watching the clouds make pictures as they formed and broke over the mountains. Her dreams were always of summer, and in them she wore bright little-girl dresses. Sometimes her father visited her dreams, and he always smiled and said how pretty he thought she was.



Katt got out of the car. Suddenly, with a muted growl of gears and chains, the garage door began to descend.



Startled, she turned to watch the door sink to the concrete floor. There was a master control panel elsewhere in the garage that opened and closed all the stall doors, but it was way over near the limo. The murky gray light was cut to a sliver, then disappeared as the garage door met concrete.



Katt stood in total darkness. The rain beat a maniacal tattoo against the garage roof, and Katt felt as if she were drowning in black water. Her fear of the dark had immobilized her. She had made sure that even her Quiet Room allowed a chink of light; she preferred the pain of light to the horror of the dark.



"Where are the lights?" she said aloud to quell her rising panic. "There should be lights on in here!"



Headlights! she thought. She fumbled for the keys in her purse, then her fingers closed around the furry rabbit's foot on her keychain. She leaned into the Maserati, slid the key in, and switched on the ignition. When she turned on the headlights -  their beams directed at shelves holding cans of oil, transmission fluid, fan belts, and various automotive tools hanging from wall hooks - she almost sobbed with relief. She reached beneath the dashboard to open the stall door again.



A cold, muscular arm slid around her throat from behind, pulling her out of the car. Her scream was canceled as it began by a hand clamped to her mouth.



Katt struggled wildly to break free. She could smell a man's body odor. His unshaven cheek scratched her ear. "Don't fight," he whispered. "There's no use fighting."



She continued to thrash, but she was weakening. Don't fight, the voice repeated in her mind, sapping her willpower, there's no use fighting. The command kept echoing inside her head, steadily gaining power as if it were being shouted by someone who was coming closer and closer. Hopelessness invaded her, and as her struggling stopped she heard, as if in a nightmare from which she couldn't awaken, the man's satisfied grunt.



"I'm going to let you go," he said. "You're not going to scream. You don't have a voice anymore. I'm going to let you go, and you're going to stand right where you are."



Not going to scream, she thought. No use fighting. Not going to scream. Stand right where you are.



He released her.



She wanted to scream; her throat vibrated, the muscles straining to pull a scream up through her mouth. Not going to scream. You don't have a voice anymore. No use fighting.



Her arms and legs were icy. She tried to move them, found she couldn't even unlock her elbows. Stand right where you are. The more she strained to move and scream, the harder and more hopeless moving and screaming became. No use fighting. Not going to scream.



The man walked in front of her, and in the wash of the Maserati's headlights, Katt recognized Logan Bodane.



She'd seen him a few times, hanging around the Gatehouse. His face was different now; his eyes glittered dangerously in the slack, gray-tinged flesh. His mouth was twisted in a sick grin. The gray Usher blazer he wore was dusty, but not wet. Neither was his tangled mass of coppery red hair. The part of Katt's mind that could still form coherent thoughts judged that Logan had been in the garage before the rain started. Waiting for her, for this moment?



Logan's gaze played slowly over Katt's body. Then he looked directly into her face, and his eyes seemed to flame like baleful blue lamps.



- smile -



His silent, mental command slid into Katt's mind like the point of an icepick. It sank deeply, with a prick of pain.



Katt felt her mouth twitch. The corners slowly arched upward in a grotesque rictus, while tears of terror rolled down her cheeks.



"That's nice," Logan said aloud. With one quick, violent motion he tore open the front of her pink jumpsuit. She gasped for breath; the smile stayed fixed on her face, and still she was unable to move. In her mind his voice - smile no use fighting smile not going to scream stand right where you are - continued to batter back and forth.



Logan retreated a pace to admire her body. "It's comin' for you," he whispered, his eyes dancing back and forth from Katt's face to her body. "Yeah, it's comin' right now. The executioner, I mean. It'll be here soon. I've seen it." He grinned, well pleased with himself. "I don't mean to let you go to waste before it gets here." He advanced on her.



Katt trembled violently, but could not break loose from whatever hold Logan had on her. As he grasped roughly at her breasts, his mouth on her throat, Katt couldn't even close her eyes. An inner scream wailed, but she had no voice. She ground her teeth in anguish.



Logan grabbed her hair and forced her head back. "Thought you were better than me, didn't you?" he asked her, his eyes narrowed into slits. "Well, I'm going to show you how wrong you were, lady." He kissed her on the mouth, jabbing his tongue in while his hand began to slide down her stomach.



Her teeth, Katt realized. She could still use her teeth.



Logan made a guttural, bestial sound and clutched at her breasts. His tongue probed deeply into her mouth.



And Katt caught it between her teeth.



Before Logan could jerk his head away, Katt bit down with all the fury and strength she could summon.



When Logan screamed, the mental chains that had held Katt fast broke apart. They scattered like dead leaves in a high wind. Feeling rushed back into her limbs with a pins-and-needles tingling. But still she continued to bite down on his tongue, as he screamed and fought to shove her away.



She felt his tongue rip. Blood filled her mouth.



Logan staggered backward, blood streaming from between his lips, and fell to his knees on the floor. He struggled to rise, his mangled roar spewing more blood.



Katt spat flesh out of her mouth. She started to run, but Logan seized her ankle and almost threw her down. She flailed, trying to break free - and then she saw the tire-iron, hanging from one of the wall hooks, within reach. She grasped it, and turned toward Logan as he heaved himself off the floor. His frenzied NO! exploded in her mind, but her arm was already on its descent. The tire-iron crunched down on Logan's skull.



He fell to his hands and knees, his head lolling. She stood over him and struck him again, across the right shoulder blade. There was a noise like a broomstick cracking. Logan pitched on his side, his eyes blazing wildly in his blood-smeared face.



Behind Katt, the cans and tools on the shelves suddenly came alive. They leaped in all directions, a can of antifreeze hitting Katt in the side, a pair of jumper-cables snapping through her hair, a wrench flashing past her cheek. The Maserati's windshield shattered. Freezing currents of Logan's misdirected power smashed back and forth across the garage, breaking more windshields, upsetting more cans and tools. A shockwave struck Katt, throwing her against the hood so hard that she lost her breath. Then she reached into her car and found the garage door switch, pressing it frantically. The garage door began to slide open, letting in gray light and blowing rain.



She ran, ducking under the door and into the storm. The rain almost beat her down, but she kept going, up through the gardens toward the Gatehouse. She slipped on a mossy stone and fell, gashing her knee. Around her the trees were in tumultuous motion, dead leaves whirling past her in miniature tornadoes. She looked back over her shoulder - and panic flared anew.



A massive, dark, and unrecognizable shape was coming after her, leaping the ornamental hedges and drowned flowerbeds.



"Help me!" Katt shouted toward the house, but her voice was shredded by the storm. In the next flash of lightning the Gatehouse was briefly illuminated - and Katt thought she saw a figure standing at a window, looking calmly out at the gardens.



She struggled to her feet and ran again. After another few strides, she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, and she knew with a terrible certainty that she would not make the Gatehouse.



As she twisted around, the monster behind her tensed and leaped through the rain like an ebony battering ram. Katt screamed, but the black panther's jaws closed around her throat and snapped her neck as she was falling backward to the stone path. She had a sensation of breathlessness, a hot crushing pain on her throat -  and then she tumbled headlong into the dark.



She was dead a few seconds after her body hit the ground.



The panther gripped her by the neck and quickly dragged her off into the underbrush. Nearby, a marble faun played its silent pipes in the downpour.



Within minutes, the rain had washed away all traces of Kattrina Usher from the garden stones.