House of Usher II

The House of Usher for Blithering Idiots

The Poe classic, rewritten for the rest of us what couldn't get our minds around the still vexingly complex 'dummy' version of the story

Chapter One: The Letter

Would you look at this letter, guys? It seems like Roderick Usher's grandson is ill. (That's a shame. Tsk-tsk...) Well, he's not so much ill as (how shall I put this?) highly nervous and agitated?

"You remember Roderick's grandson, Roderick III, the boon companion of my youth? No? That's funny. He used to come over after school almost every Friday to have a sloppy Joe with yours truly and watch cartoons: chiefly the original black-and-white versions of "Popeye" and "Marine Boy," one of the first Japanese anime cartoons to be shown in the United States. Remember? He could breathe underwater by chewing Oxy-Gum. Marine Boy, I mean, not Roderick.

"We went to school together, you know: That's right, Mongoose High School, subsequently renamed Slim Whitman, for our hometown hero, local boy makes good and all that. You know: Slim Whitman, the Cowboy Yodeler?

"Ah, yes, he always was a melancholy chap (Roderick, I mean, not Slim). Of course, that's not surprising, considering that he comes from a long line of basket cases. Take his great-grandfather, for instance: You would not believe the mischief that that old hypochondriac got into. He certainly put on a show for the local townsfolk back in the day: Are you kidding? The event to which I'm alluding here literally brought the house down! Still, it would be a shame if his great grandson went off the deep end like that. For starters, he's the only one in town who's interested in discussing the rarefied abstruse musings of Schopenhauer with me, much less those of Schiller and Goethe, and who else is willing to dive headfirst into the wind-tossed oceans of axiomatic mathematics? You, perhaps, Sally? No? Jimmy? How about you? No? Well, there you have it, I rest my case. So......

"I'll tell you what:

"I'm going to pack a small lunch (some reheated pizza from last night and some very healthy organic blueberry juice -- remember, you guys have to eat right, too, if you want to grow up big and strong like your musclebound big brother: nyuk-nyuk: er, that's me, folks) and rush out to my very own Aston Martin with a view toward 'hieing me thither," as we say (or as I say, at all events: remember, we're all atypically mansion-dwelling rich kids, when you get right down to it, and quite frankly, it busts my buttons that we're always trying to sound like "the Great Unwashed." I mean, membership has its privileges, okay, gang? But then I seem to be the only one of this generation who understands the importance of outward appearances. Call me old-fashioned, but a body has to be 'representing' viz. their ancestors, no matter how stuffy and arrogant the old coots may seem to us now from the relatively enlightened vantage point of the 21st century.)

"What's that, Sally? Yes, you're right: I misspoke. Technically, the Aston Martin does belong to pops, but there's simply no time for me to call him at work and get an official 'O.K.' for this outing. Doggone it, my homeboy is in the dumps and so help me, I'm going to go cheer him up!

"Aye, I'd like to see anyone try to stop me!

"...with the possible exception of father himself, of course, who, as everyone at this table well knows, doesn't fool around when it comes to discipline, especially in matters dealing with the sanctity of his precious automobile -- 'my old girl' as he only half-jokingly refers to his gas-guzzling status symbol. Speaking of which, I'd better burn rubber before the old hot head gets wise to my machinations. After all, Roderick needs me -- as far as I can tell, anyway, given the highly equivocal nature of this importuning missive.

I receive, as twere, an importuning missive from the old Rod-meister.



"Right. Jimmy and Sally, don't miss the school bus. Katie, don't be late for classes at Mongoose U. Oh, and not one word to pops about my intended destination, yes?"

So saying, I stalked imposingly from the dining room (pip-pip, what?), strode past the hallway valet (waving off his various proposed ministrations on my behalf with a flip of the white driving gloves that I was about to put on) and lifted up the Toro Red swan-wing driver's door of my pop's 'Old Girl,' amid cries of "Awesome!" and "Wicked!" from my two youngest siblings (as the elder Katie looked on in mature silence, but with eyes obviously glowing with pride over the spiffy figure that I was then apparently 'cutting' beside the car in question -- although, later wisecracks on her part in connection with this incident were to convince me that her then-evinced admiration was, alas, not unmixed with petty jealousy).

So I'm in the car, right, ready to pull out from the mansion parking lot...

"Bye, kids. And remember, one word to pops about my ultimate destination, and you are dead meat, yes? Just give him your name, rank and serial number, at least until I get back. What's that? No, I can't say exactly when that will be, but given the tones of that recently received letter, I think it's safe to say that it will take all my king's horses and all my king's men at least 24 hours to put this particular Humpty-Dumpty back together again, emotionally speaking.

You kids don't understand a word of what I just said to you, do you? Ha ha! I keep forgetting that you're only, what, 9 and 10 respectively, right, Sally and Jimmy? Well, stop mutely gaping at me like that, like you were posing for an illustrative dictionary photograph for the word 'dumbfounded.' Look, in plain English, it should be at least 24 hours before I return! (Jeepers: At least you understood me, right, Katie? Katie the college student, ladies and gentlemen. You go, girl! Taking after your big brother in that respect, with the pompified circumstances of academia -- except that you're majoring in art while I majored in the Paranormal Sciences -- which training, incidentally, should stand me 'in good stead' on my mission of mercy, for word on the street has it that Roderick's remote mansion is haunted like 'all get out,' eh, Katie? All get out? Ha ha! Speaking of all get out, I'd better get OUT!)

Later, dudes. And wish me luck: If I play my cards right, my adventures today could become required reading for millions of English Lit. majors the world over! (Though sadly, I could well be dead a good 50 years before the notoriously conservative and turf-protecting literary world sees fit to acknowledge my brilliance. I mean, Edgar Allan Poe himself didn't exactly rake in the dough in real-time, did he?)"

Now then, it's been a while since I've had this privilege -- Where is that ignition switch again? Oh, yes. Here goes nothing....

Scarcely had I floored the gas, however (as was my custom when driving at this somewhat tempestuous lustrum of my life, especially around the narrow and inadequately policed lanes that then begirdled my father's not insignificant estate) when I began silently speculating on the supposititious crisis that I would be facing upon arrival at the (as I now recalled) somewhat castellated abbey of my friend. "Hmm," I thought. "Hmm, hmm, hmm...." The questions kept rolling through my mind like so many awkwardly tossed bowling balls (the ones you inevitably throw at the beginning of your first game on any given outing since it always takes you at least three frames to find an orb that not only fits your fingers but doesn't practically take your arm off with every throw thanks to its excessive weight. The questions, I say, kept rolling through my mind:

What was wrong with Roddy? Had it anything to do with the mysterious disappearance of his grandfather some years back? Why had the old boy waited until now to write? And, perhaps most importantly of all, what was my father going to say when he found I had "borrowed" his Aston Martin? Lord willing, this trip will be a success: then I can no doubt appease the old man with a little sales talk about the ends justifying the means.

I bid my siblings a fond farewell as I set forth on my mission of mercy to the notoriously melancholy House of Usher.

Chapter Two: En Route

Ah, I now reflected. Ah, ah, ah....

Roderick III had been my principal 'homey' from childhood (to use the quaint lingo of our fad-embracing contemporaries in the greater Mongoose area) but it had been years since we had seen each other in the flesh (or in the pixel, for that matter, in light of my friend's almost Luddite-like aversion to modern technology, the home computer included). Yet the desperate character of the letter I mention tugged so violently at my heart strings that I felt I had to go to ground-zero of the anguish that had inspired it. And as I drove down the twisty back road toward the swampy lot on which Rodie's forebears had decided (heaven knows why) to erect their family mansion, I wondered why my friend should be in such an apparent tizzy. To be sure, his grandfather had gone off the deep end some years ago after an unfortunate incident involving a twin sister, a contretemps in which the Usher abode was actually said to have crumbled into a nearby tarn (necessitating the engagement of a small army of salvage crews and construction workers to raise and restore it to its former gothic grandeur). But why the Rodster (for such was his nickname in childhood) should just now be taking a dive into that same pool of madness, I couldn't figure out for the life of me.

Roderick the first, my esthetic homeboy's grandfather, had always maintained that he was the last of the Usher line (a fact, by the by, that plucked his already jangled nerves to no small degree); but it seems that the gloomy Gus had grown forgetful in his dotage. He had, in fact, fathered a Roderick II with an ex-wife in Poughkeepsie, of all places, to whom he was even paying child support, though the outside management of the scion's financial affairs by a big city banker ensured that grandpa remained blissfully unaware of the potentially galling financial consequences of this arrangement (if not of the arrangement itself, so thoroughly had the self-absorbed hypochondriac become psychologically estranged from the world outside his tottering mansion).



Roddy II was raised exclusively by his plucky and resourceful mum and seldom saw his hypochondriac father (indeed, the child never once set foot in his father's decaying mansion on the Rhine); yet the Rod-meister (for such was his nickname among his peers) had, by all reports, inherited many of daddy's loopy idiosyncrasies, including a marked aversion to all sounds save those from certain stringed instruments. (Oddly enough, he had a marked antipathy to all violins, but could easily tolerate most guitars, whether acoustic or electric.) How a nervous wreck like that ever procreated, it's difficult to say, but Roderick II eventually married his Poughkeepsie High sweetheart, one Asphodel Martin, and the two were soon the proud parents of a bouncing baby Usher: Roderick III, the antihero of our story and my bosom buddy, who, being of an adventurous turn of mind, made a beeline for his family's secluded homestead the very moment he came of age.

Rats! I now considered. I should have brought a map, for be this car never so fancy, I could expect to find no GPS units in a custommade model purchased by such an unrepentant Luddite as my father (though an inconsistent Luddite, to be sure, having bought such a technologically advanced car in the first place, never mind the many cutting-edge options that he was to subsequently foreswear on principle). Still, the increasingly dreary landscape admonished me that I was at least headed in the right direction. So I says to myself, 'Narrator,' I says (since the author has not yet seen fit to vouchsafe me any more specific appellation, never mind that the full Christian names of three entire generations of Ushers are depicted -- somewhat superfluously, to my way of thinking -- in this work.) 'Narrator,' says I, 'Full speed ahead to Tarn City!' And so thinking, I turned off the radio (even an admittedly recherche person such as myself can listen to so much opera, after all) and began singing the following spontaneously created lyrics to the tune of "Surf City" by the Beach Boys:

Well, I'm goin' to Tarn City 'cause it's two for one,
Yes, I'm goin' to Tarn City gonna have some fun,
Two ghouls for every boy!

What? It's a long way to Tipperary, okay? and I was growing punchy! Jeez!

Chapter Three: Arrival

Ah, there it is, says I, through those dead tree branches, just past the swamp: the melancholy House of Usher! I'd recognize that eyesore anywhere, with its vacant and eyelike windows and its crumbling masonry suggestive of the specious totality of old woodwork. (Hey, listen: I know from specious totality, given my old man's miserly procrastination when it comes to renovating and repairing -- much less replacing -- the timeworn wooden infrastructure of our own gothic mansion!) And would you believe it: There's still a perceptible fissure in the structure, extending in a zigzag direction from the gothic roof straight down into the sullen waters of the tarn! And if it weren't for the fact that it's overcast tonight, I bet I'd see a sliver of the blood-red moon playing peekaboo through that crack, just like in the good old days. Now if I could only find a place to park. (Oh, good: here comes a menial to do the dirty work. The somber fellow is signaling me to leave the keys in the car. Jeez, if this extremely peripheral character is so bummed out, I hate to think how blue Roderick himself might be!)

Ah! Here's the 'valet of stealthy step,' ready to show me in. Well, here goes nothing!

The Servant of Stealthy Step welcomes me to the melancholy House of Usher.



Heavens, what dust! I'd give a pretty penny to know when these funereal draperies were last washed. And look at all these books lying about. Tsk-tsk! Let's see here: "Directorium Inquisitorium" by Eymeric de Gironne. I take it my old friend isn't a member of the Oprah Winfrey book club! And what's this? It looks like the manual of some forgotten church: "Vigiliae Mortuorum Secundum Chorum...." Sounds like a real page turner. (Honestly, I wish this valet with the stealthy step would get a move on. These rat-eaten chambers through which we're passing are giving me the creeps! Nor was I reassured by the daunting mug of that doctor who just passed us on the staircase -- without so much as a "by your leave," now that I think of it. In fact, he cut us cold! Humph! A shady character if I've ever seen one: he had one of those mingled expressions -- you know, of perplexity and low cunning -- that kind of thing.)

Suddenly, the stealthy stepper thrust a bony finger in the direction of a particularly dodgy-looking vaulted apartment and bid me enter. "Right, in you go," says he, in a suddenly blithe tone of voice that I found perplexingly at odds with the sinister impression that he hitherto vouchsafed to me, what with his silent and cringing gait through the many creaky and shadow-filled corridors that we had thus far traversed. Naturally, I was like, "After you!" given the dim lighting of this proposed destination and the ghastly aspect of the apparently ancient furniture that it contained, judging, at least, by the furtive glimpses provided of those features by the occasional garish blazes of lightning through a series of eye-like windows situated as many as five meters above the black oaken floor. Now, I'm not easily spooked, and indeed no individual feature of the mansion had thus far bothered me one jot, but I must confess that the combined impact of all these esthetic vagaries was beginning to take its toll on my psyche, until I actually fancied that I had, for the first time in my young life, at least the initial symptoms of what my superstitious contemporaries were fain to refer to as "the heebie-jeebies."

But scarcely had I voiced my misgivings on these subjects when the valet, who but now had been my proximate Virgil through this interior designer Hell, had disappeared completely -- I neither saw him nor heard him any longer -- though I rather fancied I could still smell the rogue, for I must tell you, it was not just the furniture and appointments of the surrounding edifice that evinced a shameful neglect in the area of basic upkeep. Was I to understand then that the building's plumbing was on the fritz -- or had the oppressive air about me worked so famously on the minds of the tenants as to cause them to finally foreswear even the dictates of basic hygiene?

In the interest of fairness, let me point out immediately that the plumbing turned out to be surprisingly good at the renovated Usher mansion, as I was to later confirm for myself when I spent the proverbial penny in what I was then told was a "typical" example of the mansion's "many well-maintained loos" (though I felt that the presence of a servant at the entrance who dispenses mints upon one's departure was a bit over-the-top, even by my own high-brow standards).

Moreover, I'm pleased to report that poor hygiene was not to blame for the offensive odor of old Stealthy Steps, for, as subsequent subtle queries on my part were to reveal, the valet had recklessly switched colognes within the past couple of weeks, replacing the top-of-the-line Paco Rabanne that I still remember favorably from my last visit here five years ago (with that spicy admixture of rosemary, lavender, and just a hint of bergamot: ahhh!) with one of those rank "celebrity colognes" by Donald Trump or David Beckham (read "Trump" and "Intense," respectively) -- or maybe even that all-too-accurately-named "Unforgivable" by "P Diddy" Coombs. No wonder one wanted to cough violently in his general vicinity (in Roderick's vicinity, I mean, not Puffy's)! Roderick must be really out of it or he would have noticed the change on day one and given the valet the appropriate lecture on the false economy of substandard scents.

I was soon roused from these melancholy reflections, however, by the appearance of my old friend himself.

Chapter Four: Roderick III

"Aha! If it isn't the Rodster!" says I, relieved to see a familiar (if somewhat brutish) face. "Give us a hug, then!"

Give us a hug, then! (From left to right: Narrator,Roderick)



Perhaps misconstruing the import of that latter salutation (what was I, anyway: a weirdo? was that what I was: a weirdo?) my old friend started backwards in apparent surprise. What precisely did I mean by "give us a hug"? Was there some tawdry undercurrent of psychosexual mumbo jumbo going on here? Psychotic minds want to know! But then, realizing that I was no doubt "having a laugh" at his expense (which was, after all, he no doubt now reflected, in keeping with the ironical turn of mind that had characterized me since my childhood) he waved a disapprobatory finger in my upstart face (as who should say, 'Tut-tut, my good sir, tut-tut!') and returned with an unabashed smile, shaking me by the hand -- by the frail, clammy, and deathlike hand, alas, making me ask myself: Just what has been going on here psychologically speaking since my last visit 5 years ago or whatever?

"Come!" shouted the Rodster, in that peremptory tone of voice for which I had often had to chide him as a youth. Was I to be dragged around the place like a rag doll? "Come," indeed! (He certainly hadn't graduated from any finishing school since we last met, that was clear.) Of course, back in school days, I would have checked my homey down for such brashness, firing off some indignant rejoinder along the lines of: "I'll come when I'm dashed well ready! Honestly, Roderick, I am not your pet dog, after all!" But sensing the unwonted sorrow in his voice (such sorrow -- and so unWONTED!) I swallowed my pride and came as obediently as any cocker spaniel might do under similar circumstances -- though, under the current environmental conditions, one thinks instead of the baying hounds of the Baskervilles in this regard.

"Sit," intoned the Rodster, truly pushing his luck when it came to all these rude imperatives that he was addressing to my admittedly somewhat touchy person -- yet when I turned to admonish him, as 'twere, in 'good set terms,' his tired eyes and woe bewrinkled brow stayed my hand -- or rather stayed my tongue -- and I realized that something was truly wrong. I mean, heavens to Mergatroyd and then some, gang! Wowser! No, for now, I would simply make a mental note of his uncharitable nature, resolving to upbraid him for it some days hence, when haply I will have conquered some of his scruples and gloom (or at least some of his gloom -- one is not a miracle worker, after all.). So thinking, I awaited some long-overdue explanation from my friend on the subject of his nervous, highly agitated (and yes, downright rude!) condition.

But saying nothing, he turned instead to his "speaking guitar" (the Les Paul, if I wasn't mistaken, handed down, albeit somewhat reluctantly -- the original owner so doted on the instrument -- by the Gramps himself.)

"Please, nothing by Maria von Weber," says I, recalling the mad waltz that the original Roderick had played on the self-same instrument just minutes before his unlooked for comeuppance at the hands of his, as it turned out, "inadequately dead" sister. "How about a little of Schubert's 'Country Farmer' instead -- or better yet: 'Turkey in the Straw', you know, to cheer us BOTH up. Or even 'Heart and Soul.' I could even play the repetitive accompaniment on your great grandfather's harpsichord yonder," said I, nodding in the direction of a five-octave Neapolitan style keyboard which, in the wavering illumination of the garish oil lamps, appeared to date back at least as far as the early 18th century, if not before. Of course, I knew that the various light-hearted works that I was proposing could hold little interest for the lofty mind of my aesthetic friend, but I was determined to get the homeboy's mind off of that von Weber claptrap at any rate.

Vain hope!

Before I knew it, the Rodster was "plucking away" (with typical inaccuracy, I'm afraid) at his Les Paul, murdering the melody of that fateful waltz of accursed memory.

You see, my friend, notwithstanding the supreme musicality of his grandfather, had been tone-deaf, to my certain knowledge, since the 4th grade band class that we attended together, when the teacher was to finally sideline his "frenzied scrapings," as Mrs. Hutchins herself used to refer to them under her breath, by regularly sending him to the practice room under the pretense of fostering his "special musical spirit." (Musical spirit indeed. He was giving us all a headache. Of course, almost all of us played rather poorly back then -- but, as our teacher used to say once the Rodster was safely out of the room: "There's bad and then there's BaaaaaD!")

Chapter Five: Festering Boondocks

Notwithstanding the technical deficiencies of his performances, however, there had always been, or so I had fancied, a strange intensity of expression to my distracted friend's wild improvisations, and tonight's concert was to prove no exception to the rule, as I found myself harkening eagerly, as 'twere in spite of my own better musical judgment, to the determined plucking of each particular string. Perhaps it was just the gothic atmosphere, enhanced at intervals by the surreal illumination of the now frequent lightning bolts through those trademark eyelike windows, but there seemed to be a deeper meaning to the tune this evening than could, strictly speaking, be accounted for by the mere notes of what after all was a fairly trite melody -- how often had I found myself inadvertently napping during Aunt Nora's labored performance of this self-same composition in the spacious arboretum cum antechamber of my own palatial dwelling during papa's obligatory so-called 'Family Night's -- and yet tonight, how I hung on every note, as if I actually expected to hear therein the musical equivalent of an explanation from my friend regarding the nature of what, after all, was his as-yet unexplained summons of yours truly from the land of the living (for so I now, perhaps too charitably, thought of my hometown for all its bourgeois shortcomings, at least in contradistinction to what I now couldn't help thinking of as "these literally festering boondocks").

Roderick plays the last waltz (thank goodness!) of Von Weber



"Festering boondocks, eh?" retorted Usher, abruptly ceasing his ministrations to the seemingly message-laden strings and depositing the no-doubt priceless black Gibson guitar, rather peevishly I fear, atop one of the many timeworn ottomans that seemed to clutter up the place (rather disproportionately, as I then thought, given the general paucity of sofas and arm chairs with which they might logically be associated, leaving one to assume that the lion's share of these particular articles of furniture had somehow been abandoned by their larger siblings and left to fend for themselves as discrete entities, even though their best efforts in their new roles would only find them classed collectively, at least in MY book, as little more than an obstacle course).

"Why, Roderick!" I cried, unable to believe the sensible avouch of mine own ears, "you read my mind!" (I was like GULP! or whatever.) Eyes starting from their respective sockets, I now found myself grabbing the sides of my chair in preparation for a sudden departure lest my friend's sudden volatility were to assume a physical manifestation such as (and I gulped again in the mere contemplation of this possibility) a strong and quite un-pulled punch right in the direction of my poor defenseless "kisser," for I now recalled that Roderick had been no slouch in the strength department during grade school phys ed, and had, in fact, never once been beaten (he was the talk of the school in this regard) at any of his frequent early morning arm wrestling matches in the school cafeteria.

"Relax!" chortled Usher. "I didn't really read your mind. It's just that everyone I know considers this place a festering boondock, so I thought I'd freak you out by saying what MUST have been on your mind, too -- particularly as you were scowling, though perhaps unconsciously, at the moment that I voiced my seemingly prescient retort."

"Oh, good friend, nice friend, highly SATISFACTORY friend!" I cried, conscious that I was probably making very little sense at the moment, or at very least stringing my words together in a highly atypical and perhaps even bizarre fashion, so dazed was I from this apparent emotional about-face on the part of the Rodster. "To say truth," I said, finally mastering my temporarily dubious phraseology, "I was scowling over the thought that you are so tucked away here in the middle of nowhere -- a crumbling, swamp-infested nowhere at that -- with these vague troubles about which you have YET, as I now recall, to even speak to me! Me: The boon companion of your boyhood! Come, come: Out with it: Has Lady Madeleine III been bothering you again? If so, she has positively no right: I was here when she died from that... strange fever was it? Anyway, she was definitely dead at that time, trust me. Even that ill-mannered doctor that I passed in the hallway told us we'd be safe to bury her this time: "She's dead, dude -- stone freakin' dead," he said! (See? I remember his very words!) notwithstanding the true-to-life mixup that occurred on these same apparently luckless premises when your great grandfather allegedly rushed the burial of your departed sister's catatonic great grandmother -- could it have actually been on this very day, 80 years ago? My, how time flies! Anyway, if THIS latest Lady Madeline has come back to life post mortem, she has no one to blame but herself -- and/or the divinity of her choice, of course."

Chapter Six: The Tempest

"Then you have not seen it?" demanded Usher.

"Seen what?" I cried.

You must not, you shall not behold this!



"Then you have not seen it?" he repeated. "But stay, you shall!" And so saying, he strode resolutely to a spot on the sable carpet immediately beneath the nearest eyelike window, mounted a small wooden ladder that had apparently been placed in that location for this very purpose, and, before I realized what he was doing, had wrenched outward the massive leaden panes, admitting a torrent of nearly horizontal rain into the room to the accompaniment of almost incessant thunderclaps, while ever and anon, the tempestuous winds caused dozens of his grandfather's ancient tomes to fall down around me from their dusty perches, descending noisily to the floor with pages flapping, like so many small game birds that had just been felled by gunshot.

"You must not, you shall not behold this!" I screamed, scrambling up the ladder in a desperate attempt to close the window ASAP. But then, reflecting that the unexpectedly rickety structure was scarcely strong enough to support my own person, much less that of the Rodster and myself combined, I resolved to settle temporarily for the intermediate goal of wresting my friend (by brute force, as now appeared necessary) from his dangerous and exposed position athwart the gaping portal, where, to my superfluous horror, he was now chuckling maniacally with his arms splayed out votary like toward the yet onrushing storm. "Okay, Roderick, I see it!" I cried, tugging violently at the madman's drenched jeans. "I mean, hello? It's a meteorological phenomenon called a 'storm'! Perhaps you've heard of them? Now, would you come down from there and let me shut the window? Or better yet, shut it yourself, or -- or your 'speaking guitar' is going to be ruined by this unwonted exposure to the elements! Never mind your famous grandfather's age-old harpsichord!"

Alas, even the prospect of ruining two musical instruments (both of which he could easily stand to listen to, by the way) had no apparent mitigating effect on the vexing stubbornness of my histrionic friend, and I began to fancy that the two of us would be drowned in the raging storm before reason prevailed. (To be honest, however, I was most indignant, at least at the time, at the prospect of him needlessly ruining the harpsichord, convinced as I was that the reasonably well-maintained antique could fetch several thousand dollars easily at the appropriate specialist auction. I no doubt followed my OWN grandfather in this regard, who felt so strongly about the preservation of fine musical instruments, that he was said by survivors to have quipped, "Women, children, and Stradivariuses first!" when he finally realized the gravity of his situation as a passenger aboard the S.S. Titanic on April 15, 1912. Now THAT is what you call class!)

But then, bethinking myself of Roderick's grade-school love of poetry, I intimated a desire to hear some of his "latest verses" (if one can be said to "intimate" something while shouting at the top of one's lungs, for verily the clamor and clangor of the storm had abated not) gambling on the fact that his erstwhile interest in the art of composition had blossomed in my absence into a full-grown hobby, as, indeed, the contents of certain hallway bookshelves that I had passed en route here this morning gave me some reason to believe. Had I not seen a recently published, if not brand-new, copy of The Writer's Digest wedged rather unexpectedly between the dog-eared pages of the "Directorium Inquisitorium" and the well-thumbed manual of that forgotten church, "Vigiliae Mortuorum" or whatever? Moreover, I now recalled seeing dozens of what in retrospect must have been unopened rejection letters contained in SASE's of my friend's own creation, strewn so randomly about the room as to leave little doubt that they had been cast down in anger upon receipt from some servant, the Rodster having no patience with what, even in childhood, he had furiously castigated (to the predictable confusion of his uncomprehending contemporaries, of course) as "the cowardly conservatism of Madison Avenue and its cronies."

"That's it, just close the window and come on down," I cried, delighted to see that this proposed poetry reading had done the trick. "Perhaps you could favor us with that poem you wrote in grade-school: you know, the one that briefly appeared in the school newspaper before the PTA got wise to its contents (which, of course, they couldn't understand -- and no doubt didn't want to) and had the entire run confiscated and burnt. What was that called again? "The Conqueror Worm?" Yes, that's it. I still remember the line that really got their goat:

And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs In human gore imbued!

"No, no, leave that ladder for now and come sit beside me on this heavily becushioned sofa with the red velvet lining. You can't miss it: It's practically the only sofa in this huge room after all (which, incidentally, I find rather odd in consideration of the massive number of ottomans that lie about the place, without so much as one Lazy Boy or divan nearby to justify their existence). That's it, come on. Oh, look: you have a copy of the poem in your coat pocket, don't you? Sly dog! Sly dog! You were probably determined to read me that poem eventually whether I mentioned it or not! Am I right? No matter, though. Come, come, sit. (See? I'm ordering YOU around now, Roderick, like you sometimes order ME around. Ha ha!) Sit, boy, sit!"

But observing that Roderick III found neither wit nor propriety in this little sally of mine, and was perhaps even contemplating the re-ascension of the ladder that he had just quitted some seconds ago, I resolved to stop ribbing him at once, and even to backtrack somewhat on the previous jokes I had already cracked at his expense by issuing various apologetic disclaimers along the lines of: "Hey, listen, I'm just messing with you, Roderick!" or, "Oh, cheer up, old man: You know I'm teasing you!" and the like. Of course, he still made with the pouting lips and reproachful eyes for a few vengeful seconds -- but before long he was laughing at his own "silly wounded innocence routine," as he himself finally called it, and assured me that, his various other great sensitivities notwithstanding, he could "take a joke" as gracefully as "the next hypochondriac. Anyway, we're great friends," says he, "and I don't care who knows it! So there!"

In short, we both laughed with evident relief, spontaneously giving each other the somewhat elaborate (almost Byzantine) "high-five" routine with which we had often greeted each other back in our youth (while somberly intoning the customary nonsense syllables we had always reserved for this purpose: 'nyukka-nyukka poo-wanga-pang!') finally rapping each other playfully on the forehead once or twice, as if by way of consecrating our rapprochement, while voicing such propitiating declamations as: "Oh, you!" "You rogue!" and "Now get outta here, ya knucklehead!"

Chapter Seven: The Reluctant Poet

"But enough of this," says I, playfully shoving my moody friend off of the couch with my left hand, while pointing with the index finger of its right counterpart toward what appeared to be the only chair in the room, whither, with knowing nods and a modicum of actual physical compulsion, I now sought to encourage my friend to betake himself for the purpose of reading his poetry, convinced that the scrolling foliage of the splats and the intricate embroidery of the floral cushion (the chair had to be an original Chippendale, no doubt about it, probably mid- or late-18th century at most) was sure to complement if not positively amplify the oratory of its most vocabulary-challenged denizen, much less that of a former spelling bee champ such as I knew my pal Roderick to have been back in the day, the more so in that he went on to the regional competition only because I myself spelled "mayonnaise" with only one "n" in the school finals (although, as I tried to make clear, even at the time, I knew perfectly well that there were two such consonants in the spelling and I had merely misspoken. Now, if I had misspelled, say, "onomatopoeia," I might have let it pass, but no one was going to think -- not then, not now -- that I can't spell the name of a simple condiment. I mean, please, give me a little credit here!)

Of course, there was a practical reason for Roderick to take up residence in the chair in question, as it was situated beneath the one yet-burning oil lamp in the room, the other dozen or so torches having been extinguished by the stunt that my friend had pulled just minutes ago when he flung open that huge window full of fretted glasswork -- for reasons that escape me to this moment, by the way -- unless.... Say, you don't suppose that he wanted to have me observe a supposed "fissure" in the masonry of some external wall? Of course! That was precisely what his great grandfather was said to have noticed prior to the mansion's original descent into the surrounding tarn! (That fissure, of course, turned out to be the earthly reason assigned to the castle's apparent self-destruction.) But then if Roderick III had noticed a similar phenomenon, he might have said something! For heaven's sake. Instead of sitting there crying, "Behold! Behold!" he should have said something like, "Behold, a fissure!" Or better yet, "Behold, a fissure, not unlike the one that my famous ancestor saw just minutes before his dramatic comeuppance!" But instead he's just like, "Behold! Behold!" and I'm like, "Behold what, you moron? Now get down from there this instant!"

Seated at last on the recommended heirloom, my friend began his recital, but not before uttering the following highly atypical disclaimer, thereby convincing me that, though he had not yet entirely lost all his marbles, he had at least temporarily misplaced a few of them: "This is a relatively modern poem, you know?" says he, glancing furtively in my direction, as he fumbled in his coat pocket to extract the hitherto espied manuscript. I say he glanced "in my direction," for eye contact made he none, unless it was with the shiny toes of my "Ranuncolo" Oxfords from Bruno Magli that I had purchased specifically to wear on this mission of mercy. (Well, my Man Friday actually bought them for me, but I was grinning from ear to ear when I signed the chit. Honestly, that man. He's the kind of servant that I could safely send to Macy's with no further instructions than the whimsical admonition to "Surprise me!") "I mean to say that you mustn't expect this poem to rhyme," continued Roderick. "I've got more of a free verse thing going on here, as opposed to, say, the tick-tock prosody of 'The Raven' and so forth. Just so you know."

"Good heavens, man!" I cried. "What's with this cavalcade of caveats?! Read your poem, would you? And DO stop staring at my admittedly spiffy-looking Oxfords. They're expensive shoes, all right, but I don't think they're quite capable of holding an actual conversation with you.

"Speaking of shoes, I recall you wearing this very brand yourself five years ago, and here you are in mere sneakers, from Wal-Mart even, I shouldn't wonder. Tsk tsk tsk! And those drenched jeans I was tugging on just minutes ago: Correct me if I'm wrong, but they were plain old 5-pocket bootcut Lee jeans, weren't they? Oh, fie! Last time I was here, you were sporting 7 For All Mankind Straight Leg Antwerps!

"I own that I'm a trifle disappointed in you. If anyone realizes that outward appearances matter, it should be rich kids like ourselves. Not that you've 'gone to seed,' of course, in the manner of your valet of stealthy step who seems to have almost given up on life, judging by his latest selection of colognes -- in fact, to be fair, you actually smell rather pleasant today than otherwise: I imagine for starters that you availed yourself of a generous splash of Polo Blue during your morning ablutions. (Am I right? Fine scent, I've used it myself this very morning, as you have no doubt already noticed.) But -- oh, my friend -- how can you sit there in that (ahem!) common sports coat (tell me you at least got it at J.C. Penney's!) when but five years ago you were "the talk of the Tarn," so to speak, with your hand-woven Harris Tweed Hopsack? Surely a man who can afford multiple servants and an on-site doctor can't be entirely at the end of his economic tether. Conclusion? Something is really bothering you, babe. But then your letter to me said as much, didn't it?"

"May I read my poem now?" asked Usher, so drily and with such evident sarcasm that I was forced to conclude that his previous timidity had been a ruse, the more so in that he was now staring at me with what could only be described as callous effrontery (either that or, just possibly, brazen indifference -- still, my money, at this point at least, was definitely on callous effrontery).

"Oh, great: Now you're staring at me with what I can only describe as callous effrontery! Very funny, Roderick: You put one over on me, all right? You're not bashful after all. (I should have known: imagine you, the Class Clown of Mongoose Elementary School, being bashful!) Now, would you read that earth-shaking poem of yours at long last?! Gosh Almighty! What a to-do! Yes, I've never seen so much... uh... callous effrontery.... er... in one place, as it were -- OH! ARE YOU GOING TO READ THAT POEM OR WHAT???!!! YOU CAN SEE THAT I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY!!!!

And here (FINALLY!) Roderick held forth in those customary dulcet tones that had so endeared him to Mrs. Hildenburg, the otherwise joyless Teutonic taskmaster of our fifth-grade English class at Montgoose Elementary School (to whom some of the coarser members of the student body, no doubt jealous of this attention lavished on such a vexingly gifted contemporary, were then fain to refer to simply as "Broomhilda").

Chapter Eight: The Poem

Not long ago, the writer of these lines,
In the mad pride of intellectuality,
Maintained "the power of words"- denied that ever

A thought arose within the human brain
Beyond the utterance of the human tongue....

The reader must forgive my abridgment here of the work in question, but despite the obvious beauty of the verse, I found upon mature reflection that the poem's theme and general sentiments had little to do with the topic of this story, except perhaps in the pedestrian sense that "romance is never out of place." (Hello? This is a ghost story, yes? As in, boo, you guys! Right? Boo?) Moreover (and please don't tell the Rodster I said this, pending further inquiry on my part) I fancied that the composition sounded suspiciously similar to a love poem written by an American poet named Edgar Allan Poe in the first half of the 19th century. Still, Roderick's oratory skills were, as always, beyond reproach, so I let him continue his recital, blissfully ignorant of my misgivings, though I resolved to speak to him about them at the next appropriate moment, when I was finally certain, that is, that my boyhood crony was not, in fact (as I now began to fear in earnest) stark raving mad!

And so Roderick read on, my heart somewhat understandably missing several beats (five, to be precise), as he sang of that "moonlit dew that hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill," of the incomparable tones of "the seraph harper, Israfel, who has 'the sweetest voice of all God's creatures,'" of the narrator's strange epiphany athwart "the wide-open gate of dreams" leading to his humbling avowal that "I! My spells are broken!" and concluding at last with a haunting cinquain that ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:

Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,
And thrilling as I see, upon the right,
Upon the left, and all the way along,
Amid empurpled vapors, far away

To where the prospect terminates- thee only.

"Why, Roderick!" I cried. "I... I don't know what to say. Naturally, I'm flattered."

"The poem's not about you, you moron," returned the wordsmith, obviously vexed with my apparent flippancy.

"Gotcha!" says I. "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help myself. I admit it: I wanted to get a 'rise' out of you, especially after you led me such a merry chase with those antics of yours up there at the window. You almost ruined that harpsichord, you know!

"Speaking of which, what was that about, anyway? Come, come, forgive and forget: It was a fine poem, dude -- but now, seriously, tell me why you sent for me. It's something to do with the Lady Madeline, right? She's come back to life, hasn't she? And she blames you for her supposed premature inhumation. No, that's not gonna fly: I told you, the doctor himself signed off on her burial!
"Still, she's obviously threatening you all the same, so we've got to think of a plan. (By jiminy, she can't be too happy with me, neither, can she, seeing as I helped you carry her seeming corpse to its final -- or in this case perhaps penultimate -- resting place.) Well, at least the formerly incessant thunder is now abating so that we can hear ourselves think of a solution to this problem. Think, man! Think! (You couldn't ring for some tea, could you? That's a good fellow. I'm parched -- notwithstanding the virtual ocean of water at our feet thanks to the recent madcap histrionics of you-know-whom!")

SIGH! To my not insignificant frustration, I was still finding the Rodster stubbornly reticent on the chief point of all my inquiries: namely, the reason he had summoned me here in the first place (though as mentioned I had my own suspicions on this point viz. the vengeful machinations of an "imperfectly dead" sister). True, he spoke grudgingly of vague apprehensions concerning the probable longevity of the "Usher line," as he called it, given the fact that he, Roderick, was the last and so-far childless member of that time-honored family, but surely there was still plenty of time to change things on that score. After all, I now countered, he was still a young man, and not exactly an eyesore at that. A little pale of visage, perhaps, but what can one expect, living almost literally IN a tarn? Besides, to my certain knowledge, several young ladies had been making "significant eyes" at him back in our shared Slim Whitman High School physics class just five years back (including the notoriously shameless Lisa Lipschenbarker, better known at the time, of course -- "quite rightly," as the seventies songster Donovan would have put it -- as "Lisa Lips") though predictably my friend was far too rapt in his study-related cogitations at the time to reciprocate the attention, or even, for that matter, to recognize that he was, in fact, being (there's no better word for it, especially in Lisa's case) "ogled" by certain female classmates of his in the first place.

Meanwhile, those rafter-rattling thunderclaps, which but now had seemed to be in long-awaited abeyance, began once again gaining in their nerve-wracking clamor, leading me to wonder how either of us were going to make it through the night with our sanity intact (or in Roderick's case, with his sanity no further compromised than already appeared to be the case given the cryptic character of his complaints and his moody manner of expressing them). Then, bethinking myself of the vast number of books that laid about us here in this room (not counting the dozens that were floating at our feet after their unwonted exposure to the elements less than an hour ago) I reached for a random tome from the bookshelf nearest my person, bidding the Rodster lean back in his Chippendale (to the extent, at least, that one can actually lean back in what, after all, was a straightback wooden chair) and relax as I read at random from a promising-looking volume from his Grandfather's extensive library. "It's called..." said I, pausing briefly to bring the book's title into view under the vacillating and be-shadowed light of the solitary oil lamp: "'The Mad Trist' of Sir Launcelot Canning. Sounds like a real winner, eh? (Not.) Well, let's give it a chance, at least.

"If I remember rightly, this is the story wherein Ethelred has to slay a dragon in order to win a shield of shining brass -- or some such nonsense. Ethelred the Unready of England, you understand. Got booted out of the Fair Isle by one Sweyn Haraldsson, as I recall. Mind you, it served the vacillating monarch right. One doesn't exactly win friends and influence people by massacring one's enemies (as he appears to have done with respect to the Danes back on St. Brice's Day in England in 1002). True, those were rough times and the simple practice of giving peace a chance would no doubt have failed miserably: for starters, guess whose head would have been prominently featured on a Danish pike? Still, that one contingency, dire as it no doubt appeared to the king at the time, neither justifies nor excuses the pursuit of the opposite extreme: namely wanton violence. (All right, Roderick, quit glaring at me like that: I'll read the book, okay? Jeepers. I would have thought you'd enjoy getting a little historical background on the protagonist of the story! Sometimes I wonder why I even bother!)"

So read I did.

Chapter Nine: Cue Ethelred

Alas, if I had known from the get-go how bizarrely Roderick was to eventually begin reacting to my every word, I would have tossed the book aside at once and inquired hopefully about the presence of a DVD player and discs in one of the castle's more recently appointed suites (assuming that there, indeed, existed any such rooms, my initial tour of the building so far gainsaying that proposition) that we might repair thither and watch, say, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" while listening to the French language track thereof, for such linguistically informative viewings had been one of our chief shared pastimes back on those long Saturday afternoons of our no doubt somewhat prodigious childhoods in Mongoose Township. ("Mongoose Township," I suddenly reflected. "Why am I suddenly getting such bad vibes in contemplating the mere name of my seemingly innocuous hometown some 20 miles to the north? I mean, what's up with that? Oh, yeah: Now I remember. My dad is probably up there at this very moment, spitting nails over the fact that I borrowed his Aston Martin without asking. (Did somebody say 'dead meat'? Get me while I'm hot, you know what I'm sayin'?) What if Jimmy and Sally blabbed on me this afternoon after arriving home from school? (Why, I oughta --) Well, all the more reason to straighten Roderick out right here and now so that pops will be impressed with the compelling necessity, nay, the positive utility of my voyage hither. Right. So read I will. My mama didn't raise no dumb eggheads!")

And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn....

"Are you listening, Roderick? There WILL be a test, you know."

...but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand...

"Roderick, did you hear something? Aside from the thunder, I mean, which, thankfully, is once again abating in intensity? No? Hmm. That's funny."

And now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarmed and reverberated throughout the forest.

"There! It sounded like it came from some remote part of this very mansion: the self-same cracking and ripping that the quaint romancer has just been at some pains to describe!

"Oh, come on: You must have heard it?"

But my wildly moody friend was back in his unresponsive (indeed, effectively catatonic) state, and were it not for the feebly negating nods of his lofty forehead in response to my various queries, I would have judged him dead to the entire world.

"Well, well: Do at least try to stay awake during the rest of the story. And keep an ear out, would you? It can hardly be supposed that I'm imagining ALL of these noises!

"Now then, where was I? Oh, yes:

But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no sign of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour...

"Ooh, this is the good part, eh, Roddy?" And it seemed for a moment that my friend had finally entered into the spirit of the piece, judging by the sudden effulgence of his hitherto languid eyes, his newly straightened posture against the scrolling foliage of the chair back, and the faint quivering of his pale lips as he now waited, or so I fancied, for the exciting upshot of our hero's adventure. Indeed, the feeble prose notwithstanding, I found myself silently rooting for Ethelred, wishing him Godspeed against the dragon, and hoping that he would manage to track down the hermit before story's end and give him a sound thrashing. The idea, wasting the brave man's time like that by playing hide-and-go-seek!

"Let's see here, it says the dragon (of fiery tongue, mind you)... "

...sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten --

"Who entereth herein, a conquerer hath been;

Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win!"

I now began to pride myself upon my skills as a narrator, so rapt did Roderick now seem in the story that I was reciting. The only thing that bothered me was the way his eyes kept flitting nervously to the (as 'twere) ponderous and ebony jaws of the main door to this apartment of gloom, till I almost wanted to flail my hands in the air to remind my friend that, "Hey, I'm over here, Roderick. Stop looking at the hallway door and pay attention to ME!" But then I reasoned that he was probably just looking forward to the arrival of the tea that he had ordered at my behest some paragraphs back. Speaking of which, what was taking that servant so long? How long can it take to brew one little pot of tea? I could understand the delay if we had ordered a full-course meal, but we didn't even ask for a side order of scones. Well, well: I hope the menial in question isn't expecting a generous gratuity, that's all I can say!

And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before him...

"Yes! That-a-boy, Ethelred! You go, dude! (Oh, sorry, Roderick. I'm getting carried away, aren't I?)"

...and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound."

"There! Now I KNOW you heard THAT, Roderick." For verily, the ringing just described now emanated, as if on cue, from without the door!

Chapter Ten: Not Quite Dead

"Not hear it?" cried Roderick, rising instantly from his be-cushioned Chippendale. "Yes, I hear it, and have heard it! Yet I dared not -- oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am -- I dared not -- I dared not speak!"

"Why, Roderick, what are you on about?" says I.

"Said I not that my senses were acute?"

"Well, in so many words, yes, you could say that."

"I now tell you that she stands without the door!" And so saying, he rushed precipitously to the ponderous portal, determined, as it seemed, to open it at once and have done with the suspense. "I tell you we have put her living in the tomb!"

So saying, he flung the door wide open in one supreme effort, the comparatively low air pressure of the adjoining hall occasioning a burst of wind during the process that practically knocked us off our feet, only to reveal....

The valet of stealthy step, leaning dejectedly over the wet shards of a smashed tea pot on the black oaken floor.

"You idiot," I cried, "you dropped our tea service, teapot and all!" For verily, I had lost patience with this particular menial. It was bad enough that he was sporting bargain-basement cologne -- now it seemed that he was a klutz into the bargain.

"Well," I continued, turning to the wan face of my still edgy host, "at least that noise wasn't caused by the Lady Madeline, as you apparently feared. This -- shall we say? -- 'bozo' merely dropped the serving tray! (The devil take it, I'm more thirsty than ever now!)"

But to my horror, Roderick had now suffered his gaze to pass beyond the still down-turned face of his hapless servant, as if the hypochondriac now saw, or imagined that he saw, something moving in the bleak recesses of the extensive hallway that joined this residential chamber to the castle proper.

Editor's Note: Sorry to interrupt at such a cliff-hanging moment, but just in case the Lady Madeline does show up here, I'd better say a word or two concerning her previous illness and burial, so the reader can judge for themselves whether the vengeance that she is presumably seeking to exact is in any sense justified. You must know then that Roderick III had held what he then billed as an "End of Year Blowout Party" on the occasion of his high school graduation five years ago (that is to say, five years before the brouhaha that is unfolding even as we speak), whither the smartest 5% of the senior class were invited, which qualification, you may be sure, easily sanctioned the presence of our magna cum laude narrator (even if he DID happen to misspeak while attempting to spell the word "mayonnaise" during that ill-starred spelling bee in Middle School, which he surely knew then, as now, contains two N's: "mayonnaise" I mean, not "Middle School.").

The Lady Madeline (or "Maddy" as she was then lovingly known) was still alive at this juncture: in fact, she was the proverbial life of this particular party, her and her signature banjo, strolling gracefully through the superfluous ottomans of Roderick's book-lined apartment (which had been transformed for the occasion into so-called "party central" by the atypically industrious servants, with particolored streamers depending from the formerly funereal draperies, aromatic garlands laced about the many gargoyle bookends, and a positive blizzard of confetti (1" to 3" high, with drifts up to 5" in some of the more remote corners of the chamber), obscuring the erstwhile depressing influence of the sable carpet).

Blimey! I'm beginning to sound like the Rona Barrett of Tarnville here!

Suffice it to say that the party was in full swing (this must have been around midnight, I reckon), with the two dozen egg-headed guests alternately waltzing together, discussing various abstruse philosophies, and impressing each other with their rapid solving of the much-handled Rubik's Cube that had been making the rounds of the apartment since sundown.... When what do you suppose?

Lady Madeline, who was then standing on one of the countless ottomans, singing the so-called "Banjo Song" ("I u-la-lused to play-la-lay on my-la-lie ban-jo-la-lo..." and so forth) came tumbling precipitously, as it were (indeed, how can one tumble but precipitously?) to the confetti-strewn floor, the apparent victim of exhaustion. No, she wasn't dead at that time, thank goodness (that would have put a right damper on Roderick's "Blow-Out Party," I can tell you!) but the revelers did have to spirit her off to her own remote chambers so she could get some rest.

Blimey again! This editor's note is going on and on, isn't it? I promise, we'll get back to our story in just one second!

Long story short: She recovered for the nonce and later came back out by popular demand to triumphantly finish said "Banjo Song" atop the very ottoman from which she had but now fallen ("But the me-le-lender's sho-la-lop was shu-la-la-la--lut!")

But, despite her full recovery and the subsequent smashing success of Roderick's graduation party (the thank-you notes are full of such congratulatory accolades as "It rocked, dude" and "Awesome party, homes") "Maddy" did die for real two weeks later -- or at least she fainted once again and this time didn't "come round." ("Dead" said the melancholy doctor at this point: "Dead, dead, dead.") The heartbroken Roderick then sent an urgent text message to the narrator to "Hie yourself hither at once!" (or merely HYH in "textspeak") which, having done so, the two of them reverently placed the beloved banjo player in the family vault, situated one floor below what is technically known as the "donjon keep" (these destinations being accessed by buttons B1 and B2 respectively of the mansion's ancient Otis elevator) but only after demanding that the onsite doctor check (and REcheck) the luckless sister for any signs of life, given the family history of catalepsy.

The point of ALL of this being that the doctor insisted at that time, even upon repeated cross-examination, that the Lady Madeline was "Dead, I tell you: Dead!" (as he somewhat testily put it). "Now why are you cross-examining me?!!!" So if Roderick and the narrator did screw up and bury a living human being, we can at least hope that the vengeful victim of their mistake will take into account the mitigating circumstances of the hasty interment -- or at very least reserve the lion's share of her wrath for the apparently incompetent old sawbones.

Chapter Eleven: The Closer I Get to You

"Behold!" cried Usher.

"Oh, there you go again," says I. "Behold! Behold! Behold WHAT, you fool?!" for verily, the recluse had plucked my final nerve with his overuse of this ambiguous and no doubt unnecessarily melodramatic interjection, especially coming on the heels (the scoffed and unpolished heels, you may be sure) of the servant of stealthy step and his bungled delivery of the requested tea. Speaking of which, what was that clown still doing on the floor here in front of us? "Oi, you: Out of the way! We've got a situation here -- or at least Roderick seems to think so," for I'll be hanged if I had yet to see anybody in the far recesses of the corridor down which my host was now staring (with the sort of eagerly protruding peepers that the local villagers are fain to denominate as "bug-eyed").

"But I've lost the tea cozy!" objected the menial, in a tone of such inappropriate peevishness (especially under the circumstances: didn't he see what was going on here? or at least what appeared to be going on here?) that, had he been MY menial, I would have sacked him on the spot -- or at least given him the sharp side of my tongue!

I should point out in my defense that it was WAY past my bedtime by now and it had been a very long day! I'm normally patience itself when it comes to dealing with the lower classes, bless their quaint hearts. But everyone has their limits. Besides, a person in my well-heeled position has to draw the line somewhere. Let your servants whinge today, openly and without chastisement, and they'll be planning open rebellion tomorrow, believe me. But then Roderick (and this was, I now reflected, the main philosophical difference between the two of us) had always championed the optimistic views of Locke viz. the endless malleability of human clay, whereas I had long since sided (my servants will be all too happy to vouch for this fact) with my father in placing a decidedly Hobbesian construction on the whole business of human potential, telling myself, in effect: "Give the servants an inch and they'll take a mile," though even my critics on this score will freely admit that I'm "just too much of a teddy bear," as they usually put it, "to let dogmatism get in the way of common sense -- much less common decency." (What? Improbable as it may sound, those are the very words that these critics of mine typically use in this connection and I refuse to fabricate more plausible language for them just to make their observations "ring true." I'll do a lot for my "art," after all -- writing, I mean -- but I won't lie for it!)

But where was I? Oh, yes:

"A pox on your tea cozy, old chap! Now get up here and help me figure out what Roderick is staring at!!!! I mean, jeepers creepers, dude! First things first!"

Welcome! This is the final rest area before the exciting conclusion of our story. That's it: stretch those arms, wiggle those toes, See? Reading a complete story online isn't that hard, is it? You just have to pace yourselves.

Oi! Whose beagle is this? You should be on a leash, my friend. Well, I'll let you off with a warning this time, but now run back to your master and tell him you do, in fact, need a leash. That's it, off you go: Scoot!

Picture an horizon at sea. The lookout gazes dutifully at the seeming confluence of air and sky, trying to verify a reported ship sighting by the crew. For many weary minutes, the sailor sees no sign of other boats in the general direction that has been indicated, until finally, irritated at his own credulity and mad at the men for wasting his time, he begins to fold up his periscope preparatory to teaching his shipmates a lesson through the expedient of fisticuffs. (He'll learn them to make a laughingstock out of old Bos'n Billy, aye, that he will!) But then, hazarding one final pessimistic glance to leeward, he does indeed behold a bark, a fully-rigged sloop, perhaps -- no, strike that: an actual schooner! -- plying the waves with such apparent vigor that the relative size of the vessel appears to double with every eyeblink!

Just so did our narrator now finally behold the person of the Lady Madeline, just as Roderick had indicated (or at least seemed to have indicated by ambiguously shouting "Behold!") taking a straight tack down the center of the hallway in the direction of our gobsmacked trio, her tattered funereal raiment dancing like so many cotton telltales in the breeze occasioned by her unwonted haste -- unwonted, that is, even for the living Madeline, let alone a corpse who, by rights, should have been doornail dead for the last five years! Nor was this direful spectacle without its all-too-appropriate soundtrack, for the apparition so shrieked and wailed in flying hither that I was fain to cover my ears with my hands, but as both of those appendages were already covering my frightened eyes, I decided to split the difference and cover my left ear with my right hand, thereby freeing my left eye for a disturbingly stark appraisal of the oncoming horror: namely, what now appeared to be nothing less than the disfigured and bloody corpse of Lady M., animated, or so I now fancied, with hatred for Roderick and

Chapter Twelve: Easy there, Daddy-o!

"Not so fast, old girl!"

It was the voice of my dear father ("pops," as we siblings were fain to call him in our well-heeled -- nay, well-tricycled, well-ten-speeded, and eventually well-automobiled -- childhood) who had somehow arrived just in time to save us! Of course, at first, I thought that this happenstance, too, smacked of deus ex machina, almost as loudly as did my "parking attendant theory" of just seconds ago -- but then I reflected that the old man, alas, had probably come hither to upbraid me for driving off with his Aston Martin, and so his eventual presence here was only all too likely -- especially if, as indeed was likely by now, my two younger siblings had finally blabbed on me and told pops where I went. But then it's better to be boxed about the ears by one's father (so I now reflected) than to be strangled about the neck by a ghost to whom one is not related, even by marriage! In any case, it was too early to rejoice just yet. Pops may have impeded the ghost's progress, but he still had the tiger by the tail, so to speak, or in this case, by the shoulder blades. True, the Lady Madeline seemed stunned right now and happily sidetracked from her vengeful designs, but when she finally "collected herself" there could still be hell to pay.

As if reading my thoughts, my old man now forced Madeline backwards, tattered nightie and all, against the oaken panels of the wall, thereby bringing his own physically imposing frame (hand-woven sports suit and all) into full view (or rather into partial view thanks to the inadequate number of wall-hung oil lamps that illuminated this particular part of the corridor).

"Not so fast," he said again, looking into what I now perceived were the zombie-like eyes of the still-confused specter. "I have a little business to transact with my son first."

And so saying, he released the seemingly baffled ghost, transferring his stern and beefy paws to the shoulders of yours truly, pushing me toward a nearby fire exit (one of the many expensive safety features required by the county in exchange for their grudging approval of Roderick II's ambitious plans for resurrecting the edifice after its original descent into the tarn some 80 years ago).

"I had to come here by rental car, young man, because somebody stole my Aston Martin!" (Whew! Pop minces no words, I must say.)

And with that implicit accusation ringing in my ears, I opened the fire door in question, rejoicing inwardly, however, that I was being forced, as it were, to flee for my own safety (although to be sure, the old bully might still box me on the ears in the parking lot). Mind you, my joy was soon tempered by the reflection that Roderick and his servant were now left to their own seemingly inadequate devices, not six feet from the strangely reanimated person of Lady Madeline. True, my father's rough usage had seemingly addled her brain for the moment, but would she not be angrier than ever when she finally came to her senses?

"On to the parking lot," said Pops, still pushing me forward with those relentless mitts of his as we stumbled out into the light of day (or rather into the light of night, for the somewhat greenish glow about us, I now reflected, must have had its ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn, since my cell phone screen read but "3:28 A.M." Moreover, the stars and the moon were currently eclipsed by a fast-moving shelf of remarkably low-lying clouds whose ragged extremities seemed to reflect and even amplify the sickly green radiance emanating from the wet landscape not far below them.)

"I have a good mind to box your ears," said the Old One, finally releasing my shoulders from his "Vulcan neck pinch," as we siblings used to refer to this particular weapon in the tough-love arsenal of our father (or "Spock" as we used to call him in this connection, softly and amid nervous giggles of course, whenever he had his back turned). "But then, you're what, 22 now? I guess I'll just have to be content with sending you on a major guilt trip. I mean, you do realize that this is a V8 Vantage, don't you?" nodding toward the Toro Red coupe currently under discussion, which, to my considerable surprise was now directly in front of us, not 10 feet from the exit through which I had just passed -- or rather through which I had just been shoved by my somewhat ornery old man. "It's a direct descendant of the Virage-based 'supercars' of the 1990s! You don't just drive it into a friggin' swamp like this!"

I nodded vaguely as if in penitent agreement with the accusatory purport of the old man's harangue, but my mind was really on the fate of my homeboy inside -- that and the strange fact that my pop's Aston Martin had been parked so conveniently in front of the very egress from which we had just issued. Surely the attendant with whom I left it hadn't been privy to my onsite itinerary, and even if he had been, how could he have guessed that the arrival of a reanimated corpse would necessitate my hasty departure through this remote side exit? Indeed, absent any inside information on my plight, a servant interested in my well-being should have left the car in front of the massy limestone columns of the portico, figuring that I would exit the mansion by crossing the self-same threshold that I had traversed in entering it.

But then, as if these latter mental ruminations of mine had been voiced aloud, father says: "Why is the car parked so conveniently, isn't that it? Well, let's just say that I figured Lady Madeline was going to 'lose it' tonight (her sanity, I mean, not the car). And since this location was close to where the resulting confrontation was bound to happen, given its proximity to Roderick's own apartment, as judged by the mansion floor plan provided me by the helpful parking attendant (incidentally, you really should have described that worthy gentleman at greater length in this story of yours: he's a capital fellow) I not only parked here, but, indeed, gained access to the abode by entering via the fire door itself, the very door that I just (shall we say?) 'helped you' through with a little good-natured prodding? Ha ha! Oh, you rogue!"

"But, but, but...." I stammered, my mind unable to process the series of seemingly improbable (or at any rate, totally unexpected) revelations contained in my father's latest utterance.

Finally, however, I resolved to focus on what seemed at the time to be my principal logical objection to the version of recent events as described by pops: "But surely the Lady Madeline was.... d-d-dead!"

Chapter Thirteen: Dead Schmed

"Dead?" said dad. "Not a bit of it."

"Bu-bu-bu--"

"Do you really think that Lady Madeline, given the claustrophobic comeuppance of her grandmother, wouldn't have taken precautions against undergoing a similar fate?"

"You mean --"

"That's right, it was the old 'hinged casket' trick. The second she revived from her cataleptic coma (the one that the onsite doctor failed so miserably in diagnosing five years ago) Lady Madeline III followed the well-rehearsed emergency procedure of pressing a small button that had been installed for that purpose on the underside of the lid, thus converting the panel upon which she had been lain (oh, so inappropriately, as it turned out) into an electrically powered swinging door that was to gently deposit her yet-living frame onto an air mattress, whence she could sidle out from beneath the entire custom-made contraption to the relative freedom of the musty vault itself. Then, clapping her hands twice to activate the sound-responsive lock-opening mechanism which had been previously inserted with similar prescience into the ponderous crypt door (at no small expense, I might add), she hastened thence with the ostensible goal of upbraiding her brother (and you, too, I might also add) for his undue haste in consigning her to the tomb.

"Mind you, this was five years ago, and you lot had just graduated from Mongoose High -- or Slim Whitman High, as it's since been renamed -- so she apparently took pity on your tender years and decided to sate her vengeful spirit instead on the woefully incompetent doctor -- who, however, was away at a medical conference in Mongoose at the time, or so he later insisted, on 'The Health Needs of the Hypochondriac' (though Lady Madeline and myself have long since determined that he had actually gone to the first in a series of 'Think Like a Billionaire' conferences held at the Long Island Marriott by Donald and Ivanka Trump).

"But this dimly lit and vastly oversized car park is scarcely the place to talk about such things -- We'll discuss this business in greater detail at tonight's 'Family Night' (yes, it's that time of month again) in the arboretum cum antechamber. Meanwhile, why don't you drive that inglorious rental wreck back home (here are the keys: catch! try not to be blinded by the banana-yellow paint job) and I'll get behind the wheel of my 'old girl.' Speaking of which, you poor thing: Did my son drive you off into the swamp? Is that what he did? Oh! Not to worry: You are going to get the cleaning of your life when we get back to Mongoose Township!"

"Jeepers," I now considered: "One can't get a word in edgewise with this father of mine. Still, I'd better try to ask him the $64 question before we leave here: namely, what's to become of Roderick now that Lady M. has him (or so it would seem) at her mercy, even if she isn't exactly a ghost? Of course, I also want an answer to the epistemological question implicit in this latest turn of events: namely, how in blazes does pops KNOW all this stuff in the first place? But first things first, you understand."

But then, as if to spare me the trouble of vocalizing at least the first of these two concerns, Roderick himself poked his lofty forehead out of the fire door through which we had just exited the mansion and, with uncharacteristic sheepishness (unless, of course, you count what I've since determined was probably an exhibition of phony bashfulness back in his residential chamber) provided an explanation of such importance to the storyline that, notwithstanding its relatively modest length, I've decided to give it its own chapter below.

Chapter Fourteen: Burying the Hatchet

"Not to worry, homeboy: My sister and I have made up."

"You what? But --"

"As for the 'blood-bedecked' nightgown, it was all stage makeup."

"But --"

"Oh, and it seems that your father was 'in on it' all along; indeed, he planned this whole thing (with a little help from the mansion parking attendant, I'm told). That's right, your own father set my sister up with an alias at Mongoose Village apartment complex five years ago (apparently in the hope that my grief at 'losing' her for a space of time would teach me to be more careful the next time I consign someone to the tomb) -- then, learning of my latest missive and your voyage here by way of response (in his precious and apparently off-limits Aston Martin, no less) he resolved to 'teach us both a lesson,' as Lady M. just now phrased it for me

Chapter Fifteen: Wedding Bells?

"I've been thinking about what you said about my continuing the Usher line through the expedient of progeny and you're right -- especially now that Lady M. has given me a pep talk on this subject. Between the two of you, you've convinced me that I'm not such an eyesore after all, and that the love of my life IS indeed around here somewhere -- or at least in the neighboring township of Mongoose: my point being that I'll be expecting some help from you tomorrow night when it comes to updating "my little black book." So just be thinking: "Who's hot and who's not?" when it comes to area females between the ages of, let's say, 19 and 25. Yes?

"Now then, give me one more of those Byzantine high-fives before you leave!"

And so saying, the Rodster sauntered over to my dumbfounded person here beside the embarrassingly yellow rent-a-car (an Opel Corsa, as it turned out), already murmuring the somber nonsense syllables that we had used in this context since time immemorial (or at least since our first kindergarten class together at Mongoose Elementary School).

"Nyukka-nyukka poo-wanga-pang!" we cried, "Oh, nyukka-nyukka poo-wanga-pang!" followed in due course by the application of the customary 'noogies' on each other's "insolent" foreheads and the time-tested declamations of "You rogue!" "Oh, you!" and "Now, get outta here, ya knucklehead!"

"Now then, I'll see you and your sister tomorrow night" says I, insinuating my lissome frame into the surprisingly striking Recaro sports seat of my otherwise blase ride. "And bring Old Stealthy Step with you -- and the parking attendant if he's available, as I'd really like to pick his brain about the details of this 5-year-old plot."

"What about the doctor?" said Roderick, with a wry smile indicative of our unspoken but evidently shared aversion to the gentleman in question.

"That impolite sawbones? Sure, why not? Assuming that by then he's apologized to the Lady M. for incorrectly certifying her as dead five years ago. (As for the victim of his negligence, she always struck me as a sensible woman, so I'm sure she'll forgive and forget. I mean, the doctor made one mistake -- albeit a rather major blunder -- it's time to give him a break. It's not like any of us are perfect. Though I suppose it is odd that he would mess up in the exact same way that his great grandfather did in diagnosing the original Madeline.) Still, I'll thank him to keep a civil tongue in his head -- and use it when appropriate. I mean, he can 'cut' ME in the hallway like that and let me saunter by without so much as a 'How do you do?' But if he pulls that same stunt on my mother, he's liable to get called on the carpet. You know momsie, Roderick: she doesn't play that. She'll be like: 'Pardon me, my good sir, but it is customary among the guests here at Mongoose Manor to acknowledge the existence of their hosts.' And that's only if she's in a GOOD mood. If she's having a bad day, she'll be more like: 'Pardon me, my good sir, but it is customary among the domestics here at Mongoose Manor to acknowledge the existence of their betters."

"Yo, let's move out!" says Pops.

"Right. See you tomorrow night, Roddy -- at which point we can both finally start using my name again, by the way, since, as you rightly point out, certain authors around here haven't seen fit to mention it throughout this entire story! I mean, okay, the drama is basically about you, but that doesn't make me chopped liver, does it? I mean, jeepers creepers, dude! I've been through an awful lot over the last 10 hours to be dismissed simply as 'narrator' in the minds of all the English Lit majors yet to come."

FINNY

...save for the usual fastidious real-time tweaking by our conscientious author, bless him, Edgar Allan Quass or whatever

FOR DISCUSSION

1) Is "House of Usher II" an actual horror story, or is it really just a thinly disguised "thumb in the eye" of 21st-century credulity, which the author feels can no longer be jocularly excused in light of the vast strides of science that cast such long shadows of doubt on the all-too-bipartisan "mystic certainties" of our time: witness the Left's fascination with astrology, witness the Right's fascination with Creationism?

2) Why do you think the author juxtaposes his generally favorable references to modern technology (the Aston Martin, the DVDs, the television programs) with seemingly equally positive depictions of various antiquarian, or at least old-fashioned, pursuits (such as reading old books and placing a real value on study) as evidenced by his apparent pride at graduating magna cum laude from Slim Whitman High, his apparently unfeigned desire to win a spelling bee as a child, and his refusal to completely "write-off" even the seemingly hokey (or perhaps bourgeois, ERGO hokey?) tradition of "Family Night"? Is the author thereby suggesting that cynicism, while perhaps inevitable in certain cases, should no longer be the "default take" on life in the 21st century, and that, instead of raging against the dark a la Dylan Thomas, we should call it names, poke it in the eyes, and pelt its joyless forehead with lemon cream pies, literally having the last laugh on Fate writ large as per Nietzsche's prescription for the Overman in "The Gay Science"?

3. In chapter two, the narrator speaks of "the notoriously conservative and turf-protecting literary world" that may not see fit "to acknowledge" his "brilliance" during his lifetime. Assess the loss to American (and perhaps even World) literature that could result from such an oversight. (Indeed, would it even BE an oversight, or could it not more accurately be described as a positive SNUB?)

4. Is the author implying, by his steadfastly light-hearted treatment of an ostensibly horrifying topic, that irony-free (and non-self-referent) horror stories are "old hat" in the 21st century, or is he rather saying that 20th-century standards no longer "cut it" for this genre in an age where wholesale slaughter is often a meticulously photographed fait accompli on the 6:00 news? In other words, does the author feel that the limited and local disturbances generally occasioned by literary ghosts (the creaking floorboards, the mysteriously extinguished candle, the window that won't stay shut, and other such ultimately harmless parlor tricks) are hopelessly small emotional potatoes these days in light of the robust competition that reality itself is currently putting forth when it comes to flooring us with all-too-tangible calamities? Does the author, therefore, mean to suggest that horror can only remain a serious literary genre in the 21st century if the ghosts and other specters about which we write start catching our jaded attention by affecting humankind more substantially and on something approaching a wholesale basis, rather than meting out a mere sense of discomfiture to the odd tenant of a run-down boarding house or causing the occasional sleepless night for the weekend guest at a castle turned bed-and-breakfast?

5. If so, would there not be at least one "retail" version of the genre (i.e., Horror cum Horror) that could also survive, namely, one relying for frightening effect on a methodical dissection of the psychological misgivings occasioned by an unflinching stare into the abyss? That is to say, what could be more scary than the existential fact that ultimate dissolution and non-entity are apparently the shared fate of all sentient beings? Couldn't a horror writer achieve sublime heights merely by detailing, with a Brontean clarity, the tortuous (perhaps even tortured) psychology of he/she who dares to ponder these seemingly fathomless depths? Indeed, while we're on the subject, I could be wrong, but couldn't a widely read horror writer even insert a subtle note of hope into this "retail" sub-genre by suffering his text to incorporate some of the more hopeful speculations of modern cosmology, for instance the possibility of reversing "time's arrow" or indeed of stopping time altogether by the expedient of henceforth conducting all one's business at the speed of light, that is to say timelessly, thereby sidestepping the sordid contingencies of death and decay? (If not, why not? And you'd better be convincing, too, because quite frankly, I think the reasoning implicit in the previous questions is very close to impeccable. Feel free to be a contrarian, of course: just be ready to back it up!)