Beneath the House of Usher (Once Upon a Midnight Dreary #7)

Chapter One

Lenora

“Never let them see you bleed, Lenora.”

Mom’s quiet warning whispers through the numb cavity of my skull. A steely reminder that I am an Usher, even if merely by name alone, and that name carries a weight I must shoulder even when my entire world lies in two perfectly carved holes at my feet.

Born together.

Died together.

I suppose I should take comfort in that, if I weren’t filled with unimaginable heartbreak.

And rage.

They were taken from me. Brutally and violently. Torn from my life with the cruelty of a child ripping the wings off a butterfly. It was done with intention. The purpose: to rid the world of one more Usher.

They got lucky and claimed two in a single blow.

Eliah, beautiful, gentle Eliah, with his poet’s heart and eyes that saw beauty in a dark world that doesn’t exist.

And Ames. Bold, stubborn, a fighter with a smirk that could break hearts miles away.

Both devastatingly beautiful, and mine. They had been mine. My very reason for living. My only purpose to remain here on this mortal plain. Without them…

“Lenora.”

Gentle weight settles on my shoulder. Firm. Guiding. Pulling me back and around. Boots crunch on snow and ice. The only sound amongst the dead.

Uncle Marcus peers down into the face I tilt up. The twin pools of stormy gray kick my knees out from under me, and his arms hook instinctively around my waist, holding me flush to the solid weight of him.

He is the very picture of what my boys would have looked like in a few years.

The future I will never see. They had the best parts of their father, a fact I always appreciated because Uncle Marcus is the very definition of a man.

Strong, masculine, unyielding in his convictions.

A ruthless businessman whispered about by other men with fear and reverence.

But then he’d smile, and the thunderclouds in his eyes would become liquid silver. The hard lines soften into a smile that can melt everything inside me.

“He’s the devil and just as pretty,” Mom once said, and I agree.

Only, seeing him now. Looking into eyes the mirror of my boys’, a sob rises in my chest. My entire body shudders with the effort. I am hooked by the hot well of tears and my throat closes so the sound that escapes is the tortured whine of an injured dog.

“Doucement, mon p’tit,” he whispers in the sweet lilt of his mother tongue, the hypnotic drawl of sweet Creole into my temple. “Easy. I’m here.”

He is.

For now.

Until they take him like they took my parents. My boys. They will take him from me, and I will be eternally alone.

The final Usher standing.

“Uncle Marcus…”

“Shhh. Not here.” A gloved hand brushes my cold, wet cheek. “Chin up, Linny.”

I’m trying, but how am I supposed to care about anything when there’s nothing left? When the will to live has left me and it’s only his arms holding me together?

Leather cased fingers brush my stiff ones. Pry them apart. Free the crushed roses from my bloody palm.

“Linny.”

I say nothing as the destroyed blooms are tossed into the holes. All I hear is the thundering cascade of them striking the polished wood with all the others from the sea of faces surrounding the graves.

Uncle Marcus drags a crisp, white handkerchief from the inside pocket of his coat. It’s pressed into the gashes, the shredded skin where the rose thorns had cut into flesh.

“Don’t bury them,” I blurt, knowing it’s too late. “Don’t put them in the ground, please. Eliah…” My voice shatters at his name. “He needs the sun and Ames…”

“Mrs. Pym.”

Our housekeeper since before the boys or I were even a thought shuffles up behind me. Her warm comfort hits me seconds before her gentle hands settle on my arms.

“Come along, Miss Lenora. Let’s get some hot tea.”

My eyes stay on my uncle’s grim expression through a rising flood of tears that blur the world around us.

The faces.

The naked branches clicking in the distance.

The heavy swaddle of snow, turning the cemetery violently white.

“Please, Uncle Marcus,” I beg.

Strong, despite her frail appearance, Mrs. Pym guides me away from the watchful eyes of every enemy the Usher Family has ever had. Those who wish our end while smiling in our faces. Vultures circling the carcasses of my family.

Mrs. Pym leads me away from the hushed whispers and prodding eyes. Their scrutiny is knives slipping between my shoulder blades. Deep in that sliver of space where Mom lives, I know she would be disappointed in my behavior.

“Never let them see you bleed, Lenora.”

Mom did know best.

She was born and bred into Uncle Marcus’s world. I suppose I was, too. But Mom understood the rules. She lived by the code. If there was a situation that required all hands, Mom knew what to do before a word was spoken.

When her brother was killed on the street, a senseless tragedy of being in the wrong place — just like my boys — Mom had taken a deep breath. A shaky one, but her shoulders had squared and she set to work preparing for the funeral.

No tears.

No hysterical blubbering.

She stood still and solid at his graveside, dark eyes solemn.

“They are always watching. You can never give them the satisfaction of seeing that they cut you.”

But this is different.

I have no one to explain the bubbling war of fire and ice in my stomach.

The shrieking demon in my chest. I have no one to hold me when I can feel myself cracking and the world feels so small and endless.

Too big and too dark. I have no one because they took the only people I did have.

They carved out my soul and I’m hollow. A void sucking me in from the inside.

“All right. Just a little more,” Mrs. Pym soothes, but I know she’s warning me to keep it together.

The car is ten feet away.

“Keep it together, Lenora.”

Seven feet.

Something is buzzing.

The crisp air is brittle and unforgiving scraping down my esophagus.

Five feet.

My stomach churns and my skin grows clammy beneath the silk and wool. The world spins.

Three.

Dots dance across Mrs. Pym’s withered face. The ground is no longer solid, but liquid sludge beneath my trembling strides.

Mr. Pym, as sturdy as his wife, captures my other arm, dragging me up with surprising strength.

“All right, miss, easy now. A bit slippery here.”

A lie, but they’re watching. Watching me fall apart.

Maybe I’m not an Usher after all. Maybe I’m just a weakness Marcus will send away and I will never see my boys again. What if this is my very last time like that evening a week ago when I kissed them both before they walked out of the house, promising to be right back.

But they weren’t.

I watched them walk to the car.

Then the car returned without them…

I need to see them. They’ll be buried forever under dirt and ice, and I’ll never see them again and I didn’t even say goodbye.

“Miss!” Mrs. Pym’s startled squeak barely registers when I yank free of her hold and tip.

Without her support, the ground vanishes. The world tips in a spiral of blue and white. I think I’m falling.

Strong, sturdy arms catch me. I’m lifted with no effort against a solid chest. The rush of winter and spices fill my senses as Uncle Marcus cradles me as if I were a child.

“I have you,” he brushes into the side of my tear-streaked cheek.

My arms close around his neck and I bury my face into that familiar smell of him.

“They’re gone,” I choke out. “I didn’t say goodbye.”

“We’ll come back,” he promises. “As often as you like.”

“Don’t leave me,” I blurt. “I’ll die if you leave me, too.”

His arms tighten even as he moves in the direction of the car.

“I will never leave you, mon p’tit.”

I wake to darkness and an ocean of mattress. The familiar canopy stands rigid overhead, an archway guarding me from their absence.

It’s not the first night I’ve woken too soon. It’s not the first time since I was told the news that I’ve lain still and silent in our bed and wished for death. Being awake is a torture I can no longer stand, but must endure…

A creak.

A soft clink of steel on glass.

I stare harder at the canopy. I fist the sheets tighter to my chest, my thundering heart.

Don’t look, I tell the part of me that only wants a peek. A fleeting peek in the direction of the vanity.

A quick one.

Just to soothe my curiosity.

But I remain immobile. Rigid in my determination. It’s the house settling. It’s the cold biting the French windows. There are a million reasons…

Nails on glass.

Low. Piercing.

I shut my eyes to keep them from straying. I tell myself it’s a figment of my grief. A manifestation of my trauma. I have grown up in this room. I know every corner. There is nothing there.

Certain in my fortitude, I push upright. I pull my knees to my chest and lay my cheek on top — face carefully turned to the door.

Tomorrow will be a week.

One full week without my reasons for living. Seven days without a purpose. It’s only been three days of lucidity. Of clarity, where the doctor hasn’t tried to force drugs down my throat to calm me.

I wish he would.

I wish to remain numb for the rest of my life. To feel nothing. To float in an endless ocean of sleep. But Uncle Marcus insisted I be lucid for the funeral. He had wanted me to say goodbye. Instead, I embarrassed him and lost my chance.

Now, my boys are six feet in the dirt. Their killers are roaming free. And I’m being haunted.

The low squeak and splinter of glass spreads a chill across my exposed skin. The lacy nightgown isn’t designed for March weather over the Pacific, but it had never been a problem before now. Before now, I was at the center of two men who radiated heat.

But they’re gone.

Their place in our bed is empty. Miles of endless ocean where I am drowning without them.