Usher's Passing

by Robert McCammon

A blade grazed Rix’s cheek with a noise like a hornet. A trickle of warm blood ran down, and the pain cracked the ice that had closed around him. As he stared at the swinging hooks, reality flooded back into him. Edwin was the Pumpkin Man. Edwin had caused Sandra’s suicide. Cannibalism kept the Ushers young, warding off the Malady as long as possible. The Ushers worshiped evil, and had built Usher Armaments as an altar to the force that lived within the Lodge—the great malengine that had gathered around him and shaped him to be fuel for the furnace of destruction. Edwin contorted on the floor in a spreading pool of blood. When a spasm jolted him, the shockwaves shook the walls. Like an animal snapping madly in its death throes, he was striking in all directions with his awesome, evil magic. The chamber’s door blew off its hinges. The freezing crosscurrents of energy whipped back and forth, staggering Raven to the floor and throwing Rix against a wall as if he were caught in a hurricane.