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THE
FALL
Bethany Grifn
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First published in Great Britain in 2014
by Indigo
a division of the Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper St Martins Lane
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK company
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright Bethany Griffn 2014
The right of Bethany Griffn to be identifed
as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the Orion Publishing Group.
The Orion Publishing Groups policy is to use papers
that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and
made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging
and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the
environmental regulations of the country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 78062 136 4
Printed in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
www.orionbooks.co.uk
www.bethanygriffn.com
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1
1
MADELINE IS EIGHTEEN
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The rst thing I notice is that my blanket is gone. The
last of my nightly rituals is to pull it all the way to my
chin, and it never falls away, no matter what nightmares
I wrestle before I wake.
But something else is wrong; I try to move, and
though I dont seem to be paralyzed, my arms are
pinned tightly to my sides. My brain is slow; the horror
saturates me gradually. I struggle, twist to the left, and
free one arm.
Reaching up, my trembling hand gets only a few
inches before my ngers touch cool stone. I blink. My
lashes spider-touch my cheeks, and then that touch is
gone, so my eyes must be open. The dull, compressed
darkness is so absolute that I cannot see my shaking
hand, even as I bend my elbow and press my ngers
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Bethany Griffin
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against my right eye, and then my leftgently, very
gentlyto make certain both still rest in their sockets.
My eyes are intact. But the relief dissipates as I rec-
ognize the shape of my prison, the feel of the thin pad-
ding beneath me, the slope of the cool stone. The plush
lining . . .
This darkness is the darkness of a cofn.
Not any cofn. A stone sarcophagus. Perhaps even one
Ive been in before, years ago, on a dare.
Ive been buried, but Im not dead. Im not dead. I cant
breathe. What is that sound? Is someone here? No, its
me, crying and using precious air . . .
Tremors shake my entire body, but the box Im in does
not shift at all.
I must be in the vault, held in place by solid stone.
Beneath the house. The dead of my family press around
me. Were entombed by marble shot through with a vein
of pink, a rare and costly stone, thick enough to keep the
waters of the tarn from seeping down into the crypt.
Panic claws at me. But I cannot succumb to it; I cannot
fall into one of my ts. Not now.
The house is heavy and lled with hate. I slow my
breath and relax my arms. The lace at my sleeve is rough
against my wrist, and suddenly I realize what Im wear-
ing. A dress that I hid deep in the recesses of my ward-
robe, praying never to see it again. The lace at the neck
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is stiff and scratchy. Tight. When I move my hand, the
pearl buttons at the sleeves press into the sensitive skin of
my inner arm, likely to bruise. I should have burned the
dress. I would have, had I known that I would be buried
in it. Buried.
Claustrophobia sets in. The not-so-gentle cousin of
madness.
One of my arms is still pinned tightly down. The freed
one rests, trembling, on the silk of the dress, which I know
is white, though I cant see it. No part of me is not touch-
ing the accursed fabric. Tears wet my cheeks. I cannot
breathe. I cannot breathe.
I claw at the collar. The box is so tight that my elbow
hits the side each time I move.
The lace catches my ngernails and one of them breaks,
the pain bitter and sharp.
Blood, trickles down from my ngertips and I am chok-
ing on bits of the desiccated dress and the coarse dry
velvet of the cofns lining with every inhale. This small
space is so very hot. I cough as velvet particles line my
throat.
Only the ring on my nger remains cool. The ring I
always wear, given to me by my brother, Roderick, as a
token of his love.
Its very heavy.
My hair has been pinned tightly against my head.
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My eyes burn. I check once again to make sure that
they are intact.
I hear panting and know that the sound, animalistic,
desperate, is coming from me.
Who chose this dress?
Who put my hair up?
Was it done lovingly?
I throw back my head and scream. Somewhere in the
house above, there is one who hears me. The one who
buried me alive.
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2
MADELINE IS NINE
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Wind and rain, lightning and thunder, a storm throws
itself against the House of Usher, rattling every window,
including mine. Thunder pounds the earth and the house
groans.
Carefully, I carry out my bedtime rituals. Without
them, I would never sleep.
I pad across my room to the heavy wooden door.
Through the oor I can feel the house breathing. I posi-
tion a thick book to keep the door from swinging more
than half open.
My candle ickers. I must have the door positioned cor-
rectly before it goes out.
Taking two steps back, I survey the room. The half-open
door still feels . . . wrong. I adjust it, nudging the book
with my foot. It creaks, louder than a door should when
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moved so slightly. I rest my hand against the woodtoo
long, because feelings seep into me that are not my own.
The house wants me to open the door. To put the book
back on the bureau, to straighten the rug. The house
hates closed doors.
But completely open doors are as terrifying as being
closed in with . . . whatever might nd its way into my
room. There are things, living and dead, creeping through
these halls, and Id rather they ignore me while I sleep, as
they do during the day. The house will protect me, but I
feel safer with the book holding the door in place.
Lightning ashes as I turn, illuminating the empty cor-
ridor, and my path back to my four-poster bed. Outside,
the trees are lashed by wind and rain. I blow out the can-
dle and pull the quilt to my chin.
And now, I listen. The clock in the hallway ticks away
the minutes. It will chime, either at midnight, or upon the
hour of its choosing. A sound patters in the hallway. Pat
pat pitter pat, coming closer, ever closer, stopping before
my doorway, and then pat pat pat over the threshold and
into my room.
I dont dare breathe. I lie as still as possible, straining
my eyes against the darkness. A slight shape approaches,
slinking through the gloom. A ash of lightning
reveals the solemn face of my brother. His silver-white
hair gleams as the unnatural green-white light fades.
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Thunder crashes, and we both jump.
Roderick crawls up into my bed; he is shaking.
The storm? I whisper.
Yes, he whispers back.
Roderick is afraid of nearly everything.
I put my arms around him, trying to stop his trembling,
but instead it infects me, and we sit there propped up
among the pillows, shuddering together.
Roderick, its only a storm, I whisper.
His eyes accuse me of lying. Nothing here is just any-
thing. This is not just a house. We have never been simply
children. We are Ushers.
The storm makes my hair crackle. Lightning ashes
again, tingeing the entire world green. The house is so
huge around us, and we are so small. But were together.
The house is unsettled, I tell him.
He doesnt want to hear about the house. It frightens
him more than anything else, and he likes to pretend
hes brave. He cant tell, the way I can, that the house
is protecting us, from the storm, from the ghosts. From
everything.
Tell me a story, Roderick begs, snuggling down into
my blankets.
I close my eyes. The stories are part of this place; they
utter around me like moths, dark and bloated, the size
of my fathers hand. Some are like visions, the events
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unfolding as they might in a dream. Some are tales that
I have heard and remember, the ones that Father tells
sometimes. Which will the house give me tonight?
Once on a windy night. I try the words out, testing
them to see if they feel right. A gust of wind makes my
windowpane shake. Roderick edges even closer. His thin,
birdlike bones jut into my side. He nestles into my pillow,
nudging me over, even though he knows I like to be in the
exact center of the bed.
There was a beautiful maiden with golden hair who
was lovely as the sunrise. He reaches out and touches my
hair, which is not golden; its silver-gilt, like his. But the
maiden walked outside in the dead of winter and caught
cold and died. In the nearby forest lived a hermit, who
was old and ugly and gnarled as the root of a tree. He
wanted to capture the maidens ghost, which was said to
linger, pining for her lost love, the brave knight Ethelred,
who slept every night by her tomb.
While brave Ethelred was sleeping, the hermit crept
up and cut off a lock of the knights hair to use as bait and
placed it in an urn made of clay mixed with blood, and
set the urn out on the cold sand where the sea pounded
the shore.
I stop to take a breath, and to listen. The wind is hit-
ting the house in a rhythmic manner, much like the
sea in the story. Somehow the story, though dreamlike,
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insubstantial, is more real than this cold, dark bedroom.
For nearly a year the hermit sat, night after night, on
the beach, in the cold, waiting. Finally, he saw the ghostly
form of the maiden. When she came near the urn, there
was a ash of light. Outside lightning strikes, illuminat-
ing my brothers narrow, huge-eyed face. His frail body
no longer trembles, and his fascination warms me. We
are both immersed in this story, at one with the house.
The ghostly maiden curled up like a wisp of smoke
around the lock of hair. The hermit slammed the lid on
the urn and took her to his hovel.
Brave Ethelred came to the hermits home and beat
upon the door.
We hear a rapping sound, and Roderick shoots up in
bed. His eyes are wild.
The wind must have blown a shutter loose, and it is
hitting the side of the house. I take his hand. He sinks
slowly back down beside me.
What happened next, Madeline? he asks.
The hermit would not let Ethelred in, so he lifted his
mace and hit the door, and then stuck his gauntleted
hand in through the hole and began to rip and tear all
asunder, so that the noise echoed through the forest.
I pause, listening for the ripping of wood. Instead
Roderick throws back his head, and he screams until I
fear his throat will be torn apart.
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I wrap my arms around him.
Be still, Roderick, be still, I beg, but he keeps scream-
ing. Desperate to calm him, I press the blankets up
against his face to try to stie his voice.
Our mother glides into the room. Her hair is long, pure
white against her nightdress. She shines in the lightning
as Roderick did, and is more graceful than even a ghost.
I cant take my eyes from her.
When she reaches my bed, she slaps me hard enough
that my head hits the headboard.
My eyes burn, but I dont say anything as she scoops my
brother into her arms and carries him away. The house
whispers to me, louder in my ears than the storm outside.
I lie in the center of my bed, listening to the crash of
thunder, and to the splintering of wood, which comforts
me. The house is caught up in the story too.
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