Free Usher's Passing by Robert R. McCammon

Edwin?"
    "They have the estate to look after. Damn it, boy! I won't beg you! This is the last thing I'll ever ask of you! Stay here, for your mother's sake!"
    Rix had been caught off guard; he hadn't expected such an open appeal from his father. But here he was, back at Usherland, with the run of the estate and time on his hands—what better opportunity, then, to pursue the idea that had sparked in his mind in New York? The Gatehouse had a large library; there might be something of use in there. He would have to be careful. Though he'd mentioned his idea casually to Cass the last time he'd been home, he didn't want anyone knowing he was seriously considering it.
    "All right," Rix agreed. "Only a few days. I can't stay any longer."
    "That's all I ask."
    Rix nodded. The skeleton on the bed shifted painfully. There was something on the bed beside him. Rix stared at it for a moment before he realized it was the Usher cane with the silver lion's head, the symbol of the Usher patriarch. Walen's crablike hand closed around it.
    "You can go now," Walen told him shortly.
    My appointment's over, Rix thought. He turned abruptly away from the bed and groped to the door. Mrs. Reynolds put aside her book and rose to let him out.
    The muted stairway light stung his eyes. He ripped the surgical mask from his face and dropped it into a stainless-steel trashcan. His clothes reeked of rot.
    He descended the stairs on shaky legs, but halfway down an overwhelming dizziness struck him. He had to stop as the world spun around. There were cold specks of sweat on his face, and he braced for an attack. But then it passed, and he took several deep breaths to clear his head.
    When he was ready to walk again, he went along the corridor and found Edwin waiting for him. Edwin didn't have to ask about his reaction to seeing Walen; Rix's face looked like a sheet of waxed paper.
    Edwin cleared his throat. "Have you seen your room yet?"
    "No. Why?" The last time he'd slept in there, it was comfortable but nothing special. All his old furniture had long since been taken out to make way for an elaborate bed, a chest of drawers, a rosewood dresser, and a marble-topped table brought from the Lodge.
    Edwin opened the door for him.
    Rix stopped as if he'd walked into a glass wall.
    The room had been changed back again. The ostentatious furniture had departed. In its place was a familiar, battered pinewood desk topped with a green blotter and a beat-up Royal typewriter—his first typewriter, the one he'd pounded out monster stories on when he was ten years old; his own chest of drawers, decorated with a hundred decals from airplane model kits; his bed, with the carved headboard that he'd pretended was a spaceship's instrument panel; even the dark green rug that looked like forest moss. It was all the same, right down to the brass lamps on the desk and bedside table. Rix was amazed. He had the eerie sensation of stepping backward in time, and thought that if he opened the closet door he might find Boone—a smaller Boone, but no less tricky—crouched in there among the boy-sized suits and shoes, waiting to leap out and scream " Pumpkin Man!" at the top of his lungs.
    "My God," Rix said.
    "Your mother insisted that all these items be taken out of storage in the Lodge and returned," Edwin said with a helpless shrug.
    "I can't believe this! It's exactly the way the room looked when I was ten years old!"
    "She wanted to make sure you were comfortable. It was all done overnight."
    Rix entered the room. Everything was the same. Even the blue and green checked bedspread. "How did she remember what was in here? I didn't think she ever paid that much attention to my room."
    "Cass and I helped her."
    Rix opened the bottom drawer of the chest, half hoping to find the three stacks of vintage Batman comics he'd saved and then, stupidly, thrown away when he thought he'd outgrown them. The drawer was empty, as were all the others. The smell of mothballs wafted out. Atop the chest