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undergrowth; the looming mountains black against an orange-streaked sky, clouds snagged like gray pennants on their rocky peaks; and the Lodge—it always came back to the Lodge—immense and dark and silent, holding its secrets like a closed fist.
    A skeleton with bleeding eye sockets swung slowly through his mind's eye, and he sat up in the leaden light.
    A recurring idea had snapped on in his brain again. It was the same idea that had sent him to Wales, the same idea that had made him enter genealogy rooms in libraries from New York to Atlanta, in search of the Usher name in half-forgotten record books. Sometimes he thought he could do it, if he really wanted to; at other times he realized it would be a hell of a lot of work, probably for nothing.
    Maybe now is the time, he told himself. Yes. He certainly needed a project, and he was going back to Usherland anyway. A smile flickered across his mouth; he could hear Walen's shout of outrage over four hundred miles.
    Rix went into the bathroom for a glass of water, then picked up the copy of Rolling Stone that Boone had folded and left on the tiles. When he took it back to bed to read, the fist-sized tarantula that Boone had carefully wrapped up within it dropped onto his chest, scuttling wildly across his shoulder.
    Rix leaped out of bed, trying to get the thing off him. The attack that crashed over him like a black tidal wave drove him into the protection of the Quiet Room. With the door closed, no one could hear him scream.
    Boone had always been a great practical joker.

One

USHERLAND

    "Tell me a story," the little boy asked his father. "Something scary, okay?"
    "Something scary," the man repeated, and mused for a moment. Outside the boy's window, the darkness was complete except for the moon's grinning orb. The boy could see it over his father's shoulder—and to him it looked like a rotting Jack-o'-lantern in a black Halloween field where no one dares to walk.
    His father leaned closer toward the bed. "Okay," he said, and the low light gleamed in his glasses. "I'll tell you a story about a dying king in his castle, and the king's children, and all the kings that came before them. It may go off in different directions and try to trick you. It may not end like you want it to .. . but that's the way this story is. And the scariest thing about it—the most scariest thing—is that it might be true . . . or it might not be. Ready?"
    And the boy smiled, unaware.
    — The Night Is Not Ours by Jonathan Strange, Stratford House, 1978

1
    AS RIX WALKED OFF THE DELTA JET AND INTO THE AIRPORT TERMINAL seven miles south of Asheville, he saw Edwin Bodane's head above the group of people who'd come to meet other passengers. Edwin stood six feet four, aristocratically thin, and was definitely hard to miss. He grinned like an excited child and rushed over to embrace Rix—who didn't fail to catch the almost imperceptible wince on Edwin's face when he saw how much Rix had aged in the past year.
    "Master Rix, Master Rix!" Edwin said. His accent was old-blood Southern and as dignified as polished silver. "You look—"
    "Like hell on a Popsicle stick. But you look great, Edwin. How's Cass?"
    "She's as fine as ever. Getting feistier with the years, I'm afraid." He tried to take the garment bag that Rix was carrying, but Rix waved him off. "Did you bring any more luggage?"
    "Just a suitcase. I don't plan on staying very long."
    They stopped at the baggage check for the suitcase, then walked out into the cool breeze and sunlight of a beautiful October afternoon. At the curb was a new limo, a maroon Lincoln Continental with tinted windows and a sunroof. The Usher passions included mechanical as well as thoroughbred horsepower. Rix stored his luggage in the cavernous trunk and sat on the front seat, seeing no need to ride separated from Edwin by a plate of Plexiglas. Edwin put on a pair of wire-rimmed sunglasses and then they were off, driving away from the airport and toward the dramatic line