What Moves the Dead

This is a re-imagined version of Edgar Allen Poe's Fall of the House of Usher by one of my favorite authors, T. Kingfisher.

First Line:

The mushroom's gills were the deep-red color of severed muscle, the almost-violet shade that contrasts so dreadfully with the pale pink of viscera. I had seen it any number of times in dead deer and dying soldiers, but it startled me to see it here.

Favorite Parts:

It is a cliche to say that a building's windows look like eyes because humans will find faces in anything and of course the windows would be the eyes. The house of Usher had dozens of eyes, so either it was a great many faces lined up together or it was the face of some creature belonging to a different order of life - a spider, perhaps, with rows of eyes along its head.

* * *

Given that lack of imagination, perhaps you will forgive me when I say that the whole place felt like a hangover.

* * *

Granted, the plants all looked dead or dying. Granted, the windows of the house stared down like eye sockets in a row of skulls, yes, but so what? Actual rows of skulls wouldn't affect me so strongly. I knew a collector in Paris...well, never mind the details. He was the gentlest of souls, though he did collect rather odd things. But he used to put festive hats on his skulls depending on the season, and they all looked rather jolly.

Usher's house was going to require more than festive hats.

* * *

Very few ancient crypts have plump shepherdesses and gamboling sheep on the walls. I consider this an oversight.

* * *

Sometimes it's hard to know if someone is insulting or just an American.

* * *

Roderick started in with a story of a fellow we served with who was shot in the family jewels and went on to have three children. It's a good story. Denton winced in the appropriate places and we drank and sat by the fire and told war stories as if everything was completely normal and no one in the house was dying.

* * *

"They say mushrooms spring up where the Devil walks," said Angus sourly. "And where fairies dance."

"Do you think they ever get the two confused? The Devil shows up to a fairy ball, or finds himself mobbed with elven ingenues?"

He gave me a look from under his eyebrows. "You shouldn't joke about fairies. Sir."

"Oh, very well. As long as I can still joke about the Devil."

* * *

I had passed through the village, but hadn't thought much about it. It didn't look bad. It didn't look good. It was a village. It looked like every other small village in Ruravia, which also look pretty much like every small village in Gallacia, although they carve flowers on their shutters here and we carve turnips. (That is a general we. I have never carved a turnip in my life.)