POE: The Fall of The House of Usher (2021)

Every year millions of people head into the wilderness searching for peace, beauty, and adventure. But hidden in those same scenic landscapes are stories of violence, survival, and lives cut short. I'm Dilya DeAmbra, and on my podcast, Park Predators, I uncover the true crimes that happened in the most amazing places on Earth. Listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts. Poe is a 2021 audio chuck original made for our friends at Sirius XM. We hope you enjoy this exclusive content re-released for free on Full Body Chills. And for the best experience, we kindly recommend you listen with headphones. A house divided cannot stand, but a house alone is doomed to fall. Staring through these empty windows, these lifeless eyes shine no more. Walk along these barren halls, silence calls to shut the door. This house is dying, sealed away, fading, buried, where it will stay. Look upon its gravestone and you will see the crack that spells their eulogy. In this story, the bonds that link a family name tie the noose around their fame and set in motion, the fall of the house of Usher. The fall of the house of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe adapted by Jake Weber, 2021. It was a dreary day in October when I drove out to Usher's property outside Richmond. The mansion was once one of those grand Virginia estates, but now it was neglected and dilapidated. As it came up the long driveway, a wave of melancholy washed over me. It was as if the house had the blues and anyone who came here was going to get the blues as well. Not only was the house run down, the land had also been neglected. Overgrown hedges, patches of grass where there once were lush lawns, where there had once been vitality and verdancy, there were now sagging trees and a dried up lake. It was...dispiriting. More than dispiriting, it was depressing. But there was no getting out of it. I had told Usher I would stay the week and I had to keep my word however miserable the place. His full name was Rodric Usher, but everyone called him by his surname. I hadn't seen him for a year, so it was a surprise when he contacted me out of the blue. He said he hadn't been well and he was having medical and emotional issues, and would I come for a visit to cheer him up. I was his best and only friend, he said. He was speaking from the heart and I was touched, but it was weird for him to reach out after so long and to spill his guts like that. We were friends as kids, but he was always reserved, a shy boy to my tomboy. His family was rich and gave to charity, one of those grand Virginia families that go all the way back to the Revolutionary War, but there were only two of the Usher clan left. Some of these southern families are sprawling dynasties, but the Usher's stayed close to the family plot, and Rodric and his sister were the last of them. The house was covered in fungi and in bad need of repair. The stonework was crumbling, the woodwork riddled with termites, and there was a crack that zigzagged across the house and ran along a courtyard that led to staples and then disappeared into a murky lake. I rang the bell and an ancient woman in an apron answered, who was either mute or did not speak English and led me through the house to Usher. It was strange being back after so long. The interior had not changed, but I had, and the memory of those childhood days of running through this massive house that once was bright and cheery and now seemed lifeless made me sad. I was surprised to be moved, but you never know when or how emotion sneaks up on you. In the wide hallway, we passed a middle-aged man who carried an old-fashioned doctor's bag and who wouldn't make eye contact. He didn't look to me like your friendly family physician. He looked shifty and untrustworthy, but I can be judgmental, so I've been told. I did not like the look of him one bit. We arrived in a voluminous, loft-like space which was neither airy nor bright. Someone had forgot to incorporate a crucial architectural element. Let's see what's missing from this room. I know. Windows. There were a few, but they were placed so high you couldn't see out of them like a chapel. The furniture was as run down as the house, well-made antique pieces that had been neglected, tattered sofas and chairs on wobbly joints. This must be Usher's studio because it was cluttered with instruments. He had always been musically inclined at ran-in-the-family. And lots of books, books scattered all over the place. It was lived in, stuffy and messy. I wanted to open a window, but good luck with that. You would need the fire department to get to one of those. I didn't even see him. He was sleeping on the couch and covered in a blanket. The blanket moved, and there he was. He jumped up and gave me a hug. He said how happy he was to see me, and thank you for coming. You look great to haven't changed a bit the usual stuff, but it was almost manic in its intensity. Was he for real? I mean, we had barely seen each other since we were kids, and he was acting like we were best friends. But he meant it. His warmth was genuine and kind of overwhelming. It was intense. He was intense. And then all at once the wind just went out of his sails. He sat on the sofa and went silent. This was a man in anguish, a man in pain. That sort of manic behavior is usually associated with bipolar depression. You are up one second and then down the next. Giant mood swings. And he had changed physically. He was a beautiful man with delicate features. He had always been thin, but now he was emaciated, and his complexion was won and pallid. His thin lips were still well carved beneath an aqualine nose, but he was not quite square jawed. There had always been something androgynous about his appearance. And that hair. He had fine silky hair, but it wouldn't lay flat. It rose in a halo about his head like the tall guy from Simon and Garfunkel. Now it was unkempt and wildless, Garfunkel and more Beethoven. The light behind his eyes had changed, but they were still shockingly bright in the color of Caribbean water. A memorable face and other worldly face. He was nervous now, agitated. He had gone from sociable to sullen his voice, from tremulous with excitement to slurred and guttural like a drunk. I wondered if he was on something. What had that creepy doctor just given him? He said again about how happy he was to see me and how my visit would be just with the doctor ordered, and he spoke about what ailed him. It was a family condition he said, past from generation to generation, a nervous condition, a genetic defect. His senses were so heightened, he could only take the blandest food and tolerate only the softest fabrics. His sense of smell was so acute, he said he couldn't be around perfume. And this room was dark because his eyes had become painfully sensitive to light. Screens were impossible, the blue light cut through him like a knife. He didn't like the piano anymore, only stringed instruments, a coup's digitar, mandolin, anything with a drumbeat went right through him. He said he was paralyzed with fear, agoraphobic and paranoid. Everything frightens me, especially the house, he said. I'm going mad and it is killing me, I am literally scared to death. He was projecting some malevolent intent onto the house. It had become his enemy. It was out to destroy him, he said. There were places he didn't dare venture. He only felt safe here in his studio. It was the only place on the property that did not bring on a panic attack. The man was a red hot mess. I didn't know where to start with him. I asked if he were alone here, was there anyone else apart from the woman who showed me in who could help? Madeline helps, he said. Madeline is here with you, I asked. Where the last of the usher, the last of Mohicans. If she dies, it will just be me and I can't be left alone here without her. Madeline was Usher's twin sister. They called her Lady and they had been inseparable as kids. I had heard she had a breakdown and was hospitalized some years back and that she and Usher's parents died within hours of each other. Did she never marry? Apparently neither siblings had any significant relationships outside the family. Certainly ours was not significant. We used to play together as kids but my life had moved on. But to Usher, it had meant something. Or maybe he was just so desperately lonely he had sentimentalized our past. Reconfigured it into something more than it was. The door opened and there was Madeline, unkempt and thin like her brother with the same haunted expression. I got up to greet her but she turned away and drifted down the hall in a loose night dress, wild haired like Maddofilia. Was everyone nuts in this house? Apparently so. Usher explained that she wasn't in her right mind and so wouldn't have recognized me and no one knew what to do for her. Medications hadn't helped and the doctors were at a loss. She was often cataleptic which apparently can be a side effect of schizophrenia. It is a muscular condition where the limbs remain rigid in whatever position they have been placed. It was where he said to see her moving about. She was wasting away. She had stopped eating and it was just a matter of time now. This family had all gone insane and there was nothing anyone could do. It made no sense. Madeline was clearly anorexic. She was starving herself to death. The following morning Usher told me she was dead. She had died in her sleep, talk about timing. He didn't bring her up again and I certainly wasn't about to. He slipped into a deep fog and I did what I could to keep him engaged and lift his spirits but it was a syphien task. I gave him my attention as he improvised manically on the guitar, scatting in loud staccato bursts. We painted together, we played chess, we listened to music, but there was not much I could do to ease his pain. He liked a classical composer Carl Maria von Weber and in particular a waltz called Invitation to the Dance. His paintings were terrifying. Grotesque nightmarish dreamscapes. There is an image by an 18th century painter Henry Fousselli that depicts a woman in a flowing white nightgown passed out and half draped off a she's lounge. An ape-like gargoyle sits on her stomach and stares directly at us, mad-eyed. A donkey with bulbous cataracts grins at them. It is aptly named the Nightmare. That was the kind of stuff usher was painting, gruesome haunting compositions. Another depicted an underground tunnel with low ceilings and no outlet. It's smooth walls painted white. The space daggered with rays of ghastly light. He read me a poem that he had written and I quote from it. In green valleys watched over and blessed by angels and serifs, a stately palace once stood. A sunshine of banners flowed from its rooftops in the sweetest of breezes. Travelers would glimpse a king swayed in music. Soak and dancers salute his wit, his wisdom. But evil came in robes of sorrow and breached the walls of this happy place. And the joy that lived within now rests in shallow graves. Travelers now see shadows and hear sounds of anguish and pain. Dancing ghosts hurl themselves out the doors and fill the streets. They laugh without smiling at those they meet. A big bundle of joy, right? Usher had particular ideas about the sentience of inanimate objects such as his house and also vegetables. Vegetables apparently had souls. And he subscribed to Chaos Theory, which he explained relates to dynamic systems that operate in random states of disorder. But which are governed by a systematic feedback loop that is intricately bound up in its origins. Here I guess this is as good as mine on that one. Usher believed the house was a living organism. The fungi that blanketed the exterior, the dried up lake, the dead trees were all symptomatic of a dying ecosystem, of which the house was a part and which was infecting and destroying his physical and mental well-being. The dying house and dying usher, also I suppose the dead lady Madeline, were one and the same. He'd originally told me his condition was due to a genetic defect, but I wasn't about to argue the point. Usher finally brought up the subject of his dead sister, whose corpse to my horror was apparently still on the property. Usher did not want an autopsy. He believed because of the mystery surrounding her mental condition, doctors would insist on cracking open her skull and dissecting her brain which he couldn't bear. There was a catacombe in the cellar where the family were buried and he wanted to intern her there. Her death had to be kept a secret, he said. He led me to her coffin, she had been placed in one thank god. Usher had been a complete mess, leaving the sanctuary of his studio and it was with no small effort we got the coffin down to the basement. There, Usher dragged open a massive iron door that screeched in protest and we walked into a pitch black cellar, the air thick and impressive and as cold as a meat locker. Deep inside, we placed mad lady Madeline to her eternal rest. Usher wanted one last look at his twin sister. He unfassant a series of latches on the coffin and swung it open. There she was, her limbs in what I assumed to be rigor mortis, but I remembered. Usher had told me about that muscular condition that could lock her limbs in any position they had been placed. Her eyes were closed and her corpse wore a thin smile. She seemed to be grinning at us like that donkey in the painting by Fuseli. In the oblique light her cheeks looked almost rosy. Usher wanted a moment and I gave them their privacy. After a spell, he bent in and kissed her on the lips and gently closed the lid, latching and securing the coffin and we made our way out of the cellar and back to his studio. I wanted to leave. I was beginning to feel I was losing my own grip on reality. But Usher said he needed me now more than ever and could I stay a few more days? How could I say no? All the light had gone from his eyes. I felt terrible for him. Before he'd had moments, manic though they were, when his energy would pick up, when his voice would get that tremor of excitement and he'd babble in energetic bursts or pick up the guitar and pluck at it violently. But now he stared off into the middle distance or listened intently to imaginary sounds, eyes darting. There was a conversation he kept trying to start something he needed to get off his chest, a confession he had to make, he said. But he would always stop himself and look off again with that thousand yard stare you see in soldiers returning from battle. I was starting to freak out. I wasn't sleeping well and my nerves were frayed. Perhaps there was something about this house that infected the psyche. The stress here was intense. I didn't feel myself, but I couldn't just leave him here to die alone because that was the direction things were going. He was the shell of a man, but how long was I expected to sit by his side? Was there really no one apart from the mute housekeeper? I asked about the doctor. Should we call him back? He said that he came at night now. Usher hadn't wanted him cutting into our time together. He wanted as much of me as he could get so he had arranged for him to come after I'd gone to bed. What is he giving you? I asked. A cocktail of supplements, he said, to keep up my strength. Does he inject them? I asked. Yes, said Usher. And he comes again in the morning. Can I see? I asked. And Usher rolled up a sleeve. They were track marks to length of his arm. And the other? He rolled up his other sleeve and sure enough his other arm had them also. It isn't what you're thinking, he said. What am I thinking? I asked. That I'm a junkie. Whatever he was, it wasn't good. If he was an addict, he was not shooting up with the frequency one would expect. We had been inseparable during the day. But who knows? He may have been shooting up or snorting in the bathroom. Junkies are sneaky. That night it was raining heavily and I couldn't sleep. Through the lashing rain, I thought I heard someone moaning. Was Usher crying? I went downstairs and headed towards his studio when a voice called me back. Usher was sitting in a chair I had just passed. This guy disappeared into furniture like a cat. Have you seen it? He asked. Seeing what, I said. Come here and sit. There was a look in his eye I hadn't seen. Something wicked behind it. I sat in his chair and he walked towards French doors that looked over a balcony. He threw them open and a gust of wind nearly knocked him over. He stood there with the rain pelting in on him. The clouds were low and ominous and a light show was dancing over the lake. Something fantastic. I got up and went to him. Come in, I said. You're going to catch your death of a cold. Come on Usher. What do you think it is? It's something to do with the algae. Algae are gaseous and the storm is turning it up. He shook his head. Those are the spirits, he said. They are the evil spirits that encase this house and this house encases us. That's great. Otherwise I'd be as wet as you. Come on. Let's get you warmed up, I said. I closed the doors and wrapped my arm around his shivering waist and led him back towards his studio. I'm going to read to you to get your mind off things. Do you need your injection? I asked. He shook his head and we made our way through the dark house as the storm battered the bizarre house of Usher. The book he chose was a fairy tale we knew as kids. It's a story about a drunken knight in a forest who breaks into a hermit's lair to escape a tempestuous storm like the one raging outside. The nice name is Ethel Red and he doesn't like the look of this little hermit. So he smashes his head in with a mace which is this ball and chain operation attached to a handle that you club people to death with. It was particularly popular among bloodthirsty gladiators in the Roman Colosseum. So Ethel Red bashes in the brains of the hermit with this mace and since his shit faced decides to bust up the hermit's home for good measure. Ethel Red is not a good drunk. This is a quote from the story. He uplifted his mace outright and with slows made quickly room in the plenkings of the door. His gun is smashing in the door. He so cracked at ripped and tore all as that the noise of the dry and hollow sounding wood alarmed and reverberated throughout the forest. Translation? This gun is making a lot of noise. Here things got weird as if they were not weird enough to begin with. As I was reading this passage out loud I heard the sound I was describing come from inside the house. The rain was hammering down but I am sure I heard something. This old house was constantly creaking in complaint so it could have been anything. I asked Usher if he heard it. He nodded but shrugged it off and jestered for me to continue reading. So I did. In the story Ethel Red beats down an interior door in the hermit's home and low and behold there is a dragon behind it hissing and flame throwing in his general direction. This dragon's job it would appear is to stand guard over a hill of gold that sits on a bed of silver. On the wall behind the dragon is a sign that reads, who entereth herein a conqueror hath been, who slayeth the dragon the shield he shall win. This is Ethel Red's lucky day. All he has to do is kill this fire breathing monster and he gets to take home a fancy shield and all this gold. No problem. Ethel Red and his mace whack the dragon upside the head and the dragon collapses with an ear piercing screen. And just that moment I heard an ear piercing screen from somewhere in the house. There was no mistaking it. Usher heard it also. He pulled up his chair so it faced the door and began rocking back and forth, lips trembling muttering something. His head was dropped on his chest but his eyes were open. What's going on with you usher? I asked. What was that scream? Go on reading. He said, did you hear that scream? I heard it finished the story. He ordered. I went on reading and usher went on muttering. What happens next in the story is Ethel Red climbed over the corpse of the dragon and up the hill of gold to get the shield. But before he reaches it, it jumps off the wall and lands at his feet with a loud clatter. No sooner had the words passed my lips when a hollow metallic clanging sound reverberated through the house. I rose to my feet but usher stayed seated and continued his rocking motion. I knelt in front of him and took his shoulders in my hands. His whole body shuddered and a sickly smile creased his face. What's going on I asked. Did you hear it? Yeah, I heard it usher. What's going on? I've been hearing it ever since we put her there. He said. Since we closed her coffin, I've been trying to tell you but I didn't dare. I'm so scared. I'm so very scared. What did you want to tell me usher? That she was alive. Who was alive? Madeline was alive when we put her in the tomb. I told you how acute my hearing is. I've been listening to her move inside the coffin trying to get out. Ella red breaks open the hermit's door just as she breaks open the coffin. The dragons dying screams are hers. The clanging of the shield is her throwing things over on her way up. She's coming to take me with her. She'll be here in a second just a few more seconds and she'll be at the door. There was tear in usher's eyes as he stood to face the door which blew open in a gust of wind. Madeline of usher had thrown open the windows and now stood in the doorway, wet from the rain and bloody from her struggle to free herself from the coffin. She trembled, unsteadying on her feet. Then she moaned and lurched into usher's arms and they kissed and not in a brotherly sisterly way. They kissed like they meant it. Then they screamed in agony and usher fell backwards at the Madeline in his arms. They were both dead before they hit the ground. I ran then. I ran for my life. I threw my things together and rushed for the front door, the house straining and creaking all around me. Louder, not louder than ever. As I got to my car, the ground began to tremble and a rumble emanated from the black waters of the lake. The crack that led from there and ran the length of the courtyard and zigzagged up the facade of the house opened into a fissure. The roof split and a blood-red moon was visible through the gap. I got in my car and drove as fast as I could from the dreadful place. In the rearview mirror, I saw the mansion collapse into a hill of rubble, a stone mausoleum for the last of the usher's. Then, released by this seismic event, the lake rose from a hidden reservoir and flooded the property, swangling up the rubble and leaving only fragments, fragments of what had once been the great house of usher. Poe is an audio chuck original. This episode is read to you by Ashley Flowers. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Everyone's told a lie, but what happens when one lie becomes a life, a movement, a conspiracy? I'm Josh Dean, host of Chameleon, and I uncover true stories of deception scams so intimate and convincing they fooled the people closest to them. These are strangers, their lovers, friends, and trusted allies, because the most dangerous cons don't feel like crimes, they feel personal. Listen to Chameleon, wherever you get your podcasts.