The Fall of the House of Usher (This is how you make a decay-themed horror short story, nigga!)

PR: When the narrator receives a letter from childhood friend Roddy, he goes to assist him through his mental illness of acute hypersensitivity and the demise of his sister shortly after his arrival.

Poe's narration and ambiance building never cease to remind us of how the Usher house is at the bend of a very long slope of decay. Even the cornerstones placed by the Usher's forefathers are moldy and cracked. The trees are dry, and the tarn, which we suppose was once a pristine mountain lake, is now a nasty bog.

Roddy decides to follow a tradition he has read in a medieval pamphlet of looking over his sister's dead body for two weeks, presumably to ensure she doesn't get trapped alive. On the third night, a huge storm comes, and while using the "tale within a tale" technique, the narrator reads aloud a medieval knight fantasy story to Roddy. The sounds, such as grating noises or the fall of a metal shield, coincide with the story. We, as readers, already suspect that Maddy is possibly alive, so we are at the edge of our seats, yelling at the characters, "Come on, it's her! Go check!" Eventually, Roderick cracks and confesses to having heard noises from the very first night, faint at first and louder now. Madeline confronts her brother as he finishes speaking by pouncing on him, covered in blood. The narrator flees the scene and watches as the already brittle mansion collapses with both siblings inside, and the tarn swallows the remnants of the Usher lineage.

It's interesting how Poe manages to create multiple possible interpretations of what happened in this short story. These range from "It's a disease that causes near-dead homeostasis, and Roderick is just crazy" to "Demons and curses plague the lineage, and Madeline has come back from the dead to kill her brother" to "Roderick was crazy, and his belief that the family was cursed prompted him to kill his sister, but failed to do the job properly." Regardless of interpretation, the story is enjoyable, despite a strange beginning and long intro. 9/10