The short story is more complicated than it may seem. In order to be successful, the author needs to pull the reader in quickly and get them invested. Then, they need to keep it simple; it is short, you don’t have time to get into a heck of a lot of details, they don’t matter here, keep them for your full-length novels. Finally, and this might just be me, I love the “you got me moment;” I like to be hit at the end with something I didn’t see coming, but I should have.
Hill did a reasonable job with Ushers. I’m with you on the Martin guy, what is his real story? Just happens to not be where he was supposed to be when massive tragedies struck. There is more to this than meets the eye. He really did keep it simple, enough details to make the story work, but not so much that the crux of the story was lost. And it had a decent moment at the end, it worked and made sense, but I wanted something more.
Ushers is a good short story, not a great one; then again, the great ones are few and far between. What was it missing? I really don’t know, but there was something lacking.