N
oemí packed her suitcases slowly, feeling traitorous and second- guessing herself. Yes. No. Perhaps it would be best to remain. She truly did not wish to leave Catalina alone. But she’d said she was going to town, and it was vital that she clear her head. She decided she wouldn’t quite return to Mexico City. Instead she would journey to Pachuca, where she’d write to her father and find a good doctor willing to accompany her back to High Place. The Doyles would be reluctant to allow this, but it was better than nothing.
Emboldened, with a plan of attack, she finished her packing and headed to dinner. Because it was her last night at High Place and because she didn’t wish to seem haggard or defeated, she decided to wear a party dress. It was a buff-colored embroidered tulle dress with metallic gold accents, a yellow acetate bow at the waist, and a perfectly boned bodice. Not as full a skirt as she normally liked to wear, but very flattering and perfectly adequate for a dinner.
Obviously the Doyles had the same thought, treating this as an important, almost celebratory moment. The tablecloth of white damask was laid out, as were the silver candelabra, and a multitude of candles had been lit. In preparation for Noemí’s departure they had lifted the ban on conversation, though this evening she might have enjoyed the silence. Her nerves were still much too raw from the strange hallucination she’d experienced. Even now Noemí wondered what had caused the bizarre episode.
She was getting a headache. Noemí blamed the wine. It was strong and yet very sweet; it lingered on the palate.
The poor company did not make matters any better. She must pretend cordiality for a little bit more, but her patience had been
stretched to its limits. Virgil Doyle was a bully and Florence wasn’t any better.
She glanced in Francis’s direction. By her side sat the member of the Doyle family she appreciated. Poor Francis. He looked rather miserable that evening. She wondered if he’d drive her to town the next morning. She hoped so. It might give them time to speak in private. Could she trust him to take care of Catalina for her? She must ask for his help.
Francis eyed her back, a fleeting look. His lips parted to whisper a word before Virgil’s loud voice hushed him. “We’ll venture upstairs after supper, of course.”
Noemí raised her head. She looked at Virgil. “I’m sorry?”
“I said my father expects us to all pay him a visit after supper. To say his goodbyes to you. You won’t mind a short trip to his room, will you?”
“I wouldn’t dream of leaving without saying goodbye,” she replied.
“And yet you most eloquently wished to walk your way to town a few hours ago,” Virgil said. The words had a mordant little twist.
If she liked Francis, then she had decided she could not stomach Virgil. He was hard and unpleasant, and beneath that veneer of wretched civility she knew he could be beastly. Most of all she loathed the way he was looking at her now, which he’d done before, a chilling little smirk on his lips and his eyes fixed on her with a rawness that made her want to cover her face.
In the dream, in the bathtub, she’d felt much the same. Yet there had also been another feeling running all through her. It was pleasurable, but in a terrible way, like when she’d had a cavity and kept pressing her tongue against it.
A panting, ferocious, and sickly lust.
It was a wicked thought to have at the dinner table, with him sitting across from her, and she looked down at her plate. This was a man who could know secrets, who could divine unarticulated desires. She must not look at him.
A long silence stretched between them as the maid walked in and began taking away the dishes.
“You might have trouble getting into town come morning,” Florence said once more wine had been poured and dessert was set before them. “The roads will be terrible.”
“Yes, all these floods.” Noemí nodded. “That is how you lost the mine?”
“Ages ago,” Florence replied, waving a hand in the air. “Virgil was a baby.”
Virgil nodded. “It was waterlogged. Anyway, it’s not like it was being worked on. With the Revolution going on, you couldn’t get nearly enough workers here. They’d all be fighting for one side or the other. You need a constant influx of workers at a mine like this.”
“I suppose it was impossible to get people back after the Revolution ended? Had they all gone away?” Noemí asked.
“Yes, and besides, we had no way to hire new crews, and my father was ill for a long time, so he couldn’t oversee the work. Of course, that’ll change soon.”
“How so?”
“Catalina hasn’t mentioned it? It is our intention to open up the mine again.”
“But it’s been closed for a very long time. I thought your finances were strained,” Noemí protested.
“Catalina has decided to invest in it.” “You didn’t mention that before.”
“It slipped my mind.”
He spoke so casually that one might be tempted to actually believe him. But Noemí was betting he had kept his lips tightly shut knowing the conclusion she would draw based on that: that Catalina was going to serve as a docile piggy bank.
If he was speaking now, it was because he meant to rile her up a little, to throw in her direction that sharp smile he had deftly shown
her on more than one occasion. He wished to gloat. Because she was going away, after all, so a little gloating couldn’t hurt now.
“Is it very wise to do such a thing?” she asked. “With your wife in her condition?”
“It is not as if it’ll make her worse, don’t you think?” “I think it’s callous.”
“We’ve long been simply existing at High Place, Noemí. Too long. It is now time to grow again. The plant must find the light, and we must find our way in this world. You may consider that callous. I find it natural. And, in the end, it was you who was speaking of change to me the other day.”
How lovely that he should pin this project on her. Noemí pushed her chair back. “Maybe I should say good night to your father now. I’m tired.”
Virgil held the stem of his glass and raised an eyebrow at her. “I suppose we could skip dessert.”
“Virgil, it’s much too early,” Francis protested.
He had spoken only those words that evening, but both Virgil and Florence turned their heads in his direction brusquely, as if he’d been saying offensive things all night long. Noemí guessed that he was not supposed to offer any sort of opinions. It did not surprise her.
“I’d say it’s about the right time,” Virgil replied.
They stood up. Florence led the way, taking an oil lamp that rested on a sideboard. The house was very chilly that evening, and Noemí crossed her arms against her chest, wondering if Howard would want to talk for long. Dear Lord, she hoped not. She wished to sneak under the covers and go to sleep as quickly as possible so that she might wake up early and jump into the blasted car.
Florence opened the door to Howard’s room, and Noemí followed her in. A fire was burning, and the curtains around the large bed were closed tight. There was an ugly smell in the air. Too pungent. Like a ripe fruit. Noemí frowned.
“We are here,” Florence said, setting her oil lamp down on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. “We have your visitor.”
Florence then went by the bed and began peeling the curtains away. Noemí schooled her features into a polite smile, ready for the sight of Howard Doyle tucked neatly under the covers or perhaps lounging against the pillows in his green robe.
She did not expect him to be lying there, over the blankets, naked. His skin was terribly pale and his veins contrasted grotesquely against his whiteness, indigo lines running up and down his body. Yet that was not the worst of it. One of his legs was hideously bloated, crusted over with dozens of large, dark boils.
She had no idea what they were. Not tumors, no, for they pulsed quickly, and their fullness contrasted with his emaciated body, the skin grown taut against the bones except upon that leg where the boils grew, as thick as barnacles upon a ship’s hull.
It was horrid, horrid, and she thought he was a corpse, afflicted by the ravages of putrefaction, but he lived. His chest rose and dipped, and he breathed.
“You must get closer,” Virgil whispered into her ear and clasped her tight by the arm.
The shock had prevented Noemí from moving, but now that she felt his hand closing around her, she attempted to shove Virgil away and rush to the door. He yanked her back, though, with a vicious strength that threatened to snap her bones, and she gasped in pain, but still she fought him.
“Come on, help me here,” Virgil said, looking at Francis. “Let go of me!” she screamed.
Francis did not approach them, but Florence grabbed Noemí’s free arm, and together Virgil and the woman dragged Noemí toward the head of the bed. She twisted her body and managed to kick the night table, sending a porcelain chamber pot crashing onto the floor.
“Kneel down,” Virgil ordered her. “No,” Noemí said.
They shoved her down, Virgil’s fingers digging into her flesh, and he placed a hand behind her neck.
Howard Doyle turned his head upon the pillow and looked at her. His lips were as bloated as his leg, crusted with black growths, and a trail of dark fluid dripped down his chin, staining his bedclothes. This was the source of the bad smell in the room, and up close the stench was so awful she thought she would retch.
“My God,” she said and tried to get up, to scuttle away, but Virgil’s hand was a band of iron around her neck, and he was pushing her even closer to the old man.
And the man was rising in his bed, turning and stretching out a thin hand, his fingers digging into Noemí’s hair and pulling their faces closer.
She was able, at this disgustingly intimate distance, to clearly see the color of his eyes. They were not blue. The color was diluted by a bright, golden sheen, like flecks of molten gold.
Howard Doyle smiled at her, showing off his stained teeth— stained with black—and then he pressed his lips against hers. Noemí felt his tongue in her mouth and then saliva burning down her throat as he pressed himself against her and Virgil propped her in place.
He let go of her after long, agonizing minutes, and Noemí was able to gasp and turn her head.
She closed her eyes.
She felt very light; her thoughts were scattered. Drowsy. My God, she told herself, my God, stand up, run. Over and over again.
When she looked around, she tried to focus her eyes and saw that she was in a cave. There were people there. A man had been handed a cup, and he was drinking from it. The hideous liquid burned his mouth, and he almost passed out, but the others laughed and they clasped his shoulder in a friendly manner. They hadn’t been so friendly when he’d first arrived, a stranger in these parts. They were skittish, and for good reason.
The man was fair-haired, and his eyes were blue. He shared a resemblance with Howard, with Virgil. The shape of the jaw, the nose. But his clothes and his shoes and everything about him and the men in the cave pointed to a previous time.
When is this? Noemí thought. But she felt dizzy, and the sound of the sea distracted her. This cave, was the ocean nearby? The cave was dark; one of the men held a lantern, but it did not provide much illumination. The others continued with their jokes, and two of them helped the blond man up. He stumbled.
The man wasn’t doing very well, but that wasn’t their fault. He’d long been ill. His physician said there was no cure. There was no hope, but Doyle had hoped.
Doyle. That was him, yes. She was with Doyle.
Doyle was dying and in his desperation he’d found his way here, seeking a remedy for those who were beyond remedies. Instead of a peregrination to a holy site, he’d come to this wretched cave.
They hadn’t liked him, no, but these folk were poor, and he had a fat purse of silver. Of course, he’d feared they’d cut his throat and take the silver, but what else was there to be done? All he could manage was to promise them there’d be more where that came from if they kept their end of the bargain.
Money wasn’t everything, of course. He knew as much. They recognized him as their natural superior. Force of habit, he imagined. My lord spilled from their lips, even though these were scavengers.
In the corner of the cave Noemí saw a woman. Her hair was stringy, her face plain and pasty. She held a shawl around her shoulders with a bony hand and looked at Doyle with interest. There was a priest too, an old man who tended to the altar of their god. For in the end this was indeed a holy site of a strange sort. Instead of candles, the fungus hanging from the cave walls, luminescent, lit a crude altar. Upon it there were a bowl and a cup and a pile of old bones.
If he died, Doyle thought, his bones would be added to that pile.
But he was not afraid. He was half dead already.
Noemí rubbed a hand against her temples. A terrible headache was building inside her skull. She squinted, and the room wavered,
like a flame. She tried to focus on something and fixed her eyes on Doyle.
Doyle. She’d seen him stumbling around, his face worn down by disease, but now he looked so hearty she almost confused him with another man. His vitality restored, one would have expected him to return home at once. But here he was lingering, running a hand down the woman’s naked back. They’d married, following the custom of her people. Noemí felt his disgust as he touched the woman, but he kept a smile on his face. He must dissimulate.
He needed them. Needed to be accepted, needed to be one with these rough folk. For only then could he know all their secrets. Eternal life! It was there for the taking. The fools didn’t understand it. They used the fungus to heal their wounds and preserve their health, but it could be so much more. He’d seen it, the evidence was in the priest they blindly obeyed, and what he hadn’t witnessed he’d imagined. There were such possibilities!
The woman, she wouldn’t do. He’d known that from the start. But Doyle had two sisters, back in his great home awaiting his return, and that was the trick. It was in the blood, in his blood, the priest had said so already. And if it could be in his blood it could be in their blood.
Noemí pressed her fingertips against her forehead. The headache was growing stronger, and her vision blurred.
Doyle. Sharp, he was. Always had been, and even when his body had failed him, his mind was a blade. Now the body was alive, vital, and he thrummed with eagerness.
The priest recognized his strength, whispered that he might be the future of their congregation, that a man like him was necessary. The holy man was old and he feared for the future, for his little flock in the cave, for these timid folk. Picking through wreckage, scrambling in the dirt, that was their life. They’d fled here seeking safety and they’d survived till now, but the world was changing.
The holy man was right. Too right, perhaps. For Doyle indeed envisioned a deep change.
Lungs filled with water, the priest weighed down. What a simple death!
And then it was chaos and violence and smoke. Fire, fire, burning. The cave was deemed almost a fortress by its inhabitants. When the tide came in, it was cut off from land and only approachable by boat, rendering it a cozy, safe hideout. They hadn’t much, but they had this.
He was a single man and there were three dozen of them, but he’d killed the priest and now he held sway over them. He was holy. They were forced to remain on their knees as he set their bundles of cloth, their possessions, on fire. The cave filled with smoke.
There was a boat. He pulled the woman into the boat. She obeyed, numb and afraid. As he rowed off, she stared at him, and he glanced away.
He’d thought her unattractive. She was now frightfully ugly, with her belly grown and her eyes dull. But she was necessary. She would serve a purpose.
And then Noemí wasn’t with him as she’d been all this time, as close as his shadow. She was with someone else, a woman, with her fair hair falling loose around her shoulders as she spoke to another girl.
“He has changed,” the young woman whispered. “Don’t you see it? His eyes are not the same.”
The other girl, her hair plaited, shook her head.
Noemí shook her head too. Their brother, gone on a long voyage and now returned and there were so many questions to ask, but he wouldn’t let them speak. And the first woman, she thought a horror had befallen him, that an evil possessed him, but the other one, she knew this had always been him, under the skin.
I feared evil long ago. I feared him.
Under the skin, and Noemí looked down at her hands, at her wrist, which itched terribly. Before she could scratch herself pustules erupted and there rose tendrils, like hairs, upon her skin. Her velvety body fruited. Fleshy, white, fan-shaped caps sliced through her
marrow and her muscle, and when she opened her mouth liquid poured up, gold and black, like a river that stained the floor.
A hand on her shoulder and a whisper in her ear.
“Open your eyes,” said Noemí reflexively. Her mouth was full of blood and she spat out her own teeth.
