T
hey stopped running when they reached the top of the staircase. Lizzie and Charles, the other two servants at High Place, were standing a few steps below, looking up at them. They shivered, their heads lolling to the side, their hands opening and closing spasmodically, their mouths frozen in a stark grin. It was like observing a couple of wind-up toys that had fallen apart. Noemí guessed that the events that had transpired had affected every family member. It had not, however, destroyed them, for these two were there, staring at them.
“What’s wrong with them?” Noemí whispered.
“Howard lost control of them. They’re stuck. For now. We could attempt to walk past them. But the front entrance might be locked. My mother would have the keys.”
“We are not headed back for the keys,” Noemí said. She was also unwilling to walk past those two, and she was not heading into Howard’s room again to rifle through a corpse’s pockets.
Catalina moved to stand next to Noemí, staring back at both of the servants, and shook her head. It didn’t look like her cousin was eager to go down the main staircase either.
“There’s another way,” Francis said. “We can take the back stairs.”
He rushed down a hallway, and the women followed him. “Here,” he said, opening a door.
The back stairs were narrow and the illumination was poor, only a couple of sconces with light bulbs to guide them all the way down.
Noemí reached into her pocket and lifted her lighter while holding onto the bannister with her other hand.
As they were winding their way down, the bannister seemed to grow slippery under her fingers, like the body of a slick eel. It was alive, it breathed, and rose, and Noemí lowered the lighter and stared at the bannister. Her injured hand was throbbing in unison with the house.
“It’s not real,” Francis said.
“But can you see it?” Noemí asked.
“It’s the gloom. It wants to make us believe things. Go, go quickly.”
She walked faster and reached the bottom of the stairs. Catalina came walking right behind her and then Francis, who sounded out of breath.
“Are you all right?” Noemí asked him.
“I’m not feeling great,” he said. “We need to keep moving. Ahead it seems to be a dead end; there’s a walk-in pantry and inside it there’s a cupboard. It’s painted yellow. It can be moved aside.”
She found a door and inside it the walk-in pantry he had mentioned. The floor was made of stone, and there were hooks to hang meat. A naked light bulb with a long chain dangled from the ceiling. She pulled the chain, illuminating the small space. All the shelves were empty. If this place had stored food, it had been a long time ago, for there was dark mold running up and down the walls, which would have rendered it completely unsuitable for such use.
She saw the yellow cupboard. Its top was arched, and it had two glazed doors and two large drawers at the bottom, marks and scuffs marring its surface. It had been lined in yellow fabric, to better match its outside.
“We should be able to push it to the left,” Francis said. “And there, in the bottom of the cupboard, there’s a bag.” He still sounded like he was trying to catch his breath.
Noemí bent down and pulled open the cupboard’s bottom drawer. She found a brown canvas bag. Catalina unzipped it for her. Inside of
this bag there was an oil lamp, a compass, two sweaters. It was Francis’s unfinished escape kit. It would have to do.
“We push it left?” she asked, stuffing the compass in her pocket.
Francis nodded. “But first, we should block the entrance here,” he said, pointing at the door where they’d come in.
“There’s that bookcase there we can use,” she replied.
Catalina and Francis proceeded to drag a rickety wooden bookcase against the door. It was not a perfect barricade, but it did the job well enough.
Safely hidden in the small room, Noemí handed one sweater to Catalina and the other to Francis, for it would no doubt be chilly outside. Then it was time to tackle the cupboard. It looked heavy, but surprisingly they were able to slide it to the side with less effort than the bookcase. A dark, weathered door was revealed.
“It leads to the family crypt,” Francis said. “Then it’s a question of walking down the mountain to the town.”
“I don’t want to go there,” Catalina whispered. She had not spoken until now, and the sound startled Noemí. Catalina pointed at the door. “The dead sleep there. I don’t want to go. Listen.”
Noemí heard it then, a deep, deep groan. It seemed to make the ceiling above them shiver, and the light bulb flickered, the cord moving a little. A chill went down Noemí’s spine.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Francis looked up and inhaled. “Howard, he’s alive.” “We shot him,” Noemí said. “He’s dead—”
“No.” Francis shook his head. “He’s weakened and in pain and he’s angry. He’s not dead. The whole house is in pain.”
“I’m scared,” Catalina said, her voice small.
Noemí turned to her cousin and hugged her tight. “We’ll soon be out of here, you hear me?”
“I guess so,” Catalina muttered.
Noemí bent down to pick up the oil lamp. Lighting it proved a problem with her injured hand, but she offered Francis her lighter
and he helped her.
He carefully put the glass chimney back on the oil lamp, glancing at her hand, which she had pressed against her chest. “Want me to hold it?” he asked.
“I can do it,” she told him, because she’d broken two fingers on her left hand, not both her arms, and also because it made her feel safer to carry the lamp.
With the lamp lit, she turned toward her cousin. Catalina nodded and Noemí smiled. Francis turned the doorknob. A long tunnel stretched out ahead of them. She had expected it to be very rudimentary, the sort of thing the miners might have roughly carved.
It was not the case.
The walls had been decorated with yellow tiles, and upon those tiles were painted flower patterns and green, curling vines. On the walls there were graceful silver sconces shaped like snakes. Their open jaws would have held wax candles if they had not been tarnished and covered with dust.
On the ground and on the walls she noticed a few tiny yellowish mushrooms popping up between stone cracks. It was cold and damp, and no doubt the mushrooms found the conditions underground deeply inviting, for as they advanced they seemed to multiply, clustering together in small clumps.
Noemí began to notice something else as their numbers grew: they seemed to have a glow to them, a vague luminescence.
“I’m not imagining it, am I?” she asked Francis. “They light up.” “Yes. They do.”
“It’s so odd.”
“It’s not that unusual. Honey mushrooms and bitter oyster mushrooms both glow. People call it foxfire. But that glow is green.”
“These are the mushrooms he found in the cave,” Noemí said, looking up at the ceiling. It was like looking at dozens of tiny stars. “Immortality. In this.”
Francis raised a hand, grasping one of the silver sconces as if to support himself, and looked down at the ground. He ran trembling fingers through his hair and let out a low sigh.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’s the house. It’s upset and aching. It affects me too.” “Can you go on?”
“I think so,” he said. “I’m not sure. If I faint—” “We can stop for a minute,” she offered.
“No, it’s fine,” he said. “Lean on me. Come on.” “You’re hurt.”
“So are you.”
He hesitated, but did rest a hand on her shoulder, and they walked together, with Catalina ahead of them. The mushrooms continued to multiply and grow in size, the soft glow now coming from the ceiling and the walls.
Catalina stopped abruptly. Noemí almost bumped into her and clutched the lamp harder.
“What is it?”
Catalina raised a hand, pointing ahead. She could see now why her cousin had halted in her steps. The passageway widened and gave way to two massive double doors of a very dark, very thick wood. Upon the doors was an inlaid silver snake, biting its tail in a perfect circle, and two large door-knockers, twin circles of silver hanging from the jaws of amber-eyed matching snake heads.
“It leads to a chamber beneath the crypt,” Francis said. “We must go in there and up.”
Francis pulled one of the door-knockers. The door was heavy, but it yielded after he gave it a harsh tug, and Noemí walked in, her lamp held high. She walked in four paces and lowered the lamp. There was no need for it, no need to light the way.
The chamber was festooned with mushrooms of varying sizes, a living, organic tapestry gracing the walls. They ran up and down the
high walls, like barnacles on the hull of an ancient ship run aground, and they glowed, furnishing the large room with an unwavering source of light, stronger than candles or torches. It was the light of a moribund sun.
A metal gate to the right of the chamber had been spared the mushroom growth, and the chandelier above their heads, with its coiling metal snakes and candles reduced to stubs, evidenced no mushrooms either. The stone floor was almost bare of the luxurious mushroom growth, a scant few popping up here and there among loose tiles, and it was easy to see the gigantic mosaic that served as a decoration. It was a black snake, viciously biting its tail, its eyes aglow, and around the reptile there was a curling pattern of vines and flowers. It resembled the ouroboros she’d seen in the greenhouse. This one was larger, more magnificent, and the glow of the mushrooms gave it an ominous appearance.
The chamber was bare, except for a table set upon a stone dais. The table was covered with a yellow cloth, and upon it there sat a silver cup and a silver box. Behind the table a long, flowing drape, also of yellow silk, served as a backdrop. It might be a portiere that would hide a doorway.
“The gate, it leads up to the mausoleum,” Francis said. “We should take it.”
She could indeed see stone steps behind the metal gate, but rather than attempting to open it Noemí walked up to the stone dais, frowning. She set her lamp down on the floor and ran a hand over the table, lifting the lid of the box. Inside she found a knife with a jeweled handle and held it up.
“I’ve seen this,” she said, “in my dreams.”
Francis and Catalina had slowly walked into the chamber and were both looking at her. “He killed children with this,” she continued.
“He did many things,” Francis replied. “Casual cannibalism.”
“A communion. Our children are born infected with the fungus, and ingesting their flesh means ingesting the fungus; ingesting the fungus makes us stronger and in turn it binds us more closely to the gloom. Binds us to Howard.”
Francis winced suddenly and bent down. Noemí thought he was about to retch, but he stood like that, with his arms wrapped around his belly. Noemí dropped the knife on the table and walked down the dais, back to his side.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s painful,” he said. “She’s in pain.” “Who?”
“She’s speaking.”
Noemí became aware of a sound. It had been there all along, but she had not paid attention to it. It was very low, almost inaudible, and it would have been easy to think she was imagining it. It was a hum and also very much unlike a hum. The buzzing noise she’d heard on other occasions, only the pitch this time seemed higher.
Don’t look.
Noemí turned around. The hum seemed to be coming from the dais, and she walked up to it. As she moved closer, the hum grew stronger.
It was behind the yellow drape. Noemí raised a hand. “Don’t,” Catalina said. “You don’t want to see.”
Her fingers touched the drape, and the buzzing became the beating of a thousand frenetic insects against glass, the sound of a swarm caught inside her head, so strong she could almost feel it like a vibration cutting through the air, and she lifted her head.
Don’t look.
Bees seemed to flutter against her fingertips, the air alive with unseen wings, and her instinct was to step back, to turn away and shield her eyes, but she clutched the fabric and yanked it aside with such force she almost ripped it to the ground.
Noemí stared straight into the face of death.
It was the open, screaming maw of a woman, frozen in time. A mummy, a few teeth dangling from her mouth, her skin yellow. The clothing in which she had been buried had long dissolved into dust, and instead she was clothed in a different finery: mushrooms hid her nakedness. They grew from her torso and her belly, they grew down her arms and her legs, they clustered around her head creating a crown, a halo, of glowing gold. The mushrooms held her upright, anchored her to the wall, like a monstrous Virgin in a cathedral of mycelium.
And it was this thing, dead and buried for years and years, that made that buzzing noise. It made that terrible sound. This was the golden blur she’d seen in her dreams, the terrifying creature that lived in the walls of the house. It held out an outstretched hand, and upon that hand it wore an amber ring. She recognized it.
“Agnes,” Noemí said.
And the buzzing, it was terrible and sharp and it pulled her down and it made her see and it made her know.
Look.
The pressure of the cloth against her face, suffocating her, until she lost consciousness, only to wake up in a coffin. Her startled gasps, because despite being prepared for this, despite knowing what must happen, she was scared. Her palms pressing against the lid of the coffin, again and again, splinters digging into her skin, and she screamed, tried to push her way out, but the coffin did not yield. She screamed and screamed but nobody came. Nobody was supposed to come. This was the way it was meant to be.
Look.
He needed her. Needed her mind. The fungus by itself, it had no mind. It held no real thoughts, no real consciousness. Faint traces, like the faded scent of roses. Even the cannibalization of the priests’ remains could not bring true immortality; it augmented the potency of the mushrooms, it created a soft link between all the people present. It united but it could not preserve for all eternity, and the
mushrooms themselves could heal, they could extend life, but they could not offer immortality.
Doyle, however, clever, clever Doyle, with his knowledge of scientific and alchemical matters, with his fascination with biological processes, Doyle had understood all the possibilities nobody else had grasped.
A mind.
The fungus needed a human mind that could serve as a vessel for memories, that could offer control. The fungus and the proper human mind, fused together, were like wax, and Howard was like a seal, and he imprinted himself upon new bodies like a seal on paper.
Look.
The priests had managed to transmit a few stray memories from one to the other through the mushrooms, through the lineage of their people, but they were crude and random occurrences. Doyle systematized. And all he had needed were people like Agnes.
His wife. His kin.
But now there was no Agnes. Agnes was the gloom and the gloom was Agnes, and Howard Doyle, if he perished this instant, would still exist in the gloom, for he had created wax and a seal and paper.
And it hurt. It was in pain. The gloom. Agnes. The mushrooms. The house, heavy with rot, with hidden tendrils extending beneath and up its walls feeding on all manner of dead matter.
He is hurt. We are hurt. Look, look, look. Look!
The buzzing had acquired a fever pitch; it was so loud Noemí covered her ears and screamed, and inside her head a voice bellowed.
Francis grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around. “Don’t look at her,” he said. “We are never supposed to look at
her.”
The buzzing had ceased all of a sudden, and she raised her head and looked at Catalina, who was staring at the floor, and she looked back at Francis in horror.
A sob stuck in her throat. “They buried her alive,” Noemí said. “They buried her alive and she died, and the fungus sprouted from her body and…dear God…it’s not a human mind anymore…he remade her. He remade her.”
She was breathing very fast. Too fast, and the buzzing had ceased, but the woman was still there. Noemí turned her head, tempted to stare again at that hideous skull, but he caught her chin in his hand. “No, no, look at me. Stay here with me.”
She took a deep breath, feeling like a diver who was surfacing again. Noemí stared into Francis’s eyes. “She’s the gloom. Did you know?”
“Only Howard and Virgil come here,” Francis said. He was shivering.
“But you knew!”
All the ghosts were Agnes. Or rather, all the ghosts lived inside Agnes. No, that wasn’t right either. What had once been Agnes had become the gloom, and inside the gloom there lived ghosts. It was maddening. It was not a haunting. It was possession and not even that, but something she couldn’t even begin to describe. The creation of an afterlife, furnished with the marrow and the bones and the neurons of a woman, made of stems and spores.
“Ruth knew too, and we couldn’t do anything. She keeps us here, she’s how Howard controls everything. We can’t leave. They don’t let us, ever.”
He was sweating and then he was sliding down onto his knees, grasping Noemí’s arms. “What is it? You must get up,” she said, also sliding to her knees, touching his face.
“He’s right, he can’t leave. Neither can you, for that matter.”
It was Virgil who had spoken. He was swinging the metal gate open and walking in. Strolling in. Very casually. Perhaps he was a hallucination. Perhaps he wasn’t even there. Noemí stared at him. It can’t be, she thought.
“What?” he said with a shrug, letting the gate close behind him with a loud clang. He was there. It was no hallucination. Rather than
following them down the tunnel he had simply gone aboveground, through the cemetery, and descended the steps from the crypt.
“Poor girl. You actually look shocked. You didn’t really think you had killed me. You also didn’t think I accidentally happened to carry that tincture in my pocket, did you? I let you have it, I let you snap out of our hold for a few moments. I let you cause this mayhem.”
She swallowed. Next to her Francis was shivering. “Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? So you could hurt my father. I couldn’t. Francis couldn’t. The old man ensured none of us could raise a hand against him. You saw how he forced Ruth to kill herself. When I learned what Francis was up to I thought: here’s my chance. Let the girl escape her bonds, let’s see what she can do, this outsider who isn’t subject to our rules quite yet, who can still fight back. And now he’s dying. Feel it? Hmm? His body is falling apart.”
“That can’t be good for you,” Noemí said. “If you hurt him, you hurt the gloom, and besides, even if his body dies, he’ll still exist in the gloom. His mind—”
“He’s weakened. I control the gloom now,” Virgil said angrily. “When he dies, he’ll die forever. I won’t let him have a new body. Change. That’s what you wanted, no? Turns out we want the same.”
Virgil had reached Catalina’s side and was glancing at her with a smirk. “There you are, dear wife. Thank you for your contribution to the evening’s entertainment,” he said, squeezing her arm in a gesture of mock affection. Catalina winced, but did not move.
“Don’t touch her,” Noemí said, standing up and reaching for the knife in the silver box.
“Don’t be meddlesome. She’s my wife.”
Noemí closed her fingers around the knife. “You better not—” “You better drop that knife,” Virgil replied.
Never, she thought, yet her hand was shaking and there was this terrible impulse rushing through her body, pushing her to obey.
“I drank the tincture. You can’t control me.”
“Funny, that,” Virgil said, letting go of Catalina and looking at Noemí. “You did snap out of our control back there. But the tincture doesn’t seem to last that long, and walking all around the house, down into this chamber, you’ve been exposed to the gloom’s influence again. You’re breathing it in, all these tiny, invisible spores. You’re in the heart of the house. All three of you.”
“The gloom is hurt. You can’t—”
“We’ve all taken a beating today,” Virgil said, and she could now see there were beads of sweat dotting his forehead and his blue eyes had a feverish sheen to them. “But I’m in control now, and you’re going to do as I say.”
Her fingers ached, and suddenly it felt like she was holding a hot coal in her hand. Noemí let the knife fall to the floor with a loud clang and a yelp.
“Told you,” Virgil said mockingly.
She looked down at the knife, which lay by her foot. It was so close, yet she could not pick it up. She felt pins and needles running down her arms, making her fingers twitch. Her hand hurt, the broken bones ached with a terrible, burning pain.
“Look at this place,” Virgil said, glancing at the chandelier above their heads with distaste. “Howard was caught in the past, but I look forward to the future. We’ll have to reopen the mine, see about getting new furniture in here, real electric power. We’ll need servants, of course, new automobiles, and children. I expect you’ll have no problem giving me many children.”
“No,” she said, but it was a whisper, and she could sense his grip on her, like an invisible hand settling on her shoulder.
“Come here,” Virgil ordered. “You’ve been mine since the beginning.”
The mushrooms on the walls swayed, as if they were alive, like anemones rippling under water. They released clouds of golden dust and they sighed. Or it was she who sighed, for there was that sweet, dark feeling she had felt before enveloping her once again, and she
was suddenly light-headed. The troublesome pain of her left hand lifted and vanished.
Virgil was holding his arms out to her, and Noemí thought of those arms twined around her and how good it would be to surrender to his will. Deep down she wished to be torn apart, to scream in shame; his palm muffling that scream against her mouth.
The mushrooms glowed brighter, and she thought perhaps later she might touch them, running her hands against the wall and settling her face against the softness of their flesh. It would be good to rest there, skin pressed tight against their slick bodies, and maybe they’d cover her, the lovely fungi, and cram into her mouth, into her nostrils and eye sockets until she could not breathe and they nestled in her belly and bloomed along her thighs. And Virgil, too, driving deep within her, and the world would be a blur of gold.
“Don’t,” Francis said.
She had taken one step down the dais, but Francis had reached out a hand and clasped her injured fingers, the pain of his touch making her wince. She looked down at him, blinking, and froze.
“Don’t,” he whispered, and she could tell he was afraid. Nevertheless, he descended the steps ahead of her, as if he might shield her. His voice sounded frail and strained, ready to splinter. “Let them go.”
“Why would I ever do that?” Virgil asked innocently. “It’s wrong. Everything we do is wrong.”
Virgil pointed over his shoulder, toward the tunnel they had followed. “Hear that? That’s my father dying, and when his body finally collapses I will have absolute power over the gloom. I’ll need an ally. We are kin, after all.”
Noemí thought that she could indeed hear something, that in the distance Howard Doyle groaned and spat blood, and black fluid leaked from his body as he strained to keep breathing.
“Look, Francis, I’m not a selfish man. We can share,” Virgil said expansively. “You want the girl, I want the girl. It’s no reason to fight, huh? And Catalina is a sweet thing too. Come, come, don’t be dull.”
Francis had picked up the knife she had dropped, and now he held it up. “You won’t hurt them.”
“Are you going to try and stab me? I should warn you I’m a little harder to kill than a woman. Yes, Francis, you managed to kill your mother. Over what? A girl? And now? It’s my turn?”
“Go to hell!”
Francis rushed toward Virgil, but he suddenly halted, his hand frozen in midair, the knife tight in his grip. Noemí couldn’t see his face but she could imagine it. It must mirror her expression, for she too had become a statue, and Catalina stood in absolute stillness.
The bees stirred, the buzzing began. Look.
“Don’t make me kill you,” Virgil warned him, and his hand fell upon Francis’s trembling hand. “Yield.”
Francis shoved Virgil away, sending Virgil crashing against the wall with a strength that seemed impossible.
For one split second she felt Virgil’s pain, the tug of adrenaline rushing through her veins, his fury mingled with her own. Francis, you little shit. It was the gloom, connecting them for a brief instant, and she yelped, almost biting her tongue. She stepped back, her feet slowly obeying her. One, two steps.
Virgil frowned. His eyes seemed to glow gold as he stepped forward and brushed off tiny bits of mushrooms and dust that had adhered to his jacket.
The buzzing bubbled up, first low, then rumbling into life, and she winced.
“Yield.”
Francis groaned his answer and flung himself against Virgil once more. His cousin stopped him with ease. He was much stronger, and this time he was prepared for an attack. He caught Francis’s desperate punch, returning it with vicious abandon, hitting Francis in the head. Francis stumbled yet managed to regain his balance and struck back. His fist connected with Virgil’s mouth, and Virgil let out an angry, startled gasp.
Virgil’s eyes narrowed as he wiped his mouth clean.
“I’ll make you bite off your own tongue,” Virgil said simply.
The men had changed positions, and now Noemí could see Francis’s face, the blood welling down his temple as he heaved and shook his head, and Noemí saw the way his eyes were open wide and the way his hands were shaking and how his mouth was opening and closing, like a fish gasping for air.
Dear God, Virgil was going to make him do it. He would make him eat his own tongue.
Noemí heard the growing buzzing of bees behind her.
Look.
She turned around, and her eyes fell on the face of Agnes, her lipless mouth set in an eternal circle of pain, and she pressed her hands against her ears, furiously wondering why it wouldn’t stop. Why that noise wouldn’t cease, returning over and over again.
And it struck her all of a sudden this fact that she had missed, which should have been obvious from the very beginning: that the frightening and twisted gloom that surrounded them was the manifestation of all the suffering that had been inflicted on this woman. Agnes. Driven to madness, driven to anger, driven to despair, and even now a sliver of that woman remained, and that sliver was still screaming in agony.
She was the snake biting its tail.
She was a dreamer, eternally bound to a nightmare, eyes closed even when her eyes had turned to dust.
The buzzing was her voice. She could not communicate properly any longer but could still scream of unspeakable horrors inflicted on her, of ruin and pain. Even when coherent memory and thought had been scraped away, this searing rage remained, burning the minds of any who wandered near it. What did she wish?
Simply to be released from this torment.
Simply to wake up. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t ever wake.
The buzzing was growing, threatening to hurt Noemí again and overwhelm her mind, but she reached down and grabbed the oil lamp with quick, rough fingers and rather than thinking about what
she was about to do, she thought of that single phrase that Ruth had spoken. Open your eyes, open your eyes, and her steps were quick and determined, and for each step she whispered open your eyes.
Until she was staring at Agnes again.
“Sleepwalker,” she whispered. “Time to open your eyes.”
She tossed the lamp against the corpse’s face. It instantly ignited the mushrooms around Agnes’s head, creating a halo of fire, and then tongues of fire began to spread quickly down the wall, the organic matter apparently as good as kindling, making the mushrooms blacken and pop.
Virgil screamed. It was a hoarse, terrible scream, and he collapsed upon the floor and scratched at the tiles, attempting to stand up. Francis also collapsed. Agnes was the gloom and the gloom was part of them, and this sudden damage to Agnes, to the web of mushrooms, must be like neurons igniting. Noemí for her part felt jolted into complete awareness, the gloom shoving her away.
She rushed down the dais and immediately went to her cousin, pressing her hand against Catalina’s face.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes,” Catalina said, nodding vigorously. “Yes.”
On the floor, both Virgil and Francis were moaning. Virgil tried to reach for her, tried to lift himself up, and Noemí kicked him in the face, but he clawed at her, scrabbled to grab hold of her leg. Noemí stepped back, and he was extending a hand, still grasping and pulling himself forward even though he couldn’t walk. He crawled toward her, gritting his teeth.
Noemí took another step back, fearing he’d pounce upon her.
Catalina picked up the knife Francis had dropped, and now she stood over her husband and brought the knife down into his face when he turned to look at her, piercing an eye, in imitation of what she’d done to Howard Doyle.
Virgil fell down with a muffled groan, and Catalina pressed the knife in deeper, her lips closed together, not a single word or sob
escaping them. Virgil twitched and his mouth fell open, spitting and gasping. Then he lay still.
The women held hands and looked down at Virgil. His blood was smearing the black head of the snake, painting it red, and Noemí wished they’d had a great big knife, for she would have cut off his head if she could, like her grandmother had cut off the head of the fish.
She knew, by the way Catalina clutched her hand, that she wished for the same.
Then Francis muttered a word, and Noemí knelt next to him and tried to get him to stand up. “Come on,” she told him, “we need to run.”
“It’s dying, we are dying,” Francis said.
“Yes, we are going to die if we don’t get out quickly,” Noemí agreed. The whole room was quickly catching on fire, patches and patches of mushrooms bursting into flames, and the yellow curtains she had pulled aside were also burning.
“I can’t leave.”
“Yes, you can,” Noemí said, gritting her teeth and coaxing him to his feet. She couldn’t make him walk, though.
“Catalina, help us!” she yelled.
They each took one of Francis’s arms and placed it over their shoulders, half lifting, half dragging him toward the metal gate. It was easy to swing it open, but then Noemí eyed the steps leading up and wondered how they were going to manage that climb. But there was no other way. When she looked back, she saw Virgil on the ground, stray sparks falling upon him, and the chamber burning bright. There were also mushrooms growing on the walls of the staircase, and these too seemed to be catching fire. They had to hurry.
Up they went, as fast as they could, and Noemí pinched Francis to get him to open his eyes and assist them. He managed to climb several steps with their aid before Noemí was forced to literally drag him up the last couple of steps, stumbling into a dusty chamber with
crypts running from one side to the other. Noemí glimpsed silver plaques, rotting coffins, empty vases that might once have contained flowers, a few of the little glowing mushrooms upon the ground, providing the faintest illumination.
The door leading to the mausoleum was mercifully open, courtesy of Virgil. When they stepped out, the mist and the night were waiting to embrace them.
“The gate,” she told Catalina, “do you know the way to the gate?” “It’s too dark, the mist,” her cousin said.
Yes, the mist that had frightened Noemí with its mysterious golden blur, that buzzing that had been Agnes. But Agnes was a pillar of fire beneath their feet now, and they must find their way out of this place.
“Francis, you need to guide us to the gate,” Noemí said. The young man turned his head and looked at Noemí with half-lidded eyes and managed to nod and point to the left. They went in that direction, him leaning on Noemí and Catalina, stumbling often. The gravestones rose like broken teeth from the earth, and he grunted, pointed another way. Noemí had no idea where they were headed. It could be they were walking in circles. And wouldn’t that be ironic? Circles.
The mist gave them no quarter until, at last, she saw the iron gates of the cemetery rising in front of them, the serpent eating its tail greeting the trio. Catalina pushed the door open and they were on the path that led back to the house.
“The house is burning,” Francis said as they stood by the gates, catching their breath.
Noemí realized this was the case. There was a distant glow, visible even through the mist. She couldn’t see High Place, but she could picture it. The ancient books in the library quickly catching fire, paper and leather burning fast, mahogany furniture and heavy curtains with tassels smoldering, glass cases filled with precious silver objects crackling, the nymph and her newel post shrouded in flames as bits of the ceiling fell at her feet. The fire, flowing up the
staircase like a relentless river, making floorboards snap while the Doyles’ servants still stood on the steps, frozen.
Old paintings bubbling, faded photographs curling into nothingness, doorways arched with fire. Howard Doyle’s portraits of his wives were consumed by flames and his bed now a bed of fire, and his decayed and heaving body choked by smoke, while on the floor his physician lay immobile and the fire began to lick at the bedcovers, began to eat Howard Doyle inch by inch, and the old man screamed, but there was no one who would assist him.
Invisible, beneath the paintings and the linens and plates and glass, she imagined masses of fine threads, delicate mycelium, also burning and snapping, fueling the conflagration.
The house blazed in the distance. Let it burn until it was all reduced to ashes.
“Let’s go,” Noemí muttered.
