Mexican Gothic (26 page)

“There’s no way you can leave us,” Florence said. “Ever.”

Florence pointed the gun at her, and Noemí knew this bullet would kill, not wound, for the woman’s face was eager, the mouth a vicious snarl.

They’d cleanse the house afterward, she thought. A mad thought, but it was there, that they’d wash the floors and the linens and scrape off the blood, and toss her into a pit in the cemetery without a cross, like they had so many others.

Noemí raised her injured hand, as if to shield herself, which could do no good. There was no way to dodge a bullet at this range.

“No!” Francis yelled.

Francis lunged toward his mother, and they both crashed against the black velvet chair where Noemí had been sitting, toppling it. There was the noise of the gun going off. It was loud. She pressed her hands against her ears and winced.

She held her breath. Francis lay under the weight of his mother. From the angle where she was sitting Noemí couldn’t see who had been shot, but then Francis rolled Florence away, stood up, and he had the gun in his hands. His eyes were bright with tears and he was shivering, but it wasn’t like the previous monstrous shivers that had wracked his body.

On the floor, Florence’s body lay still.

He stumbled in Noemí’s direction and shook his head helplessly. Perhaps he meant to speak, to give himself into the fullness of grief. But a groan made them both turn their heads toward the bed as Howard extended his hands in their direction. He’d lost an eye, and the cuts from the scalpel marred his face. But the other eye remained open and monstrous and golden, staring at them. He spat out blood, spat out black mucus.

“You’re mine. Your body is mine,” he said.

He held out his hands, like claws, commanding Francis to approach the bed, and Francis took a step, and Noemí knew in that moment that this compulsion could not abate, that Francis was primed to obey. There was a pull there that could not be ignored. She had assumed, until now, that Ruth had committed suicide, that, horrified by her actions, she’d shot herself.

I’m not sorry
, she’d said, after all. But now Noemí realized it had probably been Howard who had pushed her to do this. He had incited Ruth to turn the rifle onto herself in a last, desperate attempt to survive. The Doyles could do such things. They could push you in the desired direction, like Virgil had pushed Noemí.

Ruth, she thought, had been murdered.

Now Francis shuffled forward, and Howard grinned. “Come here,” he said.

It’s the right time
, Noemí thought.
A tree ripens and one must pluck the fruit
.

It was like that, and now Howard was sliding his amber ring off his finger, now he was holding it up for Francis, so that Francis might slide it onto his own hand. A symbol. Of respect, of transference, of acquiescence.

“Francis!” she yelled, but he didn’t look at her.

Dr. Cummins was moaning. He’d be on his feet any second, and Howard, he was staring at them with that single golden eye, and she needed Francis to turn around and leave. She needed him to step out of there now, because the walls were beginning to palpitate softly all around them, alive, rising and falling, like a great, heaving beast, and the bees had returned.

The maddening movement of a thousand tiny wings.

Noemí leaped forward and dug her nails into Francis’s shoulder.

He turned, he turned and looked at her, and his eyes were fluttering, beginning to roll up.

“Francis!”

“Boy!” Howard yelled. His voice shouldn’t have sounded so loud. It bounced all around them, off the walls, the wood groaning and repeating it while the bees buzzed, their wings flapping in the dark.

Boy boy boy
.

It’s in the blood
, Ruth had said—but you can cut out a tumor.

Francis’s fingers were slack around the gun, and Noemí pulled it out of his hand easily. She had shot once in her life before. It had been that trip to El Desierto de los Leones, and her brother had set little target pieces up and their friends had applauded her accurate aim, and then they’d all laughed and gone horseback riding. She remembered the instructions well enough.

Noemí raised the gun and shot Howard twice. Something snapped in Francis. He blinked and stared at Noemí, his mouth open. Then she pulled the trigger again, but she’d run out of bullets.

Howard began to convulse and shriek. Once, when Noemí’s family had gone to the coast on vacation, they’d eaten stew, and she recalled her grandmother slicing the head off a large fish for their dinner with one steady swoop of the knife. The fish had been slippery and fierce, and even after its head had been chopped off it wriggled and attempted to escape. Howard reminded her of the fish, his body rippling violently, wracked with such violence even the bed shook.

Noemí dropped the gun, grabbed Francis by the hand and pulled him out of the room. Catalina was standing in the hallway, both hands clasped against her mouth, staring at them, staring over Noemí’s shoulder at what lay on the bed, kicking and screaming and dying. Noemí didn’t dare to look back at it.

They 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.