Mexican Gothic(61)

She saw an egg, and from it rose a thin white stalk. A snake. But no, no, she’d seen such an image before. In Francis’s room a couple of hours ago. On the walls. The watercolors of mushrooms with their neat labels beneath, and one of them had said “universal veil.” Yes.

That’s what it was. The egg, pierced, the membrane removed, the snake that was the mushroom rising through the ground. Alabaster snake, sliding and knotting itself, devouring its tail.

Then there was darkness. The light from the oil lamp had gone off. She wasn’t in the tub anymore. She had been wrapped in a thick cloth that impeded her movement, but she managed to pull it apart, to slide it away, and it slipped from her shoulders as neatly as the membrane she’d observed.

Wood. She could smell damp earth and wood, and when she raised a hand her knuckles hit a hard surface and a splinter cut her skin.

Coffin. It was a coffin. The cloth was a shroud.

But she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t. And she opened her mouth to yell, to tell them that she wasn’t dead even when she knew she’d never die.

A buzzing, like a million bees had suddenly been unleashed, and Noemí pressed her hands against her ears. A blinding golden light shivered; it touched her, moving from the tip of her toes up to her chest until it reached her face, smothering her.

Open your eyes, Ruth said. Ruth with blood in her hands and blood on her face and her nails caked with blood, and the bees were inside her head, tunneling through Noemí’s ears.

Noemí snapped her eyes open. Water was dripping down her back and her fingertips, and the bathrobe she was wearing was not cinched; it lay loose and open showing her nakedness. She was barefoot.

The room she stood in lay in shadows, but even in the dark the configuration indicated it was obviously not her own room. A dim lamp rose, like a firefly, grew brighter as nimble fingers adjusted it.

Virgil Doyle, sitting in his bed, raised the lamp that had been resting at his bedside and regarded her.

“What’s this?” she asked, pressing a hand against her throat.

She could speak. Dear God, she could speak, even if her voice was hoarse and she was trembling.

“I believe you managed to sleepwalk into my room.”

She was breathing much too quickly. She felt as though she had been running and God knew if she had. Anything was possible. She managed to close her robe with a clumsy motion of her hands.

Virgil pushed the covers away. He put on his velvet robe and approached her. “You’re all wet,” he said.

“I was taking a bath,” Noemí muttered. “What were you doing?”

“I was sleeping,” he said, reaching her side.

She thought he meant to touch her and took a step back, almost toppling the painted screen next to her. He steadied it with one hand.

“I’ll fetch you a towel. You must be cold.”

“Not that cold.”

“You’re a little liar,” he said simply and went rummaging in an armoire.

She was not going to wait for him to find the towel. She meant to walk immediately back to her room, in absolute darkness if necessary. But the night had stunned her, it had reduced Noemí to a state of anxiousness that did not allow her to leave. As in the dream, she was petrified.

“Here,” he said, and she clutched the towel for a minute, before finally drying her face and then slowly blotting her hair with it. She wondered how long she had been in the tub, and then how long she’d wandered down the hallways.

Virgil slipped into the shadows, and she heard the clinking of glass. He returned with two glasses in his hand.

“Sit and have a sip of wine,” he said. “It’ll warm you up.”

“Let me borrow your lamp and I’ll be out of here.”

“Have the wine, Noemí.”

He sat in the same chair he’d used the last time, setting the oil lamp on a table, along with her drink, while he nursed his own glass.

Noemí twisted the towel between her hands and sat down. She let the towel drop to the floor and picked up the glass, taking a sip—only one, as he’d suggested—very quickly, before setting the glass down again.

She felt as though she were still floating in the dream even though she had woken up. A haze lingered in her mind, and the only clear thing in the room was Virgil, his hair a little wild, his handsome face peering at her intently. He expected her to speak, that much was obvious, and she sought proper words.

“You were in my dream,” she said. More for her sake than for his.

She wanted to understand what she’d seen, what had happened.

“I hope it wasn’t a bad dream,” he replied. He smiled. The smile was sly. It was the same smile she’d dreamed. Slightly malicious.

The ardor that she’d felt so vividly and pleasantly was now turning into a sour feeling in the pit of her stomach, but the smile was like a stray spark, reminding Noemí of her eagerness, of his touch.

“Were you in my room?”

“I thought I was in your dream.”

“It did not feel like a dream.”

“What did it feel like?”

“Like an intrusion,” she said.

“I was sleeping. You woke me up. You are the intruder tonight.”

She’d seen him rise from his bed and grab his velvet robe and yet she didn’t think him innocent. But he couldn’t have swept into the bathroom, like a medieval incubus, sitting on her chest as if they were posing for one of Fuseli’s paintings. Sneaking into her chamber to ravish her.