Mexican Gothic(63)

“If you have an issue with that, you’d best bring it up with Virgil.”

Virgil. The last thing she wished to do was bring anything up with Virgil. Noemí crossed her arms and stared at the woman. Florence stared back at her, her eyes very cold and her mouth curved a little, the slightest hint of derision.

“Enjoy your lunch,” Florence concluded, and there was superiority in her smile, as if she thought she’d won a battle.

Noemí stirred the soup with her spoon and sipped the tea. She quickly gave up on both of them. She felt the beginning of a headache. She ought to eat but stubbornly decided to look around the house.

Noemí grabbed her sweater and walked downstairs. Did she hope to find anything? Ghosts, peeking from behind doors? If there were any, they evaded her.

The rooms with sheets on top of the furniture were dire, and so was the greenhouse with its wilted plants. Aside from evoking a mild sense of depression, they revealed nothing. She ended up seeking refuge in the library. The curtains were drawn, and she pulled them open.

She looked down at the circular rug with the snake she had noticed during her first visit and slowly walked around it. There had been a snake in her dream. It burst from an egg. No, from a fruiting body. If dreams had meaning, what did this one tell her?

Well, she was damn sure one needn’t phone a psychoanalyst to determine it had a sexual component to it. Trains going through tunnels make for neat metaphors, thanks, Mr. Freud, and apparently phallic mushrooms straining through the soil served the same purpose.

Virgil Doyle straining against her.

That was no metaphor; it was crystal clear.

The memory of him, with his hands in her hair, his lips against her own, made her shiver. But there wasn’t anything pleasant in the memory. It was cold and disturbing, and she turned her eyes toward the bookshelves, furiously looking among the tomes for a book to read.

Noemí grabbed a couple of books at random and went back to her room. She stood by the window, looking outside, nibbling on a nail before she decided she was too nervous and needed a smoke. She found the cigarettes, the lighter, and the cup decorated with half-naked cupids that she utilized as an ashtray. After taking a drag, she settled on the bed.

She hadn’t even bothered to read the titles of the books she’d picked. Hereditary Descent: Its Laws and Facts Applied to Human Improvement, it said. The other book was more interesting, dwelling on Greek and Roman mythology.

She opened it and saw the faint, dark marks of mold upon the first page. She turned the pages carefully. The interior pages were mostly intact, a few tiny spots on a corner or two. They made her think of snatches of Morse code. Nature writing upon paper and leather.

Noemí held the cigarette in her left hand and let the ash drop into the cup, which she’d placed on the side table. Golden-haired Persephone, the book informed her, had been dragged down into the Underworld by Hades. There she ate a few seeds of pomegranate, which chained her to his shadow world.

The book contained an engraving showing the exact moment when Persephone was snatched away by the god. Persephone’s hair was strewn with flowers and a few flowers had fallen to the ground; her breasts were bare. Hades, reaching from behind, had picked her up, clutching her in his arms. Persephone had one hand in the air and swooned, a scream on her lips. Her expression was one of horror. The god stared forward.

Noemí clapped the book shut and looked away, her eyes landing on the corner in her room where the rose-colored wallpaper was stained black by mold. And as she looked at it, the mold moved.

Christ, what kind of optical illusion was that?!

She sat in the bed and gripped the covers with one hand while with the other she held her cigarette. Slowly she stood and approached the wall, unblinking. The shifting mold was mesmerizing. It rearranged itself into wildly eclectic patterns that reminded her of a kaleidoscope, shifting, changing. Instead of bits of glass reflected by mirrors it was an organic madness that propelled the mold into its dizzy twists and turns, creating swirls and garlands, dissolving, then remerging.

There was color to it too. At first glance it appeared black and gray, yet the longer Noemí looked at the mold, the more it became obvious there was a golden sheen to certain sections of it. Gold and yellow and amber, dulling or intensifying as the patterns remade themselves into a new combination of staggering, symmetrical beauty.

She reached a hand up, as if to touch that section of the wall that was dirtied by the mold. The mold moved again, away from her hand, skittish. Then it seemed to change its mind. It pulsated, as if it was bubbling up, like tar, and it crooked a long, thin finger, beckoning her.

There were a thousand bees hiding in the walls, and she heard them buzzing as she pressed forward drowsily, intending to slide her lips against the mold. She’d run her hands across the shimmering gold patterns, and they would smell of earth and green, of rain, and then they would speak a thousand secrets.

The mold beat to the rhythm of her heart; they beat as one, and her lips parted.

The forgotten cigarette, still in her possession, burned Noemí’s skin, and she let go of it with a yelp. She quickly bent down and picked up the cigarette, tossing it into her makeshift ashtray.

She turned around to look at the mold. It was absolutely still. The wall looked like old, dirty wallpaper and had not changed even a little bit.

Noemí rushed into the bathroom and shut the door. She gripped the edge of the sink to keep herself steady. Her legs were about to fail her, and she thought, panicked, that she would faint.