Mexican Gothic(69)

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.





20





“B


reathe. Just breathe,” he told her.

He was a voice. She couldn’t see him well, because the pain blurred her eyes and the tears didn’t help in that regard. He held her hair back as she vomited and helped her stand up. Black and gold specks danced under her eyelids when she closed them. She’d never felt this sick in her life.

“I’ll die,” she croaked.

“You won’t,” he assured her.

Hadn’t she died? She thought she had. There had been blood and bile in her mouth.

She stared at the man. She thought she knew him, but his name escaped her. She was having trouble thinking, remembering, separating her thoughts from other thoughts. Other memories. Who was she?

Doyle, she’d been Doyle, and Doyle had killed all those people, burned them all.

The snake, it bites its tail.

The young, skinny man walked her out of the bathroom and pressed a glass of water against her lips.

She lay on the bed and turned her head. Francis sat on a chair, close to her, dabbing the sweat that beaded her forehead. Francis, yes. And she was Noemí Taboada, and this was High Place. It came back to her, the horror she’d been subjected to, the bloated body of Howard Doyle and his spit in her mouth.

She recoiled. Francis froze, then slowly handed her the handkerchief he’d been holding. She clutched it in one hand.

“What did you do to me?” she asked. It hurt to speak. Her throat felt scratchy. She recalled the filth that had poured into her mouth, and she suddenly wished to run into the bathroom again, to vomit her guts out.

“Do you need to get up?” he asked, readying a hand to help her.

“No,” she said, knowing she couldn’t reach the bathroom on her own, but also not wanting him to touch her.

He slid his hands into his jacket’s pockets. The corduroy jacket she’d thought looked good on him. The bastard. She regretted every nice thing she’d ever thought of him.

“I’m supposed to explain,” he said, his voice quiet.

“How the hell are you explaining that?! Howard…he…you… how? ”

Christ. She couldn’t even put it into words. The damn horror of it.

Of the black bile in her mouth and then the vision she’d had.

“I’ll tell you the story and then you can ask me questions. I think that would be the easiest thing,” he said.

Noemí didn’t want to do any talking. She didn’t think she could talk much, even if she tried. Better to let him speak, even if she felt like punching him. She was so tired, so sick.

“I suppose now you realize we are not like other people and this house is not like other houses. A long time ago, Howard, he found a fungus which is able to extend human life quite a bit. It can cure diseases; it keeps you healthy.”

“I saw that. I saw him,” she muttered.

“You did?” Francis replied. “I suppose you entered the gloom.

How deep have you gone into it?”

She stared at him. He was confusing her more. He shook his head.

“The fungus, it runs under the house, all the way to the cemetery and back. It’s in the walls. Like a giant spider’s web. In that web we can preserve memories, thoughts, caught like the flies that wander into a real web. We call that repository of our thoughts, of our memories, the gloom.”

“How is that possible?”

“Fungi can enter into symbiotic relationships with host plants.

Mycorrhiza. Well, it turns out that it can also have a symbiotic relationship with humans. The mycorrhiza in this house creates the gloom.”

“You have access to ancestral memories because of a fungus.”

“Yes. Only some of them are not full memories; you get faint echoes and they’re jumbled.”

Like not being able to tune to a radio station, she thought. Noemí looked at the corner on the wall that was defaced by the black mold.