Mexican Gothic(87)

“No waiting, you tease.”

“The dress!” He frowned, annoyed, but Noemí spoke again, hoping to buy time. “You’d better help me take off the dress.”

This seemed to improve his mood, and he gave her a radiant smile. She managed to stand up, and he peeled off her sweater, tossing it on the bed, and pushed her hair away from her nape as she furiously tried to think of a way out of— In the corner of her eye the mold, with its streaks of gold, had spread across the wall and was dripping onto the floor. It refracted and changed, a pattern of triangles turning to diamonds and then whorls. She nodded, feeling as if a great hand were pressed against her face, quietly smothering her.

She was never getting out of this house. To have considered it had been a folly. To have wanted to leave had been a mistake. And she wished to be a part of this, wanted to be one with the strange machinery and the veins and the muscles and the marrow of High Place. She wanted to be one with Virgil.

Want.

He had undone the top buttons on the back of the dress. She could have left long ago. Should have left in the beginning, when the first tingle of disquiet assailed her, but there had been a thrill to it, hadn’t there? A curse, maybe a haunting. She had even been excited to tell Francis about it. A haunting, a mystery to solve.

All along, the sickly pull of this. And why not? Why not.

Why not. Want.

Her body, which had been cold, now felt too hot, and the mold dripped down, forming a black puddle in the corner. It reminded her of the black bile that Howard had spit down her throat, and that memory awoke a wave of disgust, her mouth tasting sour, and she thought of Catalina and Ruth and Agnes and the terrible things they’d done to them, which they’d now do to her.

She turned around, away from the shimmering, changing mold, and shoved Virgil away with all her might. Virgil stumbled against the chest at the foot of her bed and fell down. She immediately knelt by the bed and stretched an arm under the mattress, clumsy fingers grabbing the razor she’d hidden there.

Noemí clutched the razor and looked at Virgil, who was sprawled on the floor. He’d hit his head, and his eyes were closed. Here was luck at last. Noemí breathed in slowly and leaned down next to his body, reaching into his pocket for the tincture. She found it, uncapped it, and drank a little from it, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

The effect was immediate and noticeable. She felt a wave of nausea, her hands trembled, and the flask slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor. She held on to one of the bedposts and breathed quickly. My God. She thought she’d faint. She bit her hand hard to jolt herself into wakefulness. It worked.

The black puddles of mold that had accumulated on the floor were receding, and the fog in her mind was evaporating. Noemí put on her sweater, tucked the razor in one pocket and the lighter in another.

She looked at Virgil still sprawled on the floor and considered sticking the knife into his skull, but her hands were trembling again, and she needed to get out of there and away from him. She must fetch Catalina. There was no time to waste.





25





N


oemí rushed along the darkened hallway, a hand on the wall to steady herself. The lights that were working seemed spectral and awfully dim, flickering in and out of life, but she knew the path by memory.

Quickly, quickly, she told herself.

Noemí feared her cousin’s room would be locked, but she turned the doorknob and yanked the door open.

Catalina sat on the bed in a white nightgown. She was not alone.

Mary kept her company, her eyes fixed on the floor.

“Catalina, we’re leaving,” Noemí said, extending a hand in her cousin’s direction while she held the razor in the other.

Catalina did not move; she did not even acknowledge Noemí, her gaze lost.

“Catalina,” she repeated. The young woman didn’t budge.

Noemí bit her lip and walked in, her eyes fixed on the maid sitting in the corner, her hand trembling as she gripped the razor. “For God’s sake, Catalina, snap out of it,” she said.

But it was the maid who raised her head, golden eyes zeroing in on Noemí, and rushed toward her, shoving her against the vanity.

Her hands wrapped around Noemí’s throat. It was such a startling attack, the strength of the woman unthinkable for someone her age, that Noemí dropped the blade. Several items on the vanity also clattered and fell: perfume bottles and a hair comb and a picture of Catalina in a silver frame.

The maid pushed harder, forcing Noemí to step back, the hands at her throat squeezing tight and wood digging against her back. She tried to grasp something, anything as a weapon, but her fingers found nothing suitable, tugging at a doily, overturning a porcelain pitcher that rolled upon the ground and cracked.

“Ours,” the maid said. It didn’t sound like the woman’s voice. It was an odd, raspy sound. It was the voice of the house, the voice of someone or something else, reproduced and approximated by these vocal cords.

Noemí attempted to pry the fingers off her neck, but those hands were more like claws, and all Noemí managed was to gasp and tug at the woman’s hair, which accomplished nothing.

“Ours,” Mary repeated, then clenched her teeth like a wild animal, and Noemí could hardly see, so bad was the pain. Her eyes watered, her throat was on fire.