Mexican Gothic(90)

The blow was fierce, going straight into an eye.

Catalina became a maenad, her frenzied stabbing—the scalpel bit the neck, the ear, the shoulder—brought forth a river of black pus and dark blood, splattering the covers. Howard yelled and shook as if an electric current ran through his body, and the others in the room echoed him, their bodies convulsing. The doctor, Florence, Francis, they fell upon the floor, seized by a terrible paroxysm.

Catalina stepped back, dropping the scalpel and slowly moving toward the doorway, where she remained, staring at the room.

Noemí jumped to her feet and rushed to Francis’s side. She could see nothing but the white in his eyes, and she grasped his shoulders and tried to pull him up into a sitting position.

“Let’s go!” she said, giving him a hard slap. “Come on, let’s go!”

Though dazed, he stood up and clutched her hand, trying to make his way across the room with her. But then Florence’s hand clawed at Noemí’s leg, and she stumbled and lost her footing. Francis tumbled down with her.

Noemí attempted to stand again, but there was Florence holding her ankle tight. Noemí saw the gun on the floor and tried to reach for it. Florence, noticing this, leaped upon her like a wild animal, and as Noemí’s fingers closed upon the weapon, Florence’s hand closed around Noemí’s hand, clutching it with a grip so strong Noemí yelped as she heard the cruel, hard cracking of bones.

The pain was atrocious, and her eyes watered as Florence pulled the gun out of her useless hand.

“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.