What Moves the Dead (38)

“Alex,” she said. Her voice was shallow and breathy, as if she could not draw in much air. Were her lungs felted with fungus, like the hare? Was it simply that her neck was broken? Did it even matter?

“Madeline.” Roderick was still lying on the bed, on his side. I could not tell if he was breathing. Had she killed him?

And if she has, was it murder or simply justice?

“Shooting … me … won’t … do much…” she whispered. Her hair was loose and fell over her eyes, white hair on bone-colored skin. When she lifted her hand to push it away, her fingers were violet-black and a long line ran down the underside of her arms. You see that in dead men sometimes, when the blood has pooled. Whatever the fungus was doing to her, Madeline’s heart had stopped beating days ago.

She coughed and her voice gained a little strength. “I suppose … I wouldn’t enjoy it, though.” She smiled ruefully at me, and it was her familiar smile, the one I’d known since we were children.

“Oh God, Maddy,” I said. I lowered the gun. Did I really think I could shoot her? “Oh God. What’s happened to you?”

“The broken neck was … a problem,” she said musingly. “The tarn had just been in … my brain … and my skin. Now va had to grow all the way down … past the break. It took … days.” She shook her head at me, flopping it from side to side. I could see the sharp angle of her windpipe. Nausea clawed at me. “Clever … of Roderick. He never understood … the tarn.”

Denton had come up beside me, his eyes on the bed. “Is Roderick alive, Madeline?”

“I didn’t … kill him.” She coughed again and her head slipped off her shoulder, bouncing in time. I had to look away. When I looked back, she had reached up to her mouth and was tugging. Long white strands came out and she wrapped them around her hand, then let them fall carelessly in her lap. “There,” she said, her voice stronger. “There, that’s a little better. Va filled my lungs, you see. To save me, but now there’s too much.” She pushed her head back up onto her shoulder.

“Va?” Who was she referring to like a child?

“The tarn.” She smiled up at me. “It’s always been the tarn.”

Denton took a step forward. “May I examine Roderick?” he asked. It was the right thing to do, of course, but I was desperate to find out what Madeline meant, and why she was referring to the lake as one would a child.

“Yes.”

Denton circled the bed as cautiously as if it contained an unexploded shell. Madeline ignored him. I wondered how fast she could move. I caught myself rubbing the trigger guard with my finger and stopped. Terrible habit. Angus would have yelled at me.

“Maddy,” I said, hoping to hold her attention. “What do you mean, it’s always been the tarn?”

“Va’s been reaching out for so long,” she said wistfully. “Va could get into the animals. Va learned van senses that way. I can’t imagine what that must have been like, the first time. Think of it, if you had no sight and not even the sense that sight existed, how would you get there? Hearing was easier. Va understood vibrations, and that’s all hearing is. And va already knew smell.” She pointed to her eyes. “But how would you ever think that these two round sacs of jelly did anything? But the tarn figured it out!”

I swallowed. Behind Madeline, Denton gave me a thumbs-up. Roderick was still alive. Thank Christ.

“You’re telling me that the tarn is intelligent,” I said.

She smiled up at me. “More than you or I are. Think of all va’s managed to learn.”

“And…” Denton was tugging on Roderick’s wrist, possibly trying to get him out of bed. “The tarn talks to you? Communicates with you somehow?” Half of me thought that she’d gone mad. The other half pointed out that I was already having a conversation with a dead woman. Mushrooms don’t think. Yes, and the dead don’t move either.

“Speech was the hardest,” said Madeline. She plucked another puff of hyphae from her lips. “I had to teach van a kind of sign language first. Va didn’t understand speech at all.” She giggled again, the papery rasping giggle that set my teeth on edge, made even worse by the impossible angle of her windpipe. “When you think about it, we talk by coughing up air and wiggling our lips through it. How could anyone ever understand that, if you weren’t born to it? But va grasped it eventually!”

Breath moving hard, I thought. Not Maddy. Maddy one and me one …

Oh God, it was the tarn talking. She taught the fungus to talk.

There had been clues in front of me, but how could I have possibly guessed the truth? How could I have known that when Maddy was naming the wall and the candle and counting, it was actually a vocabulary lesson?

How could I possibly have known that she would treat the fungus like a child?

Denton had gotten Roderick out of bed. The last male Usher looked groggy and leaned against Denton like a drunk, but he was moving. I heard him mumble a question and Denton shushed him.

Madeline started to turn and I stepped forward hastily to distract her. “You taught … van … the tarn … how to talk?”

It worked. She beamed at me. “Once va realized we were using sound to communicate, va almost taught vanself. So smart! My maid and I—va’d take over Alice and then I’d teach van what I could. But then Alice killed herself, that silly creature, and it got harder.” A flash of something crossed over her face, sorrow or anger or disappointment, I couldn’t tell.