Don’t look.
Bees seemed to flutter against her fingertips, the air alive with unseen wings, and her instinct was to step back, to turn away and shield her eyes, but she clutched the fabric and yanked it aside with such force she almost ripped it to the ground.
Noemí stared straight into the face of death.
It was the open, screaming maw of a woman, frozen in time. A mummy, a few teeth dangling from her mouth, her skin yellow. The clothing in which she had been buried had long dissolved into dust, and instead she was clothed in a different finery: mushrooms hid her nakedness. They grew from her torso and her belly, they grew down her arms and her legs, they clustered around her head creating a crown, a halo, of glowing gold. The mushrooms held her upright, anchored her to the wall, like a monstrous Virgin in a cathedral of mycelium.
And it was this thing, dead and buried for years and years, that made that buzzing noise. It made that terrible sound. This was the golden blur she’d seen in her dreams, the terrifying creature that lived in the walls of the house. It held out an outstretchedhand, and upon that hand it wore an amber ring. She recognized it.
“Agnes,” Noemí said.
And the buzzing, it was terrible and sharp and it pulled her down and it made her see and it made herknow.
Look.
The pressure of the cloth against her face, suffocating her, until she lost consciousness, only to wake up in a coffin. Her startled gasps, because despite being prepared for this, despite knowing what must happen, she was scared. Her palms pressing against the lid of the coffin, again and again, splinters digging into her skin, and she screamed, tried to push her way out, but the coffin did not yield. She screamed and screamed but nobody came. Nobody was supposed to come. This was the way it was meant to be.
Look.
He needed her. Needed her mind. The fungus by itself, it had no mind. It held no real thoughts, no real consciousness. Faint traces, like the faded scent of roses. Even the cannibalization of the priests’ remains could not bring true immortality; it augmented the potency of the mushrooms, it created a soft link between all the people present. It united but it could not preserve for all eternity, and the mushrooms themselves could heal, they could extend life, but they could not offer immortality.
Doyle, however, clever, clever Doyle, with his knowledge of scientific and alchemical matters, with his fascination with biological processes, Doyle had understood all the possibilities nobody else had grasped.
A mind.
The fungus needed a human mind that could serve as a vessel for memories, that could offer control. The fungus and the proper human mind, fused together, were like wax, and Howard was like a seal, and he imprinted himself upon new bodies like a seal on paper.
Look.
The priests had managed to transmit a few stray memories from one to the other through the mushrooms, through the lineage of their people, but they were crude and random occurrences. Doyle systematized. And all he had needed were people like Agnes.
His wife. His kin.
But now there was no Agnes. Agnes was the gloom and the gloom was Agnes, and Howard Doyle, if he perished this instant, would still exist in the gloom, for he had created wax and a seal and paper.
And it hurt. It was in pain. The gloom. Agnes. The mushrooms. The house, heavy with rot, with hidden tendrils extending beneath and up its walls feeding on all manner of dead matter.
He is hurt. We are hurt.Look, look, look.Look!
The buzzing had acquired a fever pitch; it was so loud Noemí covered her ears and screamed, and inside her head a voice bellowed.
Francis grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around.
“Don’t look at her,” he said. “We are never supposed to look at her.”
The buzzing had ceased all of a sudden, and she raised her head and looked at Catalina, who was staring at the floor, and she looked back at Francis in horror.
A sob stuck in her throat. “They buried her alive,” Noemí said. “They buried her alive and she died, and the fungus sprouted from her body and…dear God…it’s not a human mind anymore…he remade her. He remade her.”
She was breathing very fast. Too fast, and the buzzing had ceased, but the woman was still there. Noemí turned her head, tempted to stare again at that hideous skull, but he caught her chin in his hand. “No, no, look at me. Stay here with me.”
She took a deep breath, feeling like a diver who was surfacing again. Noemí stared into Francis’s eyes. “She’s the gloom. Did you know?”
“Only Howard and Virgil come here,” Francis said. He was shivering.
“But you knew!”
All the ghosts were Agnes. Or rather, all the ghosts lived inside Agnes. No, that wasn’t right either. What had once been Agnes had become the gloom, and inside the gloom there lived ghosts. It was maddening. It was not a haunting. It was possession and not even that, but something she couldn’t even begin to describe. The creation of an afterlife, furnished with the marrow and the bones and the neurons of a woman, made of stems and spores.