Fungi

by Orrin Grey

  But the words aloud revealed their wrongness. The black mould had tricked her, betrayed her, for what reached out and entangled her in its approximate arms was not her father. It could not be. What embraced her in a malodourous grip did so not with anger or resentment, disgust, hate or vengeance. What took her in its arms was something else. Something so foreign to any of those that she did not know if it had a name. But it took her, regardless, and though she struggled like a demon against it, she knew it was too late. She had been infected. The black alien spores within her had finally taken root.

  She remained an eternity in its embrace, time itself slowed by the solidified air. Thoughts coursed through her suspended mind, visions of the past feverishly rushing by, stripped of all meaning. She had no control, her resistance paling in the face of the sickly mould’s control. She could not breathe, her body struggling for air but unable to expel the mass of spores from her lungs. The tendrils that bound her absorbed her convulsions. As though in defense, her mind detached itself and fell into a warm state of delirium.

  When consciousness returned, it did so gradually. It was only when she finally opened her eyes that the briar of tendrils that trapped her loosened their grip. Ives fell the floor, breathless, black decay spewing from her lungs, and looked up to see that half-formed grotesquery before her start to liquefy, the dark ooze seeping into the cracks between the warped floorboards. Coughing, she found herself reaching toward it, but, as her hand pressed into it, what remained burst like a thin membrane and rained the rest of its foulness onto the thirsty floor.

  When Ives finally found strength enough to stand, she did so on wobbly legs. Her chest still burned from what she had experienced; her head ached, full of unsettled memories. She retrieved the flashlight from where it had fallen and used it to discover that no trace of the half-formed thing remained. But there was more that had disappeared. The dark crib in the middle of the room had gone as well. As she shined the light on the walls around her, she saw that the mesh of fungus no longer glistened as it had before. Its colour dulled, pieces had already begun to fall away. It was then Ives experienced the vivid realisation of how utterly empty the house really was, how devoid of anything that she might care about. It was the debris of another life, remnants of another world that fell further away the faster the warming spores inside of her multiplied and grew. Pieces of wall crumbled around her like an avalanche, but she uneasily stepped over the debris and toward the rickety stairs. With each step she took, more strength returned, her once stumbling steps becoming confident strides. As her fear ebbed, the house’s walls began to shrink, returning to a shape more ordinary than her memories once painted. Pieces of the house rained down around her as she strode to the front door. When she reached it she threw it open, letting a flood of daylight sweep into the house.

  She stepped outside and marvelled. The sun had risen, something the mould-coated windows could no longer keep secret. She stared up at the hanging orb. Though she wanted to look away, she could not. It was too large, too overwhelming, and she felt its intense heat. It burned away the last part of her taking refuge in the crumbling house of her childhood, a house she had built from the bricks of her past. She walked away from it and never looked back.

  FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE PIGS

  By Chadwick Ginther

  Chadwick Ginther is a bookseller who lives in Winnipeg. His novel Thunder Road was released this fall. In addition to this anthology, his short fiction has appeared in On Spec and Tesseracts. He refuses to eat mushrooms.

  “FIRST THEY CAME FOR the pigs; then they came for their masters.”

  The men’s expressions told the tale. They glanced at the corpse, with its piss-yellow skin and toadstools sprouting from its eyes, its mouth, its ears and nose. The mushrooms swayed, though there was no breeze. Straining against their roots, reaching. As if hunting for me.

  I shuddered and all eyes were back to me. They didn’t believe me. How could they? It was too terrible to fathom. These were not men of a scholarly bent. These were street toughs. The best — or should I say worst? — Khyber had to offer, lured to my home with promises of wealth. I rubbed at my face; I needed to make them see the threat. All of my wealth would be meaningless if the attacks continued. There was no one left for them to take.

  No one but me.

  I settled my hand upon the braided silver Goodson’s Noose about my neck. He hung from the Wall and faced heathens to win his father’s favour. Surely, I could face these … men.

  They came from all over the city of Khyber. Which meant they came from all over the world.

  “Who,” asked Coal, the ebony-skinned Garan, “are they?”

  He was dressed in the colourful robes common of his desert-dwelling people and towered over the assemblage. I, myself, barely came to the man’s chest. Furs swaddled him beneath those robes, peeking out here and there, making him seem all the larger. He shivered as if he could not get warm, though we were in Khyber’s High Summer and I felt the sweat gathering at my brow. He cupped his hands around a bowl of tea, taking a sip. A spider’s web of bright orange scars wound about those large hands, glowing like embers.

  “This,” I said, gesturing at the toadstool, “is they. They walk like men, hunt like them. Kill like them. But they are not. Not men! Not beasts! They took my stock, but were not satisfied. I’ve lost my factors in every ward in Khyber. My seneschal! Even the bloody razor guild won’t take my coin for guard duty, now!”

  I tried to calm myself. Such outbursts were unseemly, even among the lowborn.

  Wei, an inscrutable Xiou, leaned against the wall, pushing his broad hat above his eyes with the tip of his staff. He pursed his lips, but said nothing.

  “Not even Old Wyrd would expect me to believe that,” Hraki, a giant Valkuran from the North Sea, bellowed, jabbing at me with a sausage-thick finger, each jab forcing me to retreat a step. “And he’s a bigger liar than any god in Khyber.” Hraki was almost as broad as the Garan was tall, a fury of hair and iron.

  “A Garan sorcerer could have worked such magic,” Coal said cautiously, as if daring the others to accuse him. When they did not, he continued. “Though at a terrible cost to himself. He would need to give up his humanity to take the same from his victims.”

  Hraki crossed his arms over his burly chest. He spat upon my rug. I was glad now that I’d had the foresight to remove my treasured woven Rusan rugs before I had invited these ruffians into my home. Like Hraki, they’d come from the barbaric far north. Unlike him, they were irreplaceable.

  “A witch or hex, nothing more,” the Valkuran insisted.

  “You’re all wrong, yeah?” a cheery voice interjected.

  Wheeling as one, we saw a slight man leaning against the doorframe. He picked at something between his teeth, regarded the prize, and then discarded it upon one of my tapestries.

  I winced — those I’d forgotten to store away, more concerned about the muck on my … guests’ feet.

  “Mushrooms out of everywhere,” the stranger spoke, gesturing at what was once my seneschal. He shuddered, too, though I felt he was exaggerating the gesture with false disgust. “Glad you kept that one’s pants on, yeah?”

  “You.”

  All of my dangerous men said the word, each with a different inflection. Anger from the Valkuran, suspicion from the Garan, amusement from the Xiou.

  “Who?” I asked, curious, echoing Coal’s earlier confusion.

  “Needle,” they answered at once.

  Then, separately:

  Coal added, “A thief and liar.”

  “A dead man,” Hraki growled.

  And from the Xiou, “An adequate tailor.”

  Needle threw back his hood, revealing a tanned, smirking face. He nodded at Wei. Were it not for the smouldering mischief in his eyes, he could have been any man in Khyber.

  “It’s the creeping rot, it is. Cygaricus, god of shit and muck and what things grow there. It’s the Vile Truffle, luv. That’s your culprit.”

  He spo
ke with the quick brogue of a Khyber native, though I could not quite place from which quarter his accent originated. He was also utterly unconcerned by his less-than-welcome reception.

  “I’ve never heard of this ‘creeping rot’,” Hraki said.

  Needle canted his head, rolling his eyes. “Take a closer look at your prick, then, and you’ll have an idea, Hraki Hard-Sailor. Only thing hard about you is how damned hard it is to get your fat ass in a boat these days.”

  “I should’ve killed you,” the Valkuran said through bared teeth.

  “Well you didn’t, now, did you? And it’s too late to go back.”

  “Never too late to try again.” Hraki’s hand tightened on an axe handle.

  “Please, please,” I interjected, trying to forestall a brawl in my sitting room. “This is not necessary. There is no time.”

  Needle smiled, ignoring me. Odious little man. He had a dirk in each hand. I hardly saw his hands move to draw. “See how far you get, luv.”

  “I’m not your luv.”

  “Aye, that’s what your sister said, though she bent over just the same.”

  “She asked me to bring her your manhood.”

  “I knew she still fancied me.”

  Wei’s staff slapped against Hraki’s chest, holding the Valkuran back from rushing the intruder. When he spoke, it was in a hard, clipped tone. “I think he may take more than a finger this time.”

  This had gotten out of hand. I needed to wrest control of the proceedings back from these ruffians before they killed each other in my home.

  Gathering myself to my full height — not much in the face of these warriors, but it was enough that I could look down upon this Needle — I glared at the thief as if he’d tried to pass me a wooden coin.

  “I … we do not appreciate your intrusion.”

  “You’d best appreciate me,” Needle shot back. “And by that, I mean, you’d best be following me through the Undercity, or you won’t be coming back up out of the dark. The Truffle wants back what’s his; that’s the word I’ve been hearing. You need to bring that body or they’ll keep coming. I wouldn’t trust even fire to kill this rot.”

  “I do not respond well to threats —”

  He snorted. “Of course you do. Something bad hit one of your operations. You didn’t like the smell of it and so, you found —” He looked at each of the men in turn. To Coal, “The biggest.” To the Xiou, “Baddest.” And, finally, to the Valkuran: “Smelliest shankers you could find. Only flaw was leaving one out, yeah?”

  “Which one might you be?” I asked, dubious.

  “The best, luv. The best.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Well, I got this,” Needle held up a greasy-looking leather pouch, bouncing it on his palm and smiling at Hraki, “from that one.”

  Hraki growled and made to snatch the pouch back. Needle darted back a step, wagging a finger.

  “Please, you great hairy lummox. I’ve been nabbing purses longer than you’ve been preening that beard of yours — and that’s a roll of years, it is.”

  The thief dipped a finger into the pouch. Recoiling immediately, he grimaced.

  “I thought as much. Vala Mushrooms. Working for the Truffle, are we?”

  “They’re sacred,” Hraki said.

  “They’re foolish, is what. Only a great fucking fool would eat a mad mushroom before facing the bloody god of fungus and rot. Poison to the mind, luv.” Needle tapped at his temple. “Once they get in here.…”

  “It is a gift that’ll prove more useful than your quick fingers. Or mouth.”

  Hraki tore the pouch from Needle’s hands, though, I felt, he was allowed to do so.

  “Oh, aye,” the thief muttered. “Always useful to have a mad Valkuran, frothing at the mouth, chopping up anything that moves. I’m still moving and I plan on staying that way.”

  I didn’t like it.

  I didn’t know this man and those who did gave me little reason to want to. Assurances that he could handle himself in a fight, or that he knew the Undercity as well as any man alive, did little to ease my troubled conscience.

  I liked that I had to accompany them even less. With my trusted guards and factors gone — taken — who might I trust to prove to me they had succeeded?

  What were our choices? Going gate to gate in Khyber, and the bribes and graft that would accompany such a journey, would drain even the Lord General’s purse, and I was nowhere near so wealthy as that. For better and worse, I had assembled my chosen elite and there were wards that would not allow a Garan to walk through. Others had the same taboo regarding Xiou or Valkurans. Needle, the crafty bastard, had me.

  I needed him.

  I fought to keep my cheek from twitching. I fought harder to show a smile.

  “It seems we can use you, after all.”

  His grin terrified me.

  “Never doubted it, luv. Never doubted.”

  The Undercity was a labyrinthine world of sewers, cisterns and ruins buried under Khyber from the days when the city was young. I had prayed to the Goodson that I would never see its blackness again. There are … things that live in the dark. Men, and what once wore the forms of men, worship fell masters where they hope the One God’s eyes cannot find them.

  We descended into the darkness of the Undercity through a bolthole that Needle proclaimed as his own. It was a tight fit for my own belly and I must assume that Hraki was only able to push his bulk through due to the benevolence of his heathen god, Wyrd. He had scrapes all along his arms. Blood had dried red where he’d rubbed his flesh raw on brick. Needle laughed and I wondered then if he’d led us there because it was closest or because he wished to leave Hraki behind. I must assume the former, as the small man seemed to enjoy taunting the Valkuran. Almost as much as he enjoyed reminding us of his prowess.

  Coal’s hands flared and flames rose from them as if the man himself were a torch. I jumped back, a hand at my chest. I could barely hear the fire crackle as it burned over the man’s skin, but did not consume it. All this time, I’d thought him a mere arsonist. I would have to watch myself. He was a sorcerer. A Garan sorcerer meant but one thing: He’d made a pact with the Goodson’s opposite.

  But, Goodson preserve me, I would follow even a heathen’s light in this dark, dark place.

  Water dripped from the ceiling, drops spattering over cisterns, a cacophony of little noises that seemed to roar in my ears. It was hot down here. I mopped at my brow with an already sodden sleeve. They had made me drag the wrapped body of my own seneschal as if I were their pack mule.

  Outrageous.

  They were to be working for me.

  I grimaced, but there was little I could do in the face of their hard stares. Not a one would touch Kavin’s body. Wrapped or otherwise.

  It felt wrong, this heat. Sweat dripped from my nose in time with the rain falling from a brick sky.

  “Nervous in the service, then?” Needle japed, suddenly behind me.

  I ground my teeth. “I do not like this place.”

  He smiled. “Be worried if you did, luv. Be worried if you did. But it does grow on you.”

  It was interminable, the slog through these horrid, labyrinthine tunnels. But the little thief never wavered, turning at every intersection without hesitation as if he were merely walking to market.

  “Why won’t you be taking any payment?” I asked.

  “Kindness of me bleeding heart?”

  I snorted.

  “Bug-eating cultists always have a trinket or two worth a rub and a tug. I’ll take my share from what they have.” He looked sidelong at Hraki and whispered, “I don’t need to be paid up front before facing danger. Neither did his sister.”

  The last was not a whisper.

  “Fuck me,” Needle cried. “But that’s a bloody great mushroom!”

  The cistern it occupied once would have held enough water to wet the lips of an entire ward of Khyber. No longer. Only the columns supporting the arched ceiling disturbed the mass of th
e fungus. Yellow clusters of smaller — almost tumorous — growths dotted the bright purple mass where the columns lanced upward. It was luminous, glowing softly with a shifting, pulsating light.

  I touched the noose about my throat. Had the Goodson ever seen such a thing?

  I looked to the Garan, but he shook his head.

  “Even my flames would take days to burn this to nothing.”

  Days we might not have.

  “I’m not crossing that,” Hraki said.

  “You must,” I insisted.

  A mistake. One does not insist a Valkuran Dragonman do anything. Not unless one is prepared to back words with steel and shield.

  “Another word from your fat mouth, Coinpurse, and I’ll have you.”

  I swallowed hard, nodding. I knew how to use a sword; I did. A paper-thin protection that blade felt now, facing the Valkuran’s shaking axe.

  “And since you’re so insistent,” Hraki added. “You may go first.”

  I swallowed again. Yes. An act of courage, of leadership, might make me seem more to these men than a walking coinpurse. The great mushroom had swelled to take up so much of the cistern that there was no place where I could walk that was not atop it. At its centre, where it rose toward the ceiling, I would have to crouch and scrape. I looked back at the men. Hraki stood with his scowl and set jaw. Coal looked impassive. Wei’s face showed concern, or at least what I took for concern. Even Needle’s smirk seemed to have been diluted to a nervous smile.