The sharpness of Francis’s sallow face vaguely reminded her of Virgil Doyle, but now she could see the traces of his father: the pointed chin, the broad forehead.
“Ruth caused a lot of damage. It wasn’t just the people she killed; she hurt Howard very badly. No normal man would have survived after she shot him, not the way she did it. He survived. But his grip, his power, decreased. That’s why we lost all our workers.”
“They were all hypnotized? Like your three servants?”
“No. Not quite. He couldn’t possibly manipulate that many people at once. It was a more subtle push and pull. It affected them, though. The house, the fungus, it affected the miners. It was a fog that could dull your senses when he needed it.”
“What about your father?” she asked, handing him back the portrait, which he tucked in his pocket.
“After Howard was shot, he slowly began to heal himself. It has been hard, in recent generations, for the family to have children. When my mother came of age, Howard tried to…but he was too old, too damaged, to give her a child. And there were other troubles too.”
His niece. He tried to have a child with his niece, Noemí thought, and the fleeting idea of that hideous thing she’d seen naked laboring over a woman, pressing its emaciated body against Florence, made her want to hurl again. She pressed the handkerchief to her mouth.
“Noemí?” Francis asked.
“What troubles?” she replied, urging him on.
“Money. The remaining workers all left when Howard’s control over them snapped, and there was no one to watch the mine, so it flooded. There was no money coming in, and the Revolution had already ruined much of our finances. They needed money and they needed children. Otherwise, what would happen to the bloodline? My mother found my father, and she thought he’d do. He had a little money. Not a huge fortune, but enough to tide us over, and most important she thought he could get her with child. He came to live here, to High Place. They had me. I was a boy, but the idea was that he might give her more children, that he might give her girls.
“The gloom, it affected him. He felt himself going mad. He wanted to leave, but he couldn’t. He never could get far. He threw himself down a ravine in the end. If you fight it, then it will hurt. It will be bad,” Francis warned her. “But if you obey, if you bond with it, if you agree to be part of the family, then it will be fine.”
“Catalina fights it, doesn’t she?”
“Yes,” Francis admitted. “But it’s also that she is not…she’s not quite as compatible—”
Noemí shook her head. “What makes you think I’ll comply any more than she has?”
“You’re compatible. Virgil, he picked Catalina because he knew she’d be compatible, but when you came here, it became obvious you’re even more suitable than her. I guess they hope you’ll be more understanding.”
“That I’ll be happy to join your family. That I’ll be happy to what? Give you my money? Maybe give you children?”
“Yes. Yes, to both.”
“You’re a pack of monsters. And you! I trusted you.”
He stared at her intently, his mouth quivering. She thought he might cry. It made her furious. That he should be the one breaking down and weeping. Don’t you dare, she thought.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry! You god damn bastard!” she yelled, and despite the fact that her body still throbbed with a horrible, dull pain she stood up.
“I am sorry. I didn’t want this,” he said, pushing his chair back, getting up too.
“Then help me! Get me out of here!”
“I can’t.”
She hit him. It wasn’t a good punch, and as soon as she threw it she thought she was going to collapse on the floor. It robbed her of all strength, and she felt suddenly boneless. If he hadn’t caught her, surely she’d have cracked her head open. Yet she scrambled against him, trying to shove him off.
“Let go,” she demanded, but her voice was muffled against the folds of his jacket. She couldn’t pull her head up.
“You need to rest. I’ll think of a solution, but you need to rest,” he whispered.
“Go to hell!”
He deposited her carefully on the bed again, pulling the covers up, and she wanted to tell him to go to hell one last time, but her eyes were closing, and in the corner of the room the mold was beating like a heart, stretching out, making the wallpaper ripple. The floorboards also swayed, trembling like the skin of a living thing.
A great snake rose from under the floorboards, slick and black, and slid over the covers. Noemí stared at it as it touched her legs, its skin cool against her feverish flesh, and she didn’t move, fearing it would rear its head back and bite her. And upon the snake’s skin there were a thousand tiny little growths, tiny pulsating points, which quivered and unleashed spores.
It’s another dream, she thought. It’s the gloom, and the gloom isn’t real.
But she didn’t want to see this, she didn’t want to, and she moved her legs at last, trying to kick the thing away. When she touched the snake its skin split open, and it was white and dead, the carcass of a snake ravaged by decay. Life teemed upon this white corpse, mold blooming all over it.
Et Verbum caro factum est, said the snake.
She was on her knees now. The chamber was cold and made of stone. It was dark; there were no windows. They’d set candles upon an altar, but it was still much too dark. The altar was more elaborate than the one she’d spied in the caves. The table was covered with a red velvet cloth and silver candelabra. But it was still dark and humid and cold.
Howard Doyle had added tapestries too. Red and black, the ouroboros displayed on them. Pageantry, Doyle understood pageantry was an important part of this game. There he was, Doyle, clad in crimson. Next to him stood the woman from the caves, heavily pregnant, and looking ill.
Et Verbum caro factum est, the snake told her, whispering secrets in her ear. The snake was gone, but she could still hear it. It had a peculiar, hoarse voice, and Noemí had no idea what it was telling her.
Two women were helping her down a dais, to lie down at the foot of the altar. Two blond women. She’d seen them too, before. The sisters. And she’d seen this ritual before. In the cemetery. The woman giving birth in the cemetery.
Birth. The child cried out, and Doyle held the child. And then she knew.
Et Verbum caro factum est.
She knew what she had not properly seen in her previous dreams, and she did not wish to see now, but there it was. The knife and the child. Noemí closed her eyes, but even behind her eyelids she saw it all, crimson and black and the child torn apart and they were eating him.
Flesh of the gods.
They held their hands up, and Doyle deposited bits of flesh, bits of bone, into their hands and they chewed this pale meat.
They’d done this before, in the caves. But it had been the priests, when they died, who offered their flesh. Doyle had perfected the ritual. Clever Doyle, who was well learned, and had read plenty of books on theology, biology, medicine, looking for answers, and now he’d found them.
Noemí’s eyes were still closed, and the woman’s eyes were closed too. They pressed a cloth against her face, and Noemí thought they would kill the woman now, they would also cut up her body and ingest it. But she was wrong on this point. They swaddled the body. Swaddled it tight, and there was a pit by the altar, and they were throwing her into it but she was alive.
She’s not dead, Noemí told them. But it didn’t matter. It was a memory.
It was necessary, always is. The fungus would erupt up, from her body, up through the soil, weaving itself into the walls, extending itself into the foundations of the building. And the gloom needed a mind. It needed her. The gloom was alive. It was alive in more than one way; at its rotten core there was the corpse of a woman, her limbs twisted, her hair britt
le against the skull. And the corpse stretched its jaws open, screaming inside the earth, and from her dried lips emerged the pale mushroom.
The priest would have sacrificed himself: part of the body devoured, the rest buried. Life erupting from those remains, and the congregation tied to him. Tied ultimately to their god. But Doyle was no fool who would offer himself in sacrifice.
Doyle could be a god without having to obey their arcane, foolish rules.
Doyle was a god.
Doyle existed, persisted.
Doyle always is.
Monsters. Monstrum, ah, is that what you think of me, Noemí?
“Have you seen enough, curious girl?” Doyle asked.
He was playing cards in a corner of her room. She watched his wrinkled hands, the amber ring upon his index finger flashing bright under the light of the candles as he shuffled the cards. He raised his head to look at her. She stared at him. It was the Doyle of now. Howard Doyle, his spine bent, his breath labored. He placed three cards down, carefully turning each one. A knight with a sword and a page holding a coin. She could see, through the thin shirt he wore, the black boils dotting his back.
“Why do you show me this?” she asked.
“The house shows you. The house loves you. Are you enjoying our hospitality? Would you like to play with me?” he asked.
“No.”
“A pity,” he said, revealing the third card: a single, empty cup. “You’ll still renounce yourself in the end. You’re already like us, you’re family. You don’t know it.”
“You don’t scare me, you piece of shit monster, with your dreams and your tricks. This isn’t real, and you’ll never keep me here.”
“You really think that?” he asked, and the boils rippled down his back. A trickle of black liquid, as black as ink, dripped onto the floor beneath him. “I can make you do anything I want.”
He sliced one of the pustules in his hands with a long nail, pressing it against a silver cup—it looked like the goblet in the card he’d been holding—and it broke, filling the cup with a foul liquid. “Have a drink,” he said, and for a second she felt compelled to step forward and take a sip, before revulsion and alarm froze her limbs.
He smiled. He was trying to show her his power; even in dreams he was the master.
“I’ll kill you when I wake up. Give me a chance, I’ll kill you,” she swore.
She threw herself at him, sinking her fingers into his flesh, wringing the thin neck. It was like parchment, it tore beneath her hands, muscle and blood vessels showing. He grinned at her, with Virgil’s brutish smile. He was Virgil. She squeezed harder, and then he was pushing her back, his thumb pressing against her lips, against her teeth.
Francis looked at her, his eyes wide with pain, his hand sliding down. She let go of him and stepped back. Francis opened his mouth, to plead with her, and a hundred maggots crawled out of his maw.
Worms, stems, the snake in the grass rose and wrapped itself around Noemí’s neck.
You’re ours, like it or not. You’re ours and you’re us.
She tried to peel the snake off her, but it knotted itself tight, digging into her flesh, and it opened its jaws, ready to devour her whole. Noemí dug her nails into the snake, and it whispered “Et Verbum caro factum est.”
But a woman’s voice also spoke, and she said, “Open your eyes.”
I must remember that, she thought. I must remember to open my eyes.
21
Daylight. She’d never been more thankful for such an ordinary sight, the beams of light filtering under the curtains making her heart soar. Noemí flung the curtain aside and pressed her palms against the window. She tried the door. It was, predictably, locked.
They had left a tray with food for her. The tea had gone cold, and she didn’t dare drink it, wondering what might be in it. Even the toast gave her pause. She ended up nibbling at the edges of the slice of bread and drinking water from the bathroom’s faucet.
If the fungus was in the air, though, did it matter? She was inhaling it anyway. The closet door was open, and she could see they’d emptied her suitcase and returned all her dresses to their hangers.
It was cold, so she put on her long-sleeved plaid dress with the Peter Pan collar and the matching white cuffs. It was warm enough, even if she had never quite favored plaid. She couldn’t even remember why she’d packed it, but she was glad she had.
Once she’d combed her hair and put on her shoes, Noemí tried to open the window again, but it didn’t budge. Neither did the door. The cutlery they’d left included a spoon, which would be of no help to her. Just as she was wondering if the spoon could be used to pry the door open, the key turned in the lock, and Florence stood at the doorway. As usual, she seemed extremely peeved to see Noemí. The feeling, that day, was entirely mutual.
“Do you intend to starve yourself?” Florence asked, eyeing the tray by the door, which Noemí had barely touched.
“Can’t say I have much of an appetite after what happened,” Noemí replied flatly.
“You’ll have to eat. In any case, Virgil wants to see you. He’s waiting in the library. Come along.”
Noemí followed the woman down the hallways and down the stairs. Florence did not speak to her, and Noemí moved two steps behind her at all times, until they reached the ground floor and Noemí dashed toward the front door. She feared they might have locked it, but the door handle turned, and she burst out into the misty morning. It was quite thick, this mist, but it didn’t matter. She dashed blindly into it.
Tall grasses brushed her body, and her dress caught on something. She heard it ripping, but she tugged at the skirt and kept going. It was raining, the slightest drizzle dampening her hair. And even if there had been thunder and lightning and hail she wouldn’t have stopped.
But Noemí did in fact stop. She was suddenly out of breath, and even when she stood still, tried to calm herself and breathe in, she could hardly accomplish it. She felt as though a hand were squeezing her throat and she gasped, stumbling against a tree, its low branches scratching her temple, and let out a sharp hiss, touching her head, feeling blood under her fingertips.
She needed to walk more slowly, needed to see where she was going, but the mist was thick, and the breathlessness did not subside. She slipped, tumbling to the ground, and lost a shoe. It was there and suddenly gone.
Noemí attempted to push herself up to her feet again, but the relentless pressure against her throat made it difficult to summon the necessary strength. She managed to get on her knees. Blindly she tried to reach for the missing shoe and gave up on it. It didn’t matter where it was. She tugged the other shoe off.
Barefoot, she’d continue on barefoot. She clutched her remaining shoe in one hand, trying to think. The mist shrouded everything. The trees and the shrubs and the house. She had no idea in which direction she should go, but she could hear the grasses rustling, and she was certain someone was coming for her.
She still couldn’t breathe, her throat was on fire. She gasped, trying to force air into her lungs. Noemí dug her fingers into the wet earth and stood up, dragging herself forward. Four, five, six steps before she stumbled again and was back on her knees.
It was too late by then. Through the mist came a tall, dark figure, which bent down next to her. She raised her hands, to ward it off, to no avail. He bent down, the man, he picked her up as easily as one lifted a rag doll, and she shook her head.
She struck, blindly, the shoe hitting his face, and he let out an angry grunt. He released her, dropping her in the mud. Noemí shifted forward, ready to crawl away if it came to it, but she hadn’t really hurt him, and he clutched her, pulled her into his arms.
He was taking her back to the house, and she couldn’t even protest; it was as if in the struggle her throat had been sealed almost completely shut and now she could barely draw in any air. To make
it even worse, she realized how close the house really was, how she’d scarcely walked more than a few meters before collapsing on the ground.
She saw the porch, the front entrance, and turned her head to look up at the man.
Virgil. He’d opened the door and now they were going up the stairs. The round, colored glass window at the top of the staircase had a thin snake etched in red around the rim. She hadn’t noticed it before, but now the image was clear: the snake was biting its tail.
They headed to her room and into the bathroom. He gingerly placed her in the bathtub, and she gasped as he opened the tap and water began to flow into the tub.
“Get out of those clothes and clean yourself,” he said.
The shortness of breath was gone. Like flipping a switch. But her heart was still racing, and she stared at him, her mouth slightly open, her hands holding on to the sides of the bathtub.
“You’ll catch a cold,” he said simply, and he stretched out a hand, as if to undo the top button of her dress.
Noemí slapped his hand away and clutched the collar of her dress. “Don’t!” she yelled, and it hurt to speak, that one word slicing her tongue.
He chuckled, amused. “This is your fault, Noemí. You decided to take a tumble in the mud, in the rain, and now you must wash yourself. So, get out of those clothes before I make you,” he said. There was no threat in his voice; he sounded very measured, but his face was infused with a simmering animosity.
She undid the buttons with shaky hands and took the dress off, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it on the floor. She was left in her underthings. She thought that humiliation would be enough for him, but he leaned against the wall and cocked his head, looking at her.
“Well?” he said. “You’re filthy. Take off everything and wash yourself. Your hair is a mess.”
“As soon as you step out of the bathroom.”
He grabbed the three-legged stool and sat down, looking unperturbed. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m not getting naked in front of you.”
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