“Poor girl. You actually look shocked. You didn’t really think you had killed me. You also didn’t think I accidentally happened to carry that tincture in my pocket, did you? I let you have it, I let you snap out of our hold for a few moments. I let you cause this mayhem.”
She swallowed. Next to her Francis was shivering. “Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? So you could hurt my father. I couldn’t. Francis couldn’t. The old man ensured none of us could raise a hand against him. You saw how he forced Ruth to kill herself. When I learned what Francis was up to I thought: here’s my chance. Let the girl escape her bonds, let’s see what she can do, this outsider who isn’t subject to our rules quite yet, who can still fight back. And now he’s dying. Feel it? Hmm? His body is falling apart.”
“That can’t be good for you,” Noemí said. “If you hurt him, you hurt the gloom, and besides, even if his body dies, he’ll still exist in the gloom. His mind—”
“He’s weakened. I control the gloom now,” Virgil said angrily. “When he dies, he’ll die forever. I won’t let him have a new body. Change. That’s what you wanted, no? Turns out we want the same.”
Virgil had reached Catalina’s side and was glancing at her with a smirk. “There you are, dear wife. Thank you for your contribution to the evening’s entertainment,” he said, squeezing her arm in a gesture of mock affection. Catalina winced, but did not move.
“Don’t touch her,” Noemí said, standing up and reaching for the knife in the silver box.
“Don’t be meddlesome. She’s my wife.”
Noemí closed her fingers around the knife. “You better not—”
“You better drop that knife,” Virgil replied.
Never, she thought, yet her hand was shaking and there was this terrible impulse rushing through her body, pushing her to obey.
“I drank the tincture. You can’t control me.”
“Funny, that,” Virgil said, letting go of Catalina and looking at Noemí. “You did snap out of our control back there. But the tincture doesn’t seem to last that long, and walking all around the house, down into this chamber, you’ve been exposed to the gloom’s influence again. You’re breathing it in, all these tiny, invisible spores. You’re in the heart of the house. All three of you.”
“The gloom is hurt. You can’t—”
“We’ve all taken a beating today,” Virgil said, and she could now see there were beads of sweat dotting his forehead and his blue eyes had a feverish sheen to them. “But I’m in control now, and you’re going to do as I say.”
Her fingers ached, and suddenly it felt like she was holding a hot coal in her hand. Noemí let the knife fall to the floor with a loud clang and a yelp.
“Told you,” Virgil said mockingly.
She looked down at the knife, which lay by her foot. It was so close, yet she could not pick it up. She felt pins and needles running down her arms, making her fingers twitch. Her hand hurt, the broken bones ached with a terrible, burning pain.
“Look at this place,” Virgil said, glancing at the chandelier above their heads with distaste. “Howard was caught in the past, but I look forward to the future. We’ll have to reopen the mine, see about getting new furniture in here, real electric power. We’ll need servants, of course, new automobiles, and children. I expect you’ll have no problem giving me many children.”
“No,” she said, but it was a whisper, and she could sense his grip on her, like an invisible hand settling on her shoulder.
“Come here,” Virgil ordered. “You’ve been mine since the beginning.”
The mushrooms on the walls swayed, as if they were alive, like anemones rippling under water. They released clouds of golden dust and they sighed. Or it was she who sighed, for there was that sweet, dark feeling she had felt before enveloping her once again, and she was suddenly light-headed. The troublesome pain of her left hand lifted and vanished.
Virgil was holding his arms out to her, and Noemí thought of those arms twined around her and how good it would be to surrender to his will. Deep down she wished to be torn apart, to scream in shame; his palm muffling that scream against her mouth.
The mushrooms glowed brighter, and she thought perhaps later she might touch them, running her hands against the wall and settling her face against the softness of their flesh. It would be good to rest there, skin pressed tight against their slick bodies, and maybe they’d cover her, the lovely fungi, and cram into her mouth, into her nostrils and eye sockets until she could not breathe and they nestled in her belly and bloomed along her thighs. And Virgil, too, driving deep within her, and the world would be a blur of gold.
“Don’t,” Francis said.
She had taken one step down the dais, but Francis had reached out a hand and clasped her injured fingers, the pain of his touch making her wince. She looked down at him, blinking, and froze.
“Don’t,” he whispered, and she could tell he was afraid. Nevertheless, he descended the steps ahead of her, as if he might shield her. His voice sounded frail and strained, ready to splinter. “Let them go.”
“Why would I ever do that?” Virgil asked innocently.
“It’s wrong. Everything we do is wrong.”
Virgil pointed over his shoulder, toward the tunnel they had followed. “Hear that? That’s my father dying, and when his body finally collapses I will have absolute power over the gloom. I’ll need an ally. We are kin, after all.”
Noemí thought that she could indeed hear something, that in the distance Howard Doyle groaned and spat blood, and black fluid leaked from his body as he strained to keep breathing.
“Look, Francis, I’m not a selfish man. We can share,” Virgil said expansively. “You want the girl, I want the girl. It’s no reason to fight, huh? And Catalina is a sweet thing too. Come, come, don’t be dull.”
Francis had picked up the knife she had dropped, and now he held it up. “You won’t hurt them.”
“Are you going to try and stab me? I should warn you I’m a little harder to kill than a woman. Yes, Francis, you managed to kill your mother. Over what? A girl? And now? It’s my turn?”
“Go to hell!”
Francis rushed toward Virgil, but he suddenly halted, his hand frozen in midair, the knife tight in his grip. Noemí couldn’t see his face but she could imagine it. It must mirror her expression, for she too had become a statue, and Catalina stood in absolute stillness.
The bees stirred, the buzzing began. Look.
“Don’t make me kill you,” Virgil warned him, and his hand fell upon Francis’s trembling hand. “Yield.”
Francis shoved Virgil away, sending Virgil crashing against the wall with a strength that seemed impossible.
For one split second she felt Virgil’s pain, the tug of adrenaline rushing through her veins, his fury mingled with her own. Francis, you little shit. It was the gloom, connecting them for a brief instant, and she yelped, almost biting her tongue. She stepped back, her feet slowly obeying her. One, two steps.
Virgil frowned. His eyes seemed to glow gold as he stepped forward and brushed off tiny bits of mushrooms and dust that had adhered to his jacket.
The buzzing bubbled up, first low, then rumbling into life, and she winced.
“Yield.”
Francis groaned his answer and flung himself against Virgil once more. His cousin stopped him with ease. He was much stronger, and this time he was prepared for an attack. He caught Francis’s desperate punch, returning it with vicious abandon, hitting Francis in the head. Francis stumbled yet managed to regain his balance and struck back. His fist connected with Virgil’s mouth, and Virgil let out an angry, startled gasp.
Virgil’s eyes narrowed as he wiped his mouth clean.
“I’ll make you bite off your own tongue,” Virgil said simply.
The men had changed positions, and now Noemí coul
d see Francis’s face, the blood welling down his temple as he heaved and shook his head, and Noemí saw the way his eyes were open wide and the way his hands were shaking and how his mouth was opening and closing, like a fish gasping for air.
Dear God, Virgil was going to make him do it. He would make him eat his own tongue.
Noemí heard the growing buzzing of bees behind her.
Look.
She turned around, and her eyes fell on the face of Agnes, her lipless mouth set in an eternal circle of pain, and she pressed her hands against her ears, furiously wondering why it wouldn’t stop. Why that noise wouldn’t cease, returning over and over again.
And it struck her all of a sudden this fact that she had missed, which should have been obvious from the very beginning: that the frightening and twisted gloom that surrounded them was the manifestation of all the suffering that had been inflicted on this woman. Agnes. Driven to madness, driven to anger, driven to despair, and even now a sliver of that woman remained, and that sliver was still screaming in agony.
She was the snake biting its tail.
She was a dreamer, eternally bound to a nightmare, eyes closed even when her eyes had turned to dust.
The buzzing was her voice. She could not communicate properly any longer but could still scream of unspeakable horrors inflicted on her, of ruin and pain. Even when coherent memory and thought had been scraped away, this searing rage remained, burning the minds of any who wandered near it. What did she wish?
Simply to be released from this torment.
Simply to wake up. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t ever wake.
The buzzing was growing, threatening to hurt Noemí again and overwhelm her mind, but she reached down and grabbed the oil lamp with quick, rough fingers and rather than thinking about what she was about to do, she thought of that single phrase that Ruth had spoken. Open your eyes, open your eyes, and her steps were quick and determined, and for each step she whispered open your eyes.
Until she was staring at Agnes again.
“Sleepwalker,” she whispered. “Time to open your eyes.”
She tossed the lamp against the corpse’s face. It instantly ignited the mushrooms around Agnes’s head, creating a halo of fire, and then tongues of fire began to spread quickly down the wall, the organic matter apparently as good as kindling, making the mushrooms blacken and pop.
Virgil screamed. It was a hoarse, terrible scream, and he collapsed upon the floor and scratched at the tiles, attempting to stand up. Francis also collapsed. Agnes was the gloom and the gloom was part of them, and this sudden damage to Agnes, to the web of mushrooms, must be like neurons igniting. Noemí for her part felt jolted into complete awareness, the gloom shoving her away.
She rushed down the dais and immediately went to her cousin, pressing her hand against Catalina’s face.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes,” Catalina said, nodding vigorously. “Yes.”
On the floor, both Virgil and Francis were moaning. Virgil tried to reach for her, tried to lift himself up, and Noemí kicked him in the face, but he clawed at her, scrabbled to grab hold of her leg. Noemí stepped back, and he was extending a hand, still grasping and pulling himself forward even though he couldn’t walk. He crawled toward her, gritting his teeth.
Noemí took another step back, fearing he’d pounce upon her.
Catalina picked up the knife Francis had dropped, and now she stood over her husband and brought the knife down into his face when he turned to look at her, piercing an eye, in imitation of what she’d done to Howard Doyle.
Virgil fell down with a muffled groan, and Catalina pressed the knife in deeper, her lips closed together, not a single word or sob escaping them. Virgil twitched and his mouth fell open, spitting and gasping. Then he lay still.
The women held hands and looked down at Virgil. His blood was smearing the black head of the snake, painting it red, and Noemí wished they’d had a great big knife, for she would have cut off his head if she could, like her grandmother had cut off the head of the fish.
She knew, by the way Catalina clutched her hand, that she wished for the same.
Then Francis muttered a word, and Noemí knelt next to him and tried to get him to stand up. “Come on,” she told him, “we need to run.”
“It’s dying, we are dying,” Francis said.
“Yes, we are going to die if we don’t get out quickly,” Noemí agreed. The whole room was quickly catching on fire, patches and patches of mushrooms bursting into flames, and the yellow curtains she had pulled aside were also burning.
“I can’t leave.”
“Yes, you can,” Noemí said, gritting her teeth and coaxing him to his feet. She couldn’t make him walk, though.
“Catalina, help us!” she yelled.
They each took one of Francis’s arms and placed it over their shoulders, half lifting, half dragging him toward the metal gate. It was easy to swing it open, but then Noemí eyed the steps leading up and wondered how they were going to manage that climb. But there was no other way. When she looked back, she saw Virgil on the ground, stray sparks falling upon him, and the chamber burning bright. There were also mushrooms growing on the walls of the staircase, and these too seemed to be catching fire. They had to hurry.
Up they went, as fast as they could, and Noemí pinched Francis to get him to open his eyes and assist them. He managed to climb several steps with their aid before Noemí was forced to literally drag him up the last couple of steps, stumbling into a dusty chamber with crypts running from one side to the other. Noemí glimpsed silver plaques, rotting coffins, empty vases that might once have contained flowers, a few of the little glowing mushrooms upon the ground, providing the faintest illumination.
The door leading to the mausoleum was mercifully open, courtesy of Virgil. When they stepped out, the mist and the night were waiting to embrace them.
“The gate,” she told Catalina, “do you know the way to the gate?”
“It’s too dark, the mist,” her cousin said.
Yes, the mist that had frightened Noemí with its mysterious golden blur, that buzzing that had been Agnes. But Agnes was a pillar of fire beneath their feet now, and they must find their way out of this place.
“Francis, you need to guide us to the gate,” Noemí said. The young man turned his head and looked at Noemí with half-lidded eyes and managed to nod and point to the left. They went in that direction, him leaning on Noemí and Catalina, stumbling often. The gravestones rose like broken teeth from the earth, and he grunted, pointed another way. Noemí had no idea where they were headed. It could be they were walking in circles. And wouldn’t that be ironic? Circles.
The mist gave them no quarter until, at last, she saw the iron gates of the cemetery rising in front of them, the serpent eating its tail greeting the trio. Catalina pushed the door open and they were on the path that led back to the house.
“The house is burning,” Francis said as they stood by the gates, catching their breath.
Noemí realized this was the case. There was a distant glow, visible even through the mist. She couldn’t see High Place, but she could picture it. The ancient books in the library quickly catching fire, paper and leather burning fast, mahogany furniture and heavy curtains with tassels smoldering, glass cases filled with precious silver objects crackling, the nymph and her newel post shrouded in flames as bits of the ceiling fell at her feet. The fire, flowing up the staircase like a relentless river, making floorboards snap while the Doyles’ servants still stood on the steps, frozen.
Old paintings bubbling, faded photographs curling into nothingness, doorways arched with fire. Howard Doyle’s portraits of his wives were consumed by flames and his bed now a bed of fire, and his decayed and heaving body choked by smoke, while on the floor his physician lay immobile and the fire began to lick at the bedcovers,
began to eat Howard Doyle inch by inch, and the old man screamed, but there was no one who would assist him.
Invisible, beneath the paintings and the linens and plates and glass, she imagined masses of fine threads, delicate mycelium, also burning and snapping, fueling the conflagration.
The house blazed in the distance. Let it burn until it was all reduced to ashes.
“Let’s go,” Noemí muttered.
27
He was asleep, the covers pulled up to his chin. It was a small room with scarcely space for a chair and a dresser, and she occupied that chair, right by the bed. Atop the dresser sat a little figurine of San Judas Tadeo, and Noemí had found herself praying to it more than once, placing a cigarette before its feet as an offering. She was staring at the figurine, her lips moving slowly, when the door opened and Catalina walked in. She wore a cotton nightgown that belonged to one of Dr. Camarillo’s friends and a thick brown shawl.
“I came to see if you needed anything before I go to bed.”
“I’m fine.”
“You should go to bed too,” her cousin said, setting a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve hardly had any rest.”
Noemí patted her hand. “I don’t want him to wake up alone.”
“It’s been two days.”
“I know,” Noemí said. “I wish it were like in the fairy tales you read to us. It was very easy in them: all you had to do was kiss the princess.”
They both looked at Francis, his face as pale as the pillowcase on which his head rested. Dr. Camarillo had tended to all of them. He’d seen to their wounds, given them a chance to clean themselves and change their clothes, prepared rooms for them to stay, called for Marta to bring her tincture when Noemí quietly explained they needed it. After imbibing it, they had all experienced headaches and nausea, which quickly eased. Except for Francis. Francis had drifted into a deep slumber from which he couldn’t be roused.
“Tiring yourself won’t help him,” Catalina said.
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