“A communion. Our children are born infected with the fungus, and ingesting their flesh means ingesting the fungus; ingesting the fungus makes us stronger and in turn it binds us more closely to the gloom. Binds us to Howard.”
Francis winced suddenly and bent down. Noemí thought he was about to retch, but he stood like that, with his arms wrapped around his belly. Noemí dropped the knife on the table and walked down the dais, back to his side.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s painful,” he said. “She’s in pain.”
“Who?”
“She’s speaking.”
Noemí became aware of a sound. It had been there all along, but she had not paid attention to it. It was very low, almost inaudible, and it would have been easy to think she was imagining it. It was a hum and also very much unlike a hum. The buzzing noise she’d heard on other occasions, only the pitch this time seemed higher.
Don’t look.
Noemí turned around. The hum seemed to be coming from the dais, and she walked up to it. As she moved closer, the hum grew stronger.
It was behind the yellow drape. Noemí raised a hand.
“Don’t,” Catalina said. “You don’t want to see.”
Her fingers touched the drape, and the buzzing became the beating of a thousand frenetic insects against glass, the sound of a swarm caught inside her head, so strong she could almost feel it like a vibration cutting through the air, and she lifted her head.
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 outstretched hand, 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 her know.
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,