The Doyle look. All the people in those portraits. “How far back?” Noemí asked. “How old is he? How many generations?”
“I don’t know. Three hundred years, maybe more.”
“Three hundred years. Marrying his own kin, having children with them, then transferring his mind into one of their bodies. Over and over again. And all of you? You allow this?”
“We have no choice. He’s a god.”
“You have a damn choice! And that sick fuck is not a god!”
Francis stared at her. He had taken his hands out of his pockets and was now clutching them together. He looked tired. Slowly he slid a hand up and touched his forehead; he shook his head.
“He is to us,” he said. “And he wants you to be part of our family.”
“Then that’s why he poured that black sludge down my throat.”
“They were afraid you were going to leave. They couldn’t let you do that. Now you won’t be able to go anywhere.”
“I don’t want to be part of your god damn family, Francis,” she said. “And believe me, I’m going to go back home and I’m going to—”
“It won’t let you go. My father, I don’t think I told you about him, did I?”
She had been looking at the black marks on the wall, the mold in the corner of her room, but she slowly turned her head to look at him. He had taken out a little portrait from his pocket. This is what he clutched in his hand, she thought. The little picture nestling in his jacket’s pocket.
“Richard,” Francis whispered, allowing her to look at the black-and-white photograph of a man. “His name was Richard.”
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. Nonormalman 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.”
