“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 wereeatinghim.
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 wasalive.
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 brittle 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.
