“It leads to the family crypt,” Francis said. “Then it’s a question of walking down the mountain to the town.”
“I don’t want to go there,” Catalina whispered. She had not spoken until now, and the sound startled Noemí. Catalina pointed at the door. “The dead sleep there. I don’t want to go. Listen.”
Noemí heard it then, a deep, deep groan. It seemed to make the ceiling above them shiver, and the light bulb flickered, the cord moving a little. A chill went down Noemí’s spine.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Francis looked up and inhaled. “Howard, he’s alive.”
“We shot him,” Noemí said. “He’s dead—”
“No.” Francis shook his head. “He’s weakened and in pain and he’s angry. He’s not dead. The whole house is in pain.”
“I’m scared,” Catalina said, her voice small.
Noemí turned to her cousin and hugged her tight. “We’ll soon be out of here, you hear me?”
“I guess so,” Catalina muttered.
Noemí bent down to pick up the oil lamp. Lighting it proved a problem with her injured hand, but she offered Francis her lighter and he helped her.
He carefully put the glass chimney back on the oil lamp, glancing at her hand, which she had pressed against her chest. “Want me to hold it?” he asked.
“I can do it,” she told him, because she’d broken two fingers on her left hand, not both her arms, and also because it made her feel safer to carry the lamp.
With the lamp lit, she turned toward her cousin. Catalina nodded and Noemí smiled. Francis turned the doorknob. A long tunnel stretched out ahead of them. She had expected it to be very rudimentary, the sort of thing the miners might have roughly carved.
It was not the case.
The walls had been decorated with yellow tiles, and upon those tiles were painted flower patterns and green, curling vines. On the walls there were graceful silver sconces shaped like snakes. Their open jaws would have held wax candles if they had not been tarnished and covered with dust.
On the ground and on the walls she noticed a few tiny yellowish mushrooms popping up between stone cracks. It was cold and damp, and no doubt the mushrooms found the conditions underground deeply inviting, for as they advanced they seemed to multiply, clustering together in small clumps.
Noemí began to notice something else as their numbers grew: they seemed to have a glow to them, a vague luminescence.
“I’m not imagining it, am I?” she asked Francis. “They light up.”
“Yes. They do.”
“It’s so odd.”
“It’s not that unusual. Honey mushrooms and bitter oyster mushrooms both glow. People call it foxfire. But that glow is green.”
“These are the mushrooms he found in the cave,” Noemí said, looking up at the ceiling. It was like looking at dozens of tiny stars. “Immortality. In this.”
Francis raised a hand, grasping one of the silver sconces as if to support himself, and looked down at the ground. He ran trembling fingers through his hair and let out a low sigh.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’s the house. It’s upset and aching. It affects me too.”
“Can you go on?”
“I think so,” he said. “I’m not sure. If I faint—”
“We can stop for a minute,” she offered.
“No, it’s fine,” he said.
