by Darcy Coates
Her time at home was a daze. Her mother screamed at her so violently that spittle flew from the woman’s mouth. That didn’t matter, though. The food passed through her bedroom door didn’t matter, the hot bath didn’t matter, and the starry night didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered until Mary tried to open her door the following morning and found it locked. Then she screamed, shed hot tears, and beat her fists against the door. The doctor arrived. His diagnosis was hysteria to be treated with seclusion and a pungent herbal blend. Mary hated the medicine; it was so astringent, so acrimonious compared to her mushrooms. She swallowed it so that the doctor would leave her alone, then waited until her family went to bed before cracking open her window.
The cold outside air burnt her throat as she ran towards the woods. She was barefoot, but the littered forest floor didn’t hurt her. She wore only her nightdress, but the air didn’t make her shiver. She followed the route to the fungi as surely as though the map had been branded into her mind. As she stepped into the clearing, she discovered the farmgirl had brought more friends. Five of them knelt in the hollow, but didn’t stir as Mary took her place amongst them.
Emma lay among the mushrooms. She looked so peaceful that she might have been dead, except for her infrequent, halting breaths.
The fungi had grown across her, sprouting from her skin in little pretty patches. Their grey-and-yellow stalks, so much like fingers, quivered every time Emma breathed. It was a sight that might have once filled Mary with revulsion, but at that moment, seemed natural and comforting. It was a good thing to have happened; Emma might die, but the fungi would live, growing from her collapsing body and spreading their sweet scent through the forest.
Mary no longer felt any of the niggling reluctance that had plagued her over the previous days. Her mind was pleasantly empty as she bent forward, snapped one of the growths off Emma’s cheek, and lapped at the honey-like syrup that dribbled from its stalk.
47
Quarantine
The shuttle door opened with a quiet hiss. Ava pushed inside and floated in the zero gravity while she waited for Takil to follow her. He’d been unusually slow that afternoon, and she found herself crossing her arms as her partner drifted through the hatch.
“Anytime this century,” she said, as he pressed the button to close the door.
She couldn’t see his face under the helmet, but she could imagine the scowl he shot her. “Hey, shut up. It’s not like we’re on a deadline or anything.”
Ava sighed and began typing commands into the control panel. “Yeah, sorry. You’ve just been… I dunno, like you’ve run out of juice. We’ve been working together for—what? Four years? And I can’t ever remember having you follow me before.”
The gravity normalised as the centrifuge kicked in, and Ava let her boots drift to the floor. She pressed a second button to check the air levels were safe, then she unlocked her helmet. As she unzipped from her suit, she glanced back at Takil and felt a stab of shock. Her partner was pale and sweaty. He’d looked fine when they’d suited up, but something had obviously affected him during the four-hour flight. “Hey, is something wrong? You’re not looking so hot.”
Takil shot her a tight smile. “I don’t feel great, to be honest. My wife was coming down with something this morning. I might have caught it off her. Don’t worry about me, though. We’ll be back to base in a couple hours, and I’ll take the rest of the day off work if I’m not better by then.”
“You sure? I can finish up here while you wait in the ship.”
Takil punched her arm as he passed her, and opened the door to the small biotech room that held the life support systems. “What did I say? I’m fine. We’ll get through this faster if we both do it, anyway.”
Ava sighed and hung her suit beside Takil’s before moving to the shuttle’s main control board to check for irregularities. It was a routine maintenance trip to an infrequently used midpoint shuttle, and if they were lucky, they could solve any issues within an hour and be back to their host planet early in the afternoon.
Her communication pad buzzed, and Ava unhooked it from her belt. Central’s logo flashed on the screen, with her commander’s insignia below it. She pressed the button to answer. “What’s up, boss?”
Mal, her dark-grey hair slicked back above her deep eyes, appeared on the screen. Ava wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or not, but her boss seemed a little more frazzled than normal.
“Oh, good, you’re there already. Everything going according to plan?”
Ava glanced behind herself, where the room was quiet and still. “Yeah, no problems so far. The system says there are only three non-critical bugs this time. Should be an easy job.”
“Good, good.” Mal glanced to the side, as though she were listening to someone beyond the screen’s view. Ava tried to be patient. A call from her superior during a routine job was unusual, unless there was an emergency.
“Uh…” Mal glanced back at Ava and pushed a determined smile onto her face. “Just wanted to check that you and Takil are doing okay.”
Isn’t that what she just asked? “Yeah, things are fine. Should be out of here soon.”
“Good, good, and neither of you have any sort of… symptoms?”
Ava hesitated and glanced at the biotech room, where she could see the bases of Takil’s boots as he worked on the cabling under the water reclaimer. “Well, actually, Takil’s come down with something. He said he’d probably caught it from his wife before he left.”
“Ah.” Mal turned to the side and spoke in to the person Ava couldn’t see. Her voice was too quiet for Ava to hear most of what she said, but Ava managed to catch, “Was she one of them?”
Mal’s face darkened. She turned back to Ava, her smile evaporated, and took a deep breath before speaking. “Captain Janes, there’s a potentially dangerous disease passing through the stations. We have the situation under control at our base, but I suspect Captain Shamel may have contracted it before his deployment this morning.”
Ava frowned at her boss, confused by the suddenly formal dialogue. She’d always gotten on well with Mal, to the point of being at first-name basis and joining her for drinks on evenings when they had to work late. She wasn’t sure what to make of the suddenly official tone. “So… should we come back straight away?”
Mal paused for a moment before answering, and Ava hated seeing the creases building around her mouth. “No. Your orders are to remain where you are. Move Captain Shamel into quarantine immediately and avoid any contact with him. I’ll send a medic crew to retrieve you as soon as possible.”
“As soon as possible…” Ava glanced at Takil’s boots, barely visible through the doorway. “How soon’s that going to be? Within the next hour?”
“As soon as possible,” Mal repeated then glanced aside. This time her companion’s voice was loud enough for Ava to hear the urgent tones, but not the words. “Ava, I have to go now. Get Takil into quarantine, and stay safe.”
“Stay safe?” Ava echoed, but Mal had already ended the communication. Frustrated, Ava clipped the box back onto her belt and scowled at the shuttle. “And where exactly am I supposed to quarantine someone on this heap of junk? Hey, Takil!”
Her companion didn’t answer. Ava approached the biotech room as anxiety began to flutter in her chest. Takil was kneeling on the ground, apparently lost in thought as he stared at the cables. Ava had to rap her knuckles on the door twice before he rocked back onto his heels and looked at her.
“Jeeze,” Ava said, lost for words.
Takil had looked bad before, but he’d degenerated to ghastly in the few short minutes they’d been separated. His hair was plastered to his face, which dripped sweat. His skin, normally a healthy bronze, had turned grey, and his lips were tinged blue. His unfocussed eyes roved the room before settling on Ava.
“Huh?” he said, and a trickle of saliva ran from the corner of his mouth to mix with his sweat.
Ava swore and covered her mouth and nose with
her sleeve so she wouldn’t inhale any pathogens. Is it a virus, though? I’ve never seen any sort of disease move this quickly.
Takil keeled forward, and his hands flopped against his stomach as though to knock away an unpleasant sensation. Ava stared, transfixed, as her partner lurched back and his stomach swelled under his uniform. Fear fought through the confusion, and Ava remembered that she was supposed to quarantine her partner. She reached for the door to wrench it closed, but a second before she could, Takil’s suit and stomach split open, spilling a series of long grey worm-like creatures onto the floor.
A scream rose in Ava’s throat, but she choked it off before it could leave her mouth. Her partner rocked backwards, his body collapsing against the network of cables, as the parasites that had grown inside him pooled forward, stretching towards Ava.
She slammed the door against them and stumbled backwards, shock turning her limbs to putty. The parasites made wet, sticking noises as they pressed against the door. Ava skittered backwards as far as the cramped room would allow her then dropped to the ground and pulled her knees up under her chin. She fumbled the communication unit off her belt and pressed the emergency button, then she stared at the screen as the little connection circle cycled around and around. Their phones can’t be that busy, surely? Unless this thing is spreading…
She could hear the creatures moving. Their slimy grey bodies slid across the floor and walls as they searched for a gap to escape through. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if—rather, when—they found a way out.
Please, Mal, send the rescue team quickly.
48
The Cleaners
“Jeeze, wow.” Jerry opened the car door to get a better look at the three-story mansion towering above him. The day had been hot and sunny when they’d left the town forty minutes before, but thick clouds had blotted out most of the natural light and left him feeling chilled. “You’ve been coming here every day for the last week?” he asked, incredulous, as his cousin killed the car’s ignition and undid his seatbelt.
Ash gave him a toothy smile. “And been paid three times what I was making at my old job.”
“How exactly did you get this gig again?”
Ash slid out of his seat and rounded the car to retrieve his supplies. “Craigslist. Put myself up as a professional cleaning company. No one checks your references, and it’s simple enough to fake certificates and letters of recommendation. It’s an easy job, anyway.”
“Easy,” Jerry repeated, staring at the building. “I’d call this the opposite of easy.”
Ash, holding a mop and bucket in one hand and with spare cloths slung over his shoulder, gave Jerry’s back a slap as he passed him. “It’s not that bad on the inside. Just help me out for a day or two until I’m back on schedule, ‘kay? Grab the spare boxes so we can haul some of the junk out.”
Jerry rubbed at the back of his neck then sighed and retrieved the empty boxes before following his cousin up the weed-choked gravel driveway. It had sounded like an easy job when Ash had called him the night before. I’m cleaning a friend’s home, but I’m a bit behind schedule. Wanna help out for the day? I’ll pay you fifty bucks.
Of course, he hadn’t learnt until that morning that it was actually a paid job. And it wasn’t a simple de-clutter-and-dust task, either. The elderly woman who had lived in the house has passed away a fortnight before, and her family wanted the building thoroughly cleaned before they put it up for sale.
Jerry swore under his breath and ran up the porch steps to where Ash had propped the door open with a rock. The foyer looked reasonably clean; furniture had been shoved into a corner, waiting either to be sold or carted away in a dump truck. An archway to the right led into an old-fashioned sitting room. Jerry’s mouth dropped open as he turned in a slow circle, amazed by the opulence surrounding him. The gold-leafed sconces lining the walls matched the chandelier hanging high above his head, and the chandelier, in turn, matched the grungy marble tiles below his feet.
“This is incredible.”
“It’s sure something, huh? The guy who hired me said it was built in the eighteen hundreds, when the woman who lived here was a young child.”
“What? Seriously? But wouldn’t that make her, like, over a hundred?”
“That’s what he said. I’ve got to finish in the kitchen—I didn’t get through it last night—but it’s a bit small for two of us. Why don’t you head upstairs and pick a room? Just clear out any drawers, carry as much of the furniture downstairs as you can, and vacuum the floors.”
“Clear out… what do I do with it?”
Ash shrugged as he backed towards the sitting room, dragging the mop in his wake. “If it looks super, super important, put it to one side. Otherwise, toss it all in the box to throw out. I already asked the owner, and he doesn’t want any memorabilia kept.”
“Right.”
Ash disappeared from view, and Jerry was left facing the curved stairway leading to the second floor. He cleared his throat, picked up one of the empty boxes, and began climbing. The steps groaned under his weight, and Jerry couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since they’d been used regularly. If the owner was over a hundred, she must have lived in the downstairs rooms, surely?
The dark, musty hallway stretched ahead of him, coated in red wallpaper that had faded with age. Jerry tried the first room, but Ash had already cleared it. The second opened into a bathroom, which he skipped, but the third brought him to a cluttered bedroom.
“‘Kay, you got this,” Jerry said, clutching the box tightly. The room looked long disused. A huge wardrobe sat recessed into one wall, opposite a bureau, a small desk, and an empty shelf. Though the room had clearly been meant as a bedroom, it had no bed.
Jerry dropped his box beside the bureau and pulled open the first drawer, expecting linen. To his surprise, it was filled with piles of hand-written notes on aging yellowed paper. He leafed through a few pages, but the old-fashioned scrawl was indecipherable, so he dropped the papers into his box and went back for another handful.
A picture slipped out and fluttered to the floor, and Jerry bent to pick it up. It showed four women, all dressed in heavy Victorian garb and with their hair pulled back into tight buns, sitting in a semi-circle. The picture was small and grainy, but the women all seemed to wear an identical inscrutable expression as they gazed at the camera.
He squinted at a shape in the background then lowered the picture to look at the wardrobe set into the back of the room. They were one and the same. The way the women were arranged around the wardrobe seemed to suggest it had some sort of significance. “Weird,” Jerry muttered. He dropped the image into the box, where it landed on an ink-stained butcher’s receipt.
Jerry moved quickly through the first drawer, dumping its contents into the box after a quick scan for obviously valuable paperwork. Halfway down, he came across a gold-embossed certificate. Awarded to Miss Myrtle Vouchalis for exceptional contributions to the field of cryptozoology.
Cryptozoology?
Jerry had heard the word before, though he couldn’t remember what it meant. The certificate looked expensive and important, but if it had been left forgotten in a room that was never used, he couldn’t imagine anyone still living wanted it.
Into the box you go.
With the top drawer emptied, he bent his head to check that he hadn’t missed anything. Snagged between the base and the back of the drawer was a second photograph. Jerry reached into the bureau and plucked it out. What he saw set his heart thundering and sweat developing across his back.
The four women still sat posed around the wardrobe. This time, however, its doors were open. And inside was something Jerry couldn’t even begin to explain. It was huge—taller than a human—and had multiple limbs extending from its elongated torso. Its head reminded him of an ibis’s, except it seemed more like a skull than living tissue. Hollows filled the space where the eyes should have been, and the long thin beak stretched down in front of its bod
y. The limbs were all scrawny and multi-jointed, like a spider’s, and though it was hard to discern in the picture, the skin seemed leathery. Its arms had been spread out and fixed to the back of the wardrobe as though the furniture were an impromptu display case.
Jerry turned slowly to look at the dark doors set into the wall. He dropped the photograph and took two steps towards the stained wood. “Ash?” he called, hoping his voice would carry through the old house.
“Yeah?” he cousin bellowed from the kitchen below.
Jerry fastened his sweating palms on the door’s handles. “What’s cryptozoology?”
“I know that… isn’t it, like, uh…”
Jerry pulled on the handles and tugged the doors wide open.
“It’s the study of mythical animals, isn’t it?”
Jerry didn’t reply. He was captivated—and shocked—and amazed—and appalled—by the sight in front of him. The creature, standing nearly a foot taller than he did, remained in the wardrobe, its limbs still nailed to the wooden sides. Its empty eye sockets stared out of the bird-like head, and its leathery skin sagged about its ancient frame.
Jerry met the skull’s empty gaze, and he could have sworn he heard a quiet rattle as the beast exhaled.
49
Experimental
Arlo stretched then lounged back in his chair. He had his phone propped up against the back of the desk, playing that night’s footy match, and his ice pack had done a decent job of keeping the beer cold.
His shift at the Argent Research and Development Labs wouldn’t finish for another hour, but it was the quietest part of his day; most of the labs had already been vacated, leaving just the deadline chasers and obsessives to burn the midnight oil.