by Tim Curran
But he wouldn’t allow that.
He couldn’t allow that.
By sheer force of will he made himself stand erect, chuckling hopelessly deep in his throat when a stream of water warm as piss trickled from above and ran down his cheek. It was followed by a clod of clay that oozed down the bridge of his nose like a melting turd.
He pushed on through the water, refusing to think about the fact that Chipney—Jesus, Chip—was probably dead. No marriage. No future. No nothing save a bride left at the altar, crying her eyes out over the cold corpse of her fiancé.
You could have ordered him to stay above.
Yes, that was true, but he was a cop. A damn good cop and that would have been an insult to him, a professional slap in the face from a friend and a colleague and Kenney couldn’t do something like that.
Stop thinking and push on.
Yes, that was it.
He followed the tunnel around a bend, noticing that his flashlight beam was very weak, dimming to a struggling yellow ray that reflected off the swirling gaseous mist rising from the stagnant swamp around him. There was a shelf of rock jutting from the wall just ahead. He would change the batteries there.
That’s how tired he was.
So tired he hadn’t even noticed the light was going dead. His eyes must have really been beginning to adjust to the murk and that disturbed him.
He made it over to the shelf and it was perfect: a seatlike shelf of limestone. He crawled up onto it, dangled his legs over the edge, and swapped the dying batteries for the fresh ones in his tac vest. God, the light was so bright now it was blinding. He clicked it off, conserving power.
That done, he sat there, listening.
And listening.
He could hear the sound of water dripping, bits of the walls sloughing off, a steady sound of liquid draining into the soup like a leaking pipe. It was nice. It was nearly comforting. It made him very relaxed. Too relaxed, in fact, because his eyes began to drift shut. He didn’t bother fighting the exhaustion. He let himself sink into the darkness and raft away on dreams.
Better.
Much better.
He didn’t know how long he slept, but he woke to a tugging sensation at his left hand. It was pulling, itching, and generally nagging him. There was a rush of hot, moist, and noisome air blown into his face. The reek was nauseating. It reached yellow fingers down his throat and pulled his stomach up.
He knew what it was.
Even in the darkness, he could see vague shapes clustered around him. Their smell was revolting. He forced himself not to panic. If he did, he knew very well what they could do to him with their claws.
They were hissing.
Smacking their lips.
Ignoring the pain in his left hand, Kenney slowly, very slowly, reached his right hand towards the switch on the flashlight. As he did so, he felt them touching him with hands like soft, warm mittens.
He turned on the light.
The sudden explosion of brilliance made them cry out and cover their faces, which were like bloated mushrooms. They backed away and he pulled a flare from his tac vest, igniting it. The heat scared them. The light it threw was bright as a welding arc in the darkness. It sent them scurrying, making gobbling and squealing sounds. There had to be a least a dozen of them pulling away like roaches.
Some of them, he saw, were bent over and twisted from the weight of the pink fungus growing on them in slimy mounds. Others were eaten away from it, great chasms where their faces should have been. He saw one with sagging, furry breasts that must have been a woman. She was blown up to grotesque proportions, a shivering pink mass set with yellow spines and draping ribbons of crawling fungi in place of her hair. Her hands were like oven mitts.
Then they were gone.
Kenney sat there, gasping for breath, his throat dry with the spores they had been breathing on him.
He tried to rise from the shelf, but his aching left hand was stuck to the wall…but, no, he saw in the light of the flare and flashlight with a shudder of aversion, that wasn’t it at all. Not stuck but tied with strings. Except these strings were mucid and alive, growing right out of the wall like roots and into his hand.
Nearly hysterical at the sight of it, he yanked and pulled with everything he had but the tendrils held tight.
The more strength he put to it, the more it felt like his skin would peel off as if the strings had grown deep into the bones of his hand. Still, he yanked and jerked his hand and a great quantity of the creepers emerged from the wall that seemed to be infested with them.
He took the flare and put its burning end on them.
The tendrils tried to pull away from the heat, then crisped and withered and blackened, dropping out of his hand. The others began to push almost angrily from the wall, coiling and corkscrewing.
Kenney didn’t wait around to see what they were going to do. The flare in one hand and the riot gun in the other, he fled.
42
Godfrey was still conscious, not completely, but wavering in the gray netherworld between dream and reality. He was part of the mother organism, rooted into her now, yet his mind seemed to drift through her, knowing things and understanding things and somehow maintaining a sort of individuality. Being part of her was revelation. Her chemistry was utterly alien to what his was used to, so he scaled peaks of euphoria and dropped down into dark abysses. She made adjustments, weaning him slowly and making him part of something much larger than himself, filling him with herself and letting him experience the hallucinatory delight of herself.
The beauty of it was there was no hate or anger.
These were purely simian reactions to frustrations and disappointments and things that could not be controlled or anticipated. Negative emotions did not exist within the mother organism. They were impractical and incomprehensible things to her. So even though joining with her had been painful—that was Godfrey’s own fault because he resisted—it was now bliss.
He became a nova inside her, a raging cloud of supercharged dust that blew through the world, igniting things and being ignited, burning white-hot and traveling impossible distances through space and time. He breathed out searing mushroom clouds and screamed colors. The world was his and he devoured it bite by bite, laying waste to the works of man and destroying the scurrying masses with searing heat.
Then the world was empty.
There was nothing.
He seeded it with himself and watched the cooling clay remains of the human race blossoming into a new and better kind that grew over the rubble of the old and lifted caps like mushrooms to the stars above, bathing in the pure light of the twinkling jewels above.
And in the back of his head, one last reasonable shred of his brain knew one thing for sure: he was tripping his brains out.
43
Wetness.
Dripping.
Pain.
Numbness.
These were the things Chipney had been feeling for some time now as he swam in and out of consciousness. He wasn’t sure when he was dreaming and when he was awake. But now as he concentrated, focused, forced his brain to the surface of the mire of confusion, he remembered. The light. The fresh air. Then falling into that pool of rushing water that threw him against rocks and stone walls and then vomited him onto a muddy flat of dripping water.
He was not alone.
He knew, in that tomblike blackness, there was another. He could hear the low, rumbling breathing. A clotted, congested sound of tubercular lungs sucking moist, thick air.
He tried to move, but could not.
There was no feeling beneath his waist, just a frightful rubbery emptiness. Paralyzed. Yes, he knew then with a manic, building hysteria that he was helpless.
But he was not alone.
The other moved towards him, pressed its fungous, soft bulk against him and he went mad at its touch, its pressure, its nearness…for its flesh felt like, if anything, the flesh of a mushroom, bloated and warm. Pendulous breasts brushed against h
is face and he knew it was a female. He could feel larval things squirming in those heavy teats.
His hand fumbled at his tac vest and pulled out a flare.
He had to see.
He had to drive her away.
He had to keep that horror off him.
The flare ignited and the brilliance made his eyes burn, but he saw what hovered over him, that swollen face with its bubbling growth of pink fungus, the flies lighting off it, the bones jutting from the fungous hide. It was barely human, but it was very lonely. Its face lacked eyes and a nose, it was just a shriveling, puckered chasm like a blowhole that suckered open and closed.
This is what he saw in the light before she knocked the flare away with a huge, fleshy hand of clear, glistening tissue. The fingers were slats, purple and black veins like wires beneath the skin.
Then the light was gone.
He began to scream as she tended to him, licking him with a rough and narrow tongue, cleansing his wounds with her own secretions, picking parasites from his hair. She cooed at him with a weird, shrilling sound that set him to trembling.
He thought she was going to kill him, devour him.
But as her hair fell over him like rotting kelp and that oozing, puckered mouth found his own, he knew she wasn’t going to hurt him.
And he was certain of it when she shoved something between his lips that she had plucked off her own body. He tried to spit out. But she wouldn’t have it. She wanted him to eat. He didn’t know what it was, but its texture was soft and repellent…then his tongue became aware of its delicate, almost nutty flavor and he found himself biting into it. The juice that filled his mouth was sweet, fermented, and almost effervescent…and he squirmed as it filled his body with chemical fireworks.
She made a grunting, slobbering sound.
But he understood. “Yes,” he said, everything inside him beginning to take flight. “It’s…it’s very good.”
44
Kenney stumbled into an immense grotto that was like a great tube made of fungus. The water was patched with iridescent mold that shimmered brightly in hues of purple and indigo. It was a living tunnel of pink fungus, orange and yellow mounded growths, and bright red posts that grew up out of the water like deep sea smoker vents.
They were everywhere.
And they were moving.
The fungus draped from the ceiling and grew in sheer nets and fine filaments that flashed colors like fiber-optic displays. Ropes and cables of it connected everything together in an intricate spiderweb mesh. He moved past things like immense nodding mushrooms whose caps were shiny and ruby-red above and bubblegum pink below. His flashlight beam was filled with multicolored spores that he breathed in and attached themselves to him, making him feel queasy and weak, then exhilarated and dreamy.
This is it, he told himself. You have reached the epicenter. This is the womb of creation, the birth chamber; ground zero of this immense fungus-thing that has been gestating beneath the ground for centuries.
As he passed through rising yellow grasses that were like spines, soft as pillow down, it all made no sense to him.
Why was this allowed?
Why wasn’t he barred from this place?
Why wasn’t he attacked or at least pushed back from this fragile wonderland ecosystem of birth? Why was he allowed to wander blindly here?
Because the thing wants you here. It wants you to see and feel its true nature.
That made no sense, yet it made all the sense in the world.
The growths he saw everywhere with such wild, rich, yet ordered profusion were all dripping with nectar that became a mist in the air that he breathed in and made him feel giddy. He could feel it on his face and in his hair, in his mouth and down his throat. Its taste was much like wine—sweet, fizzing, sour, its bouquet a rapture to the taste buds.
You’re stoned. You’re fucking stoned.
And that, he figured, was the key to it all, the very basis. No wonder those people of Clavitt Fields could not give up their wicked ways and blasphemies (as their contemporaries viewed it). They were addicted to the psychotropic secretions of the fungus. They were wasted on the shit. Even though contact with the subterranean fungi physically mutated them, making them more like funguses and slime molds than human beings, they still could not live without the tripping, hallucinogenic ecstasies of it.
It was addiction.
It was nothing more than fucking addiction.
There was no witch cult in Clavitt Fields, just a bunch of deluded proto-hippy ‘shroom heads tripping their fucking minds out. Turn on, tune in, drop out, man. Dig it, baby!
He giggled as he imagined those staid, buttoned-up puritan types tripping their fucking brains out. God, what a revelation it must have been! What a freedom from the chains and bondage of their religion and repressive lives it must have offered! The fungus must have come down in that piece of star (as Elena Blasden called it) and then began to grow in the hollows beneath Clavitt Fields and what was now Bellac Road. It must have made contact with the townspeople and its chemical attraction could not be denied. For once tasted, it would have to be tasted again even if it meant you would become a crawling mutant horror.
Yes, that’s exactly how it was.
The fungus had called him here because it wanted to teach him the true history of this region.
Kenney didn’t really want it…but, then again, he really had no choice in the matter. The consciousness of the mother organism was a colossal thing that crushed him. He became a receiver.
He saw Clavitt Fields as it was in the 17th century.
He saw Preacher Clavitt show up. He was some kind of fanatical zealot who practiced an extreme form of the puritan faith. It was he and his congregation that originally began building the town, but as blood calls to blood, soon enough dozens of families traveled west to join them. By the time of the War of Independence there were several hundred people in the village. But even then it was a bad place. Stories made the rounds of things heard calling from the dark woods, strange sounds echoing up from the well Elena Blasden had mentioned. Clavitt’s people were a fearful lot who did not dare venture out after dark and looked to the Bible for strength against the unknown. Clavitt himself called the area a “blighted, pestilential run of haunted forest and dark, brooding hollows that must be purified by the hand of the lord.”
Then Corben arrived.
He went by no other name and was considered a sage of sorts, though local gossip had it he was a warlock that escaped persecution in Europe. He took control of the village from the old, infirm Clavitt. He was a learned man, well-versed in herb lore and folk remedy. Straight away, he began curing the sick and making fertile the fields. He fashioned talismans and amulets, good-luck charms and love philters for the heartbroken. And slowly, inexorably, he began to wean the townsfolk away from Christianity and into some older, pagan religion. A religion where ancient deities were worshipped in shadowy glens, where animal sacrifice was offered to ensure the harvest, where maidens adorned in flower petals were given bodily in orgiastic rites.
Those were the tales that the locals fervently believed.
The truth was that Corben was something of a 17th century-Timothy Leary, a hallucinogen guru that had studied widely in the Orient. His cures and potions often contained trace amounts of psilocybin, which created feelings of euphoria, good fortune, and geniality among their users…and sometimes, unreasoning terror.
Somewhere during this period, the acid guru made contact with the mother organism and began to actively cultivate her spores, which created mild to extreme hallucinogenic effects. It wasn’t long before the entire town was involved and slave to her…and happily so.
Clavitt Fields became increasingly isolated. There was a great deal of speculation by outsiders concerning interbreeding and resultant insanity, physical and mental aberrations. Soon enough, none of the local villagers would go anywhere near Clavitt Fields. They spoke of witchcraft and Satanism, the black mass and human sacrifice. Even
the unspeakable acts of cannibalism and necrophilia were mentioned, that some dark cult worshiped hideous gods in moon-washed groves and gave their firstborn to slake the appetites of these creatures. Outsiders were frightened and many had seen the evidence of witching: failed crops, diseased livestock, and unnatural births among their own numbers. But these things were the result of contact with the mother organism and nothing else. All of the above was nothing but superstitious fantasy and old wives’ tales.
The inhabitants of Clavitt Fields were more than happy to stay on their own lands. They disassociated themselves from the outside world because they had all, in their own way, achieved a higher state of consciousness via the fungus.
But that was hardly acceptable to the town fathers of Trowden, who saw iniquity breeding on their doorstep. Three trusted and honorable men were given the task of making a pilgrimage to the shunned and evil hamlet of Clavitt Fields. No townsmen of Trowden had visited those redoubtable environs in some time. It was a sinister, witch-haunted borough, after all.
The three men were Dr. Blair, Mr. Bowden, and Mr. Peel.
Their mission was not of a military order, though they carried muskets and Bowden sported a brace of pistols and an old naval cutlass sharpened to lethal perfection. Their mission was simply recognizance. Regardless, they expected trouble of the most “vile awfulness” as Peel put it. The most foul sort of tales were told of that accursed village, of course, things concerning obscene rites held upon May-Eve and Candlemas, and their judgment was more than a little clouded.
It was near to twilight when they picketed their horses in a thicket a few leagues from the village—this was Bowden’s idea being a former cavalry officer. And it made good sense to the others, the rationale being that in the case of quick retreat their mares would stand ready.
Although evidently an agricultural community of sorts, they saw that the fields of Clavitt were mostly uncultivated and overgrown with briars, wild grasses, uprisings of creepers and an unwholesome umbrage that seemed to quiver though there was no discernable breeze. It was said that here were to be found splendid fields of buckwheat, rye, and Indian corn, but they saw only bramble thickets and alder bushes, and no livestock—nary a pig or guinea fowl or plow horse.