by Ike Hamill
She saw herself back in Colorado, on that first experiment. From over her own shoulder, she saw herself bend down to push the sensors into the ground. There was something in the dirt, waiting for an opportunity. When Nelson triggered his experiment, the organism released its colonists into the air. Marie could somehow see the microscopic spores infiltrating her body when she inhaled.
She jumped up from the chair, breaking the vision.
“It’s inside me?”
“We are everywhere,” Nelson said. “With the heat from this fire, we will activate the portion of ourselves that are inside you. With the cold outside, we will activate the portion that is carried by Tyler. Together, we will become whole again. Then we can use the tools of the mammals to move on.”
“To where?”
“Everywhere.”
Marie shook her head. She paced between the chair and the couch. It was infuriating trying to make sense of the things coming out of Nelson’s mouth. It was as if he expected they shared a basic understanding of the world, but Marie didn’t have any idea what he was referring to.
“What tools?”
“Orion,” Nelson said. “Or something like it.”
To her, Orion only conjured a picture of a cluster of stars. It seemed that he was naming a destination rather than a tool.
Nelson smiled. “That’s not a part you have to be concerned with. We know how to do it.”
Every time he plucked a thought out of her head, Marie wanted to scream.
That gave her an idea.
* * * * * * *
(Rebellion)
“You’re not all gone, are you?” Marie asked Nelson. They stood a few paces apart.
His face changed. This wasn’t the blank look or the smug look. He wore a new perplexed expression. It almost seemed like she could feel the tendrils of his confusion poking at her brain. He was trying to probe her to figure out what she meant.
“I still have my own thoughts and my own desires. I’m still mostly mammal. I can feel the other consciousness inside me, but I’m still able to keep it at bay. You’re almost all the other thing, and Tyler is completely gone,” she said, but she wasn’t even sure that was true. Maybe there was still something of the real Tyler inside the body that waited in the cold on the front porch.
“You’ve simply forgotten yourself,” Nelson said. “You’re waking up.”
He bent, opened the stove, and managed to squeeze another log in there. The implication was clear—the thing inside Nelson expected that the heat would accelerate the process of purging the real Marie and letting the invader take over.
“But Nelson is inside you, even if you’re overpowering him at the moment. I see it in your eyes sometimes. I can see him in there. And I suspect that he knows more about you than anyone else in the world. How much is he fighting you right now?”
Marie covered her mouth with her hand in horror at what happened in response. Nelson smiled at her and shook his head, but his eyes crossed as he answered. Actually, to be more accurate, only one of his eyes moved. One eye darted around, like it was panicked and trying to escape, while his other eye stayed fixed on her.
“We’re in complete control. You must understand that.”
She understood the opposite. Nelson was in there, and he was able to show it. If the same were true of Tyler…
“Why is Tyler so strong?” she asked. “I suppose it’s in the realm of understanding that you have infected his brain, but why is he strong?”
“We have more efficient control of these bodies,” Nelson said. “That’s all. Mammalian brains have safeguards to protect the body. Muscles contracted too quickly might break bones or tear tendons. We’re simply utilizing more of its power.”
Marie believed what he was saying, but she wasn’t convinced that he was giving her the entire truth. Oliver, fascinated by fungus in all aspects of his life, had taken a supplement made from the Cordyceps fungus. He claimed that it boosted both his strength and endurance. Marie wondered if maybe the invading spores had imparted more than their own consciousness to Tyler. If that were true, wouldn’t it also be true for herself? Her vision of Tyler coming in and breaking her arms and legs didn’t necessarily have to happen that way. If she were just as strong as him, she could fight back. The same transformation that his muscles had undergone might be available to her as well.
“Nelson, you’re in there, right? I think you are, and if I can control my own body, I’m hoping that you can still control yours to some extent.”
She let her eyes drift back to the hatchet hanging on the wall.
Nelson’s eyes were pointed in different directions. He didn’t appear to be completely focused on her anymore.
“Fuck politeness,” she whispered. Marie ran for the hatchet. Nelson didn’t move from his position near the wood stove, but she thought that she heard something bump out on the porch. She grabbed the hatchet and spun, ready for anything. Nelson was still standing by the stove. The door to the porch remained closed.
She stepped forward, trying to summon the will to swing the weapon on the animal that still looked exactly like Nelson. It would have been easier earlier, when she felt backed into a corner. Now, it appeared like Nelson was waging an internal battle with himself, and Tyler hadn’t burst in, like in her vision. And he wouldn’t, she was pretty sure of that. Tyler wouldn’t come in until it was absolutely necessary. He wouldn’t compromise his own body by exposing it to the heat, or let any of the cold in to slow her progress. He would wait outside and only come in if it were absolutely necessary. Marie wondered how much she could get away with before he would act.
“Nelson, if you’re in there, you have to help me. There has to be a way to stop this process. I don’t know exactly what it will mean for people, but if there’s a way to stop this fungus from spreading to more people, we have to do it.”
His body was still except for his eyes. His eyes were still moving independently, roving around the room. One of them came to rest on Marie as she moved even closer. The eye looked sad somehow, like Nelson wanted to help her but he didn’t have a way to do it.
“If you can’t help me, then at least keep him occupied,” she said.
She took his stasis as agreement. Nelson didn’t move to stop her as she opened up the dampers on the wood stove. On their first day, before she had shown Tyler and Nelson how to operate the wood stove, they had proven that the cabin would stay pretty cool with the dampers open. The fire would suck in enough fresh air through all the cracks and crevices to lower the temperature. As she supplied more air, the fire roared inside the box. Soon enough, a chilly draft began to move through the cabin. It felt almost cold against Marie’s bare skin.
Tyler hadn’t yet burst through the door in response.
Marie held the hatchet between herself and Nelson as she slid past him to get to the stairs. When she was sure that he wasn’t going to reach to grab her, she turned and ran up the stairs, practically diving into her bedroom and then slamming the door.
She panted as she pressed her back to it.
For the longest time, Marie could barely breathe. She expected that any moment she would feel one of them trying to break down the door. She expected that the thing inside Nelson would take control again and crank the fire back up to its full potential. Minute after minute passed without any of that happening.
A terrible thought came to her. “If they’re not trying to stop me, then this must all be going according to plan. Either that explanation was true, or somehow the real Nelson and Tyler had battled their way back to control. That idea was both absurd and nonproductive. If, somehow, she had inexplicably won the battle, then she didn’t need to do a thing. However, if the fight still continued, then she had to act as soon as possible. The best course of action was to do anything instead of waiting up in her bedroom for her own mind to be possessed.
Marie opened the door slowly. Heat baked against her face. She crept to the top of the stairs and looked down.
Nelson w
as gone.
* * * * * * *
(Assistance)
Marie crept down the stairs, expecting to be jumped at any second. The first floor of the cabin appeared to be empty. The wood stove was back up to temperature, cranking away. It appeared that Nelson had lost the battle to the thing inhabiting him. Marie made the stove her first stop. This time, she cut off the oxygen entirely, hoping to starve the fire out. She raised her hatchet and moved towards the door.
Movement flashed by one of the windows that faced the porch.
The door opened.
Tyler stood in the doorway. His face and arms were blue except for patches of gray. The worst part was his eye. Where Marie had stabbed out his eyeball, a thin film of fur had grown. He was sprouting fungus from the wound like food left in the refrigerator for too long.
“This has to stop,” he said. “You have to stop fighting.”
Marie raised the hatchet, ready to strike if he stepped any closer.
He did.
She trusted her own muscles to match his. Whatever was germinating inside him, she was convinced that she had the same thing inside her. Her strength surged as the hatchet came down. She felt an unnatural power pulse through her body.
Tyler’s hand flew upwards and intercepted the hatchet. She felt the metal sink deep into the meat of his hand as it jerked to a stop. With a quick motion—almost too fast to see—he jerked the hatchet backwards and it launched out of her grip. She watched it sail away and crash into the wall.
“This has to stop,” he said. His hand wasn’t bleeding as it clamped around her throat. For a moment, Marie thought that he was going to choke the air out of her. He was going to squeeze her windpipe shut, crushing her ability to breathe. But he wouldn’t do that. The thing taking root in her needed the oxygen, and her lungs were the best way to provide it. But he would cut off the blood to her brain. Marie’s dwindling humanity was the only thing that still needed her brain.
Marie clawed at his arm as his finger cut off her blood supply. In a few seconds, her vision began to fade to nothing but blackness.
* * * * * * *
(Morning)
She woke on the floor. Her eyes focused on the dust beneath the couch. For a moment, she imagined that it was a forest of delicate fungus. The spores had gotten everywhere and they were taking root on every surface. When she blinked, the illusion melted away. It was warm, but not hot. Just as the temperature crossed her mind, she heard the squeak of the door on the stove.
Nelson was stocking it full of wood again.
“We’re not accustomed to cultivating fire,” he said. “I confess that it’s a gap in our knowledge. We picked through the memories available to us, but we’re still learning.”
He glanced over at her. His eyes were dead again. Nelson wasn’t controlling them anymore.
“Nelson, listen,” she said. She pushed her way up from the floor and her head spun. Bracing her arms, she managed to stay upright until the spinning stopped. Marie was having trouble making her mouth work again. It was hard to open it and actually make words come out. Each syllable was a battle.
“I know you’re in there,” she said to Nelson, “because I’m still in here. I’m fighting. You can fight too.”
His dead eyes stared at her. The wood stove was starting to pump out heat again with the new crackling logs. Marie could almost sense the alien consciousness inside her beginning to wake. She didn’t have forever to make her case.
“Please, Nelson, remember Oliver?”
One of his eyes winked at her and twitched.
“You held up well all this time, but I know his passing meant something to you. When he died, you understood the nature of your work. Unless you make a major breakthrough and get the attention of the masses, your work will be forgotten. It will be buried under the sand of a million other inferior theories. But now, at this moment, you have the opportunity to do something that truly has meaning for the human race. Whatever it takes, we have to put a stop to the spread of this thing. I don’t know precisely what it intends to do, but it doesn’t regard us as worthy of concern. However it is plotting its escape from this world, I’m certain it will have terrible consequences for the inhabitants of Earth.”
Both of Nelson’s eyes blinked.
“You’re right,” he said. His voice was thin and strained. It somehow sounded like he was trying to shout, but all that came out was a harsh whisper. “The fallout from Orion will likely kill us all.”
“Help me,” she said.
Warm hope blossomed in her chest as Nelson straightened up. He crossed to the door and donned his gloves. He tucked the cuffs of his blue jumpsuit under the gloves and then put on a hat.
“I’ll do the best that I can,” he said.
Marie held her breath when he reached for the doorknob. There was no telling what he was going to do. The door swung inwards. For a tiny second, she caught a glimpse of Tyler, sitting on the porch. The young man was a pale blue sculpture of ice. Until the plume of vapor rolled out of Tyler’s nose, she figured that he was dead.
The door shut and she didn’t witness what happened between the men.
Marie pulled herself along the braided carpet towards the wood stove. She couldn’t trust her legs to keep her upright, so she crawled the few paces until she could reach the dampers on the front. Once again she closed everything tight, suffocating the fire. The windows were much farther away. Marie began her crawling trek to reach them, trying to imagine how she would find the strength to reach the latch to open one. There had to be a way to get cool and stop the progress of the parasites in her system. A better plan lit up her features and she turned around. There was a hatch in the kitchen floor that led to a cold box. It was basically just an animal-proof locker mounted under the cabin that had no insulation. The forest’s cold penetrated the cool box enough to freeze the cream that they had stored there.
Marie felt her strength returning as she got to the hatch and slipped her finger through the ring.
Then, from outside the cabin, a new sound doused her spirits. It was a snowmobile starting. The machine cranked, caught, revved, and then sped off. She pictured it clearly in her head. Nelson, the coward, had used the tiny amount of control that he had gained to abandon her.
She lifted the hatch, threw it open, and collapsed into the cold box on top of their meager provisions. The chill was heavenly. It drove away the fog in her brain and Marie realized that she was on her own. She always had been, really. The illusion of other people caring for her had always been a construction that her own mind made to comfort herself. These were things that people clung to, like religious rituals.
She remembered when Father Bisson had stood over Oliver, after he had finished the sacrament of anointing. Oliver had smiled and thanked the priest. Marie had taken her seat again. She hadn’t asked about the ceremony. As far as she was concerned, that business was between Oliver and his mother. It had to have been Helene who called the priest in.
“It was for Mom, more than anything,” Oliver had said.
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I understand it, though. When you’re standing alone at a dark doorway, you’ll listen to anyone who claims to know what’s on the other side.”
They had shared a smile at that.
“We’re all alone, in the end,” Oliver had said to her.
She had squeezed his hand and shook her head.
“I’m here.”
“I don’t mean now. I can feel myself slipping backwards, away from all this. None of it is a surprise, except for the fact that I can still think and speak. I figured I would be a drooling pile of flesh by now.”
Marie bit her top lip to keep the moment from overwhelming her.
“There’s a chance that the work I was doing was really important. I’m sad about that. And I’m sad that I won’t get to know you better, Marie. I get the feeling that you would have been the best thing that ever happened to me.”
He had taken a moment to
consider his own words. She saw consternation on his brow and wished that he wouldn’t pour his effort into trying to communicate. In that moment, he had needed every ounce of his energy.
“I should say that you are the best thing. I just think it would have kept getting better and better for us. Thank you for everything. Could I ask you for one more thing?”
“Of course,” she had said. Later, lying awake and thinking about his final breath, she had finally admitted to herself that she resented his last wish. That resentment had bubbled and boiled and ended up fueling a lot of bad decisions. She thought she understood altruism, but all she really understood was self-flagellation.
“Go to Nelson and ask him to continue the work. He’s too much of a bastard to admit that it might be significant because it wasn’t completely his idea. I think if you ask him…”
“Didn’t you already ask him?” she had asked, cutting him off. She had immediately hated herself for doing it. It would have been much more simple to go along with the request immediately. Lying to someone as they lay dying is a victimless crime.
“Wait a month and then ask him. Let him cool down. You might just change his mind.”
“I will,” she had said. “I will.”
Now, laying on the floor of a cabin in the Maine woods, half in and half out of a cold storage box built into the floor, she realized precisely how stupid she had been.