Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

“I should have known you’d turn on the light,” she said, and twisted to face me.

I didn’t gasp or recoil. I wish, looking back, that I could say I’d been a better person than that, but the truth is that I was too stunned to do anything but stare silently, trying to make sense of the single gray mitten that she had pulled over her left hand, or the patch of pale gray felt that she had glued to the corner of her left eye. Then she blinked at me, and the strands of mold clinging to her eyelashes wavered in the breeze, and my denial snapped like a broken branch, leaving me holding nothing but splinters. Before I knew it, I was standing with my back against the wall, as far from her as I could get without actually fleeing the room.

Now I understood the dry, dusty smell. It wasn’t old paper or a forgotten library book. It was mold, living, flourishing mold, feasting on the body of my wife.

My throat was a desert. It didn’t help that Rachel—my beautiful Rachel, who should have been the one panicking, if either one of us was going to—was looking at me with perfect understanding, like she hadn’t expected any other reaction, yet still couldn’t blame me for following the nature she’d always known I was slave to. She blinked again, and I realized to my horror that the sclera of her left eye was slightly clouded, like something was beginning to block the vitreous humor. Something like the spreading gray mold.

“I must have had a cut on my hand,” she said. “I thought I’d scrubbed hard enough, but I guess I was wrong. And then I rubbed my eye in my sleep…maybe that’s a good thing. The itching woke me up. So we can go to the hospital and they can do whatever it is you do when you get a…a fungal infection, and then it’ll all be okay. Right? I just have to go to the hospital. Right?” There was a fragile edge to her words, like she was standing very close to the place where reason dropped away, leaving only a yawning chasm of blackness underneath.

She looked so sad. My girl. My wife. The woman I had promised to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, amen. And I couldn’t make myself go to her. I tried—no one will ever know how hard I tried—but the muscles in my legs refused to work, and the air in my lungs refused to circulate until I was stepping backward into the doorway, away from the dry, dusty smell of mold growing on human flesh.

“I’ll call the hospital,” I said, and fled for the hall.

Nikki woke when the ambulance pulled to a stop in front of our house, flashing lights painting everything they touched bloody red. “Mom?” She appeared on the stairs, holding her robe shut with one hand and squinting through the curtain of her hair. “What’s going on?”

I forced myself to smile at her. The EMTs already had Rachel outside. They’d taken one look at her and swung into action with a speed that impressed even me, producing gloves and sterile masks and anything else they could use to keep themselves from coming into contact with her skin. Even then they’d touched her as little as possible, guiding her with words, not hands, casting anxious looks at each other and then back at me as they moved. I understood their concern, but there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t even force myself to follow them. The dry mold smell filled our bedroom, almost solid in its presence. I wanted to bleach the whole place, would have bleached the whole place, except that I knew Rachel’s treatment might depend on being able to examine the spot where she’d been infected.

“Rachel’s not feeling so well,” I said. “I’m going to follow her to the hospital as soon as they call and tell me it’s all right. I was going to come up and make sure that you were awake before I went.”

Nikki’s eyes got very wide and round. “You’re going to leave me here?”

“No, I’m going to ask Mrs. Levine from next door to keep an eye on you.” I didn’t want to leave her alone in the house, but even more, I didn’t want to take her to the hospital. Not until we knew what the thing on Rachel’s arm was, and whether it was contagious.

It had to be contagious. It had been on the fruit, and then it had been on the table, and Rachel had touched the residue on the table; just touched it, nothing more than that. If this stuff wasn’t contagious, she had been exposed at the same time as the fruit, and Nikki—

Sudden terror seized me. “Honey,” I said, fighting to keep my voice level, “are you feeling all right?”

Nikki’s eyes got even wider. “Why? Is it food poisoning? My stomach feels fine.”

“No, it’s not food poisoning. Hold on.” I flicked on the light, illuminating the hall and stairs in a harsh white glow. Nikki squinted at me, looking affronted. I would worry about her sensibilities later. “Show me your hands.”

“What? Mom—”

“ Show me your hands .” I was using the tone Rachel always called “OCD voice”—and she wasn’t kidding, exactly, even if she used the label to soften my admittedly violent reactions, turning them into something that wouldn’t frighten people who weren’t as used to me as she was.

Nikki had grown up with my quirks and issues. She stopped arguing and held her hands out for me to inspect. They were spotlessly clean, with short, close-clipped fingernails that had been manicured with a simple clear coat. Most importantly, there was no mold on them. I swallowed the urge to tell her to disrobe, to prove that she wasn’t infected. Things weren’t that bad. Things weren’t going to get that bad. I wouldn’t let them. I couldn’t help her if I let them. I had to hold onto control with both hands, because if I lost it—

If I lost it, I was going to lose everything. For the first time in my life, the sense of impending doom that followed me around might actually have weight.

“Mom, what’s going on?” Her voice shook a little as she pulled her robe tight around herself once more. “Where are they taking Rachel?”

“I told you. To the hospital.” I turned to look at the front door, and then at the open door to our bedroom. “Go upstairs. You can get online if you want, but I don’t want you down here until I’ve cleaned up a little.” Any mold that was in our bedroom could stay; I could sleep on the couch. But the kitchen? The dining room? My fingers itched, and I rubbed them together to reassure myself that it was just the urge to clean, and not a sign of contamination.

“Okay,” said Nikki meekly, and turned and fled back to her room, where she could barricade the door against me and my insatiable need to scrub the world.

Rachel’s hand. Rachel’s beautiful, delicate hand. Completely obscured by clinging gray.

I turned and walked straight for the closet where we kept the bleach.

The hospital called a little after five a.m., four hours after they had loaded Rachel into the back of an ambulance and left me alone with a contaminated house and a teenage daughter who refused to come out of her room. The gray mold had been growing on Rachel’s latest picture, almost obscured by the pastel loops and swirls. I’d stopped when I found it, standing and staring transfixed at the delicate swirls it cut through the color. There was something strangely beautiful about it. It was hardy, and alive, and finding sustenance wherever it could. Even in pastels.

It was eating the last thing my wife had touched before she came to bed and woke me up pleading for help. I had thrown the picture in the trash and was in the process of bleaching the studio walls when the phone rang. My gloves were covered in bleach. I answered anyway. I didn’t trust the receiver. “Hello?”

“May I speak to Megan Riley?”