Alan Baxter - The Gulp - Five Tales of Horror

Maddy crept forward, sniffed tentatively. The stink of sickness and death was almost non-existent, but it had been replaced with an earthy, fungal scent. Not entirely unpleasant, but also not entirely natural. Or perhaps super-natural, like an artificially created facsimile of what a mushroom should smell like. Super-real.

On the old armchair in the corner of the room, a wire coat hanger lay atop a pile of clothes her mother would never wear again. Maddy took it and used one rounded end to prod at the nearest bulge of fungus, her mother’s right foot buried somewhere deep within. That same tough but pliant exterior, the same cushioned softness under pressure. She didn’t dare push hard enough to split the skin of it again.

“What is happening?” she whispered to herself.

The whole mass shivered.

Maddy squealed and ran backwards, bumped into the wall. It shivered again, a vibration rippling through, then it settled. Maddy’s body shook with horror, imagining the whole thing splitting open like one of those puffball mushrooms she’d seen on a nature doco, a dusty cloud of spores bursting from it.

She felt behind herself for the door as she sidled along the wall, not taking her eyes from the corpulent white mass. She slipped out of the room and closed the door.

When Zack got home a little while later, she was sitting on the sofa staring at some rubbish commercial television show. She genuinely had no idea what it was, what it was even about. She’d been in some kind of fugue state, just waiting.

Zack dropped his bag in the hallway by his bedroom door then came to join her, sitting on the edge of the armchair. “Haven’t stopped thinking about it all day.”

She laughed softly. “Me either. It’s worse.”

“Worse?”

“Or better, maybe. Depending how you look at it.”

They opened the door, shoulder to shoulder to see in. The mass had pushed the bedclothes aside as it grew, a parody of a cloud sat atop the mattress. It covered two-thirds of the bed, vaguely ovoid with an undulating surface. The light above reflected off it, so bright, so white.

“It looks so…” Zack frowned, searching for a word. “Clean,” he said eventually.

“What’s happening to her in there?” Maddy said. “That’s what I can’t stop thinking about. Like, is it consuming her flesh? Will there be nothing but polished bones inside eventually? Or will it take the bones too? And then what?” The memory of her previous thoughts came back to her. The idea had been haunting her since the thing shivered so suddenly. “Will it fucking spore?”

“Fungi are eukaryotic organisms,” Zack said, monotone like a newsreader.

“What?”

“I’ve spent all afternoon in the school library, reading, memorising. Fungi are eukaryotic organisms such as yeasts, moulds, and mushrooms. Some fungi are multicellular, while others, such as yeasts, are unicellular. Most fungi are microscopic, but many produce the visible fruitbodies we call mushrooms.”

“Fruitbodies?”

Zack pointed at the bed. “That’s what it is. Growing out of her, that’s the fruitbody of the fungus. And it’s what produces the spores.” His voice dropped into the reciting tone again. “Unlike plants, fungi can’t produce their own food and have to feed like animals, by sourcing their own nutrients.”

“Jesus, Zack, you’re not helping.” He’d always been able to read and recite like this. It was funny sometimes. Now it was decidedly creepy. “So some microscopic fungus found her and fruited while feeding on her? I guess we kinda figured that already. So what?”

Zack shook his head. “I don’t know. I thought learning about it might help, but you’re right. So what? It’ll spore by bursting or scattering in some way, some use animals to carry the spore, most use the wind. I guess what I’m thinking is that maybe it’ll feed on Mum until there’s nothing left and then it’ll wither and die or something, and it may or may not spore in the meantime. But I think we should just leave it alone. Shut the door. Maybe block the gap at the bottom with a towel or something and leave the window open.”

“And then what?”

“Just fucking forget about it, Mads. For, like, a week or something. We can always go around the back, I suppose, peek in at the window, but I don’t know if I dare. Maybe give it a month, then check? Perhaps everything will be over then, and she’ll be gone. Or just bones and we can think of a way to bag them up and get rid of them.”

Maddy thought of her fishing boat idea again. It would be even easier if it was just the woman’s bones. Stack them in an esky and carry it to the harbour. Easy. She reached in and turned out the bedroom light, dropping the room into gloom broken only by the wan glow through the thin curtain. The fungal mass on the bed was still bright, almost luminescent it was so pale.

She looked at Zack and he nodded, so she closed the door. Zack turned to the hallway cupboard, rummaged in the bottom for one of the old towels and rolled it up into a snake that he pressed against the bottom of the door.

“So that’s it?” Maddy asked.

“I reckon. Just forget about it now. For a while.”

Maddy glanced at the closed door. “Is there anything in there we need?”

“Nah. I took it all weeks ago. Got all the paperwork, her few bits of jewellery, all that stuff is in my room. All that’s in there are her clothes. And some books.”

Maddy nodded. “Okay then. So that’s that. For now.”

“For now,” he agreed.

“I want to clean the house,” Maddy said.

Zack smiled. “I was thinking the same thing. Three bedrooms, bathroom, lounge, kitchen, hall. It’s not much.” He went to his bag, reached inside and pulled out a large blue plastic bottle, held it up. “Sugar soap. Mix it with a bucket of water to clean the walls. Cuts through grease and grime, and it’s got a mould protection in it too.”

“That seems definitely worthwhile right now.” They laughed nervously, then Maddy said, “But two bedrooms. For now. We’re leaving hers alone, remember.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll vacuum and dust, wipe all the surfaces. There’s bleach under the sink. You do the walls.”

“Gonna do the ceilings too. With a mop.”

Maddy gave her brother a crooked smile. “Fucking look at us, eh?”

They busted their arses for hours, taking turns to crank music from their phones through Maddy’s Bluetooth JBL speaker. The focus seemed to be something they both needed, the physical labour of it taking up the nervous energy they’d been carrying. Maddy thought maybe the tensions and anxieties had been building for weeks, as their mother’s illness quickly deteriorated from ongoing sickness to terminal decline. Then the actual death and rapid-fire shocks since had left them both shaken. Working hard, taking control of something, was like medicine.

It was nearly 9 p.m. when they both collapsed onto the couch, sweaty and dishevelled, and absolutely spent. Zack ordered in pizza with their mother’s credit card, and they stared at the TV until it arrived. Starving, they devoured it in minutes, then watched more TV without talking. There was nothing to say, no need to plan or discuss. They were simply getting on with it. Maddy had some reservations, wondering if it was entirely wise to ignore the thing growing on their mother. She had occasional visions of it blooming to fill the room, bulge against the door until it burst, billowing in great rolls out the open window.

But she shook those thoughts away. It wouldn’t come to that. If it did need more attention, maybe in a week or two, they’d decide then. Not now. They’d done enough for the time being. Their mother had just died, after all. Let them enjoy that for a while first.