We all must die. There is no better way to do so than in the pursuit of something you love.

  Jim Butcher

  _______________________________________________________________________________

  The smell is different here. Still of wood, but it’s more now, saturated with the tangy brine of still waters, the scent of moss and algae grown up out of the murk. We follow the veins, grey and dense with fibrous strength, and it leads us, inexorably, further towards the far end of the logging bay.

  The roots multiply, branching out at odd angles and seemingly random points along the length of each one we find. I’m reminded of something almost like a city map, replete with multiple right angles and turns, rather than a “natural” growth. Then again, I’ve also seen those videos about mycelial systems before. Some people say that it’s the future of design planning, since fungal networks always pursue the fastest and most efficient route towards a resource point, and I’ve seen some stuff on Youtube talking about using it to design train networks across America.

  I don’t know that fungi have a specific smell, but if they did, it would probably be something like this. Wet and fleshy in a weirdly bloodless sort of way, carrying some of the markers from the raw meat smell I’ve gotten so used to over the last week. My hand aches a bit at the thought, like an old scar acting up at the first sign of a storm. I keep it extended forward, bladed edges out and ready.

  I didn’t actually design the Glove as a weapon. The concept behind it was, and is, to use it as a sort of toolbelt, something to improve my ability to create other things by giving me more options and control. Whether or not it’ll get the chance to serve as such, there are very few tools that can’t also be used as weapons. Spiked fingers and little scalpel-bones (or as close as I can make, they’re a bit clunky and not as sharp as the real thing) isn’t not something I can use to defend myself, and it’s technically easier to wield than the knives I brought. I can dual-fist sharp implements as needed, but having a hand for flashlight-usage is pretty important here, considering how fucking dark it is. The light off of the water outside almost makes it darker in here, heightening the shadows and the way that the angles of the building seem to shrug off any sort of illumination.

  The shadows look like vague and splotchy things. I assumed it was based on vibes, for want of a better term; some sort of ambiental effect of whatever’s in here, like how weirdly preserved everything is. As we walk further, though, it becomes clear that nope, that’s just because the shadows are full of stuff.

  I step into the main sort of “logging bay”, the slide down into the water starting on the floor directly above us, and feel the ground deform under my weight.

  It, like the shadows, has been colonized.

  I turn my light into the corners, Jay behind me and covering the angles I’m not, and see the growth there.

  Just like with the floor, the veins have spread, branching out over and over- but where they seem to spread out semi-evenly across the floor, making all of it soft and uneven, the growths on the walls thicken and wrap around each other. There are vines, braided and woven into being by growing into and through each other, over and over, until they fall like ropes from the ceiling back to the ground.

  As I watch, a bug flies in from the water, the stillness making it visible even in the dark. The sound of it buzzing is frighteningly loud in the silence, and the return of that silence is almost as jarring. It passes the doorways in from the water, hovers by, passes through some of the dangling hairs- and is gone.

  “Don’t touch the vines.”

  Jay looks at me like I just said the stupidest thing in the world.

  “No shit don’t touch the vines.”

  I open my mouth to retort- and then shut it. Yeah. Fair enough.

  Still, he steps a little closer to me, practically up against my bag. I can’t blame him- the haziness of the shadows is hard enough to perceive, even with my altered senses and the lights. I can’t imagine how disorienting it must be for him, being aware that he’s only seeing part of the picture, if that. He seems to cycle in and out of remembering that there’s something here he can’t see, but the discomfort is palpable, even in the moments where his eyes glaze past the hanging tapestry of organic decor.

  The smell is so strong here that it’s almost overpowering the wood. It isn’t, though. It’s synchronized, like how rotten fish still smell sort-of like fish in general- one is the foundation of the other.

  I take a few steps closer, keeping the light moving, panning all around in search of movement or danger- but the stillness remains. The hanging vines of fungus don’t sway in the wind, the water doesn’t ripple or lap at the wood of the building, and the wood doesn’t so much as creak, despite how long it’s been sitting on or near the water, entirely unmaintained.

  Stillness and the smell of life that is not meat.

  And then, we’re there. At long last, we arrive.

  I reach out and shine my light over the edge of the water.

  In spite of the sunlight streaming down, the brightness of the day, it still seems almost black. The surface is so smooth I see the light reflected back almost directly, the edge of my face creeping into view from one side. The water sits like a mirror, reflecting back the stillness of the mill and the strange things that grow in it.

  And then… a ripple.

  Not an insect. There are no insects here, none that I can see or feel or expect in the autumn cold. The possibility of fish comes to mind, but that too seems out of place- the idea of something so convenient and conventional beneath the waves doesn’t fit.

  A second one. Louder. A bit… messier.

  And then a third, and I realize as I pull back that it’s not the ripple of something moving against the surface- it’s bubbles, rising up from the deep and popping against the open air.

  I step away from the edge of the water, keeping my light trained on where the bubbles came up.

  It goes still.

  “Ok, Ilia? What the fuck are we looking for?”

  I blink, turning around to look at Jay. He’s not looking at the water, or at me; his eyes are roving the walls of the mill, tracking shadows as his phone-light flashes back and forth. He’s not panicking, but it feels like that might be a matter of time.

  “I… guess I found it. The mold, here. I… we wanted to figure out more of what’s going on, right? This place is abandoned, but it’s… it’s still growing.”

  “Alright, so let’s take a sample and go. This place is freaking me the hell out. Plus, whoever you… ‘felt’ on the other side of that other door is still around, right?”

  “Maybe. Definitely keep an eye out back the way we came. Let’s go upstairs, away from the water- I want to check to see if there’s any wood I can take pieces of, stuff that’s infested with this mold. I don’t think it’s a good idea to directly poke at it.”

  “Works for me. Just letting you know though, if something jumps the fuck out at me I will scream.”

  “Ok, just… be ready.”

  “Bitch you gave me a grenade, I am as ready as I can be considering the circumstances.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I snort, letting my own light play out around his. It doesn’t take us long to find where the stairs leading up are.

  They don’t creak. That hits me almost as bad as the smell when we drove up. Old, wooden stairs are supposed to creak, and the fact that these ones don’t feels almost weirder than the mold and the water. Still, twenty-odd steps later, we’re upstairs, the long metal slide that delivers logs down into the lake standing proud to one side, the bandsaws to the other.

  Again, the shadows are fuzzy here- but not as much as nearer to the water. There’s still plenty of mold, but it seems to have grown up, rather than down. It takes a few minutes to properly shine a light everywhere, but it’s helped by how empty it is- just like downstairs, there are no logs left behind here, nothing to obscure line of sight save the bandsaws and the raised platforms they sit on, ready to shred apart whatever is pushed their way down the tracks.

  Saws are saws, and in spite of how it doesn’t feel like it would be “on-theme”, I can’t help but keep checking them over as we move anyways. Massive bladed implements capable of cutting through wood like paper aren’t exactly comforting things to find somewhere. I notice, as we canvas the room, that the metal fixtures are much more degraded than the ever-static wood. The blades are coated in rust, their colors turned from steel-silver to a dirty bronze from exposure to lake-air over time. They’re not exactly falling apart- in fact, for however-many-decades-long this place has been closed, they probably look decent. The contrast between the corroded metal and the ever-still, ever-silent wooden beams that surround them make for a notable distinction, though.

  Hello I’m here

  There. A voice again.

  She signals to Jay, pointing out where she’s going with the light. He nods, knife gripped hard in his other hand, and they approach the far side of the space, next to the log-chute.

  Come to me it is safe here it is good

  Now that she knows what she’s looking for, it’s easier to find. It’s not a rat this time, tucked into a locker- this time, the voice remains near-silent even as I approach, and it’s framed somewhere above me.

  Come here touch me it’s safe it’s warm it’s food come closer

  There. A spiderweb.

  The threads have been replaced, most of them hanging limply from where the web fell apart- but new strands have come to replace them, growing down like falling raintracks from the thing at its center. Like the mouse, it seems like it was once a fully-fledged creature, but it too has taken to its infection. Rather than from an ever-branching tail, the infested spider has grown its mold from its spinnerette and the tips of its legs, folding itself into a cluster of matter at the center of the web.

  And it keeps whispering. Calling. I hear words, barely audible in the open air, but it’s not speaking out loud. That’s just the way my brain is translating the signals. It’s emitting some kind of aura, trying to tempt things closer.

  Is it something the mold is making it do? It could be part of how this place is so well-preserved; maybe the mold is doing to other decomposers what the faux-animals are trying to do to me, calling that which can hear them into their grasp. Maybe it’s something circumstantial, though- rats and spiders both are predators, and maybe, infected and forced into this half-life, they’re just hungry and reaching out.

  Slowly, I wrap my hand in my jacket, ensuring that my skin is properly protected. It’s not exactly a sterile way to go about this, but limited options are limited options. I scoop the spider-thing from where it is, hearing its call get louder as it’s moved- and then it’s in one of the pockets of my gym bag, which I promptly zip shut.

  …I should probably have a better place to store this stuff than my room.

  Fuck it. One step at a time.

  Jay punches me in the shoulder, shocking me badly enough that I almost drop my flashlight.

  “What the hell happened to ‘don’t touch the moss’!? You were very explicit about this very obvious thing!”

  “I- It was small! Like, a tiny part, I think! It’s not-”

  “Ilia! Big bad terrible things are made of small parts!”

  “It’s fine! I didn’t touch it with my skin, and it’s stored away, and it felt small! I think it only eats bugs, because it used to be a spider, so-”

  Jay waves his hand frantically in front of her face. “Hello? When did you suddenly, magically figure out what this thing is? Or how it works? Or literally anything? You were just telling me how dangerous this place is, how I shouldn’t touch anything. Now you’re just grabbing shit?”

  “It’s different for me. I can-”

  “Do you know that?”

  I-

  Fuck.

  I don’t.

  “It’s less dangerous than staying ignorant,” I say instead. “I need to figure things out, and I don’t have forever. I could get attacked again literally anytime, as far as I know. If I had a couple spare months, maybe I could study this like a scientist, set up some field experiments, watch and notate and shit. I don’t have that. I have a bunch of weird instincts in my weird brain, and that’s about it. It led me to the Glove, so trusting it here isn’t the craziest thing in the world.”

  “I- Ilia, trusting instincts you don’t understand that made your hand turn into a meat-abomination sounds absolutely like the craziest thing in the world.”

  Once again, I actually don’t have a rebuttal to that. Not a pithy one, anyways, not one that would properly deflect the issue.“I can’t… I can’t afford to just go slowly.”

  “Why not? You said that that thing doesn’t attack if it’s not nighttime, and that’s held up.”

  “Yeah, for now. It’s not just ‘the big guy’, either- I didn’t know that it was going to attack, so I couldn’t prepare. For all I know, the next time I walk outside, some fuckass-big bird is going to swoop down and kidnap me like a wandering baby. I know something that for now is keeping me from being hunted down and killed by one threat, when I don’t even know how many more are out there. I can’t take things slow.”

  It's true. I don’t lie to Jay. I could. The temptation is there. But I won’t. It’s not even that it would be wrong or something, it isn’t always wrong to lie, but lying to Jay would be something else. Betraying trust, at the very least.

  But it’s not the whole truth. And he knows it.

  He mentioned, as a joke, that calling him “unperceptive” was damn hurtful. The fact that it couldn’t be further from the truth only emphasizes that fact.

  But… it is still true. And it’s a good argument.

  So he doesn’t press me, even though I can see that part of him wants to.

  “Fine. I’m not the one who got attacked, and I’m not the one who understands this shit- but at least warn me first, alright? I can’t offer input if I don’t know what you’re doing, and if you just wanted me around as muscle, I have disappointing news about my BMI.”

  I snort, the sound coming out harder than expected. “Yeah. That’s more than fair, I think.

  “To that end- I’m probably going to collect the mouse body we found in the lockers, too. Maybe a few others, if I can find them. Something about them is scratching at my crafting itch, and those instincts haven’t led me wrong yet.”

  “Alright, sure. Far be it from me to stop a queer-girl from collecting dead animals in rural America. If that’s all, can we go?”

  “Let’s look around a bit more, see if we can’t find any other critters like this. The more I have, the more I can experiment and try to understand things.”

  “Alright, Frankenstein. Guess we’re off to go find more critters, then.”

  It’s nice, hearing the relief in his voice. It’s also laced with plenty of other emotions, but I’m still glad to be able to be something other than anxiety-inducing for him. Besides the fact that he hasn’t asked for anything I didn’t basically tell him I needed him for, it’s nice to have someone pulling me back out of this place.

  As much as I’m skeeved out, as uncomfortable and disturbed as this place makes me feel, the thought of leaving hadn’t even occurred to me.

  The other part of the truth I offered Jay? I committed myself. My windshield cracked and a heart started beating through my radio, and I decided that either I was insane, or this was real, and the best option either way was to commit myself entirely. We’re well-past that point now- to slow, to stop, would be to cripple myself, and the tools at my disposal for dealing with all this.

  And… yeah.

  It’s not all fear.

  I flex the Glove, feeling the extra joints I designed turning against each other and that which holds them together.

  A few more samples. Little… moldings? Sure, a few more little moldings, enough to start experimenting with, and we leave. Plenty of time left in the day to recover from the adrenaline, relax, maybe even look up some other leads.

  I follow Jay back down the steps, and-

  Pop.

  Loud and clear. Almost articulate.

  The sound of a large, well-formed bubble, hitting the surface of the water.

  We both turn out lights to it so fast that we have to refocus them a moment after, both staring out at the dark. The light from outside, reflecting a cloudy sky further out into the lake, reflects only the shadow of the mill at its base, obsidian-dark and still.

  Save for the ripples.

  Pop. pop. POP.

  Three more. Like an escaped breath.

  “Ilia? Your instincts telling you anything here?”

  “I…”

  I don’t get a chance to put a sentence together.

  At first it looks like a rock- but no. It’s too soft for that. Too… grown-over. Little strands of something wispy float along it, and then stick to it as it rises, and only then do I recognize it as hair.

  And then I recognize a face.

  Waterlogged, long-drowned, almost gelatinous- and where there should be eyes, there are two pools of thick grey mold.

  HELLO I’M HERE

  7-8 ish (it's fluctuating with this week's mad dash!) chapters on Patreon and more to come!

  And just for funsies, here's the discord!