Before he could move, Cynthia was at the wastepaper basket taking out the crumpled wrapping paper with the special-delivery stamps on it.
The postmark read: NEW ORLEANS, LA. Cynthia looked up from it.
“New Orleans. Isn’t that where Roger is heading right now? A doorknob rattled, a door opened and closed in Fortnum’s mind. Another doorknob rattled, another door swung wide and then shut. There was a smell of damp earth.
He found his hand dialing the phone. After a long while Dorothy Willis answered at the other end. He could imagine her sitting alone in a house with too many lights on. He talked quietly with her a while, then cleared his throat and Said, “Dorothy, look. I know it sounds silly. Did any special-delivery packages arrive at your house the last few days?”
Her voice was faint. “No.” Then: “No, wait. Three days ago. But I thought you knew! All the boys on the block are going in for it.”
Fortnum measured his words carefully. “Going in for what?”
“But why ask?” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with raising mushrooms, is there?”
Fortnum closed his eyes.
“Hugh? Are you still there?” asked Dorothy.
“I said there’s nothing wrong with—-“
“Raising mushrooms”, said Fortnum at last. “No. Nothing wrong. Nothing wrong.”
And slowly he put down the phone.
The curtains blew like veils of moonlight. The clock ticked. The after-midnight world bowed into and filled the bedroom. He heard Mrs. Goodbody’s clear voice on this morning’s air, a million years gone now..
He heard Roger putting a cloud over the sun at noon. He heard the police damning him by phone from down state. Then Roger’s voice again, with the locomotive thunder hurrying him away and away, fading.
And, finally, Mrs. Goodbody’s voice behind the hedge: “Lord, it grows fast!” “What does?” “The Marasmius oreades!” He snapped his eyes open.
He sat up. Downstairs, a moment later, he flicked through the unabridged dictionary.
His forefinger underlined the words: “Maraimius oreades; a mushroom commonly found on lawns in summer and early autumn…”
He let the book fall shut. Outside, in the deep summer night, he lit a cigarette and smoked quietly.
A meteor fell across space, burning itself out quickly. The trees rustled softly.
The front door tapped shut. Cynthia moved toward him in her robe.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Too warm, I guess.”
“It’s not warm.”
“No,” he said, feeling his arms. “In fact, it’s cold.” He sucked on the cigarette twice, then, not looking at her, said, “Cynthia, what if…” He snorted and had to stop. “Well, what if Roger was right this morning.
Mrs. Goodbody, what if she’s right, too? Something terrible is happening. Like, well–” he nodded at the sky and the million stars “Earth being invaded by things from other worlds, maybe.”
“Hugh…”
“No, let me run wild.”
“It’s quite obvious we’re not being invaded, or we’d notice.”
“Let’s say we’ve only half noticed, become uneasy about something. What? How could we be invaded? By what means would creatures invade?”
Cynthia looked at the sky and was about to try something when he interrupted. “No, not meteors or flying saucers, things we can see. What about bacteria? That comes from outer space, too, doesn’t it?”
“I read once, yes.”
“Spores, seeds, pollens, viruses probably bombard our atmosphere by the billions every second and have done so for millions of years. Right now we’re sitting out under an invisible rain. It falls all over the country, the cities, the towns, and right now, our lawn.”
“Our lawn?”
“And Mrs. Goodbody’s. But people like her are always pulling weeds, spraying poison, kicking toadstools off their grass. It would be hard for any strange life form to survive in cities. Weather’s a problem, too. Best climate might be South: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana. Back in the damp bayous they could grow to a fine size.”
But Cynthia was beginning to laugh now. “Oh, really, you don’t believe, do you, that this Great Bayou or Whatever Greenhouse Novelty Company that sent Tom his package is owned and operated by six-foot-tall mushrooms from another planet?”
“If you put it that way, it sounds funny.”
“Funny! It’s hilarious!” She threw her head back, deliciously.
“Good grief!” he cried, suddenly irritated. “Something’s going on! Mrs. Goodbody is rooting out and killing Marasmius oreades. What is Marasmius oreades? A certain kind of mushroom. Simultaneously, and I suppose you’ll call it coincidence, by special delivery, what arrives the same day? Mushrooms for Tom!
What else happens? Roger fears he may soon cease to be! Within hours, he vanishes, then telegraphs us, warning us not to accept what? The special delivery mushrooms for Tom! Has Roger’s son got a similar package in the last few days? He has! Where do the packages come from?
New Orleans! And where is Roger going when he vanishes? New Orleans! Do you see, Cynthia, do you see? I wouldn’t be upset if all these separate things didn’t lock together! Roger, Tom, Joe, mushrooms, Mrs. Goodbody, packages, destinations, everything in one pattern!”
She was watching his face now, quieter, but still amused. “Don’t get angry.”
“I’m not!” Fortnum almost shouted. And then he simply could not go on. He was afraid that if he did he would find himself shouting with laughter too, and somehow he did not want that. He stared at the surrounding houses up and down the block and thought of the dark cellars and the neighbor boys who read Popular Mechanics and sent their money in by the millions to raise the mushrooms hidden away.
Just as he, when a boy, had mailed off for chemicals, seeds, turtles, numberless salves and sickish ointments. In how many million American homes tonight were billions of mushrooms rousing up under the ministrations of the innocent?
“Hugh?” His wife was touching his arm now. “Mushrooms, even big ones, can’t think, can’t move, don’t have arms and legs. How could they run a mail-order service and ‘take over’ the world? Come on, now, let’s look at your terrible fiends and monsters!”
She pulled him toward the door. Inside, she headed for the cellar, but he stopped, shaking his head, a foolish smile shaping itself somehow to his mouth. “No, no, I know what we’ll find. You win. The whole thing’s silly. Roger will be back next week and we’ll all get drunk together. Go on up to bed now and I’ll drink a glass of warm milk and be with you in a minute.”
“That’s better!” She kissed him on both cheeks, squeezed him and went away up the stairs.
In the kitchen, he took out a glass, opened the refrigerator, and was pouring the milk when he stopped suddenly.
Near the front of the top shelf was a small yellow dish. It was not the dish that held his attention, however. It was what lay in the dish.
The fresh-cut mushrooms. He must have stood there for half a minute, his breath frosting the air, before he reached out, took hold of the dish, sniffed it, felt the mushrooms, then at last, carrying the dish, went out into the hall.
He looked up the stairs, hearing Cynthia moving about in the bedroom, and was about to call up to her, “Cynthia, did you put these in the refrigerator?” Then he stopped. He knew her answer. She had not.
He put the dish of mushrooms on the newel-upright at the bottom of the stairs and stood looking at them. He imagined himself in bed later, looking at the walls, the open windows, watching the moonlight sift patterns on the ceiling.
He heard himself saying, Cynthia? And her answering, Yes? And him saying, There is a way for mushrooms to grow arms and legs. What? she would say, silly, silly man, what? And he would gather courage against her hilarious reaction and go on, What if a man wandered through the swamp, picked the mushrooms and ate them… ?
No response from Cynthia.
Once inside the man, would the mushrooms spread through his blood, take over every cell and change the man from a man to a Martian? Given this theory, would the mushroom need its own arms and legs? No, not when it could borrow people, live inside and become them. Roger ate mushrooms given him by his son. Roger became something else.
He kidnapped himself. And in one last flash of sanity, of being himself, he telegraphed us, warning us not to accept the special-delivery mushrooms. The ‘Roger’ that telephoned later was no longer Roger but a captive of what he had eaten. Doesn’t that figure, Cynthia, doesn’t it, doesn’t it?
No, said the imagined Cynthia, no, it doesn’t figure, no, no, no….
There was the faintest whisper, rustle, stir from the cellar.
Taking his eyes from the bowl, Fortnum walked to the cellar door and put his ear to it. “Tom?” No answer. “Tom, are you down there? ” No answer. “Tom?”
After a long while, Tom’s voice came up from below. “Yes, Dad?”
“It’s after midnight,” said Fortnum, fighting to keep his voice from going high. “What are you doing down there?” No answer.
“I said–“
“Tending to my crop,” said the boy at last, his voice cold and faint.
“Well, get the hell out of there! You hear me?”
Silence.
“Tom? Listen! Did you put some mushrooms in the refrigerator tonight? If so, why?”
Ten seconds must have ticked by before the boy replied from below, “For you and Mom to eat, of course.”
Fortnum heard his heart moving swiftly and had to take three deep breaths before he could go on.
“Tom? You didn’t … that is, you haven’t by any chance eaten some of the mushrooms yourself, have you?”
“Funny you ask that,” said Tom. “Yes. Tonight. On a sandwich. After supper. Why?”
Fortnum held to the doorknob. Now it was his turn not to answer. He felt his knees beginning to melt and he fought the whole silly senseless fool thing. No reason,
