A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories

“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. Not 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,” he admitted.

“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. They can’t move. They 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 … well, a couple of minutes …”

“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 refrigerated 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 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 kidnaped 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?”