Page 79 of Grave Matter

The goat thing screams again.

Revulsions slams through me and I vomit. I can’t help it.

I throw up right on the concrete floor of the barn, unable to keep it in, unable to understand what I’m looking at, except to know that it’s wrong. It’s so wrong. My grandmother would be making the sign of the cross right now, swearing that this thing did not come from God, did not come from nature.

The goat doesn’t notice. It struggles, the sound wet, sluicing, its bare muscles rippling as it tries to escape its fate. The white filaments coming out of its eyes are coming out of its mouth too, poking out beneath the muscles like snakes.

Mycelia, I think.They’re not filaments, they’re mycelia.

It’s being devoured whole by the fungi.

I’m about to vomit again when suddenly I hear footsteps behind me.

I turn around, hand at my mouth, to see Nick walking toward me. With his face in silhouette, I can’t see his expression, but even he is putting me on alert. It’s the way he walks. Purposeful. Powerful.

“What is this?” I manage to say, trying to keep from throwing up again. “Nick. This poor baby goat. What’s happening to it?”

He stops beside me, and I can finally focus on his face. Gone is the hippie surfer dude who catches the wave breaks not farfrom here. He’s someone else now. Maybe the person he was always underneath.

“Something that you aren’t to repeat to anyone else,” he says. His brown eyes are hard, his words harder. “You didn’t see any of this.”

“But what is it?” I exclaim. “What happened to it?!”

He just stares at me. “You need to go back to your cohort and forget you ever saw this.”

I shake my head. “I can’t. I need to…”

The goat thing screams again.

“Please, just put it out of its misery!” I yell.

“I’ll deal with it,” he says. “Go back.”

But I feel like standing my ground.

“Or what?” I ask.

His eyes narrow. So damn cold. So damn serious. “I’ll get Everly and Michael to recite to you the NDA that you signed.”

“It never said anything about not talking about the things while we’re here!”

“Did you even read it?” he asks with a derisive snort. “I mean it, Sydney. Talk about this and you’ll have a lawsuit on your hands. How the fuck are you going to pay for that? You don’t have a job, you don’t even have a scholarship. You have nothing.”

My jaw clenches. Fuck him. He is just a bro in disguise, a corporate asshole underneath.

He jerks his head toward the light, and I go.

I’m both happy to be out of there and yet so fucking disturbed that when I leave the barn, I don’t even bother catching up with the other students who have already walked ahead, dispersing for lunch.

I go right to Kincaid’s office and bang on the door with my fist until he opens it.

His expression is both guarded and relieved. Happy to see me and yet…not.

“You’re early,” he says with a raise of his brow.

“Close the door,” I say quickly, rushing in and sitting down in the chair, my head in my hands, rocking back and forth like a mental patient.

I hear him close it, then lock it, and he comes over to me, crouching beside the chair, hand on my knee. “Syd,” he says softly. “What happened?”

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