So you can choose to disbelieve if you wish—whatever part you want to disbelieve. But don’t disbelieve my intent: to set the record straight, to explain Duncan to you, to explain myself.
“Take off the glasses,” Duncan said.
“I’m not sure I want to now,” I replied. I had begun to understand that there could be worse things in the real world than what I saw through the glasses. Even as the invisible starfish made its slow orbit of Duncan’s body, feeding off his disease, cilia rotating madly.
I took off the glasses. It was no surprise to me when they scurried to the middle of the table and crouched there, waiting. Waiting for what? Me to put them on again?
Without the glasses, Duncan came into focus as … assimilated, made over in the image of some gray cap’s imagination. A camouflage that seeped into the flesh so that it became entity, identity. He was slow and fast in that attire, that disguise, that incarnation. Swift and slow. He formed runnels of himself, the “particulate matter” of his left arm shining and purple, studded with the hoods of thousands of tiny mushrooms. The arm extended like a trickle, a slender stream, ending in a formless puddle of flesh. The strands of his other arm coalesced, recombined, came undone, came back together again.
Of his body, the less said, the better. (It was definitely not my best day.) There was nothing left to him that was Duncan, except for his eyes and a wry smile like liquid gold with a vein of granite running through it.
“What happens when it begins to infiltrate my brain?” Duncan said, though I’d said nothing. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m no longer Duncan. Maybe I begin to know all there is to know about the gray caps.”
But by now I was not afraid. I really wasn’t, I was surprised to find. He didn’t scare me. He was my brother, no matter what. I’d become accustomed. I realized now that even from the first time he’d stumbled into my apartment, covered in mushrooms, I had known it would come to this one day. (You weren’t scared? Maybe because it wasn’t happening to you. Me, I was fascinated and terrified at the same time.)
I reached out toward the shimmering, simmering writhing of his arm and touched him lightly.
“Tell me what happened,” I said.
“We were both drunk,” he said.
“Who?”
“Mary and me.” He choked out the words.
“Where?”
“At a gallery opening. This afternoon. I happened to be there and she happened to be there. We had both had some wine before we met, and I guess that’s why she didn’t ignore me. She seemed in a good mood. She’d just finished a new book. She wanted to talk about it. I didn’t mind. There was something about both of us, and the day, that allowed it. Everything from before had become ancient history.”
I didn’t believe him. That they had met by accident? That they had happened to attend the same gallery opening? Unlikely, knowing my Duncan. But I let it pass. (It’s true. You’re right. I planned it, down to the last detail. One last chance. I wanted to show her everything—all of it, from root to root, cavern to cavern.)
“Did you … did you look like you look now?” I asked him.
Duncan scowled. “No. I had control. I was keeping it all in. She didn’t see any of this. I’m sure I looked a little fatter than when she’d last seen me, from everything I was keeping bottled up inside. But that’s all.”
“What happened?”
Duncan looked over at me, his frown enough to tell me before he said anything.
“We went outside. I began to talk about my theories. I had the eyeglasses in my pocket. Like I said, we were both a little drunk. We’d shared some pleasant memories from the Academy. I’d made her laugh. Now I think she was taking pity on me. At the time, I thought I saw in her face, her movements, a willingness to be friends again. And I couldn’t help myself. I just couldn’t. I pulled out the glasses. I told her to put them on. She giggled and said, ‘What’s this?’ and then she put them on. She looked so beautiful then. I could not bear it. I think at first she thought it was a kaleidoscope, or some sort of party trick. At first, she laughed in delight. She let me take her by the hand and walk down the street. But somehow…”
“What?” I asked.
“Somehow, she guessed what she was looking at—she saw something that frightened her, something that made her so frightened that she got mad. She flung the glasses into the street. She began to curse me. I think she would have hit me if I hadn’t backed away. I followed her for a while, to make sure she got back to the gallery safely. And that was it. I left her and came here. Then I sent my glasses to find you.”
“That was it,” I echoed.
After a pause, I said, “What did you think would happen?”
Duncan shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I thought she would finally see, that if she could see as I saw, then I could make everything all right.”
Instead, in her fear and his distress, he had finally realized that he would always be alone, that he would never have the luxury of a normal life.
He winced at the look on my face.
“Janice! I didn’t think it would make everything like it was before, but I thought it would make her see that I’m not a crackpot, not a liar, not crazy. At least that … I spent a long time making those glasses for her, so she could experience it.” (Ten years. It took ten years of research to make them. But no one wanted to see through them when I was done, except you, Janice, and you already believed me.)
“Did you really think that it could end well?” I asked.
The look of grief he gave me made it hard to judge him.
“Do you know how long I’ve protected her, looked out for her?”
I began to wonder whether Duncan’s madness lay more in his inability to put Mary behind him than any of his more outlandish obsessions. (I had to try. I had to make the effort. Even if I knew how useless it was from the moment I entered the gallery.)
“Anyway,” he said, “it’s over now. I don’t think I’m long for Ambergris, at least not aboveground.”
“Going on another trip?” I asked.
“Not a trip. I wouldn’t be the first. There are others down there. In the dark, rejecting the false light, as Bonmot liked to say. It’s a choice. We all have a choice. So I think I’ll travel there again.”
“For good?” A panic threatened to overcome me, a panic that at first had no source.
“Probably. There isn’t much left aboveground for me.”
Which is when I realized, dear reader, that there wasn’t much left aboveground for me, either. What would it mean to be a tour guide for the rest of my days, fated to point out landmarks that would always be personal for me, signs of success and failure? What kind of life would that be? Would I wind up like my mother? Perhaps I would try to kill myself again at some point, when the loneliness of it got too bad. Or perhaps I would let it happen to me, go through the same routines day after day, allow myself to fall into repetitions that masked the truth. And some days wonder, Did Duncan make it? Did he find some kind of final truth? Did he find some kind of final happiness? Could it have worked for me?
It might seem more like surrender to you, but right now it feels like defiance.