The remains of dozens of bodies fill the room, all lying or crouched on the floor in postures of pained worship. Crotter worked as a cell tower technician, and he found another way to transmit his message in this afterlife. In his diaries he had written about the voices he heard at the tops of the towers, the humming dialogue with what he thought was God. God was speaking through him. God had found him, and this is His cathedral.

And maybe they hear it now. A whispering. It seems to come from all around them, warning them away or urging them forward. The air feels thick enough to swim through. Mia leads the way cautiously, stepping around the molten, rotted bodies. Then the three of them stand before him, only inches away. Maybe there is a ripple through the spongy floor, like the twitch of a muscle. Maybe one of the black eyes appears to widen with knowledge, their reflections captured in its inky globe.

And then, in a surge, the room comes to life. The coral formations discharge and the black wiry hairs whiz through the air and bite their skin, piercing them like thorns. The bodies come unstuck and muddily slop their way toward them with a sound like rutting pigs. Nora fires her pistol, making the dim air strobe with the muzzle flash, but the bullets have no effect beyond splashing their skin. When Jack punches one of them, his hand is swallowed up by its chest and won’t come out, cemented into place. The things circle around Jack, Nora, and Mia in a steadily closing knot. Their goal seems less to strike than to grapple, to cling and smother, to bury, to make them stay, to make them theirs.

Only Mia has any effect on them. She hacks up a bile that melts the face off one supplicant. She hardens her arm into a plated bludgeon and knocks another onto its back; it splatters into a mess of porridge and bones.

Then she climbs up the wall, finding her grip in the ribbed strands of hyphae. There is a sound of guttural exhalation as Crotter’s mouth expels a chimney-black cloud of spores, hazing the air of the room. She slams her hand directly into the source of it and pushes, pushes, all the way up to her shoulder. The teeth clamp down and she lets out a tiny scream that Jack and Nora can hear through their whole bodies.

Then she yanks back and rips out what looks like a squirming black squid. Its tentacles lash at her, tangling the air. She grits her teeth and squeezes her fist, strangling the brain of the thing until the pulp of it oozes between her fingers.