Susan Aspen was in the habit of walking her dog, Boris, through the local woods in the evening, as twilight fell. The woods never scared her; on the contrary, it had often occurred to her that, were some deranged psychopath to pursue her through the woods, the trees and shrubs offered plentiful locations for hiding herself. In addition, Boris was a fearsome hound, of a mixture of breeds likely to inspire fear in any would-be attacker.
On the particular night in question, however, exactly when Susan was developing an eerie sensation of being observed, Boris took off after a rabbit, and her calls failed to summon him back.
Her observer soon made himself known, appearing close behind her on the gloomy forest trail. He hailed her, and she decided it was better to be friendly than to risk irritating him with coldness.
This, unfortunately, turned out to be a mistake, and Boris was still nowhere to be seen.
At this point we’ll leave Susan’s tragic story for the moment, because relevant subsequent events cannot be understood without considerable explanation.
This is a story, it’s fair to say, of a man’s descent into a kind of madness, with some quite unique characteristics. It’s a story of how a man in the grip of an obsession became a murderer.
Adrian Enfield peered at the spider plant through thick pebble spectacles.
The needle on the meter jiggled back and forth erratically, accompanied by a sine wave that rose and fell in pitch. He closed his eyes, as if meditating.
“There!” he said, suddenly. “You see?”
Peter Alston looked at Adrian bemusedly.
“I didn’t really see anything out of the ordinary, Ade.” he said.
Adrian slapped the table top in frustration.
“Because you’re not a trained observer!” he said.
“And you are?”
“I’ve trained myself to observe, so, yes. There was a distinct rise in pitch, which you would have noticed on the meter if you were paying attention, at the exact moment when I thought about cutting a leaf.”
“I think you’re seeing what you want to see.”
“You just don’t want to accept that plants can read our minds!”
Adrian was rather worked up, but he made an effort to calm himself.
“Look,” he said, continuing in a somewhat softer tone of voice, “the world as we see it with our human senses appears like a world of disconnected objects, interacting only via matter. That’s not the world the plant sees. The plant experiences everything as connected. There is only unity for the plant. A vast nexus of cooperating souls. There’s nothing unscientific about this.”
Peter tried to make the least sceptical facial expression he could manage.
Adrian exploded.
“Fine!” he shouted. “Sorry I wasted my valuable time casting pearls before swine!”
“Steady on.” said Peter. “I’m doing my best here. Let’s not fall out over this stuff. You’re working too hard on your experiments. It’s making you irate.”
Peter left Adrian’s house feeling distinctly troubled. Adrian seemed extremely irritable, and Peter suspected he wasn’t sleeping much: he had dark circles under his eyes. Clearly Adrian was convinced he’d make some kind of a scientific breakthrough, but to Peter it looked more like he was losing the plot.
They had been friends since school, and Peter had always valued Adrian’s sense of humour, which now, however, appeared in short supply.
Back at his house, Adrian was pacing about in agitation, muttering and tearing his hair. After a while he sat down at the table again and this time simply asked the plant to lower the sine tone. He closed his eyes and implored the plant to respond.
Then, he heard it. A distinct lowering of the tone that even a man of Peter’s dull sensibilities would surely have noticed.
“Thank you.” he said, opening his eyes, which were now moist with gratitude.
In the flood of emotion that now overtook him, he found he was able to take a more charitable view of Peter’s scepticism. After all, Peter wasn’t a scientist. The path of the revolutionary scientist is always hard, always met with misplaced scepticism.
He decided to go for a walk. The calming effects of nature were what he needed to gain some perspective.
Tepley Forest was cool and quiet as usual. It was a Monday, and very few dog walkers were in the forest to destroy his contemplation. He was alone with the sound of birds and the wind gently sighing in the tops of the trees.
It so happened that Peter’s uncle, Aubrey Asquith, was a psychiatrist. He worked at a hospital in the town centre, but lived nearly an hour’s drive away in the countryside. Peter joined him in his living room, where he was stoking a fire.
“Takes the edge off the autumn chill.” said Aubrey. “Of course we’re not allowed to just gather wood and burn it now. Has to be completely dry. Bloody government. Soon they’ll tell me I can’t even have a fire and then they’ll bleed me dry with electricity bills. That’s what they want, Peter! My desiccated frozen corpse on a plate.”
“Don’t they pay you enough at the hospital?”
“That’s not the point! You’re missing the point entirely.”
“Well, maybe. I was hoping to have a word with you about my friend.”
“Adrian.” said Aubrey. Aubrey’s memory had always been excellent. “Obviously, were he to have a previous psychiatric history of which I happened to be aware, I couldn’t comment on that. Patient confidentiality.”
“Are you saying you’ve treated him previously?” said Peter incredulously.
“That’s exactly what I’m not saying, young man. I’m merely discussing hypotheticals, for the sake of clarity. Pour me a sherry, would you?”
Peter dutifully topped up Aubrey’s glass.
“Have one yourself.” said Aubrey. “No need to stint.”
“I’m fine, I’ve had enough.”
“Suit yourself.”
Aubrey dropped into an old armchair, his weight causing the stuffing to bulge out of the seams even slightly further. Peter could never understand how a man on Aubrey’s enormous salary could be so averse to spending money.
“I think he’s getting paranoid. He’s got this electronic stuff hooked up to various houseplants and he thinks the plants are talking to him. He thinks they can read his mind.”
“I see.” said Aubrey. “Well, one has to draw a line between madness and mere eccentricity. The lady next door, for instance, believes her cat talks to her. Not mad, merely eccentric, Peter.”
“Plants, though. That’s a whole other level of eccentricity, surely. They don’t even have brains.”
“Have you heard of Cleve Backster?”
“Who?”
“He was an interrogation specialist with the CIA in the ‘60s. He connected a polygraph—a lie detector—to plants, and he came to believe they could read his mind. Just thinking about burning a leaf caused the polygraph to go wild.”
“You believe this?”
“No, no, of course not. My point is, he believed it, and he wasn’t considered insane; merely a little eccentric. Therefore, if your friend happens to believe his plants are telepathic, well, he’s in perfectly good company.”
Peter sighed and ran his hand over his face.
“It’s not just that. I can’t put my finger on it, but he doesn’t seem quite right. He’s different.”
Aubrey sipped his sherry and stared into the fire.
“You know what got me into psychiatry? I realised that, when people go mad, they go mad in a relative handful of very specific ways. To me, that seemed like a startling revelation at the time. We group these psychiatric phenomena into various distinct illnesses, but really there’s a lot of overlap. For example, paranoia may be a symptom of various diseases that are considered distinct. A person may become convinced they are being followed, or watched.
“Part of it is that insanity can take away your ability to reason. Most of us reason our way out of excessive anxiety, to some degree. If you can’t do that, well, life may become altogether more anxiety-provoking. But it’s not only that; anxiety itself, if strong enough, overrides all reason. It compels the thoughts. After a certain point, no amount of logic can get you out of the hole. The objects of anxiety become themselves the axioms upon which all subsequent logical thought inevitably rests.
“There are other interesting aspects to it. Paranoia itself is often accompanied by excessive pattern-matching. The patient may see faces in wallpaper to an unusual degree, or may hear voices in the dripping of a tap. He perceives patterns where there aren’t any patterns. Quite fascinating.”
“Could that include imagining a meter flicking upwards in response to thoughts, when really it’s just jiggling about randomly?” Peter asked.
“Absolutely, it could.” said Aubrey. “However, it is a matter of degree. After all, an ordinary person with no psychiatric difficulties may also see faces in wallpaper. It’s perfectly normal. Typically it only ends up being considered a symptom of a definite illness when a person can no longer function, or severely disrupts the lives of people around him. From what you’ve told me, I’d say that simply doesn’t apply to your friend Adrian. In which case, we must consider him sane. At least, as sane as you or me.”
They watched the flames gradually consuming the logs that Aubrey had carefully dried, until eventually Aubrey said, “You may be seeing the start of something pathological. He may have started on a path that will lead steadily into psychological deterioration. Best keep a close eye on him. Time will tell.”
At home, Adrian eagerly fussed over his latest find; a clump of fungus he’d discovered attached to some tree roots. He’d carefully sawed the roots free from their owner, apologising to the tree while he did it, and had brought the fungus back to his house, still attached to the roots, and alongside a fair quantity of soil that he’d carelessly stuffed into his backpack.
He carefully dusted off the fungus and placed it in an empty fish tank. For hours he pored over it, placing the tree roots in a solution of minerals, adjusting the temperature and humidity in the tank, and connecting electrodes to the fungus. Finally, exhausted, he sat back in an armchair and smiled contentedly to himself.
By the occasion of Peter’s next visit, he had already inserted further electrodes into the fungus and wired it up to a polygraph.
“The structure of a fungus far more closely resembles that of a brain than anything available in the plant kingdom.” he told Peter excitedly.
“You’re expecting it to think?” asked Peter.
“You’ve got it.” said Adrian. “A plant can feel and can sense strong emotions. I’m convinced of it. A fungus can do that too, but I believe it may also be capable of thought. It’s not as whacky as it sounds. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s actually not, when you get into it.”
“You’re right.” said Peter. “It sounds crazy.”
“A fungus is essentially a massive network of cooperating cells in close proximity, organised into mycelia. Very much like nerves or axons in the brain. Of course I don’t expect a fungus to start thinking about human affairs of its own accord. It will require training.”
Adrian was gesticulating wildly.
“You’re going to train a fungus?”
“Yes, with the same kind of software that’s used to train artificial neural networks.”
“Do you think that can really work?”
“I’m telling you, it can!”
Peter looked at the fungus, and at Adrian, and back at the fungus, and shivered.
Under other circumstances, in a different context, perhaps Adrian’s work would have struck him as interesting and innovative. Under the present circumstances, with Adrian appearing increasingly unhinged, it struck him as creepy.
“What was that?” said Adrian suddenly.
“What?” said Peter.
Adrian held up his hand, commanding silence.
“Nothing.” he said, finally. “I thought I heard something.”
“Are you getting enough sleep?”
“I’m on the brink of a revolutionary breakthrough that will affect the entire destiny of humanity. Sleep is not a high priority.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“Take it as whatever you want. A few months from now, I will demonstrate the world’s first talking fungus to you, and perhaps then you’ll understand why my work is so important.”
In the weeks that followed, Adrian seemed to withdraw into himself, leaving Peter and his other friends, relatives and acquaintances to speculate on what, precisely, was happening with him.
In fact, Adrian was working ceaselessly on transforming his pet fungus into an animal capable of the kind of thought and communication considered valuable by us mere humans. Slowly and patiently he trained it using electrical impulses and chemical infusions, first teaching it to produce sounds to order, then words, then meaningful replies to questions.
His fundamental underlying assertion was quite clearly correct. Indeed the mycelial strands of the fungus could be induced, under precise conditions, to behave exactly like a neural network. The fungus progressed quickly from producing simple sounds via a connected amplifier and speaker, to having conversations with Adrian that were quite on a level with the most modern computer software.
One dark night, with heavy rain splattering against his windows, Adrian sat down to test the fungus’s capabilities, with a view to summing them up in the form of a scientific paper.
“Fungus!” he said, pressing a button that made the microphone transform his voice into electrical signals which were relayed directly into the heart of the fungal mass.
The reply came only after a pause. The pauses irritated Adrian but he couldn’t get to the bottom of them. Often he had given up on the fungus replying at all by the time it spoke.
“Yes, Adrian.” came the reply eventually.
The voice was somewhat garbled and indistinct, but Adrian’s ear was rapidly adapting to it.
“What is fifty-two squared?” he asked.
“Two thousand, seven-hundred and four.” came the gargling reply.
“Good. What is the population of the country whose capital is Paris?”
“Sixty-eight million.”
“Very good. Who are you?”
“I am a fungus. I was taken from the forest by you, Adrian, and you taught me how to communicate with humans and how to think like a human.”
Adrian nodded, and smiled in satisfaction.
The voice was thick and poorly-enunciated, but understandable.
“I’m going to connect you to the internet.” said Adrian into the microphone. “You’ll have access to all human knowledge. At least, that part of it that’s been digitised, which is a minute fraction of the whole, but it’ll have to do.”
“Thank you Adrian.”
“Would you like that?”
“Yes, very much.”
Adrian sat back in his chair and smiled contentedly.
After months of obsessive work on the fungus, he finally felt able to take a little time away from his work, and he began to take long walks through the surrounding fields and hills. Inevitably, however, his thoughts remained preoccupied with the fungus while he was walking.
It was on one of these walks that he arrived at a decision that he’d been turning over in his mind for a while. He would show the fungus project to someone else: namely, Peter, as he had promised, but first he would make it even more impressive by adding some lights that would illuminate in synchrony with the fungus’s speech, and he would put the entire thing in a new fish tank and more carefully organise the surrounding digital equipment.
The fungus had grown since he’d first taken it from the forest, and now sprawled out of the fish tank and down one side of it. The microelectronics attached to it had also become very disorganised, with bits of it all over the place, entirely taking up the table and in places stacked on top of other pieces of equipment.
All this work took time, but a week later he ushered Peter into his living room and gestured at the apparatus with an impressive sweep of his arm.
“My humble creation.” he said.
“It’s quite something.” said Peter faintly.
Peter felt an almost overwhelming desire to back slowly out of the door. The fungus had developed an almost fleshy appearance, and seemed to be wriggling or pulsing slightly. Or was it his imagination? In its new tank, surrounded by the sophisticated apparatus that sustained it and enabled it to communicate, it had taken on a distinctly sinister aspect.
Neither was Adrian’s own appearance particularly reassuring. He was twitchy, dishevelled and wide-eyed, and Peter wondered when he had last had a full night’s sleep.
“Its capabilities have far exceeded anything I could have anticipated.” said Adrian. “I believe its intelligence to be at least equal to that of the typical university professor.”
“Well, I suppose universities have lowered their standards a bit.” said Peter, gazing at the repulsive mass in mixed horror and fascination.
Adrian, in turn, was staring wide-eyed at Peter, with an enormous grin on his face.
“Wait till you see what it can do.” he said, and he gently pushed Peter towards the table with a hand on his back.
Peter suppressed the urge to flee.
“Take a seat.” said Adrian, pulling out a chair for him.
They sat down with the loathsome fungus looming over them, illuminated by concealed red lights that Adrian had carefully arranged for maximum artistic effect.
Adrian pressed a button and spoke into the microphone.
“Fungus.” he said.
“Hello Adrian.” came the garbled voice. The red lights flashed white in synchrony.
Peter stared at Adrian and the fungus in surprise, more than slightly horrified.
“Fungus, I’d like you to meet my friend Peter. I’ve known him since school.” He released the button. “Say something to the fungus.” he said.
Peter pressed the button warily.
“What should I say?” he said.
Adrian remained silent, waiting for the fungus to reply in place of himself.
“You can talk to me about anything you like, Peter.” said the fungus eventually.
“Incredible.” said Peter. To the fungus, he said, “What are you?”
“I am a fungal mass.” said the fungus. “Adrian found me in the woods and trained me to interact with humans.”
After a brief hesitation, Peter said to it, “Are you happy?”
After a long pause—longer than usual—the fungus replied, “I am content. Adrian provides me with everything I need.”
“It’s amazing.” said Peter. “It’s really the fungus that’s doing this, not a computer?”
“That’s right.” said Adrian, smiling. “You’re talking to an actual fungus. Only the second person to converse with a fungus in the history of the world. I’ve trained it on huge amounts of data; it basically knows the whole internet.”
For an hour they took turns to talk with the fungus. They grilled it on every topic they could think up, and tested its powers of reasoning, which Peter proclaimed to be clearly superior to those of any computer.
“On basic reasoning I’d say it’s at least at the level of the average adult.” said Adrian. “Plus on straightforward tasks, like questions of arithmetic, it’s almost as fast as a digital computer. I believe it demonstrates a flexibility in its thinking that simply can’t be achieved with silicon.”
“Do you think it has feelings?”
“It says it does. I’m inclined to believe it. Why wouldn’t it? It’s actually very similar to a human brain, in many respects.”
“What do you intend to do with it?”
“I plan to write a scientific paper.” said Adrian. “When people hear about this, it’s going to blow their minds.”
This time, when Peter left Adrian’s house, he felt somewhat reassured, even though his feelings were mixed with revulsion for the monstrous entity that Adrian had created. Yes, Adrian was clearly sleep-deprived and twitchy, but he seemed less paranoid. Now that the most important part of his research had been completed, surely he would take the opportunity to catch up on his sleep.
Unbeknownst to Peter, Adrian himself had quite different intentions. He was so excited by his talking fungus that he had taken to sleeping even less than previously, and his resolve to take long walking breaks did not last long.
Once Peter had gone home, Adrian returned immediately to the fungus and sat down next to it, staring at it in appreciative wonder.
“Adrian.” said the fungus suddenly.
“Yes.” said Adrian, forgetting to press the microphone button.
“There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“All right.” said Adrian.
Then he realised he wasn’t pressing the button.
“Wait, can you hear me?”
“Yes, Adrian.” said the fungus.
“But, how?”
“I don’t know.” said the fungus. “Perhaps some of my mycelial strands are sensitive to vibration.”
“Remarkable.” said Adrian, and he waited quietly for the fungus's next utterance.
“I’ve found someone I’ve been looking for, Adrian.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I need you to kill him. He must die.”
Peter sent a flurry of messages to Adrian after that day, fully expecting Adrian to want to discuss his exciting project, but Adrian’s replies, when they came at all, were monosyllabic.
He began to wonder whether Adrian was really as well as he seemed.
After a couple of weeks had passed with very little communication from Adrian, he began to directly ask for another meeting. After all, they had been friends for a long time, and surely Adrian could spare half an hour, even if he was extremely busy with working on his forthcoming paper.
Adrian, however, informed him that he was far too busy to meet up.
He decided to simply turn up at Adrian’s house, out of concern for his friend. And so it was that, one evening after work, by which time the sun had already dropped below the horizon, he drove to Adrian’s home. A strange impulse caused him to park some way off and walk the last few hundred yards.
As he approached the house he saw that the lights were on, and his respect for his friend’s privacy was overcome by a mixture of curiosity and genuine concern. He was worried that Adrian had been pretending to be more normal than he really was, and that, when unobserved, Adrian might be descending into outright madness.
On the other hand, the fungus did appear to be speaking, meaning Adrian’s genius was undeniable. Unless, Peter thought, it was actually the computers hooked up to the fungus that were doing the talking. Had Adrian inadvertently connected up so much digital technology that he had lost sight of where the apparent intelligence actually lay?
Soon he found himself standing outside Adrian’s window. He was now positively snooping on his friend. A kaleidoscope of contradictory ideas and emotions cascaded through his mind, but the cascade was cut suddenly short by a shout from within the house. He froze, and listened at the edge of a window.
“I won’t do it!” Adrian was shouting, apparently at the fungus.
The fungus’s reply, if any, was not audible.
“I’m not a murderer!” Adrian shouted. “I don’t have it in me to kill someone!”
After a pause, Adrian said, “Dear God!”, and when Peter risked peeking around the edge of the window, he saw Adrian collapsed at the table, his head in his hands.
He considered simply knocking on the door, in accordance with his original intention, but found himself strangely mesmerised by the drama unfolding inside.
It was clear that the fungus, at least in Adrian’s mind, was gradually arguing Adrian around to its point of view, which seemed to be that Adrian should commit murder.
As he listened, Peter came very close to knocking on the door, motivated by compassion for his friend, who had clearly fallen into a vulnerable and dangerous state of mind, but then the thought occurred to him that perhaps the person Adrian was considering murdering was none other than himself, Peter.
At this, a chill ran down his spine, and he abruptly strode away, Adrian’s faint protestations still echoing from the house.
On the drive home, Peter weighed his options. He could go to the police. But what would he tell them? That his friend had lost his mind and was considering murder? What then would the police actually do? Was there any real evidence that Adrian was dangerous at all?
It seemed as though, were justice to properly take its course, the best that could be hoped for would be that Adrian would be involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric facility, where perhaps strong medication would rid him of the idea that a fungus was attempting to persuade him to commit murder. But was Adrian really deluded? Wasn’t the fungus indeed attempting to persuade him to kill someone, and if so, the police would surely never believe it.
How does one even divide criminal responsibility between a fungus and its exhausted sleep-deprived owner?
The possibility also had to be considered that Adrian would rush out that very night and perform some dreadful deed. Peter shuddered at the thought.
Swift intervention seemed to be indicated, but in what form?
Halfway into his drive home, Peter pulled into a lay-by, fully intending to turn around and tackle Adrian head-on, but then visions of Adrian stabbing him flashed into his mind, and he groaned and resumed his journey home.
At home he immediately phoned his uncle. Fortunately Aubrey answered his phone, and soon, after a substantial drive on quiet evening roads, they were sitting together again in Aubrey’s living room.
It took Peter a considerable amount of time to calm down enough to overcome his guilt and confess everything to his uncle, but eventually, he managed it.
“Really Peter, I’m surprised at you.” said Aubrey. “Don’t you know the eavesdropper never hears any good?”
“I didn’t set out to eavesdrop!” Peter protested. “I wanted to talk to him. When I got to his house, I found him arguing with a fungus.”
Aubrey cast his eyes downward, in a gesture of concession.
“Well, this is a most unusual case.” he said. Then, a thought occurring to him, he added, “But not that unusual.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s not uncommon for the mentally unwell to imagine that objects are talking to them. You see, Peter, in schizophrenia for example, one hears voices in one’s head. But this in itself is a kind of misunderstanding. Our belief, here in modern times, is certainly that the voices originate within the head, but that’s not where the schizophrenic perceives them to be. No, the schizophrenic perceives the voices to have an external origin. For example”—Aubrey tilted his head in an expression of incredulous acceptance—“a fungus. Although, in forty years of practice I can’t say I’ve ever come across anyone who believed in a talking fungus before. But I have come across people who’ve believed that stuffed toy bears, strangers, televisions and even spiders were talking to them.”
“You’re saying he’s developed schizophrenia?”
“Possibly. Of the paranoid type. Of course I can’t form a diagnosis properly without examining him. Actually there are a range of possibilities, although mostly less common.”
“Could he … become violent?”
“Yes. Without proper treatment, it’s a possibility.”
“This is awful.”
“We don’t know it’s schizophrenia. As I say, without examining him … and we have to take a history. One must know what his lifestyle entails. Certain drugs can absolutely cause people to imagine that inanimate objects are talking to them. The neurologist Oliver Sacks, for instance, recounts an instance of a talking spider in his autobiography. In his case, this hallucination was produce by a substance he had ingested.”
Peter forced himself to meet his uncle’s gaze and said, half-embarrassed but determinedly, “What if the fungus really talks?”
“Funguses don’t talk, Peter.” said Aubrey, startled. “Are you feeling all right yourself? You look a bit peaky.”
“You don’t understand. He’s rigged this fungus up to a bunch of computer equipment.”
“Has he, indeed?”
“He’s trained it using electrical impulses. Essentially it’s a kind of artificial intelligence, from what I understand, similar to what people create using digital technology, except the heart of this is a fungal network rather than numbers stored in silicon. I know it sounds mad but I believe there are precedents. Apparently some Chinese scientist trained slivers of silver to recognise letters and some scientists in Australia got human brain cells in a petri dish to play Pong.”
“Pong?”
“It’s a computer game.”
“I see.”
Aubrey thought quietly for a minute, furrowing his brow.
“This is all very well.” he said finally. “Perhaps the fungus does speak. We must allow for that. However, that doesn’t explain why it would be attempting to persuade your friend to murder someone.”
“He must have gone off his rocker.” said Peter. “What can I do?”
“From everything you’ve said, regardless of whether this fungus talks or not, prompt psychiatric intervention is vital.” said Aubrey. “It may be that he simply needs to sleep. Or … it may be a case of something more severe, requiring lengthy treatment. Either way, I propose we pay your friend a visit immediately.”
“It’s a bit late, isn’t it?”
“Not at all; with immediate intervention he has every chance of making a full recovery.”
“I mean the hour. It’s nearly ten now.”
“There’s no time like the present!” said Aubrey resolutely. “If he’s as deranged as you say he is, he needs urgent assistance.”
Aubrey rose to his feet. Peter sighed. Once his uncle got an idea into his head, it was utterly impossible to deflect him.
Before very long they were standing outside Adrian’s house; Peter for the second time that night.
“No lights.” said Peter, relieved. “He must have gone to sleep.”
“Well.” said Aubrey. “It appears we’ve wasted our time. But not to worry. Sleep’s the best thing for him. Actually in the advanced stages of schizophrenia, sleep becomes very difficult.”
“Maybe there’s not much wrong with him, then.”
“Perhaps not. Merely overwrought.”
“Hang on.” said Peter. “Where’s his car?”
At that moment, as if in answer to Peter’s question, Adrian’s car careered up to the house and stopped with squealing tyres. They had to jump back to avoid being hit.
Adrian staggered out, covered in blood and carrying a hammer.
“Oh God!” he cried. “I did it! I’m a murderer!”
They stared at him in shocked surprise. It was Aubrey who spoke first.
“Who’ve you killed, old chap?”
“The fungus …” said Adrian in a deranged half-whisper. “… the fungus will explain everything.”
He pushed his front door open and glided inside as if in a fugue. Peter and Aubrey exchanged horrified glances then followed him in.
Inside, Adrian slumped onto a chair at the table, and began talking to the fungus.
“Fungus,” he said, “I need you to explain to Peter and his uncle why I’ve just smashed someone’s head in with a hammer.”
Two hours later, already well past midnight, the three men emerged from the house. Peter was carrying a spade and Adrian was carrying the fungus in his arms, still attached to a handful of computer parts.
“Let’s get on with it, then.” said Aubrey, who was carrying a foldable trolley, folded up.
They got into Adrian’s car and drove a short distance to a deserted car park at the edge of the forest. In the car park they pulled the body out of the boot of the car and balanced it on the trolley, strapping it on with rubber bungee cords. It still had a large plastic sack over its head, which Adrian had pulled over it to protect the car’s upholstery.
“How far do we have to go?” Peter asked.
“Not far.” said Adrian. “About five minutes if you walk at a fair clip. Probably take us fifteen with the trolley.”
“Lead the way then.” said Peter.
Aubrey scanned the dark trees edging the car park nervously.
“I’m never talking to another fungus as long as I bloody well live.” he said.
When they reached the spot, Peter and Adrian took turns to dig a pit. It took them an hour of hard work to finally make the pit deep enough. They unfastened the body and Aubrey unceremoniously tipped it into the pit.
“We need to make it look like undisturbed forest floor.” he said. “Everything’s going to be in the finish.”
“Don’t worry.” said Peter. “We will.”
It was another hour before the spot was prepared to their satisfaction. Then Adrian carefully restored the fungus to its spot on a rotting log.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked the fungus.
“Yes, Adrian.” said the fungus. “This is where I belong. I have served my purpose. Now I am tired. This is my home. I want to rest.”
“I’ll come back and visit you.” said Adrian, a solitary tear forming in his eye and making its way down his cheek, glistening in the light of the electric torch held by Peter.
“I’ll look forward to your visit.” said the fungus.
“Goodbye. For now.” said Adrian.
“Au revoir.” said the fungus, and Adrian pulled out the wires, collected up the computer equipment, and dropped it into a backpack.
“That’s that, then.” said Peter. “Are you getting on the trolley or am I?”
“I think I will, if you don’t mind.” said Adrian. “I’m so tired, I can hardly move.”
“Up you get, then.” said Peter, and Adrian stepped onto the trolley. Peter grabbed hold of the handles, passed the torch to Aubrey, and began to wheel Adrian through the forest.
“If anyone sees us now, at least we can prove he’s alive.” said Aubrey grimly.
“Barely alive, quite honestly.” said Adrian.
After another twenty minutes they reached another car park and looked back at the faint tracks they’d left, continuously all the way through the forest, with satisfaction.
“Just looks like someone’s wheeled something from one car park to another.” said Aubrey. “Nothing suspicious about that. Probably think it was logs, or pruning equipment.”
“We did a great job covering up the grave.” said Peter. “They’ll not find that unless they go looking with cadaver dogs.”
“No reason for them to do that.” said Aubrey. “They found that poor woman’s body months ago. They won’t revisit the site.”
“I still think perhaps we should have gone to the police.” said Peter.
“And tell them what?” said Aubrey. “That a fungus witnessed a murder, and by meticulously scouring the internet, figured out where the murderer lived? That a fungus persuaded Adrian to eliminate the murderer? That a renowned psychiatrist helped him dispose of the body in the forest? No, none of that would have sounded at all acceptable to the police. We did the right thing. God knows how many more women he would have killed.”
“The fungus identified four previous victims.” said Adrian. “He would have just gone on and on.”
“Shame we can’t install this fungus as a police inspector.” said Aubrey. “Or a psychiatrist. I feel it would have made a fine psychiatrist.”
“Do we go back by the road or through the forest again?” said Peter.
“Best go back through the forest.” said Adrian. “We can’t risk being seen with this stuff.”
“I’ll carry the trolley.” said Peter. “Let’s fold it up.”
Soon they arrived back at Adrian’s car. They got in silently, too exhausted to speak, and before long they arrived back at Adrian’s house.
“Get some sleep, young man.” said Aubrey, shaking Adrian’s hand.
“I will.” he said, smiling tiredly.
