Chapter 1

Joshua Marsh was not where he thought he would be in life.

He was nearly forty and had accomplished almost nothing that he had thought he would. His career had stalled, the money he had to pay to his ex-wife for child support was crippling him, and the opportunity he thought would turn everything around had been nothing but a disaster.

Joshua was a field researcher in a sub-branch of a major pharmacological company - not something that traditionally paid well. He was diligent in his job, but he’d never made the kind of breakthrough that would have cemented his career. To start with, his prospects had been held back by the fact that he had knocked up his girlfriend Annie in his final years at college. At twenty-two years old, Joshua had been faced with the terrifying prospect of fatherhood - and what was worse was that he’d had to play the part of responsible adult as his girlfriend at the time was a fresh-faced eighteen year old in her first year of study. They’d tried to do the right thing and make it work - but had lasted barely two years together before they had filed for divorce. Although their split had started out amicable, as time had passed Annie had become more and more hostile towards him - blaming and resenting him for the fact that she was saddled with a child during the ‘best years of her life’.

Their child was a little girl that they had named Claire, and in the beginning Joshua considered her to be the best thing in his life. Claire was a bubbly and vivacious girl - with a cute face, honey-blonde hair, and striking blue-grey eyes. Even though Joshua only got to have her one week a month, he very much looked forward to their time together. Unfortunately though, as Claire got older her behaviour changed for the worse.

Joshua could only assume that Annie had been making an effort to turn his daughter against him. As time passed he noted that Claire was starting to become distant with him - no longer showing or wanting affection. It gradually got to the point where she was being opening hostile - all but sneering whenever he tried to speak to her. Joshua had considered forgoing his visitation rights, but held off doing so - hoping that his girl would come around. He was beginning to give up on that hope though, as Claire - now in her final year of high school - seemed to actively despise him. She had blossomed in the last few years - her cute face morphing into the kind of beauty that wouldn’t look out of place upon a model. On top of that her body had developed a set of curves that seemed hand-tailored for sin; Joshua had to admit to himself that he had checked out his daughter more than once - shaking his head in rueful admiration at just how sexy she was becoming. Not that he had much chance to look at her though - every time Claire came to stay with him she spent most of the time in her room or out with friends. Her obvious attempts at avoiding him had initially saddened Joshua, but as time progressed a spark of anger had been growing inside of him.

If his personal life being a mess wasn’t bad enough, Joshua was now dealing with the fact that his latest gambit career-wise had been an unmitigated cluster-fuck. He had volunteered to join a research expedition deep into a jungle that was situated in an isolated and barely explored valley. The time-frame for the trip was tentatively scheduled for two months - his ex-wife had thrown a tantrum about the fact he wouldn’t be able to take their daughter while he was away; something to do with the fact that she’d made plans with the guy she was currently screwing. She couldn’t exactly stop him from going however, and she’d had to make do with uttering threats that he would regret fucking her plans around.

The expedition had started out fine - it was a small research team consisting of Joshua and five others. He was the only new person in the group - the other team members had been to the jungle in question before, but this time they were planning on pushing further into the depths than they had gone previously. It had been gruelling and exhausting work - making their way through the undergrowth. It had been the most challenging research trip that Joshua had ever been on, but he’d experienced a swelling feeling of accomplishment when they had reached their destination. That feeling had only increased when they almost immediately started discovering and cataloging what they were sure were undiscovered species of plants.

Unfortunately, things quickly took a turn for the worse.

Everything went wrong when they were nearing the end of their trip, even though Joshua was the only one who retained a memory of what had actually happened. While he had been at their basecamp inputting data into a computer, the other five team members had stumbled across an unknown species of fungi. The first that Joshua had known of it was when he noted that the others were very late in getting back to the camp. He had gone looking for them and had eventually found them in an oddly shaped small clearing - standing in a rough circle and not moving at all. Something about their slack posture gave him pause, and it made Joshua baulk at going any closer. He had called out - trying to get their attention, but all that happened was that they shuffled around slowly on the spot to face him; their features terrifyingly blank. He then decided that there was nothing for it - he’d have to walk out to them if he wanted to help his colleagues. Just then a light breeze sprung up and he felt it caress his face.

Joshua had lost a bit of time at this point - the next thing he knew it was the late afternoon, and he was standing a few feet into the clearing, and it looked like the other team members hadn’t moved at all. He looked down at his feet confused - it appeared he had only made it few steps before he had blacked out. Spooked, he’d retreated further from the clearing and took the opportunity to look closely at the surrounding area.

The more he took in, the more sinister this clearing became. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but there appeared to be a disproportionally large number of carrion within the break in jungle. Everywhere he looked there were small animals decaying and clusters of bones. Around each carcass was a solid clump of an innocent appearing fungus. As Joshua watched, a light breeze sprung up again and he noticed a fine mist of spores rise up from the group of fungi. Could that have been what happened to him? It didn’t seem likely, but just in case he was going to take some precautions.

He had hurried back to the camp to collect some protective gear - chiefly a face mask. By the time he’d made it back to the clearing it was almost nightfall. It had taken a great deal of courage for Joshua to walk into that clearing, but he’d managed it. When he got to them, the five researchers were still blank and appeared completely unaware of anything around them. He tried shouting their names and even shaking them, but apart from them turning to face him when he said their names he got no reaction at all.

He discovered a solution completely by accident. Frustrated and scared, he broke down and swore - yelling at them to get the fuck out of the clearing. It spooked him even more when they obediently and blankly obeyed - shuffling with an odd and loose gait until they had reached the jungle - where they then stopped once more.

It appeared that whatever their condition was, they could follow directions. Joshua got them up and moving and back to the basecamp - hoping that once they were away from the area they would return to normal. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case - the stood milling about the camp while showing no interest in their surroundings. Giving up for the moment - it was late and they were far from any available help - Joshua got them all fed and watered before putting them into their tents. He fervently hoped all would be normal in the morning.

Unfortunately that wasn’t to be the case. All five of his colleagues remained in the fugue-like state; oblivious and pliant, they obeyed any order given to them but were incapable of caring for themselves. It was creepy how they just obediently did whatever he told them to do. Joshua recalled the clearing of death, and shuddered when he considered that if he had gone with them that morning they would all currently be standing out there until they died of exposure. It must be those odd fungal spores that were the cause.

Joshua decided to give it one more day before sending an SOS - a decision that would prove costly. He still hoped that the other five researchers would snap out of it eventually like he had, but regardless he decided he should probably go back to the clearing to collect samples of the mysterious fungi. He was certain he had only breathed in a tiny amount of the spores, but he had no clue as to how much the other five researchers had been exposed to. If his colleague’s conditions didn’t improve they would need data on the root cause in order to investigate what was wrong with them.

In another example of the universe piling it on against them, Joshua was on his way back with the fungal spore samples when a massive rain storm struck. To say it was raining was to do a huge disservice to just how torrential the deluge was. It had felt closer to living through a monsoon season instead of a mere storm. It rained for days on end, and Joshua was soon at his limit in trying to keep all his helpless colleagues safe. When it was finally over, the damage was extensive.

Nearly all the samples they had collected over the course of the expedition were ruined, as well as every piece of electronic equipment that they had brought. There was to be no calling for help now. The only thing left intact were the fungal spores and that was only because Joshua had taken extreme care in keeping them safe. The new danger to be faced was that while they still had food and supplies, they wouldn’t last forever.

In the end it was almost a full month until Joshua’s colleagues began to come out of their fugue state. It was a slow process and they remained confused and delusional. Even when they improved, they retained no memory whatsoever of anything they had experienced after being in contact with the spores. They didn’t even remember finding them to begin with.

Joshua had been ordering them all around for over a month - making sure they were clean and fed. He’d had to deal with all their bodily functions and issues - degrading things that he was sure they would have been mortified by had they any recollection of it. On top of that, he was startled to note that they retained some aspects of behaviour that he had ordered them to do - even towards the end of their recovery when they were most of the way to normal, they all still practically did everything that needed doing; for example the camp chores that he had been telling them to do all this time they now did automatically. It seemed that they had imprinted on his commands somehow - they weren’t aware of it, but they still subconsciously followed the directions he had given them while they were under the influence of the spores.

Even though they had finally snapped out of it, it was a gruelling trek out of the jungle. When they eventually emerged, the final kick in the teeth was revealed.

Joshua didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t what was waiting for them. While they had been missing and overdue to return, their funding had been cut - a typical soulless corporate decision about profit and loss - and their failures in the field were widely dismissed as bumbling academics who had brought disaster upon themselves through being underprepared and unsuited for such an ambitious expedition; a theory that seemed accurate given just how confused and unsure the team was when they returned.

Joshua had intended to use the spores he had collected - the only thing that he’d managed to salvage from the expedition - as evidence for what had occurred, but everything happened so fast. He wasn’t proud of it - and indeed, still felt a little guilty - but as soon as he was confronted with the scathing rebukes and financial punishment that was inflicted on them, he instead held his tongue. His colleagues were getting better every day, and he found that he had no desire to provide something that might be an incredible discovery to a company that was treating him so terribly. He felt like it could be his ticket out of the rut that he found himself in - the anaesthetic properties of the fungal spores alone could be groundbreaking!

So - after one nerve-wracking trip back into the country with his smuggled collection of fungal spore samples - Joshua found himself back in his old life and apartment with the strange new feeling of hope at last. He set about immediately constructing what he needed to cultivate more samples - he’d decided he would need to propagate the fungus so he would always have it on hand. Fortunately his apartment was an old-style bottom floor affair - he had access to a small private sub-basement below ground. After adding some glass terrarium cases and setting up a humidifier, Joshua was all set. The hardest part was getting the soil pH just right, but as he’d had a long time to study the fungus in its natural habitat he soon had it all sorted out.

He was so caught up and overworked - spending his day doing dreary lab work at his job and then spending most of the night on his own special project - that it completely slipped his mind when the time came for Claire to have her monthly stay with him.

He answered the door on a Saturday morning - he had no idea how long the loud knocking had been going on for - to find his ex-wife and daughter waiting angrily at the threshold.

“Are you getting off on making us wait out here or something?” Annie angrily spat at him as soon as he opened the door. “I have places to be - I don’t have time to wait while you’re pulling some kind of bullshit power play.”

“Um.” Joshua mumbled. He rubbed at his eyes and then looked at his watch - he had no idea what time it was. “I was downstairs. Working on something. Sorry, I didn’t hear -”

“Save it.” Annie said scathingly. “And whats with your clothes? You look like shit!”

“Oh.” Joshua said. He looked down at his body and saw that the clothes he was wearing were crumpled and dirty. He tried to laugh it off. “Yeah - I think a shower is in order, right? I lost track of time - I was working on something promising you see -”

“Whatever.” Annie said, cutting him off dismissively. “Like I care about whatever you’re ‘working on’. Unlike you I actually have things to do - and you’ve made Claire wait long enough.”

“Uh, yeah.” Joshua said weakly. He looked down at his daughter. “Hi, sweetie - sorry I didn’t hear you knocking. Have you been well?”

Claire - looking very fetching in a small pair of jean-shorts and a figure-hugging singlet - gave him a disinterested frown and didn’t bother answering. Joshua sighed to himself - no change there then. He negotiated the tricky conversational steps in finally getting his ex to leave - even though she was insisting she was running late and had to go, Annie seemed very content to stay at his door delivering barbs and insults. Claire and pushed passed him with her bag in the meantime, and after her mother had gone, Joshua had found his daughter in the kitchen.

She was looking in disgust at the mess of dishes piled in the sink, and Joshua suddenly felt ashamed and embarrassed at the state of his house.

“Sorry about the mess, Claire.” He muttered, giving her a shame-faced smile. Luckily he knew her bedroom was the only clean room in the house - he didn’t go in there when she was at her mother’s place. “Why don’t you go and get comfortable and unpack while I give this place a quick tidy.”