CHRYSALIS Read online

  CHRYSALIS

  WALTER ERICKSON

  1

  The two men stood on either side of the shallow grave, long handled spades digging rhythmically into the freshly mounded earth, shoveling it back into the hole they’d so recently dug. The spades made a pleasing sound as they dug into the soft, fresh loam. Thhhukkk, they went, a drawn out explosive sort of sound, to be followed by the equally pleasing shwoof of the dirt being swung from the spade into the hole.

  “Too shallow,” one of the men said, the first words spoken in some time. “Too shallow by far.”

  “Deep enough for Old Bo,” the second man said.

  “Aye, but I like not the way he’s shifted. He’ll not be completely covered.”

  In the grave, on his side, eyes open, lay a large black dog, heavy bodied and deeply muscled, short ears flat against his head, thick black coat covered with mud, a large wooden stake thrust violently through his body.

  “It’s the stake, you see,” the first man said. “He’s twisted, and the stake be showin’ above the ground.”

  He pushed on the stake with his spade, forcing it down, twisting the body further in the process, jamming the top of the stake into the side of the grave. A low whisper rose from the dog, a sigh, a softly expelled breath, though no visible movement, not even of the eyes.

  “That's good,” the other man said, and they resumed their shoveling.

  They were near the edge of the lake, between the lake and the yellow sulfur cones, in one of the many narrow furrows of soft earth between wide ribbons of hardened basalt. They worked swiftly, their moving forms black against the saffron glow, for the flow of lava from the sulfur cones was constant, and while one never knew in which direction the next ribbon of molten rock would flow, they did know it would be well not to be caught in one of the furrows.

  Thhukk shwoof, thhukk shwoof. They filled the grave and patted down the loose dirt. One of the men glanced up into the yellow sky.

  “Rain,” he said. The other glanced skyward and felt the drops.

  “Old Bo loved the rain,” the first man said.

  The second man, still looking skyward, said, “Well, it looks like he be getting his fill of it tonight.”

  They shouldered their shovels and walked quickly down the furrow, nimbly clambering over the hard basaltic fingers, heading for the edge of the lake and the safety of the high road.

  2

  He sat quietly at his rosewood desk, in his rosewood paneled office, on the sixteenth floor of a reasonably priced office building in downtown Philadelphia, just a few short blocks from City Hall, a hop and a skip from the Interstate, and a short walk to his new, and still uncomfortable, bachelor digs. His name was Simon Pure, as was his father's and his father's father's, but he disdained the Roman numeral, for he was essentially a modest man. He was not a particularly large man, perhaps a shade over six feet, nor was he particularly muscular, though he took pride in his appearance. Neither was he particularly handsome, though there were those who thought him reasonably attractive. He had dark hair, and warm, dark blue eyes. His square, forceful chin contrasted sharply with his fingers, which were long and delicate. They were surgeon's fingers, which was what, in fact, he was.

  His office lights were on, warm and comforting, for it was late afternoon, early evening, almost dark, in that gray time of year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. He found himself wondering, not for the first time, if perhaps he hadn’t made a mistake in giving up his position as Chief of Neurosurgery at Children's Hospital to act out his fantasy. He remembered how his analyst had tiptoed around it, and he smiled briefly.

  “Fantasies can be quite real,” Dr. Posner had said, his face serious and concerned. “Perfectly healthy, of course, unless one gets caught up in them.”

  “An indulgence,” Simon had smiled. “A temporary respite, if you will. I’m thirty-eight years old, and at the top of my profession. What is there ahead of me but more of the same? A loveless marriage has just come to an end. I have more money than I’ll ever need, thanks to dad, but I only have one life. I’m going to spend some of that life being who I really want to be.”

  “Sam Spade seems an odd choice.”

  Simon smiled and corrected him. “Not Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe.”

  “Long dead fictional private detectives seems an odd choice for a fantasy,” Posner insisted.

  “They aren’t dead to me.”

  “But to everyone else they are. You are not alone, you know. I am informed there are any number of FantasyLife detectives, people who believe themselves to be the Thin Man or Nero Wolfe. Most of these people have never read the books, they only know them from old movies. You and they are living a fantasy within a fantasy.”

  The memory caused him to look away from the rapidly darkening windows. Of course, he thought, there’s more to it than that. There always is. He remembered the day he’d come home from fourteen hours of surgery to find a letter from Eloise, a rather rambling letter, full of accusation, full of sorrow. Underneath the crabbed handwriting, underneath the violet ink, underneath the anger and recriminations, lay the boundless gulf that had come to separate them. He had sensed the growing distance between them, had seen it in her eyes, had heard it in her voice, had come to understand, finally, that she found him distasteful. They hadn’t slept together for years, neither of them wanting nor needing anything from the other. He knew it was just a question of time, really, until one of them decided that enough was enough, scandal and social position and family be damned.

  So there it was. One line in the crabbed and crooked violet handwriting stuck in his mind, the line that said she was going to begin a new life. He’d thought instantly that that seemed a wonderful thing to do. He closed his eyes and the handwritten sentence came into his mind. He saw again the ill-formed letters and wondered if she’d have been a different person had she been taught the Palmer method of penmanship as a child. He remembered the exercise, drawing the free flowing circles, all the way across the page, a long coil of soft pencil loops. He remembered how pleased he was to be able to form the coil of perfect circles, followed by a coil of perfect ellipses, all within the ruled lines of his copy tablet. Yes, there was much to be said for the Palmer method of penmanship. It not only freed your wrist and arm and fingers from the natural tendency to write cramped and crabby letters, it freed your mind as well, for he was convinced that cramped and crabby penmanship betokened a cramped and crabby mind. “Free the fingers,” Miss Foster would say, walking noiselessly between the rows of desks, examining the penciled loops and whorls, “free the fingers and the mind will follow.” He believed her then, and he believed her now.

  He looked at his watch. Five-fifteen and fully dark, time to think about closing the old shop for another day. Marykate had left early, saying she had an errand to run, and she’d be ready when he called. Dinner at La Bianca, this year's finest restaurant, or at least this year's most expensive. They had dinner there every Tuesday, and he wondered if perhaps a change might be in order. He did not want her thinking him unimaginative.

  He thought about Marykate, and decided he’d made an excellent selection from the wide array of choices FantasyLife provided. A fantasy private investigator needed a fantasy secretary, and she was certainly that. Supplied as part of the FantasyLife detective package, along with a fully equipped office, a private investigator's license, and a steady supply of cases, she was stunningly beautiful, tall and willowy, with shimmering auburn hair, emerald green eyes, and the high cheekbones of the true redhead. She bubbled energy and sensuality, and seemed, on the occasions he had taken her to bed, to be completely uninhibited. He wasn’t certain what he thought of her, the face and voice of his analyst kept intruding on those thoughts, but he was certain she’d been taught the Palmer met
hod of penmanship.

  “She’s a fantasy,” Dr. Posner said, and Simon had shaken his head in agreement.

  “She’s a fantasy secretary for a fantasy Philip Marlowe,” Dr. Posner insisted, and Simon had said wearily, “I know.”

  Nonetheless, there’s a difference between a fantasy and a dream, and Simon Pure was living a dream. There really was an office, and he really was a newly licensed private investigator. Thanks to the folks at FantasyLife, he really did have a gorgeous secretary who smiled at him and had dinner with him and seemed to like to play pattycake with him. The problem was, he didn’t know quite how he felt about her.

  “You must not think of her as Marykate,” Dr. Posner had said once, “but as your current sexual attraction, an integral and essential part of your fantasy, but not a part of your life outside your fantasy. This private investigator fantasy will run its course, and you’ll return to your profession, and when you do you will need a socially acceptable wife, someone like Eloise. A redheaded secretary simply will not do. She's Irish, isn't she?”

  “Yes. Hennessy.”

  “Well, there you are.”

  He had not yet told Dr. Posner about the letter he’d gotten today, from Cal-Davis, offering him a new department, developing new equipment, new techniques, new insights into the workings of the brain. The prospect was exciting, though he didn’t think he was ready to move clear across the country. Dr. Posner would only have said he was trying to get away from Eloise. He put on his coat and went out the door, noting with pleasure, as always, the gold lettering on the polished wood door. SIMON PURE, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. He loved it. He walked down the carpeted corridor to the elevator, whistling happily. He’d tell Marykate about the Cal-Davis letter tonight. He thought her reaction would do much to clarify his feelings.

  3

  Old Mrs. Shallcross lived alone in the house her grandfather had built, a house she’d lived in all of her ninety-six years. The house was quite representative of the Victorian era, with a number of steeply pitched roofs, all at odd angles to one another, complete with a half dozen chimneys topped with ornamental clay chimneypots. A porch extended across the front and for most of one side, complementing the narrow windows and elaborate ornamentation. To Mrs. Shallcross it was a lovely house. To others, however, it had a certain air, a feeling of unsettledness, as if somewhere, deep inside, the workmen were still putting on the finishing touches. Dark and foreboding, it was the sort of house the neighborhood children instinctively crossed the street to avoid.

  The house had been on the edge of town when she was a girl, but was now surrounded by a working class neighborhood of rundown houses and fast food restaurants, dry cleaning establishments and body and fender shops. She’d seen the houses go up, sitting on the porch swing with her cat, watching the workmen come and go. She’d seen the Irish kids and then the Italian kids and now the Black and Hispanic kids walk past her house on their way home, or on their way to school or on their way to wherever it is kids are always on their way to.

  At the moment, however, Mrs. Shallcross wasn’t thinking of the past. She was lying in bed, wide awake, hearing noises, noises she was taking some pains to identify, running through the catalog of night noises she kept constantly on call, growing progressively fearful because she could not identify them. She singled out the heater, then the refrigerator, then the clock, separating them from the strange noises that seemed, to her increasingly alarmed imagination, to be growing louder. She was afraid to move, afraid to breathe, for she had never heard these noises before, and they seemed to be coming from very near by. She listened closely, the blood pounding in her ears.

  Thhukk shwoof, thhukk shwoof.

  The sound continued for some time, and she began to match the sound with memory. She had heard that sound before, but she couldn’t remember where. She wracked her memory, for the sound was familiar, tantalizingly so. She lay quietly, eyes closed in the dark, listening.

  Thhukk shwoof, thhukk shwoof.

  She gasped, heart racing, eyes opened wide. She had it! In her mind's eye she saw her father, long ago, strong-armed and sweating, standing over a mound of freshly dug earth. She saw her father's arms bulge as the muscles tensed, she saw the clean flow of her father's body as he raised the spade and flung the dirt into the hole, a hole that contained her onliest friend in the world, an old black and white cat named Bobbles. She’d cried that day and her father had comforted her and told her he’d get her another cat. She told herself she’d never forget Bobbles, and even though she hadn’t thought of him in almost ninety years, she never had. And now, in the darkness of a late November night, with the rain beginning to spat on the windows, she heard the sound again, and wondered if it might not be her father, somehow come back, her father and Bobbles.

  The sound continued, steady, insistent. Thhukk shwoof, thhukk shwoof.

  She got out of bed and walked unsteadily to the bedroom door. She did not turn on a light, though if the state of her nerves had allowed her to think of it she would have. She stood there, in the dark, listening.

  “Daddy?” she breathed, closing her eyes, seeing him standing there in the backyard, near the rosebushes.

  She was beyond volition. Her father had come back and was unaccountably in one of the bedrooms. She could do nothing but walk slowly and unsteadily down the dark and familiar hallway, toward the back of the house. The noise was coming from Jimmy’s bedroom. She stood outside the door, straining to hear what was happening inside.

  “Daddy?” she whispered.

  The sound of shoveling was louder now, and as she listened she realized there were two shovels. She wondered who her father could have brought with him, and her heart leaped, for it could only be her son, taken from her so long ago on some cold Korean mountain. She heard the sound the shovels made when they hit a stone, and now she heard a voice, a low voice, a distant voice, as if the speaker had his back to her. She distinctly heard the voice say Rain.

  She stood there, outside the door, heart pounding, not recognizing the voice but knowing it wasn’t her father, knowing it wasn’t her son. Another voice said something in reply, a heavily accented voice, and she knew with overwhelming disappointment that neither her father nor her son was in the room. She had no idea what to do, but she did know she didn’t want strangers in Jimmy's room, shoveling dirt in the rain, messing it up, tracking mud on the carpet, endangering the fragile model airplanes sitting on the dresser.

  The sound of shoveling stopped. She pressed her ear to the door, her entire body now trembling with fear. If it were not her father, and not her son, who could it be? She heard the rain tapping on the hall window, getting louder now, firmer, as if the rain were turning to sleet. She stood in the darkness for several minutes, heart pounding, and finally she put her hand on the knob. The door opened slowly and she stepped into Jimmy's room, her hand reaching for the light.

  4

  “Thank you for coming, Doctor,” Guyton-Brown said. “I think you’ll find this interesting.”

  Simon nodded, wondering if this was real or not, a constant question when one embarks on a FantasyLife. You never know when the folks at FantasyLife are going to throw you a case, or from which direction it will come. When one signed on with FantasyLife, one of the things they told you was that some of what they would set up for you would be real, and some of it wouldn't be. When you bought the Private Investigator package, you bought cases with it, cases sent to you by FantasyLife, so that you wouldn’t have to sit in your office waiting for someone to walk in the door.

  The call from Dr. Richard Guyton-Brown had come yesterday, requesting a consultation on a very urgent matter. He knew Guyton-Brown by reputation, knew him to be head of Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, knew him to be author of several important papers, and thought it unlikely a man of that stature would be part of a FantasyLife production. Still, you never know, and so it was with some sense of uncertainty that he’d taken the Interstate to Baltimore to see Guyton-Brown.

  “This way, Do
ctor,” Guyton-Brown said, leading Simon through his suite of offices and into a darkened viewing room.

  Simon wondered if Guyton-Brown was aware of his present identity. The call had been routed through Children's Hospital, which would indicate this had nothing to do with his current professional persona, and it was likely, given the evidence, that Guyton-Brown was calling him in for consultation on a medical problem. On the other hand, the folks at FantasyLife were very clever.

  “I read your paper on brain-stem endings in JAMA, Doctor,” Guyton-Brown said, “a very handsome piece of work.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “If you will sit here,” Guyton-Brown said, “I’ll show you something singular.” He turned on the viewing screen and inserted a disk. “Got this yesterday from Annemarie Kellerman, and I've been staring at it ever since.”

  “Ohio State University Hospital?”

  “The same. Brilliant woman.”

  The screen came to life and presented a colored picture of a section through a brain. Many times life size, the section was a standard imaging machine picture of a slice of the brain, the slices arranged from front to back, like slices of bread in a packaged loaf.

  “Unremarkable, eh?” Guyton-Brown smiled. “Watch. I’m going to show you the sections in order, beginning with frame number one.”

  The brain section came up on the screen, lingered for a few moments, and disappeared, to be replaced with the next frame. A black dot appeared on Frame 13, in the upper left hand side of the screen, in the right cerebral hemisphere. The dot grew and changed shape as the succeeding frames flashed up, but not once did any of the black shapes look like the silhouette of anything familiar. The black shape rapidly diminished in size, and Frame 46 was clear. The remaining frames were run through without the black shape reappearing, and Guyton-Brown swiveled in his chair.