Elixir

by Davis Bunn

  He heard the rapid tripping of young footsteps and instinctively backed far into the shadows. A blond-headed cherub in cartoon pajamas with red feet opened the door. Taylor did not recognize his own voice as he said, “Is your momma home tonight?”

  A man’s voice called from further inside, “Who is it, honey?”

  “A man, but he’s standing out where I can’t see him good.”

  That brought the father in a hurry. “Get back inside the house.”

  “He wanted mommy.”

  “I said get inside.” He put himself between the child and harm’s way. “Who’s out there?”

  At that point his strength simply vanished. Taylor caught himself on a knee and both hands. “It’s Taylor, John.”

  “Taylor Knox?” The man approached in a cautious sideways manner. “What’ve they done to you, boy?”

  The child cried from the doorway, “I’m scared, Daddy!”

  “I told you to get inside the house!” He raised his voice even higher. “Ruth! Ruth!”

  “What is it?”

  John fitted one strong hand under Taylor’s arm and lifted. “Come on, old son, help me now.” Then he said to his wife, “Go flip the switch on the garage doors.”

  “Why don’t you just—”

  “Do what I say. And bring your doctor’s bag. And get the child upstairs!”

  The garage door ground up at their approach. Taylor said, “I’m getting blood all over your clothes.”

  “Don’t worry about that, now.”

  Ruth was a solid woman with the no-nonsense air of an emergency room doctor. Even so she could not keep the shock or the question out of her voice. “Taylor?”

  “You were the closest to hand and the only folks I thought I could reach.”

  The man swept a half-finished bookshelf and a mess of tools onto the floor. “Honey, pull a towel out of the hamper and spread it out.”

  His wife was already moving. “Who did this to you?”

  “I don’t know. All I saw was a mask and a stave.”

  John peeled off what was left of Taylor’s shirt and winced at the lacerations on his chest. “How come you’re all wet?”

  “They dumped me in the bay. Sort of.”

  “John, go call the police.”

  “There’s not a lot I can tell them,” Taylor said.

  John talked as he dialed. “Man I haven’t seen in over a year comes stumbling out of the night looking like somebody’s gone over his body with razor wire, you bet I’m getting the cops in here.”

  Ruth found the place on his skull. “Is your vision blurry?”

  “To tell the truth, I couldn’t say.” Now that he was down and people were watching over him, his eyelids came into a will of their own. “What time is it?”

  “Just gone nine.”

  “That’s impossible.” He felt like it should be near dawn, so much had happened.

  John set down the phone. “Cops are on their way.” He returned to stand over Taylor. “Folks always did say you’d come to a bad end.”

  “You hush up, they did not.” Ruth worked her way down to his leg. Whatever she found there caused her to raise her voice. “What did they do to you?”

  “You remember the old dungeon.” They were locals. He did not need to frame it as a question.

  That brought horror to both their faces. “They stuck you in there? How’d they get you past the guards at the front gates?”

  “I didn’t have a chance to ask them. I was out at the time.”

  Ruth dabbed his leg with something that felt like painted fire. “You’re too big to make it through the tunnel.”

  “I know.”

  “Does this have something to do with that rich Revell woman you took up with?”

  Taylor chose that moment to surrender. His eyelids fell, and he took his answer with him into a dark cocoon.

  A DREAM ABOUT THE TUNNEL WOKE TAYLOR IN THE MIDDLE of the night. This time he clawed his way forward only to confront something that forced him back. What it was precisely, Taylor never saw. The tunnel was pitch black and filled with bottom silt. But something was there. It filled the confines totally, gripped him with impossible strength, and held him there. Forever.

  Taylor awoke drenched with the terror he had not admitted to until now. He padded to the guest bathroom, washed his face, toweled off the fear sweat, and returned to bed. As he slipped back into exhausted slumber, he found himself recalling something Ada Folley had told him years before. It was one of the few times Ada had ever made reference to her juju forebears. She had done it only because Taylor had kept pestering her, wanting to know if there was any truth to the rumors.

  You want to know about the dark, do you? That was how Ada had finally responded, her eyes burning with a fire black as his recently departed nightmare. You want to touch that forbidden fruit? You best be watching out for the soon-tocome, is all I can tell you. The soon-to-come’s right out there, hiding in shadows so thick you’ll never see him till he pounces. But he’s there all right. If you’re sick, or somebody you love is coming close to that final door.

  Taylor heard Ada’s chant echo through his softly pounding head. Her voice sang him away to a dark that was something more than sleep. Cold as winter moonlight, the soon-to-come’s breath. You best be ready, ’cause the soon-to-come is gonna call on you. Calls on everybody, and always when they ain’t quite disposed to go. Oh yes. Be ready.

  WHEN TAYLOR NEXT OPENED HIS EYES, HE WAS GREETED by birdsong and the sweet scent of bed linen dried in the open air. He inspected his wounds in the guest bath, felt the threads dangling from his head and left thigh, tested his joints, and knew he was going to be all right.

  He showered and joined the family for breakfast, accepted their questions, and made no objection as John called the police back in. He forced himself to eat slowly, though he was as ravenous as a wolf and felt almost as scruffy. John was a big man and his borrowed sweats fitted Taylor like they were meant for two of him. At the table’s opposite end, their daughter sang of sunrises and daffodils and entertained them with butterfly shadows her father helped her shape. Taylor observed the family’s morning routine and felt worse than an intruder.

  The policeman arrived just as they were finishing breakfast. He was vaguely familiar, a man Taylor had last seen beneath the helmet of an opposing team. He had skin so black it was almost purple, and was big in the manner of someone who worked hard to keep his weight under control. Taylor told the entire story both because he owed it to his hosts and because there was nothing to be gained by holding back.

  The cop made careful notes and kept his voice level for the child playing in the next room. “You got anybody can confirm what you been up to?”

  “You mean, other than Amanda Revell?”

  “I’ll be in touch with them. But I was hoping for somebody closer to home, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’d just gone to see Ada Folley.”

  His face brightened. “Where you know Ada from?”

  “She cooks for the Revell family.”

  “Sure, I knew that. How’s that lady doing?”

  “Nasty as ever.”

  “I hear you.” He slapped his notebook closed and rose to his feet. Instantly the room shrank two sizes. “Where can I reach you, I need something more?”

  “I’ve got a room at the Casa Monica.”

  John whistled. “You been moving up in the world.”

  “It’s on the Revell nickel.”

  “John, good to see you again.” The cop offered Taylor a hand and a hard eye. “Where have I seen you before?”

  “I played tight end for Augustine High.”

  “Now I remember. You were the kid with all the moves.”

  “You gave me a couple of good licks our last game.”

  “Didn’t stop you from making that winning touchdown.” He nodded a farewell to the doctor. “Thanks for the coffee, Ruth.”

  He paused at the door and asked Taylor, “You think maybe the Revell d
aughter’s been abducted?”

  “All I can say for certain is somebody doesn’t want her found. In the worst way.”

  The cop mulled that one over, then said, “Glad to see you ain’t lost your moves.”

  When the cop had departed, John announced, “I’m late for the office.”

  Taylor heard the unspoken question. “If it’s okay, I’d like to make a phone call. Then I’ll be on my way.”

  Ruth responded in the formal manner of one guided by generations of southern protocol. “You’re welcome to stay on here, Taylor.”

  “I’m fine, Ruth. Thanks to you. And I’d feel better getting away from you folks until I know what it is I’m facing.”

  They did not object further. While they prepared for busy days, Taylor placed a call to his secretary’s home. “Any word from those visitors of yours?”

  “The morning you left for Jacksonville, I called like you asked me to. He said I’d be hearing from them. But I never did. So I called again last night. The phone was disconnected. I checked with the phone company. The number belonged to a cell phone.”

  “You’ve done great, Allison.”

  She breathed in the manner of one releasing a breath she had been holding for days. “I’ve been so worried.”

  “Everything is okay.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I’m working on that.”

  “What do I do with the money?”

  “Take a vacation.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Take your child and go away. Type out a memo from me to you, instructing you to take some time off, you’ve been working too hard, the strain from the merger, you know what to say. And sign my name.”

  “Something’s terribly wrong, isn’t it?”

  “I’m okay. But I don’t want to have to worry about you, do you see?”

  Taylor hung up the phone with the sense of severing yet another cord tying him to the home he had fashioned for himself. He endured Ruth’s inspection and a change of dressings, thanked his friends the best he could, then entered the sullen summer heat.

  St. Augustine was marginally hotter than Annapolis and a trace more humid. But the air hung heavier here, as though centuries of semitropical weather carried its own weight. Taylor stopped by a tourist shop at the old town’s border and bought a pair of sandals, shorts, and a T-shirt advertising Augustine’s Menéndez Day Festival. He rolled up John’s castoffs and put them in the shopping bag. He meandered the streets, walking very slowly, favoring his throbbing leg. It was almost certain no one had tracked him to the home and was following now. But after the previous night Taylor was taking no chances.

  He sat in a shaded alcove opposite the hotel and watched the entrance for almost half an hour. Finally a bus too large to make it into the covered alcove halted in front of him and disgorged a bevy of tourists dressed just like himself. Taylor eased into the middle of the crowd and limped across the street and into safety.

  He showered a second time, as though hoping to scrub away the previous night and the remaining tremors. He replaced the bandages with extras Ruth had given him, then stretched out on the bed.

  He awoke two hours later stiff and sore, as though only now when he was well removed from the danger would his body admit to being hurt.

  He slipped out of the hotel’s rear entrance and walked down to the Matanzas Inlet Restaurant, a haunt of his father’s generation. Matanzas meant slaughter in some ancient form of Spanish. The inlet bearing the same name was where Spanish defenders had slaughtered a horde of invading Huguenots. The restaurant attempted to do the same with its brand of Minorcan cuisine. Taylor ordered a bowl of full-strength perlough, a native stew of tomatoes, sausages, pilau rice, datil peppers, and whatever vegetables were fresh from market that day. Datil peppers were a native variety that made jalapeño taste like snow cone flavoring. While he waited for his meal, Taylor cleared his nostrils in the traditional manner, sprinkling datil pepper sauce on cream cheese spread over a piece of thick local bread. He ate three such fireballs and drained two pitchers of lemonade before his stew arrived. Minorcan sausage was made from equal parts meat, onion, green pepper, fennel seeds, and datil pepper. They were pickled in vinegar then either boiled or smoked. The natives called them smoke bombs, and for good reason. By the time Taylor left the restaurant, his sweat glands were on overdrive. He felt purged of almost every ounce of fear he’d carried from the night.

  The fire in his belly granted his thoughts a special clarity. Taylor held to narrow lanes as he crossed the city’s heart, recalling earlier times with a lucidity that made every memory stand out as clearly as etched gold. He remembered walking these very streets, his own hand lost in the hard assuredness of his father’s.

  Taylor’s father had been a great man. Everybody said so. Years after his death, Taylor was still known as Miles Knox’s boy, as though being claimed by a man years in the grave granted him entry into a special league. Miles had earned his living as a plumber. Taylor remembered him as a man fierce in all he did. Miles Knox shone with a turbulent ardor. His smile was blinding. Twenty years after his old man’s funeral, Taylor could still remember how thrilling it was to watch him grin. A world of anticipation and magnetism went into that simple act, in a way that charmed everyone within reach.

  Taylor’s newfound clarity was a two-edged sword. As he walked the brick-lined lanes, Taylor found other memories rising unbidden. Of a man who did not always come home when he should. Of odors drifting in the air when he did arrive, sweet odors that somehow had made the little boy sick to his belly. Not the odors, exactly, but rather how they made his mother weep. Miles Knox would stand abject and contrite before his wife, waiting for the storm to pass. His mother was not a fighter. She loved the wayward man too much to leave him. When Miles had aimed his special allure at someone else, she would become hollowed by her pain, defenseless in her determination to hold fast. Then Miles had left them permanently, felled by cancer that ate him from the inside out, saving his gleam and his smile for the last bite.

  Taylor slipped through the shadows of an empty street and recalled the anger he had felt, nine years old and forced to stand and watch the hero of his early years sink into the ground. After they had laid Miles Knox to rest, Taylor had gone totally wild. Totally.

  Taylor stole into a cool alcove across from the college’s environmental science building and studied the terrain. The streets were baking and quiet, but he could see figures moving about inside the lab. He thought he heard his father’s voice drift through the dusty air, calling to him. Despite the heat, Taylor found himself shivering. It seemed as though he had been hearing that unspoken voice his entire life, leading him along a road not of his own choosing.

  “Can I help you?”

  He spun around to face a young man in a lab coat. “I was looking for Dr. Preston.”

  The man squinted against the heat. “Well, you sure won’t find him out here.”

  Taylor climbed the rear stairs and entered the manufactured coolness. “I didn’t want to bother anybody.”

  “Just stay here a second. I’ll see if he’s available. What did you say your name was?”

  “Taylor Knox. I’m with Revell.”

  “Oh. Right. Sure. Hang on a second.”

  The professor could have been drawn from Taylor’s own lab team. He was balding and egg-shaped and utterly unconcerned with his physical appearance. He wore a pair of reading glasses on a loop around his neck, a starched lab coat, and rubber slip-ons to avoid static electricity. “You’re from Revell?”

  “Yes sir. Taylor Knox.”

  “I can’t tell you anything more than I did the other gentlemen. I have no idea where Kirra Revell has gone.”

  “I understand.” He followed the professor down the side hallway into a cluttered office whose interior window overlooked a busy lab. “Nice place.”

  “Paid for in large part by your company. Believe me, if I knew where she was, I would be delighted to help out. Coffee?”

/>   “I’m fine, thanks. Can you tell me what Kirra was working on?”

  “A rather interesting issue.” He waved Taylor into the one seat not piled high with papers and journals. “She was not a scientist.”

  “She was doing honors studies in local history. Isn’t that right?”

  “Exactly. She came to me and asked for help with one aspect of her project. Naturally I would not dream of refusing any request from Revell. But what she had was quite fascinating. And highly original.” He sprang from his seat, pulled open an overcrammed filing cabinet, fished out a file. “Can I ask what you do for Revell?”

  “I run an ops team looking at potential new eye medications.”

  “So you’re not a biochemist.”

  “No. Sorry. Numbers are my game.”

  “Then this won’t mean any more to you than it did to the last batch they sent.”

  “Can you tell me about them?”

  “Two men. One was a giant. The other I don’t recall. A beard, I think. They said they were detectives.”

  “You told them about Kirra’s studies?”

  “Yes, but they weren’t particularly interested. Just wanted to know where she might have gone, asked a number of highly repetitive questions, and finally left.” He returned to his seat, flipped open the chart, and was soon lost in the data.

  Taylor gave him a moment. “Dr. Preston.”

  “Eh, yes?”

  “Could you tell me what Kirra was researching?”

  “Well, certainly, I mean, what I know of it. She came to me with two items for study. One was a local plant, Gincava gravis. Do you know it?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Indigenous species, grows mostly in the interior hills between here and Gainesville. Found nowhere else to our knowledge. She asked me to run a compound analysis. Several, in fact. Apparently, she had found documents suggesting that it had been used as a healing compound by the early Minorcans.” His gaze returned to the data. “Nothing of significance in the flower or leaves. But one particular composite within the root system was quite new. We are actually thinking of running a series of tests on it ourselves.”

  “You said she brought you two plants?”