The Medusa Amulet

by Robert Masello

  “Her brother,” David said, already moving on.

  “Hold on,” the nurse said, as one hand reached for the phone. “I have to notify her caregiver. She might be sleeping.”

  What difference did that make? He was here to wake her up.

  Outside her door, he saw Gary, in a flannel shirt and jeans, pacing the hall.

  “Thank God,” Gary said. “I had my phone on vibrate, and just picked up your message.”

  “How is she?” David said.

  “One of the nurses is in with her now.” He looked at David with enormous relief, tempered with a bit of reproach. “She’s been waiting for you. I told you she would.”

  “I was counting on it,” he said, even as he swiftly circumvented Gary-who looked startled-and headed straight into Room 3.

  “David, you might want to wait a minute!”

  But that was the last thing he wanted to do.

  The nurse, an African-American man with gray hair and a gentle face, was just adjusting an IV line. He turned and said, “You must be her brother. She’s been waiting for you. I’m Walter.”

  But David’s eyes were fixed on Sarah, or what was left of her. In the time he’d been gone, she had changed from a woman hanging on to life, however weakly, to a woman already in the embrace of death. Her hands on the blanket were mottled and blue, her cracked lips were slick with Vaseline, and her face was a hollow mask. Even on seeing him, she showed none of the joy he had expected; her expression, instead, was querulous and uncertain. He wasn’t even sure she recognized him.

  “We just upped her Halperidol,” Walter said, sotto voce. “In a few minutes, she may be more lucid.”

  David had thought he’d been prepared for anything… but now he knew that he hadn’t.

  “Can we be alone?”

  “Sure,” the nurse said. “I’m here if you need me.”

  David dragged a chair to the bedside and took her hand in his. The skin was cold and the fingers felt like twigs.

  “Sarah, it’s David. I’m here.”

  But she didn’t respond. Her eyes were glassy and staring off into space, her bare skull covered by a paisley silk scarf.

  He waited, wondering what to do next.

  “Remember that day at the skating rink?” he finally said. “When you told me you’d give anything, anything at all, for the chance to see Emme grow up?”

  A humidifier hummed quietly in the corner.

  “I’m going to give you that chance.”

  Whether he was imagining it or not, her fingers seemed to stir in his grasp.

  But how, he wondered, was he going to get this done?

  The wind howled at the window, and it was then that he noticed the birch trees outside, in the little garden, and the frozen pond… glimmering dully in the moonlight.

  He jumped from his chair. A wheelchair was folded up in the corner of the room, and he quickly opened it. He had to move fast, because he knew that if Gary or the nurse came in, they would surely intervene. He pushed the chair to the side of the bed, and tucking the blanket all around her, he lifted Sarah into it. She weighed so little, it was like lifting a bundle of rags.

  Glancing out her bedroom door, he was glad to see that Gary and Walter had moved down the hall, toward the reception desk and its big silver coffee urn. In one swift motion, he steered the chair out her door and then out of sight down the hall. Now he just had to find his way into that garden.

  In his haste, the first door he tried turned out to be a utility closet, the second one a dispensary. But the third, with a metal crossbar across it, looked more promising, and turning the chair so that he could press on the bar with his own back, he felt a rush of cold air. While he was dragging the wheels over the bump of the threshold, a corner of the blanket got caught in the closing door, threatening for a second to pull Sarah out of the chair altogether. David had to stop, bend down, and wrench it free.

  When he looked up at her face, he thought he saw a glimmer of recognition.

  “David? Are you… really here?” she said, her voice murky and slow.

  “Sure looks that way,” he said, tucking the blanket back around her.

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re getting some fresh air,” he said, his breath clouding, as he pushed the chair out into the garden.

  “Cold,” she said. “It’s cold.”

  “I know that,” he said, his fingers scrabbling under his shirt to retrieve the Medusa. A gust of wind plucked the scarf off her head and blew it onto the frozen pond. “I just need you to do something for me,” he said, as he lifted the amulet over his own head, and brushed aside the black silk backing that concealed the mirror.

  “Are we in the backyard?” she asked. “I bet Emme’s waiting for you upstairs-you should go and surprise her.”

  “I will,” he promised, “I will.” He put the Medusa into her palm and helped her to raise her hand. “But right now I want you to look at yourself in this mirror.”

  She seemed confused, and irritated. “No, I don’t do that anymore. I don’t look at myself in mirrors anymore.”

  “You have to, just this once.” He glanced over his shoulder, past the roof of the hospice, to gauge where the moon was in the sky. A dark cloud was just drifting past it.

  He angled the mirror to be sure to catch the emerging rays.

  “The mirror,” he repeated. “Look in the mirror.”

  Frowning, she did what he asked. “I can’t see a thing,” she said.

  “You will in a minute,” he said, humoring her, as he bent low to see if the mirror was being held in the right spot. Its convex surface gleamed, like a shiny dark scarab, in the moonlight. He could see his sister’s reflection, hovering in the glass as if it were staring out rather than in, and he braced her hand so that the pose would be held. The waters of eternity, captured behind the glass, were receiving their blessing from the radiant moon.

  But how long did it take?

  He was startled by a thumping sound-a palm flatly smacking against a window-and he glanced back into Sarah’s lighted bedroom where he could see Gary, his shocked face pressed close to the glass, banging again and again.

  “Keep looking,” David urged his sister, “just keep looking.” Any moment, he expected Walter to come barreling outside to rescue her.

  But the hand holding the mirror suddenly dropped into Sarah’s lap and her head snapped back against the wheelchair, as if she’d suffered a seizure.

  Had it worked?

  David snatched the mirror out of her lap, wondering if he would actually feel any difference in it. Would it be hotter? colder? charged somehow?

  But it was his own face he was seeing… his own eyes staring back at him from the bottom of its deep, dark well… and before he knew it, a jolt like electricity had sizzled through his limbs. His jaw clenched shut, his head went back, and his knees nearly buckled; if he hadn’t been holding on to the wheelchair, he’d have collapsed on the spot.

  The courtyard door flew open, as Gary and the nurse came running toward them.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Walter said, pushing the helpless David away from the handlebars of the chair.

  David staggered backwards, his arms dangling loose, his legs shaking. He leaned, reeling, between the birch trees, afraid that he might pass out.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Gary barked, as he snatched her scarf from the icy pond.

  Walter whirled the chair around and headed back through the door. Gary, following him in, was so mad he didn’t even bother to look back at David.

  And David didn’t blame them. He knew how insane this looked.

  A bank of clouds obscured the moon, casting the courtyard into darker shadow.

  Through the window of her room, he could see Sarah being lifted back into the bed, extra blankets being piled over her again. And he could only imagine what was being said about her distraught, but deranged, younger brother.

  But none of it mattered. Not any longer. He had done what
he had set out to do… and no one-no Greek hero, no Florentine artisan-could have achieved anything more. Come what may, he was at peace with what he had done.

  Chapter 46

  Kathryn Van Owen was staring out the windows of her penthouse aerie, watching the moonlight glint off the obsidian black surface of Lake Michigan, and wondering, for the thousandth time, what had become of David Franco. Had he found La Medusa, or had he, like Palliser and so many others before him, fallen into the spider’s web, never to emerge again?

  In the next room, she heard the phone ring, and Cyril pick up. She could not make out what was being said, but a few moments later, he rushed in and said, “It was the receptionist at the hospice.”

  Kathryn, who had been keeping close tabs on David’s family, had already taken the trouble to bribe her for any news of his return.

  “David Franco is there right now.”

  Kathryn’s heart leapt in her chest. She knew all about Sarah’s grim prognosis. But had David rushed back to save her, or simply to say good-bye? Kathryn was already moving toward the door, and Cyril, close behind, was grabbing her coat and gloves. And while she usually waited for him to bring the limo up, tonight she went down to the garage with him, opened her own door, and virtually jumped inside.

  He pulled the car out of the garage, onto Lake Shore Drive, and into traffic made worse by the weather. Kathryn cursed the winds that gusted the snow across the lanes, slowing the other cars, and she cursed the cars themselves for impeding her progress.

  How long had David been back? Why hadn’t he called her the moment he returned? Was it because he could not admit his failure?

  Or was it because he was concealing his success?

  Oh, she could have warned him not to try his own hand at magic. She had feared that he might. But she also knew her admonitions would have fallen on deaf ears. After all, wasn’t it his sister’s critical state that she had been banking on all along? She knew that any doubts he might have entertained-doubts any rational man would of course have had-would be subsumed in his desperate search to find a cure. He had needed to succeed on this mission as no other searcher for the Medusa ever had.

  Could that have made the crucial difference?

  On one side of the limo, she saw the twinkling lights of the Chicago skyscrapers and apartment buildings. On the other, the emptiness of the vast and freezing lake.

  But one thought alone-had he found the damned thing?-kept coming back to her. Would she finally hold the Medusa in her hand again? Would she be able to undo its sinister power? Over the years, how many times had she cast her mind back to Benvenuto’s studio, and the night when she had removed the iron box from its hideaway… perused its mysterious contents… and awakened on the floor, naked, her hair white, with Benvenuto bending over her and asking in mournful tones, “What have you done? What have you done?”

  Even now, centuries later, the words echoed in her head as if they had just been spoken.

  Cyril turned the car off the wide, lakeshore highway and onto the less congested city streets. And by the time they pulled into the harsh white lights of the hospice driveway, she was already perched on the edge of her seat like a skydiver about to leap.

  Without waiting for Cyril to come around and open the door, she threw it wide and, with her fur coat flapping open around her, flew into the building.

  The receptionist took one look at her and instantly said, “Room 3. Down the hall, turn right.”

  She marched down the hall, the carpet muffling her steps, trying to compose herself. Vivaldi was playing over the speaker system, the lights were low and recessed.

  She saw a burly man in a flannel shirt, urging a cup of hot coffee on an exhausted David Franco, who was slumped in a chair. His head hung down, his shoulders sagged, but only one thing truly startled her. And that was his hair.

  It was dead white.

  My God. He not only had the glass-he had looked into its depths himself!

  When she stood before him, his eyes slowly came up to meet hers. She could not read his expression. It wasn’t triumph, and it wasn’t defeat.

  It was uncertainty.

  “Give it to me,” was all she said, holding out her empty palm.

  “Excuse me,” the burly man said-surely Sarah’s husband-“but who are you?”

  “A friend of your wife’s,” she replied, without even looking at him. “The best friend she’s ever had, in fact. Wouldn’t you say so, David?”

  Her hand was still out.

  “Gary, could you give us a minute?” David asked.

  “Sure, sure,” Gary said, moving off warily. “But I’ll be in with Sarah if you need me.”

  When he was out of earshot, David said, “How do I know if it’s worked?” and Kathryn brushed his question aside like a gnat.

  “Look at you,” she said. “You can’t be serious.”

  “But Sarah?”

  “Enough of this,” she said. “Another word and I’ll think you’re trying to renege on the deal.”

  “I would never do that.”

  “Good,” she said, withdrawing a sealed envelope from her pocket. “You know what this is, right?”

  David looked at it vacantly.

  “Most people would be glad to get a million dollars.”

  A lanky man with a badge that identified him as Dr. Alan Ross came out of the room, noting something on a chart and saying, “David, can I have a word with you?”

  He acknowledged Kathryn, but didn’t say anything more until David explained that she was a family member and the doctor could speak freely in front of her.

  “In that case,” the doctor said, “I’ll say I’m stumped.”

  “Stumped?”

  “Your sister says she feels great, and trust me, she shouldn’t.”

  “But is she?”

  “I’ll know a lot more tomorrow when all the tests can be done. I’m certainly not releasing her tonight. But for now? I don’t know what’s going on, but she’s rallied in a way I’ve never seen before. All her vital signs are back to normal, and I just called down to the lab and the blood test we took is clean as a whistle. They thought I must have mixed up some samples.” He shook his head in wonderment. “She even looks a hundred percent better. Gary said she just called the house and told Emme to get out of bed-and this is a school night, mind you-and come right over. I’ve never seen a remission like this. I wish I could claim I’d performed some miracle here, but I didn’t.”

  “Maybe someone else did,” Kathryn said.

  “Maybe so,” he admitted. “Maybe so.” Shaking David’s hand happily, he said, “Whatever happened, it’s great news. I’ll be back first thing in the morning.” Then, glancing at David’s shock of white hair, he said, “When did you decide to do that?”

  “It was kind of… impulsive.”

  Still in a rollicking humor, the doctor said, “Next time you get an impulse like that, talk to Sarah. She was always the sensible one of you two.”

  He sauntered off, snapping his fingers at his side, and Kathryn tucked the check into David’s breast pocket. Without another word, he fished La Medusa out from under his collar. It turned slowly on its chain, the Gorgon’s glare catching the light.

  But the moment it landed in her palm, she snapped her hand shut like a trap. “A pleasure doing business with you,” she said before turning back down the hall. She was squeezing the amulet so tight her knuckles hurt.

  But she had it, she had it at last!

  She had just gone through the revolving door and into the cold night air-snow was swirling off the concrete-when a black Mercedes sedan, its headlights casting a bright blue glow, tore up to the driveway, skidding to a stop at the icy curb.

  She stepped back, signaling to Cyril to bring her own limo around, when the back door of the car opened and a long, black walking stick descended onto the cement. It was followed a moment later by a man with a coat draped over his shoulders, in the Continental style. He had strong features, with a prominent Italian
nose, a thick moustache, black hair dusted at the temples with gray… and a scowl that might have scared a legion.

  Kathryn stopped where she stood, so suddenly that he almost collided with her. Apologizing as he passed, he momentarily glanced back.

  And that was all it took.

  Disbelief gave way to dawning amazement. She saw his eyes searching her face, his lips moving to form the right word.

  “Caterina?” he said, as a nimbus of snowflakes whirled above their heads.

  It was as if the world had stopped turning. All the strength had left her limbs.

  “Benvenuto,” she replied.

  Dropping the cane, the coat falling from his shoulders, he snatched her into his arms, so violently that the Medusa, clutched in her hand, slipped through her fingers and landed with a sharp crack on the pavement.

  “My God!” she exclaimed, looking down as its glass shattered into a thousand tiny fragments. A thin rivulet of pale green water trickled out, sizzling on the ice like acid. Before she could even consider the consequences, she felt a rush of hot blood pounding in her veins, and a flush filling her cheeks. She gasped in shock and saw that her lover was reeling, too. A light was blazing in his face, and his breathing was labored. Their eyes locked, and though they said nothing, they didn’t have to. Both of them knew what the other was thinking, and feeling. Both of them had imagined this release for centuries.

  Still holding her in his arms, he glanced down at his fallen cane. But she could feel his back straightening, his legs growing stronger under him. She could sense an even greater power than before surging through his body, just as it was doing through her own.

  “ Il mio gatto,” he said, a wide smile lifting the ends of his moustache and his strong arms buoying her up. “Still causing trouble, I see.”

  But she was too overwhelmed to reply.

  He kissed her hard on the lips, then threw back his head in exultation. Snowflakes stuck to his eyebrows and moustache. He let out a loud, braying laugh that cut through the night and reverberated off the walls of the hospice before being carried away on the gusting wind.