Elixir

by Charles Atkins

  ‘I’m on it,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be there as fast as I can,’ she said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And Dalton, here’s the thing about catalysts, they can be quickened. As long as Frank believes there’s another copy of the formula, he won’t give it up to either you or me.’

  ‘Yes, understood.’ He grasped her subtext. Grace Lewis needed to be removed from the playing field.

  ‘Excellent.’

  And she hung up.

  Case in hand, he paused at the door. Mother’s message was clear … and risky. What worried him was the risk of taking out Grace, and Frank’s mother completing what she’d started, leaving no copy of the formula. But if he had Grace … and she were still alive. Possibly unconscious, maybe locked up and tucked away.

  He thought to call her back, but no. Wouldn’t that be something, to have the only copy of the thing Mother needed. To take the wheel. What about you, Dalton? What do you want? What do you really really want? The answer was clear. To be in charge. To be the one with the extra life. To be loved by millions. To be adored. To be …

  His thoughts bounced bright, a world where Mother was less of a presence. Or better, no presence at all. Head in the game, boy. It’s time to play.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Frank’s short drive from Hollow Hills to the Crestview farm was agony. He left a second jangled message for Sean and practiced what he’d say in person. It helped him focus, but then that sick feeling of being chased by Candace returned. In truth, it had never left, not since he was eight. It was not a question of if she would find him, but when. He put no stock in the FBI’s efforts. And those UNICO guards, no matter how prepared, were no match for her unbridled crazy. She’s too smart.

  ‘My fault,’ he muttered. ‘I should never have given the hospital my address.’ But he had. His thought at the time was better to let her keep writing in case they tried to let her out again. A fatalistic crush bore down on him; unfinished business was about to reach closure.

  The phone rang. Sean’s face appeared on screen.

  ‘Frank, what’s wrong?’

  Like the start of a children’s story with Once upon a time, a tale that he hated, spewed out. His final words, ‘She escaped. She killed a guard. She’s come to kill me. You can’t be near me. No one can.’

  ‘The hell I can’t. And you were going to tell me about this, when?’

  ‘Never. I’m strange enough without it.’

  ‘I like your strange. No, fuck it, I love your strange. And I love you, Frank.’

  A driver, texting in the car ahead, slowed and swerved towards the curb. Frank accelerated and tried to pass, but as they rounded a curve, a slow-moving hay thresher appeared in the other direction. Frank slammed on the brakes, tried to duck back behind the texting teen, but he miscalculated his speed and the loose-gravel road.

  The Element fish-tailed and spun out. He turned the wheel into it, but lost traction. His left front tire clipped a guard rail and that, combined with centripetal force, tipped the vehicle off its two driver-side wheels. He held his breath as the car hung undecided on two tires. The decision was made as the Element slammed into a boulder. It flipped up and over. Strapped in, there was nothing to do but wonder, is this how I die?

  The car rolled across the road and smashed into a phone pole. With two sharp explosions the airbags deployed front and side. They made it impossible to see, and Frank focused on the movement of the Element as it took its final roll, and landed on its roof.

  ‘What just happened?’ Sean asked. His voice was muffled by the bags and adrenalin. ‘What’s happening?’

  Hanging upside down and held in place by his seatbelt Frank felt trapped, breathless, and exposed, a turtle on its back. ‘Nothing …’ He reached back, found the door handle, pressed and pushed. Miraculously it opened. ‘I hit a phone pole,’ he said, his iPhone clutched in his white-knuckled hand. He undid the belt; blood trickled down his back. He lowered himself to the roof and scrambled out on hands and knees; the flesh of his palms burned on the hot gravel.

  ‘Where are you?’ Sean asked.

  He looked for anything recognizable. ‘Don’t know.’ The thresher driver headed towards him. He had a phone to his ear.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ Sean asked.

  ‘Hey Mister,’ the driver shouted, ‘you OK? I called 911. Maybe you shouldn’t be moving around so much.’

  ‘I don’t think anything’s broken.’ His adrenalin coursed. ‘Nothing hurts’ … yet. He heard a siren in the distance and fought the urge to run. He turned and stared at his upside-down Element; totaled. But it had saved his life. What have I done? He turned in place. It was a warm, blue-sky beautiful day in the Connecticut countryside. Where is she?

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Sean said. ‘I’ll be there in two hours.’

  ‘No. Don’t.’ Panic took over. ‘You can’t be near me. You don’t understand.’ Sirens neared. Flashing lights pulsed around the corner. Frank looked for the car he’d tried to pass. It hadn’t even stopped. ‘Sean. Sean!’ The line was dead.

  A volunteer ambulance arrived, followed by two police cruisers. A black UNICO security SUV pulled in behind followed by a second.

  Frank felt his forehead. Pain blossomed across his chest from the triple impact of the steering wheel, seatbelt and airbag. Blood trickled from a cut on the back of his neck. It seeped down and soaked his shirt. A pair of older EMTs with concerned smiles, tried to coax him to a stretcher. ‘What’s your name, honey?’ one asked.

  ‘Frank … Garfield.’ That’s strange, why couldn’t I remember that?

  ‘OK Frank. Mr Garfield. Sit here, lie back and let’s get you to Charlotte Hungerford Hospital.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Frank, sweetie, you’re in shock.’

  ‘No.’ He pushed back their hands as they tried to strap him down. He stood on shaky legs. Dazed, he watched as cars slowed to look at the fresh accident.

  A pair of cops joined the EMTs. ‘What happened? And yes, you should get in the ambulance and be cleared medically.’

  ‘I tried to pass someone. I don’t think anything is broken … and I’m a doctor.’ Why does that matter?

  ‘Then you know,’ one of the EMTs said, ‘that internal injuries may not show up right away. You could have an internal bleed. Your seatbelt could have caused a liver rupture.’

  Frank paused, liver rupture. That’s not what you call it. It was hard to think. Like the accident had rattled his brain to where words that should have come, didn’t.

  The cops asked to see his license, car insurance, and registration. ‘Glove compartment.’

  They looked at the upturned car.

  ‘OK for me to get them?’ an officer asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  They made him blow into a tube. ‘You have to really push until you hear the click.’

  He complied. All the time trying to make sense of what had happened. And below the surface, Sean … why didn’t I want him to come? He said he loved me. That’s a good thing. So why … and then like being in a second collision, reality hit. She’s out … she’s coming, or is already here.

  Two more SUVs screeched into the accident site. Dark-suited federal agents emerged. Their shoes crunched on the gravel.

  ‘Dr Garfield, are you OK?’

  Where is she? He squinted against the sun, his focus pulled by the slow parade of cars, all wanting to look at the upside-down car and the tall dark-haired man with his blood-soaked shirt. One held his focus. The breath left his body as he made eye contact. How did she get a car? It’s a Lexus. Who did she kill for it?

  ‘That’s her!’ he shouted. ‘That’s Candace. That was my mother.’

  But the woman, not his mother, smiled and sped away. He focused on the New York license plate and repeated it aloud.

  One of the agents caught what he said. Grabbed his partner and chased off in pursuit.

  ‘I can’t be here,’ he muttered … was that really her? ‘The children. Grace.’
I have to get out of here. He refused the medics, and signed papers absolving them of blame should he drop dead. A cop handed him a citation for improper passing.

  ‘I’ll rip this up,’ she said, ‘if you get checked out. You’re really bleeding.’

  ‘No! No hospitals.’ They’d shoot him up with drugs, and he needed his wits. Everything was wrong, and not just the accident or his deranged mother on the loose. Everything.

  ‘Dr Garfield,’ one of the UNICO security men said. ‘We’ve been instructed to stay with you. If you don’t go to the hospital, which we think you should, Hollow Hills will be the safest.’

  ‘Where are the children and their families?’ I know this. ‘The farm. Crestview, they wanted to see the animals.’

  ‘They’re being taken to Hollow Hills.’

  ‘And Grace. Dr Lewis, where is she?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. Everyone is being brought to Hollow Hills. It’s like a fortress.’

  He pictured Grace, not as an adult, but as his seven-year-old best friend neighbor, whose basement he hid in twenty-four years ago. That’s who she’ll go for. He looked at the history on his cell. The last message from her had been hours ago. All his messages had gone to her voice mail. Shit. ‘No,’ he said to the guard. ‘We have to find Dr Lewis. That’s who she’ll go after. She’ll do it to get to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry sir …’

  Before the guard could finish his sentence, Frank spotted keys in the ignition of a UNICO SUV. He made an unsteady dash for it, slammed the door shut, locked it, and seeing double, he floored it.

  TWENTY-NINE

  In the zone with data, Grace sat at the kitchen table with her laptop. Phones went to voice mail, and nothing short of a fire could distract her from the mystery of Jen Owens’s cells. She flipped through analyses of all six of the children’s DNA. On five the telomeres were robust and twice as long as prior to the infusion. But Jen’s going to die … soon. Why didn’t it work for her? Why isn’t she getting better? She thought of Frank and how attached he’d become to Jen. We have to try again. Maybe she got a bogus dosage. Not possible … and we can’t … can we?

  She imagined what Jackson would say. ‘When things don’t add up, you’ve not thoroughly assessed the problem. So, stop trying to solve it. Because you don’t know what you’re trying to solve. Find the correct question, and then – only then – can you maybe answer it.’

  She sat back, again ignored her phone, ‘What am I missing?’ She replayed the night in the Hollow Hills laboratory with Frank when they’d produced the six doses. It had taken till dawn. They’d sequenced the nucleotide protein, purified it, coated it with sugars to trick the cells into thinking it was food, and created just enough for six infusions.

  Her doorbell rang. Like a hypnotic subject, Grace started.

  Through the frosted-glass door panes she saw Dalton Lang’s perfect profile. ‘What the fuck is he doing here?’

  She opened it

  ‘Dalton, what’s—’

  ‘Grace, we’ve got a serious situation. I need you to come with me now.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Frank’s mother escaped from the hospital.’

  ‘Candace! Oh fuck. Where’s Frank?’ She grabbed her cell and saw his missed messages and texts.

  ‘He’s safe. He says you’re not. Come with me.’

  ‘Right. Yes. OK.’ She looked around at her country chic rental home, she thought to grab her laptop. But Candace Garfield on the loose, meant drop everything and get to safety. Poor Frank!

  ‘Hurry,’ Dalton urged.

  She left it and followed Dalton to his BMW. She heard the locks click as they sped out the drive and onto the road. In the rearview mirror she saw a dark SUV race past and turn into her driveway. Is that her?

  ‘Wait, stop!’ Her pulse quickened. ‘Dalton, stop!’ She tried to open her door. It wouldn’t. Focused on the unraveling nightmare of Candace Garfield’s escape she didn’t see Dalton’s fist as it connected with surgical efficiency to her left temple. Light exploded across her visual fields. Then piercing pain, like someone drilled through her skull. And then she blacked out.

  Without slowing, Dalton placed two fingers into the notch of Grace’s carotid. It pulsed. Good. He glanced at her, like a sleeping doll, save for the angry red mark that grew across the side of her face where he’d hit her. Like bruised fruit.

  Using the hands-free, he called Frank.

  He picked up after the first ring.

  ‘Frank, good news bad news. The children and their families are accounted for. We even pulled your rats back to Hollow Hill.’ He paused for effect. ‘We can’t find Grace.’

  ‘She doesn’t answer her calls when she’s working. It’s annoying—’

  ‘No Frank. We’ve been to her house. She’s not there. It’s not good.’

  ‘I’ll find her.’

  ‘Frank, no. You need to stay safe. The children need you. Jennifer needs you.’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  Yes, you do. ‘Frank, no.’

  The line went dead. Dalton thought to call him back, but no. He drove for several miles to a property that hugged a curve of the Shepaugh River. He turned right onto a dirt road that led back to an abandoned spread that had once been the obsession of an investment banker who’d harbored fantasies of being a weekend farmer. The three-story house was an impractical modern mess with acute angles that made the rooms impossible for furniture, but that’s not where he headed. He drove past a cracked basketball court that had begun to break off at the edges and fall down the ravine towards the river. And past a rotting deck that framed an abandoned pool now home to frogs, bright green algae, and hatching mosquitoes. The car jounced over potholes and rocks as a vine-covered barn came into sight.

  He stopped, opened his door and listened. He heard the spring-swollen river in the background, birdsong overhead. He noted a deep loamy smell then searched for signs of human activity. He spotted a few rusted beer cans and a faded foil condom wrapper. But nothing recent. This will do.

  He popped the trunk and opened a satchel filled with samples of UNICO products. He selected a potent surgical narcotic, grabbed a needle and syringe, and drew up a double dose.

  Grace moaned.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Shush. Everything’s fine, you had a little accident.’

  He opened her door and smiled. She looked confused and then alarmed as he pushed up her sleeve.

  ‘What?’ was all she managed, as he efficiently jabbed her bicep and depressed the plunger.

  ‘It’s OK, Grace. Everything’s fine.’ He examined the area where he’d hit her, as redness blossomed … like a flower. Lyrics popped to mind. Blood red chrysanthemum on my baby’s face. He crouched beside her as the potent narcotic drew her into a stupor. Her jaw fell slack. She snored.

  ‘Cute … and you really are.’ He put a finger under her firm chin, the way Mother’s used to be … and is again. He compared the passed-out blonde to Frank. ‘Who’s not into me … which makes no sense. What is that boy’s problem?’

  ‘But we’ve things to do.’ He liked the sound of his voice against the backdrop of the woods and the engorged river. He pulled Grace from the car, was relieved to see she wasn’t much more than a hundred-twenty pounds and gently carried her in his arms into the barn.

  Inside, it was dark and smelled of old dung and hay. His eyes adjusted and he caught small pools of light through cracks in the weathered siding. ‘Here we go.’ He carried her to a spot near the center of the cavernous structure. With his foot, he cleared away bits of straw and loose wood and nails and laid her down. He grabbed his cell phone, flipped on the flashlight and searched around on the floor. ‘There you are.’ He grabbed a brass ring and yanked up on a metal-lined trap door that revealed a tidy root cellar, or perhaps a previous owner’s idea of a bomb shelter. The insides were surprisingly clean and the air that brushed his face was cool.

  He left his cell on the floor to illuminate the interior, and
trying not to injure her further, he lowered her like a rag doll into the cellar, closed the hatch, found a piece of two-by-four and pushed it through the brass ring. He tested to see if it would hold. It did. Blood red chrysanthemum on my baby’s cheek. Sleeping like an angel in a hollow deep.

  He retrieved his phone and headed back to the car. Blood red chrysanthemum why must we weep? He heard the river and the chirp of frogs. Blood red chrysanthemum here now the day of feast.

  He unzipped an outer compartment of his briefcase and grabbed a burner phone. He dialed Frank. In a well-practiced and perfect impersonation of his mother, he said, ‘Dr Garfield, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this.’ He paused. ‘Grace Lewis was in a horrible accident.’

  ‘What? What are you saying?’

  ‘The doctors don’t know if she’ll survive.’

  There was dead air over the line.

  ‘Dr Garfield? Frank?’ Dalton heard a woman’s voice in the background. ‘Frank? Frank?’ It sounded like Frank’s phone dropped to the ground. He pressed the cheap cell to his ear. ‘Frank?’ There was someone with him. She rambled, half talking and half chanting. Her words sounded garbled. Latin?

  And he knew. Candace Garfield had found her son. Fascinated, he listened. She made no sense, her sentences flew fast, muddled and weird. Then a scraping sound and the line went dead.

  He grabbed his iPhone and swiped to a GPS app which had the data for Frank’s, Grace’s, and his mother’s cells. He was at Grace’s. Right. He now pictured the SUV that pulled in as he’d sped off. He’d been correct that Frank’s mother would go for his life-long friend. He’d missed him, and apparently her, by seconds.

  Catalyst, indeed.

  He sang in a mournful E minor, Blood red chrysanthemum cruel fate now tears us apart. Blood red chrysanthemum you broke the key to my heart. He drove off.

  THIRTY

  ‘Unclean thing,’ Candace Garfield shouted as she emerged through a dense yew hedge outside Grace’s.

  Frank panicked. He didn’t register when his cell dropped or that Leona Lang had just said awful things about Grace. All he saw was his mother, in green hospital scrubs, twigs and dirt tangled in her iron-gray hair, and a black-handled butcher knife with fresh blood on the blade. Did she kill Grace? ‘Whose blood is that?’