The Bloodstone, page 25
The new hope buoyed her, sending her almost running down the flagstone path on Ron’s arm. He could do nothing to calm her. In the back seat of the taxi she sat wringing her hands, silently willing the cabby to go faster.
“It’s that narrow building with grating on the downstairs windows,” she said suddenly and reached for the door handle.
“Easy, lady!” barked the driver, glaring at her through his rear view mirror. “For God’s sake, you’ll end up like a tube of toothpaste, you keep acting like that. Just a tube of skin around soft squished insides.”
“We got the picture,” muttered Ron.
“You see that truck in back of me?” the driver continued undaunted. “Truck drivers don’t stop for nothing. They’re the biggest bullies on the road. How’d you like to be under that truck, huh? For Christ’s sakes, one of his wheels weighs more than you do.”
“There’s nothing in the world like a New York cabby,” grinned Ron, as Chandal dragged him after her across the street. “The one I had out from Kennedy sang opera to me in Yiddish.” His smile evaporated, as she offered no response. He had tried for lightness, what the hell, but she wasn’t having any of it.
She was racing up narrow stairs. “It’s upstairs, but I don’t understand why there weren’t any signs in the lobby. I’m sure—I remember there were signs.” She came to such an abrupt halt at the top of the stairs that he almost ran into her. “Oh, Jesus,” she moaned. “Oh, my God. Ron, Jesus, Ron. Just look. Oh, my God, look!”
“What? What in the name of—”
She stood, ghastly pale and washed clean of resistance, staring at a door.
THE NEW YORK SCHOOL OF KARATE, proclaimed a sign and an arrow pointed the way through the door, as though the average person who would have come to study the art of Karate wouldn’t be able to maneuver through a doorway without proper instruction.
“This was Friendly Realty,” she said dully. “It was painted all bright—orange, I think—and disco music was playing.... How were they able to do this?”
“Are you sure this is the right building?” Ron squeezed her hand and found it limp and cool.
“Oh, it’s the right building, all right.” As though mildly curious to see the worst, she pushed open the door and a slender young mulatto rose from behind his desk to greet them with a smile and a swift glance downward to see that his pens and forms were handy for quick access. Ron almost hated to give the news that the potential double sale was not to be.
“Friendly Realty?” the man sighed with crushing disappointment. He had never heard of it. He had also never heard of a Miss Ramsey, the place had never been painted in psychedelic colors, and the New York School of Karate had been in business for six years. Open fifty weeks a year, he said hopefully. Their students had gone on to win brown belts, black belts and were the only really safe residents of New York City.
“We don’t live in New York,” Ron stated. “We live in California. Los Angeles.”
“Oh. Too bad it’s not San Francisco. We have a branch in San Francisco.”
“I was here in March. March 19th. This whole place was a realty firm. Friendly Realty,” Chandal said, her voice more curious than hopeful.
“You must be off a block. There was nobody here on March 19th. We were in Colorado. A Karate exhibition. Then up in Toronto for a week after that. Unless somebody was doing a number on you, you’re mistaken.” His eyes narrowed. “Hey, you weren’t caught in a scam or anything?”
“No. No, nothing like that. Thank you.” She turned away and then shrieked, “Ron—on the door! Do you see that?”
“What?” Ron and the Karate salesman asked at once.
“On the door! Don’t you see?” She pointed, her fingers tense and trembling. “It’s orange paint. That round spot.”
“That’s rust,” said the man disgustedly. “And we just paid big money for a paint job too. Nobody takes time to do the job right anymore.”
“It’s not rust! It’s orange paint. Ron, can’t you see that’s orange paint?”
Ron hated the doubt that stabbed through his faith. He turned to stare at Chandal. So soon, he thought self-accusingly. He had come to doubt her. So soon.
Later, back at the carriage house, as Chandal sat motionless on the couch, Ron broached the subject of Dr. Luther.
The idea of hypnosis frightened her, and yet at the same time Ron could see that she was interested. The primary attraction seemed to lie in the concept of herself safely asleep, and, through this peaceful trance, obtaining the ability to bring forth psychological data that had thus far emerged in sporadic rushes. Now, if Ron was right, the information might be obtained in a cohesive non-traumatic manner, while she would lie protected by Dr. Luther and Ron as well. Her fear was composed of the conviction that “Elizabeth” and perhaps others would know what was happening.
“So what?” Ron responded, stroking her arm affectionately. “What can they do, Del? I’ll be here. Dr. Luther will be here. There’s nothing they can do about that.”
Chandal closed her eyes convulsively. “I’m not sure,” she said, her voice thin, hardly vocal. “It’s hard to say what they can do. I...
“Go on,” he coaxed.
“Billy Deats... he used to be an old friend. An actor. I thought maybe he could help me. That he knew something. Something that would help me remember. I called him. He was hesitant at first, but then he agreed to see me. We set up an appointment. When I arrived at his hotel, he... Oh, Jesus!”
“What happened?”
“When I got there—he had...” She shook her head. “He had committed suicide. He’d jumped... I...”
“Del, come on! Things happen. You can’t go around blaming yourself. Things happen.”
“I guess.”
“Don’t guess. Know. Dr. Luther wants to help you. He feels you’ll remember under hypnosis. Why not let him try?”
Chandal sat straighter on the couch. “What if I want to wake up? What then?”
“Then you tell him you want to wake up.”
“And I can? I can just open my eyes?”
“We’ll tell him to make sure you can.”
She considered that, shaking her head in some inner indecisiveness.
“What we don’t want,” Ron said gently, “is to run away from this thing.”
She raised her eyes to stare at him. He thought he had never seen her so childlike. There was that heartbreaking vulnerability spilling over from her intensely blue dilated pupils. Perhaps it was this dilation that made her seem so vulnerable, so dependent on what he would do or say, as if something within those eyes was a high-powered magnet, sucking at every impulse, every thought wave, within a radius of a hundred feet.
Reluctantly Ron let his gaze leave those inquisitive wells and travel on over the satiny clear skin of her small, delicate face; the sheen of soft fine brown hair pulled back with a wide cloth headband; the momentary peace that had settled over her usual anxiety.
“And Dr. Luther thinks I should be hypnotized?” she asked, keeping her eyes fastened on him.
“Yes. It’s his recommendation, Del.”
“Well, then—” She let her shoulders rise and fall in a slight gesture of acquiesence.
It was the only yes she was to give him, but it was enough.
Moments later she was curled up into a knot, sound asleep on the couch. Ron found himself drawn to stare through the window at the brownstone. He knew what he was looking for—for signs of life, as Chandal had said she’d noticed. Lights, draperies at window’s, something. The brownstone stood dark, silent and deserted, its eyes dark and lifeless, as though it were a demolished giant who stood blinded and defeated by age and lack of care.
Ron sighed, turned off the lamp, and dropped uneasily into the chair facing the couch. His only thought was that somewhere—somewhere—there had to be an answer to all this. He stared at Chandal for a long time, then turned away. Logic—there had to be a logical explanation, or else.... No, he wouldn’t allow himself the thought.
His eyes came to rest on the statue, whose Gothic features remained hidden in the shadows. A small shaft of light fell just short of its center, creating highlights over its folded legs and cloven hooves.
Ron’s eyes blinked several times and began to close. What had he been thinking? Something about the statue. Rites and rituals. Priests and demons. Incantations on both sides. Not the statue—the crucifix. He had been thinking of the crucifix. It appeared before his eyes, rightside up. With a sudden thrust, as if a Las Vegas dealer were using it for a wheel-of-fortune, the crucifix began to spin. Around and around it went until finally it stopped. Upside down.
“Upside down,” Ron mumbled and fell into a deep sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
NOW IT WAS FRIDAY, APRIL THE SEVENTEENTH.
The city had grown colder that night and there was no moon. The sky was clouded, without stars. It was the kind of night when no one should be alone.
Perhaps that was why Chandal had cried when Ron and Dr. Luther entered the house, causing Ron to experience a stab of jealousy. Probably a little in love with him, he thought, the way patients were with their doctors. In a paranoid way, he wondered if this was why she had agreed to the hypnosis. To see Dr. Luther again. He wished that the doctor had worn more clinical garments—a lab jacket or something less imposing, less distinguished than the simple open-necked black sports shirt that complemented his dark complexion and grey-blue eyes which always seemed to be calm, yet at the same time flashed with energy and purpose.
“I’m going to use this round piece of crystal,” Luther was saying now, holding the sparkling ball between his thumb and first finger. “Do you have any idea what it’s for?”
Chandal eyed the crystal ball, which measured approximately one inch in diameter. “It’s supposed to put me to sleep,” she said rather distrustfully and followed it with her eyes as Luther moved forward and sat in a chair facing her. The living room lights had been lowered to a very dim glow and the sparkle of the ball was an appealing focal point. Luther held it now about twelve inches from Chandal’s eyes and slightly above eye level.
“I would imagine you must feel very tired about this time,” he said pleasantly and moved the ball very slightly to the left. “You’ve been tense for such a long time now and it’s so good to relax.”
Chandal stared wide-eyed at the ball without exhibiting any signs of relaxing.
“You want to say something,” Luther encouraged. “It’s perfectly all right to speak, Chandal. We haven’t begun. We’re only talking.”
“The shine of that crystal,” she said sharply. “It isn’t at all relaxing. I hate that—that whiteness. I can’t stand to look at it.”
Immediately Luther’s hand closed around the small object and he dropped it into his coat pocket. “We don’t have to use it. Is there something else you’d like to use? Something that gives you pleasure to look at?”
Her lips formed a tight little smile. “My pendant,” she said, reaching up to remove it from her neck. “I love to look at it. It’s called a bloodstone.”
Luther stepped forward and took it from her suddenly hesitant fingers. “It’s lovely,” he murmured, returning to his chair.
Ron, sitting off to the side in the shadows, knew that Luther had not missed Chandal’s reluctance to part with the pendant. He had merely chosen to ignore it. Luther now inclined his head in Ron’s direction and Ron obediently followed the signal by pushing a button in a small mechanism that sat before him on the table. The slow steady beating of a metronome filled the room.
Luther continued to talk in a sleep-inducing voice. He suggested that all tension was leaving Chandal’s body, that her eyelids were becoming heavy, that she wanted more than anything else to sleep. At the same time, he had begun to swing the bloodstone pendant very slowly from left to right. Chandal was to let herself sleep, nothing was going to happen except that she would feel very peaceful, very happy and confident. Her memory would be sharp despite the fact that her body would be completely relaxed, completely free of tension.
Chandal’s eyes seemed distressed as though she struggled against an inevitable surrender. They fought to remain open, to stay focused on the bloodstone.
“It’s perfectly all right to let go,” Luther murmured. “You’re perfectly safe, and so peaceful.”
With a sudden sigh Chandal let her eyes close, swayed slightly until she seemed to find a new center of gravity in her chair, something that held her securely and would not let her fall.
Ron blinked and sat up straighter. It would have become very easy to fall asleep, lulled by Luther’s voice and the low rhythmic sound of the metronome. Luther was administering tests to Chandal now, satisfying himself that she was in a hypnotic sleep. She was unable to open her eyes when challenged. Unable to raise her arm when told she could not. He continued to make suggestions as to her well-being. Later he would wish to awaken her, he said in a voice that inspired confidence. At that time he would command her to awaken and then count to five. She would follow his instructions and awaken at once to feel refreshed and filled with new vitality and relaxation.
“Do you understand, Chandal?”
She nodded slightly.
“Are you relaxed?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to ask you to go back to a time in the past. There’s absolutely nothing that can harm you back there. You’re perfectly free to remember and you’re so peaceful that the memory can no longer hurt you. It can only help you. It can only heal you. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” she said in a louder, mildly pleased voice.
“Well, then, do you remember when we first met? The first night you came to Lakewood—”
“That was her,” Chandal said distinctly. “I wasn’t there at all that night.”
“Where were you?” Luther asked without surprise.
Instinctively Ron reached out and clicked off the metronome as Luther had indicated he might, once the session was underway. He had a faint twinge of misgiving. As though the slight frown that hovered around Chandal’s lips had warned him he was going to hear things that perhaps he would be afraid to hear.
Slowly Chandal brought a clenched fist upward and buried it in her stomach just above the navel.
“Is that where you were?” Luther questioned.
No answer as her frown deepened.
“You can open your eyes without breaking your sleep,” Luther directed calmly. “Go ahead now and open your eyes.”
Ron was amazed to note that Chandal’s eyes flew open with no hesitation. She looked perfectly awake now and completely normal. It’s not working, he thought. She isn’t hypnotized.
“The night when you first arrived at Lakewood,” Luther began.
“I was too tired to fight anymore.” Chandal’s voice was low and slightly slurred as though under heavy sedation. “She was so much stronger than me and, anyhow, I didn’t care anymore.”
“What didn’t you care about?”
She mumbled something. The words seemed deliberately muffled.
“What didn’t you care about?”
“Oh,” she sighed.
“What?”
“—the body. I didn’t care about the body.”
“Your body?”
“She wanted it. She took it. It didn’t matter.”
“Who took it?”
Chandal compressed her lips tightly.
“All right, then.” Luther smiled. “We’ll come back to that. Now I’d like you to go back a little further. You’re packing. Getting ready to move into the brownstone on—what street was it again?”
“On 85th Street. The same block we already lived on. I want to go to California, but Justin—Justin wants to stay. I don’t know why. He just changed his mind. And so...”
“Do you love Justin very much?”
“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed softly, a light coming into her eyes. “More than anyone in the world.”
Ron was unprepared for the question and the answer, although Luther had warned him that this line of questioning would be explored. He had simply not anticipated the strong acid sting of pain in his gut at seeing that look of love on Chandal’s face for another man.
“How do you feel about moving into the brownstone?” Luther prompted.
“It’s spacious. It could be nice. But it’s dark. And the building’s so run-down. So gloomy.”
“So you don’t want to live there?”
She stirred restively. “I don’t know.”
“What about the owners of the brownstone?”
“They’re nice. Two nice old women. Of course, they have terrible taste, but we can fix it up. Paint, paper....”
“You’re moved in now. You’re unpacked and settled. Tell me how you like it now.”
She seemed to strain for a memory just out of reach. A fleeting note of puzzlement touched her face and then she shook her head. “I don’t believe I can remember. She doesn’t want me to remember.”
“Who is she?”
No answer.
Luther let a restful moment go by before continuing. “I’m going to make it very easy for you to remember, Chandal. In your right hand you will find a large ring of keys. A simple metal ring filled with all sorts of different shaped keys. Can you feel the ring? Do you see the keys?”
Chandal glanced down at her right hand which had closed around a seemingly real object. “Yes, I have it.”
“You hold in your hand the keys to your memory. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Each one of those keys will unlock a room inside the brownstone,” Luther continued. “Chandal, pick out any one of those keys and lead me into one of the rooms in the brownstone. Any one at all. The easiest one.”
She sat puzzling over the keys.
“Something simple,” Luther said. “The kitchen. That should be easy.”
