Robert Masello - The Medusa Amulet

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.

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.”