The bloodstone, p.15
The Bloodstone, page 15
“Look,” Doreen exclaimed, “there’s a container for donor tags. We’re supposed to drop them inside.”
“Not yet. I want to see the American Wing.” Chandal was surprised at her own insistence.
“Oh, let’s go. I wanted to get a bite to eat. I thought—”
“I have to go in there. Don’t ask me why, I can’t explain. It’s just that—”
Doreen tried to pull her toward the door. “You’re shaking. Chandal, you’re shaking all over. You need air or to sit down or something.”
Chandal hurried on, unaware now of her surroundings. There was just an unexplainable obsessive pull toward the American Wing, where a sign proclaimed that there was a special exhibit this week.
A change of atmosphere hit her first. A different sort of smell, a mustiness not apparent in any other room of the well-ventilated museum. Slowly, the two girls advanced through the door into a room that had been assembled as a cathedral. Even the lighting seemed to filter through stained glass. On the walls were lights in holders under huge oil paintings. There were wooden pews on either side and down the center ran a red carpet like an aisle of blood up to the altar.
For a moment the room made her physically dizzy, as if an earth tremor had occurred beneath her. The floor seemed to quiver. She felt sick and shivered, as some dim and horrible memory rammed against the walls of her consciousness, then died away, leaving her numb, her head throbbing, as if from a brutal blow.
She reeled blindly from the cathedral into a smaller anteroom, where her mind recorded images of gleaming rosewood tables, high-backed chairs, vases, gargoyles, sideboards, a hand-carved chess set of superb workmanship. She heard herself begin to moan, could not stop.
“Chandal? What’s wrong?” Doreen’s voice, high-pitched, scared.
Turning, Chandal once again faced the cathedral room. A sort of paralysis had come over her, held her immobile, as she gazed upon the icon art—crucifixion too realistically captured, the agony of Christ intense, the blood thick. Corpses upon other crosses being robbed of their clothing by the poor. The Virgin Mary, her mouth sad, her eyes dull and compassionless. A human skeleton, lance in hand, riding on a white stallion.
She shivered and a pain developed in the center of her forehead. As though something inside of her concentrated very hard now, almost lusting after the blood that oozed from the wounds of Christ. Sweat began to gather on her neck under her turtleneck sweater, began to roll down from her hairline. Death. She could see it so plainly in the mummified body lying in its shallow grave, and in the face on the Virgin Mary who gazed up at her son on the cross. Now Chandal felt her knees buckle and sat down quickly on a low stool, swaying slightly from side to side.
“What’s the matter?” Doreen’s voice said as if from a far distance.
Chandal breathed in harsh desperate gasps. A pain shot across her chest and seemed to plunge inward like a knife.
“Doreen,” whispered Chandal, “I’m sick.”
“Sick? What kind of sick? Are you going to faint?”
“What’s wrong here?” inquired a masculine voice and Chandal felt hands come up to support her on the left side. Doreen’s clammy fingers still clutched her right arm so hard as to bring bruises.
“She just needs a little air,” mumbled Doreen.
“Should I call a doctor?”
Chandal began to protest, imagined that the doctor they would call would be a psychiatrist. And, of course, a psychiatrist would soon decide she needed to go back to that place. That was why she must never let anyone see how confused she was. Some unexpected inner strength lifted her head, relaxed her hands which had been clenched into fists.
“Thank you,” she said in a refined, almost prudish voice. “I can’t imagine what came over me. I’m all right now. Quite all right.” Head held high, she rose and walked steadily toward the exit ahead of Doreen who followed somewhat breathlessly, heels scraping loudly against the polished floor. Chandal looked briefly over her shoulder and something in her icy blue eyes hastened Doreen’s gait.
Side by side now, the two girls made their way across the lobby. Chandal took tiny ladylike steps that carried her forward at a deceptively rapid pace. She was in control now and clucked gently as though she remonstrated with some inner self. She would remember in the future never to attract such attention to herself. It wasn’t proper. It wasn’t....
She neatly extracted her donor button from her collar and dropped it into the bin. It wasn’t the ladylike thing to do, she reminded herself. No. She would have to be more on her guard after this.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
... DISTURBED.
What does “disturbed” mean?
Dr. I. Luther peered over the tops of his half-glasses at Chandal Knight’s folder. Case history number 33236. It was late Friday afternoon. Outside the narrow lead-paned window of his office, which faced the huge expanse of lawn that encompassed most of the front grounds of Lakewood Sanitarium, it was raining. Soft rain. Steady rain. A rain filled with many thoughts. The word “disturbed” passed through his mind once again.
Over the years he had hoped that the word would take on new meaning for him, that it would change or that some other word would appear to clarify its meaning so that the word could be transmuted into an absolute.
He thought—of that frightened young girl. A February night. She had cried herself sick. Fainted. Found herself surrounded by windows laced with steel net. Lakewood. He had gone to her. Had helped her relax. She had screamed suddenly: Fire!... A quick series of injections. Then sleep.
Commotion became stillness.
And soon a year had passed with Chandal progressing from “mental illness” to “health.” It had been a startling recovery which began in September of that same year. Her confusion had suddenly vanished. Overnight, it seemed, she had everything under control. She was no longer “disturbed.” It had happened too suddenly to please Dr. Luther. Not, unfortunately, too suddenly to please the Board of Examiners.
He glanced again at the folder before him and remembered how the empty pages began to fill. Notes doubled. Full chords filled the binder. Notes written below the allotted space. Hurried notes. Sudden thoughts that had seemed important to him at the time.
His fist curled tight now as he tried to extricate himself from thought. It was one of his concentration tricks. Tense a part of your body to get the brain’s attention, to get it off whatever particular treadmill it had begun to pace at a given moment. This afternoon it wasn’t working.
Beyond his window clouds shifted, causing yet more shadows that changed the day. An overhang supported by four round pillars that extended to the edge of the walkway continued to shield people as they waited for cars to pick them up. Others decided in sudden fits of frenzy to make a mad dash for it.
The door to his office opened abruptly and he looked up, momentarily squinting.
“Dr. Luther! I didn’t know you were still here.”
It was Nurse Sharp, one of the hospital’s part-time medical secretaries, a registered nurse with more of a penchant for clerical work than for patients. Nurse Sharp was assigned to Luther whenever he found himself with an excessive work load. She was wearing a dark blue suit, suede and expensive.
“I’m afraid so,” he sighed.
“I just finished a few letters for Dr. Hess. I thought I’d check your file. To see if you needed something done.”
“I’m all caught up at the moment. Thank you.”
She shook her head and frowned. “You look tired.”
“Just restless. I’ll be all right.”
“Well, have a nice weekend.”
“You too.”
“Bye.”
Without looking back, she departed quickly.
Luther sat for a while with quiet thoughts. Then he stood up and removed his lab coat. He looked taller without it. Broad shoulders. Narrow waist. He pushed his arms through the sleeves of his sports jacket. Now he stood behind his desk, with an apprehensive sense of things disassembling. He was uncertain how to react to Chandal’s sudden return to New York.
He had had many strange cases, but out of all his many patients, he had always felt there was something unexplainable about her recovery. She had appeared totally healthy upon her release from Lakewood. Yet... something didn’t fit.
Over the many months that followed her release, he had tried to put all doubt out of his mind. But somehow he had never freed himself from her bewitchment, or had freed himself only temporarily, then had found himself once again drawn to her file. Drawn again to listen to the tape recording of her voice that he had listened to so many times.
On sudden impulse he withdrew a small tape machine from his desk drawer, dropped quickly into his chair and pressed the start button. There was no need to check the label to ascertain the tape’s contents. It was the voice recording of Patient 33236, C. Knight, a 26-year-old Caucasian female.
The click of the machine echoed abrasively against the walls of his almost airtight office. A brief silence followed before her words filled the room.
“Because I have seen what I have seen,
Because I have been where I have been,
Because I have communed with those who know...
I am who I am.”
Chandal spoke dully, without emphasis, her voice deeply unhappy. There was desolation in what she was saying, a darkness, as if laced with eons of medieval superstitions.
He punched the button. There was no impulse to rewind the tape and listen again. He knew the words by heart. He knew, too, that Chandal had never remembered saying those words. And that she could not explain their meaning.
Were they part of a dream she had once had? A hallucination? A fantasy of sorts? Or did they have meaning? Were they part of and the cause of her amnesia?
He dug into her folder. Turned pages until he found what he was looking for. He took the note away and read it silently.
Chandal’s expression, appearance, and the impression she makes are all fairly normal now. She is about seven-eighths of the time young-looking, facial features relaxed. She has almost completely lost the disoriented quality which plagued her throughout most of her sessions. Yet there are fleeting moments when she slips into a much more prudish posture. Restricted and somber. In these moments she refers to herself as WE, fluctuates from poor to fair contact, and speaks very little and shyly. During these unusual brief periods, her eyes change from wide-eyed and normal to a more dreamy and introverted expression. Eyes become narrow slits.
Seven-eighths of the time, Luther mused. It had always been the remaining one-eighth that had left him feeling vaguely uneasy.
Luther now took a breath deeper than usual as he wished that he had gotten more information from Ron Talon. He hoped that he had left Ron with the right sense of urgency. He found himself thinking it imperative that Ron call him once he’d reached New York City.
Carefully he placed the note back into Chandal’s folder and closed its cover. He had closed the cover once, thinking it was over. This time he wasn’t quite that sure.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHEN CHANDAL CAME BOUNDING DOWN THE BEDROOM STAIRS, her living room smelled of air that was three days old. The apartment was musty-smelling, yet at the same time a little too warm. She looked tired, like a person who had just put in two long eight-hour shifts back-to-back. Without pausing in the living room she ran toward the kitchen, her feet making no sound on the new green shag carpet.
“What are the big pills for?” Doreen asked from her usual slouched position on the couch.
“Headaches. They’re for the headaches.”
“And these?” She held up smaller pills in a green bottle.
“What? Oh. Blood pressure.”
“That’s it? Blood pressure?”
“That’s what the doctor said. All I have is a slight case of elevated blood pressure. All the other tests were negative.”
It was due to Doreen’s insistence that Chandal had finally spent three excruciating hours in St. Luke’s Hospital, where she had undergone a series of tests after the incident at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They assured her that she was in perfect health, that she need only relax and take life a bit more easily. If, however, the fainting spells continued, she had been advised to see a neurologist. Prescriptions in hand, more annoyed than cured, she was released.
Chandal now paced the kitchen miserably, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her skirt. She looked up once and saw Doreen staring sadly at her. Her deep blue eyes gushed over with sympathy and compassion.
“Doreen, stop looking at me like that!”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m about to die or something. I’m fine. Fine!”
“I know, but...”
“But what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, I thought maybe... well, I thought maybe you were pregnant.”
“Pregnant!” Chandal stood there and stared her in the eyes, Doreen stared back.
Chandal suddenly felt a fear at being joined to such an ongoing chain of life. It was as if Doreen had struck a nerve that Chandal had thought was well protected, blocked off. Her fear surged forward. Strange kicks in her womb. Milk sucked from nipples. Constipation, stomach cramps, and sleepless nights. Maternity. But she had wanted this at one time, hadn’t she? If so, why so intense a reaction on her part now? Through a confused haze she heard Doreen’s voice.
“Is there any reason why you couldn’t be?” Doreen asked.
Chandal struggled to regain control, felt herself drawn to reply against her will. “I haven’t been with a man. Not since Ron. And besides—”
“What?”
“I... I have a prescription for birth control pills.”
Doreen nodded. “I see.”
Chandal’s fear ebbed. Something new took its place. Not really new, merely new in its intensity. Success. Stardom. There weren’t any words. How bright her future seemed. Startlingly she regained focus, felt her vigor return.
“This is ridiculous!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands into the air. “Me standing here talking about being pregnant. I gotta get the hell out of here or I’ll be late for rehearsal.”
Chandal began flying around the room, pushing aside magazines, rifling drawers, peering behind pillows and under chairs. She stopped abruptly and turned to Doreen.
“Damn it!” her voice boomed.
“What’s the matter?”
“My script. You haven’t seen a blue script lying around here, have you?”
Doreen’s forehead rippled with distress as she reached beneath her crumpled body. “You mean this?”
“Yes! I mean that!” She snatched the script from Doreen’s hand.
Doreen looked away sheepishly. “How does it feel to be a working actress?”
“Great.”
“It sure didn’t take you long,” she mumbled. “I mean, you got the part just like that.”
Chandal smiled cynically and snapped her fingers. “Just like that!”
Chandal had to admit she’d been pleased with the way she had handled herself at the audition on Wednesday, not to mention having entirely charmed Eric Savage. If she had been out of practice as an actress, she still had more nerve and courage than she had imagined.
Her pleasure, however, hadn’t been destined to last very long. When she had telephoned her service on Thursday from a pay phone to see if there were any messages, they had informed her that Eric Savage had been trying to reach her all day. That she had been cast in the role of Rachel. In mid-sentence Chandal shrieked:
“You’re kidding!”
“No, you go into rehearsal tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” she gulped. “Are you sure?”
“That’s what the message says. Rehearsals begin Friday, April 3rd. 10:00 A.M. Pilot Theatre.”
Chandal stood, receiver in hand, and stared blankly at the pedestrians and traffic going by. She thought of the hours spent in acting classes, dance classes, voice lessons, even the hours of reading hundreds of plays. And the dreams, the courage to risk all to go against impossible odds, the knowledge that if you failed, it would be too late to do anything else. That the definition of your life would be failure. All this so that she could finally, finally, win a role like Rachel in an authentic New York play. And all for seventy-odd dollars a week.
“Thank you,” she said in a rather dazed manner and found that she had slammed the receiver on the hook almost viciously. Of all the reactions imaginable, she would never have expected to feel as she did. This frightened, depressed, ironic realization that she had spent a good many years and an enormous expenditure of energy and money for an ultimately meager end.
Eight-thirty. Friday morning. Toast, a small glass of orange juice and two cups of tea.
Chandal sat perched percariously on the edge of her chair, the remote thought still numbing her mind: Stage fright. God!
It gave her the jitters as if she were opening in front of Clive Barnes, Walter Kerr and John Simon today, instead of just attending her first day of rehearsal. What if I freeze? What will I do then?
Preoccupied, she made the bed, emptied an overflowing ashtray, and washed two days of dirty dishes which had piled up in the sink. It was so hard lately to keep the place clean. She just didn’t have her mind on it. New York apartments got dirty too quickly anyhow. Dust was like a second skin to furniture, window ledges and floors. Hurriedly she ran a vacuum and then dusted with a feather duster, not the most thorough of methods, but to hell with it. She knew she was stalling anyway. Knew that it was getting late, and that soon, very soon, she had to face what she hadn’t wanted to face in years. Could she cut it as a professional stage actress? Anxiety ripped her apart like a knife.
But the first day of rehearsal turned out to be a soothing interlude. Chandal surprised herself with the ease with which she went about doing her job, despite the harrowing week she had had prior to getting the part.
From the first moment of the first read-through of the play, Chandal found that she habitually drew a deep breath and upon releasing it, had somehow given up a part of herself, sacrificed herself for the sake of the play. She could feel herself tremble as she waited for the transformation to take place. Waited for the soft core of her personality to become rigid. Where once there was love, let there be hate. Where once there was magnanimity, let there be self-absorption. In a way, she thought with a great deal of Rachel’s satisfaction, it was like selling a part of one’s soul.
