Petrified (6 page)

He jogged faster and faster, panting. He jogged past marble cenotaphs and polished granite slabs and statues of weeping angels. The trees were burning more and more fiercely, and now the grass itself was on fire, and the flames were rushing after him as if a fiery rip-tide were coming in.

As he neared the cemetery gates, he saw that they were closed and locked, and that there was no way out. Black smoke was rolling across the cemetery in dense, choking clouds, and everything was blazing, even the statues of weeping angels, as if they were made of white wax instead of stone.

Braydon turned around and around, frantically trying to work out how he was going to escape.

It was then that he heard Sukie's voice. ‘
Daddy
?' she was calling. ‘
Daddy, where
are you
?'

‘I'm here, sweetheart!' Braydon called out. ‘Daddy's right here!'

‘
I need you, Daddy
!
Please, Daddy, come save me
!
Please
!'

‘I'm coming, darling! Don't be frightened! Daddy's right here!'

Braydon flailed his way through the thickening smoke, coughing and wheezing. He tripped over the low cast-iron fencing around somebody's granite sepulcher, and stumbled through the flower vases in front of somebody else's headstone. But then the smoke cleared a little and he saw Sukie standing on a white marble plinth, holding Binkie tightly in her arms.

‘I'm here, sweetheart! I'm right here! Let's get you out of this horrible place!'

Sukie was wearing the same red sweater and the same OshKosh dungarees that she had been wearing when he had kidnapped her from Miranda's parents' house. Her dark hair was parted in the middle and braided into pigtails, with red ribbons tied in a bow. To Braydon's bewilderment, though, her eyes were closed.

‘
Daddy
!
I need you, Daddy
!
Please come save me
!'

‘I'm here! Open your eyes, sweetheart! I'm right here in front of you!'

‘
Save me, Daddy
!
Save me
!'

As he came nearer, Sukie opened her eyes. Braydon said, ‘Oh my God! Oh, sweet Jesus!' Both of her eyes were completely blood red, and translucent, as if she were a vampire.

Braydon had been ready to reach out and scoop her up, but now he hesitated. ‘What's happened, Sukie? What's happened to your eyes?'

‘
Save me, Daddy
!
Don't let me burn
!'

‘I won't, sweetheart. I promise.' He coughed, and he coughed, and for a while he couldn't stop himself from coughing, and he ended up by retching. ‘Here – let's get the hell out of here, before it's too late!'

But it was already too late. Sukie's cherubic, heart-shaped face was beginning to melt – as if she, too, were molded out of wax. Her cheeks slid slowly downward and her lips curled, and then her eyelids drooped like a very old woman.

‘
It hurts, Daddy
!
It hurts so much
!' she repeated, but her throat was constricted and her words were thick and sticky and Braydon could barely understand her. He stayed where he was, unable to move. His brain simply couldn't work out what messages to send to his legs and his arms to make them work, and go to her, and pick her up.

Sukie's forehead collapsed, and then her doll Binkie caught fire, and started to blaze fiercely in her arms. The flames from Binkie's nylon hair licked at Sukie's face, and she started to burn, too. Her skin, her flesh, her pigtails. She burned so fiercely that Braydon could feel the heat on his outstretched hands.

He didn't know how long she burned. Eventually, however, her head collapsed into her neck, and then her chest collapsed, and then she was nothing but two burning legs supporting a burning pelvis, like some kind of sacrificial bowl.

Braydon managed to take one step back, and then another. His eyes were crowded with tears and his throat was raw. His lungs were so filled with smoke that he couldn't even cough.

Sukie. I killed you. Sukie, I burned you alive. How can you ever forgive me
?

A woman's voice very close to his left ear said, ‘Mr Harris? Are you awake?'

Braydon opened his eyes. He was lying on one of two beds in a small recovery room. A black nurse in a pale blue uniform was leaning over him with her hand on his shoulder.

‘How do you feel?' the nurse asked him. ‘Do you feel any pain?'

He lifted his head, and saw that his right arm was supported by a gray vinyl sling, and that his right wrist was encased in a hard white plaster cast. He could feel a dull, underlying throbbing, but no real pain.

‘I'm OK. I think I'm OK. Where am I?'

‘You're in the specialist burns unit at Temple University Hospital. You've been sleeping for over an hour now.'

‘Temple University Hospital?'

‘Philadelphia, Mr Harris.'

He looked up at her. ‘Oh, Jesus,' he said. ‘Sukie.'

‘I'm sorry,' said the nurse. ‘But Doctor Berman has made your daughter comfortable, and she's not in any pain. You can come and see her now. Let me help you put on your shoes.'

Braydon rolled himself sideways on the bed and managed to sit up. When he tried to stand up, however, his knees gave way and he promptly sat back down again. The nurse took hold of his elbow and helped him to his feet. ‘How bad is she?' he croaked.

‘Well, you can see for yourself. She has deep facial burns, but Doctor Berman is brilliant when it comes to treating children with injuries like hers.'

‘I thought – I dreamed she was dead.'

‘She's a very sick little girl, Mr Harris. She has damage to her mouth and throat and lungs, and her digestive tract, too. But, like I say, Doctor Berman is one of the world's leading specialists when it comes to pediatric burns.'

Braydon nodded. ‘OK. Can I see her now?'

‘Of course. But I think there's one more thing I should tell you. Your ex-wife is here, too.'

Miranda was sitting next to Sukie's bed. She didn't turn around when Braydon was ushered into the room. She was wearing a dark green silk scarf tied around her head and from the back she looked bonier than ever – with visible vertebrae and angular shoulders. In the middle of one of their more spectacular rows, Braydon had told her that she had all the physical charm of a praying mantis.

Doctor Berman was standing on the other side of the bed. He was big and heavily built and bespectacled, with two double chins that were covered with a graying beard. He held out his hand when Braydon came in, and in a booming voice said, ‘Mr Harris? How are you? Terrible thing to happen. Just awful. I want you to know that you have all of our sympathy.'

Braydon heard Miranda say, ‘
Huh
!' but he ignored her and approached the bed. Sukie's face was charred scarlet and black so that it looked like an aerial view of some volcanic island. Her nose and her lips were hideously puffed up and most of her hair had been burned off, so that her scalp was covered with nothing but blackened stubble.

‘How is she?' he asked.

‘Oh, she's just dandy,' said Miranda, still without looking around. ‘You can see for yourself, can't you?'

‘In herself, she's doing not too bad,' said Doctor Berman. ‘We have her on a drip to replace her fluids and her vital signs are holding up.'

Braydon said, ‘She has bandages on her arms but no bandages on her face.'

‘That's right. But if you look at her face you'll see that it appears to be shiny. That's because we've covered it with a transparent film medication called Jaloskin. It's a totally new class of biomaterial, a membrane produced by the esterification of hyaluronic acid, which is a naturally-occurring extracellular matrix molecule.'

‘Excuse me?'

Doctor Berman smiled. ‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get too technical. When you're dealing with deep dermal burns like Sukie's, it's important to remove the burned flesh as soon as possible, because that reduces inflammation and scarring.

‘Once you've done that, you need to apply a dressing to prevent infection, and that's where Jaloskin comes in. It covers the burns and creates the ideal conditions for very rapid healing. It allows excess fluid to drain away, but at the same time it keeps the wound moist. Using Jaloskin, I've been able to allow young patients with second-degree burns to leave hospital and go home after only twelve days' treatment.'

‘How long do you think it's going to take Sukie to get better?'

Doctor Berman shrugged. ‘Right now, it's a little early to predict. Her burns are very deep and very serious, and we want to make sure that she suffers minimal aesthetic impact.'

Miranda twisted around in her chair. Her pale blue eyes were narrowed with fury, and she looked as if her mouth was crammed with broken glass.

‘You know what that means, Braydon – “minimal aesthetic impact”? That means that the good doctor here is going to do everything he can to stop your daughter looking like too much of a freak!'

‘Now, come on, Mrs Harris,' said Doctor Berman. ‘If everything goes according to plan, Sukie should eventually be left with only the faintest of scars.'

‘She wouldn't have any scars at all if my deadbeat ex-husband hadn't tried to kidnap her! I can tell you where I'm going as soon as I leave here, Braydon. I'm going to contact the FBI, and I'm going to have you arrested for violating a court order and for taking my daughter over a state line and for wrecking her life! You stupid, selfish, irresponsible, careless, pig-headed piece of worthless shit!'

Braydon looked down at Sukie, lying on the bed with her scorched face shining under its protective membrane.

‘You can do what you like, Miranda,' he said, his voice still hoarse from the smoke. ‘I think I've been punished quite enough already.'

SEVEN

Tuesday, 7:17 p.m.

N
athan arrived home that evening to find a strange car blocking his driveway, nose-to-bumper behind Grace's Explorer, so that he had to park his own car halfway up the curb. The offending vehicle was a purple Chevrolet Impala, and when he squeezed past it he saw that it had an Avis rental sticker in the window, from Philadelphia International Airport.

He opened the front door and immediately heard voices in the living room. When he walked through, still carrying his briefcase, he found Grace sitting on the couch, talking to a young man in a light-gray three-piece suit. The young man had prickly black hair, almost military cut, and eyeglasses with black rectangular frames, as if he were looking through the slots in a mailbox. He turned around when Nathan came in, and as he did so, Nathan could see that he had a white zigzag scar that ran all the way from his right cheekbone to his chin.

‘Hi, honey,' he said. ‘Didn't know that we were expecting a visitor.'

He was feeling sweaty and ratty. In spite of his success in creating the phoenix, he had been looking forward all afternoon to coming home, taking a shower, and then collapsing into his armchair with a very cold can of Dale's Pale Ale.

The young man stood up, tugged down his vest, and held out his hand.

‘I called yesterday, sir,' he said, in a strong German accent. ‘Unfortunately I could not contact you so I decided to take a chance and call in person. I am Theodor Zauber.'

Nathan put down his briefcase, but he didn't shake the young man's hand.

‘Theodor
Zauber
? Any relation to the late Doctor Christian Zauber?'

‘He was my father, sir.'

‘I see. So what brings you here to see me? I would have thought that I was the last person on earth you would have wanted to make contact with.'

‘My father and you, sir, you were two sides of the same coin, so to speak.'

Nathan said, ‘I don't know if you should have come here, really. What happened between me and your father – well, I think it's best forgotten.'

‘It was a tragedy, Professor Underhill. But it would be even more of a tragedy if all of his life's work were to be wasted.'

Grace said, ‘Would you like a beer, darling?'

‘In a minute. After Mr Zauber has left.' He turned back to Theodor Zauber and said, ‘To be straight with you, Mr Zauber, I don't think we have anything to talk about. Your father managed to bring a basilisk to life, which would have been an incredible achievement if he hadn't sacrificed the lives of dozens of elderly people in order to do so. He almost killed my wife, too. He put her into a coma from which she was very lucky ever to recover.'

Theodor Zauber nodded. ‘Yes, Professor. I know about all of this. I can only tell you that I am profoundly regretful for all of those deaths, and for what my father did to Mrs Underhill. Of course his actions were criminal. But I think it would be even more criminal if all of the advances he made in the field of cryptozoology were to be ignored.'

‘I'm sorry, Mr Zauber. Your father was a genius, no doubt about it. Anybody who could take a spell devised by an eighth-century sorcerer and make it work in a modern laboratory was inspired. But that still doesn't excuse what he did. The whole purpose of recreating mythical beasts is to
save
lives.'

‘In all medical research there is some risk,' Theodor Zauber replied. ‘However –
ja
– I have to accept what you say about my father.'

‘Then, goodnight,' said Nathan. ‘I hope you understand that it's nothing personal.'

Theodor Zauber said, ‘Of course. The only reason I wanted to talk to you was because you have already made such impressive strides in recreating gryphons and basilisks and wyverns. I gather from the scientific media that you have also been trying to recreate a phoenix.'

‘That's right, Mr Zauber, I have. But I've had a very long day and I really have nothing more to say to you.'

‘Please, Professor. I do not know how far you have advanced with this phoenix project, or any of your other enterprises. But if you were to have unlimited access to all of my father's papers – there is no question that you could save yourself years of laborious research and millions of dollars.'