Petrified

by Graham Masterton

  Inside his cage, the phoenix had raised his head and spread his wings wide, and he was on fire. Not in the sense that his feathers were alight. He was fire, he had become fire. First of all, he had been a dragon-worm, then a bird. Now he had transformed himself into pure white flame, a flame that was hissing like a pressure lamp.

  Ron Kasabian lifted his head to stare at it, although he kept his grip on Kavita’s throat. Kavita herself tried to wriggle herself free, but Ron Kasabian clutched her throat even more tightly and banged her head against the bench. ‘Stay there, you fucking slut!’ Nathan guessed that however angry he was, he must have realized by now that his outburst had lost him his job, and possibly his marriage, too, if his wife got to hear what he had done, and there was nobody more dangerous than a man who has nothing else to lose.

  ‘Ron!’ he shouted. ‘Let her go, Ron! It’s over!’

  ‘Go screw yourself, Nathan!’ Ron Kasabian shouted back, without even turning to look at him. He was transfixed by the white feathery fire in the phoenix’s cage, which was blazing brighter and hotter with every passing second.

  Suddenly, the fire-bird flapped his wings – once, twice, three times – and then flew right through the bars of his cage as if he were made of nothing more substantial than flames. He flew at Ron Kasabian with a soft roaring sound, and then he let out a screech that made Nathan’s scalp prickle.

  Ron Kasabian tried to dodge to one side, ducking his head down, but the phoenix caught his shoulder pad in its claws, clinging so ferociously that there was nothing he could do to beat it off.

  ‘Get it off me!’ he screamed. ‘For Christ’s sake, get it off me!’

  But the phoenix flapped its fiery wings on either side of his head, again and again, so that his hair caught alight, and his cheeks were seared scarlet. He lurched toward the door, knocking over stools and colliding with workbenches, but the phoenix flapped its wings harder and harder, until his entire head was enveloped in fire, and then the sleeves and lapels of his suit began to burn.

  ‘Get it off me! Oh God, get it off me! It hurts! It fucking hurts! I can’t take it! God, I can’t take it! It hurts!’

  The smoke alarms began to sing meep-meep-meep-meep-meep. Nathan hurried across to the door, and hoisted the bright yellow fire extinguisher out of its rack. Ron Kasabian was flailing around and around with the phoenix perched on his shoulder, blazing from the waist upward. It looked as if the phoenix was flapping its wings in order to create a downdraft, so that the flames were licking at Ron Kasabian’s thighs and down toward his knees, greedy for more and more oxygen.

  Nathan punched the button that started the extinguisher and white foam spurted out of the nozzle. But this fire was just like the fire in which the phoenix had first been created: it was so hot that it seemed to swallow the foam and evaporate it. Within a few seconds, Ron Kasabian was burning from head to foot, a sacrificial figure made out of nothing but flames. He collapsed to his knees, his arms by his sides, and then he keeled over sideways and lay burning on the floor.

  The phoenix let out another screech, but this time he sounded more triumphant than vengeful. He lifted itself up into the air and hovered for a moment over Ron Kasabian’s body, a bird made out of nothing but brilliant white fire. Nathan could just make out his eyes, as pale as glass. Then the phoenix tilted toward his cage, and flew back in through the bars. He settled on his perch, and as soon as he settled his incandescence began to dim, and his flames died down, and within a few moments he was back to his substantial self, with his rose-pink beak and his gilded feathers and his yellow tail. He let out a self-satisfied skrarrrkkk.

  ‘Call nine-one-one,’ said Nathan, in a croak as dry as Torchy’s. Smoke was still rising from Ron Kasabian’s body and the laboratory reeked of his half-cremated flesh.

  ‘I did already,’ said Aarif. He was dabbing his bloody nose with a white hand-towel. ‘Fire, police and ambulance.’ The smoke alarms were still meep-meeping as if they were peeved at being ignored.

  Nathan went over to Kavita. She was rubbing her neck where Ron Kasabian had tried to throttle her. Both of her cheeks were crimson and bruised, and Nathan could tell that she would probably have a black eye tomorrow. She was trembling with shock.

  ‘How did that happen?’ she coughed. ‘I mean, that was impossible. How did Torchy change like that? He flew right through the bars of his cage as if they weren’t even there.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ Nathan asked her. He was shaking, too. ‘Jesus – if I’d thought for a moment that Ron would go apeshit like that—’

  Kavita glanced toward Ron Kasabian’s blackened body and then looked away.

  ‘He’s dead, I’m afraid,’ said Nathan.

  Kavita gave a complicated shrug. ‘He was a bully and a pig. He didn’t deserve to die like that, but he brought it on himself.’

  She paused, still trembling, and then she said, ‘In bed, he was just the same. Trying to make me do things that I didn’t want to do. Shouting at me when I refused.’

  She paused again. ‘He even expected me to—’

  She started to say something more, but then she thought better of it and closed her lips. Ron Kasabian was dead now, after all.

  Nathan walked across to Torchy’s cage and peered in through the bars. Torchy clawed his way along his perch to the far side of the cage, as far away from Nathan as possible.

  ‘He definitely doesn’t like me,’ said Nathan.

  Kavita said, ‘Don’t worry. He will grow to like you, when he sees how well you take care of me.’

  ‘We need to run some more tests, but I think you’d better do the honors until I’m sure that he’s not going to burn me to a cinder, like Ron here.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Kavita. ‘But I think I need to go now. I can’t bear the smell.’

  Nathan said, ‘I want another DNA sample, and we should also check if his fundamental cell structure has altered in any way. How the hell does a living bird turn itself into pure fire, without any apparent scorching or loss of substance? And how does it turn itself back into flesh and feathers? And what triggers a change like that? Is it fear, do you think, or protectiveness, or is it natural avian aggression?’

  ‘Professor, I feel sick.’

  ‘OK,’ said Nathan. ‘I’m sorry. Why don’t you and Aarif both go down to the lobby? But I think I’d better stay here. The police will be here at any minute, and besides, I want to keep an eye on Torchy.’

  Aarif and Kavita left the laboratory, circling around the benches so that they kept as far away from Ron Kasabian’s smoldering body as they could. Nathan stayed close to Torchy’s cage, but not too close. He didn’t want to set off another exhibition of avian pyrotechnics.

  He was deeply shaken by the way in which Ron Kasabian had been burned to death, right in front of them, but as a zoologist he had so many questions about how and why it had happened. He had read every myth and every legend about the phoenix that he could find, including O Pássaro Ardente De Egipto – The Burning Bird of Egypt, by the fifteenth-century Portuguese alchemist and ornithologist Aldo Sombrio. There were only two known copies – one of which had been water-damaged during the Second World War in a flood at the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon – but it contained more details about the origins of the phoenix than anything else he had read. All the same, it hadn’t mentioned that the phoenix could transform itself into pure fire, and then back again into a solid, screeching, bad-tempered bird.

  He went across and hunkered down next to Ron Kasabian’s body. Ron Kasabian was lying on his right side, with his arms and legs drawn up into the monkey-like position adopted by the victims of so many fires. His eyes were open but his eyeballs were opaque, and the skin on his face was charred in curled-up layers, like the pages of a burned book.

  ‘Jesus, Ron. Why did you have to lose it like that?’ Nathan asked him, but he already knew the answer to that. As long as he had known him, Ron Kasabian had been arrogant and insecure. He had been afraid to take risks in a business that was inherentl
y risky, and Nathan had quickly come to the conclusion that he had been promoted far beyond his capabilities. That was why he had always acted so aggressively. He obviously hadn’t expected that Kavita would stand up to him, or that she would be defended with such ferocity by a mythical creature that could incinerate him where he stood.

  Nathan was still hunkered down next to him when three firefighters came in, followed by Henry and then by two paramedics.

  ‘Holy Moses, Professor!’ said Henry, taking off his cap. ‘Not another fire?’ Then he realized what was lying next to Nathan on the floor.

  ‘That ain’t – that ain’t Mr Kasabian, is it? That’s – shee-it! – that is Mr Kasabian! How’d he get all burned up like that?’

  Nathan stood up. The leading firefighter looked around to make sure that there were no spot fires still burning, and then he said, ‘Want to tell us what happened here, sir?’

  ‘I couldn’t honestly tell you,’ said Nathan. ‘Spontaneous combustion, I guess you could call it. Mr Kasabian was standing here talking to us, and suddenly whoof! Up he went like a Roman candle.’

  ‘Whoof?’ repeated the firefighter. His eyes were very pale hazel, and he had a bristly ginger moustache. He looked like the stubborn type.

  ‘Whoof,’ said Nathan, nodding in agreement.

  The firefighter knelt down next to Ron Kasabian’s body. He lifted off his helmet, bent his head down and sniffed. He sniffed again, all the way down to Ron Kasabian’s tan Gucci loafers, with their fringes crisp and curled-up from the fire. Then he looked up at his companions and said, ‘I can’t smell nothing in the way of accelerants, but Jimmy – why don’t you go bring Muttley up here? Maybe he can.’

  ‘Muttley?’ asked Nathan.

  ‘He’s our fire dog. He can detect one thousandth of a drop of part-evaporated gasoline in a room twice this volume.’

  ‘Mr Kasabian wasn’t set alight by any accelerants, officer. Not that we saw. Not unless his clothes were already saturated when he came in here, but we didn’t smell anything.’

  ‘So, what are you telling me? Your friend walked in here and caught fire without no warning at all? He looks like he was given a going-over by a goddamned flame-thrower.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Henry. ‘Only a half-hour ago, Mr Kasabian was axin’ me about my hernia operation. Now look at him.’

  One of the paramedics said, ‘We’ll leave you guys to get on with it, OK? There’s nothing we can do for this poor bastard. We’ll contact the ME.’

  The paramedics left; but as they did so, they stepped aside to let Detective Pullet and Detective Rubik in through the door.

  Jenna came in and looked around. Then she stalked right up to Ron Kasabian’s body, bent down and peered at it closely.

  ‘Do we know who this is?’ she asked, looking directly at Nathan.

  Nathan said, ‘Mr Ron Kasabian, CEO of Schiller Medical Research Inc.’

  ‘And do we know what happened to him?’

  ‘He caught fire,’ Nathan told her. He nodded toward the empty fire extinguisher lying on the floor. ‘I tried to put him out, but I couldn’t. He was burning far too fiercely.’

  ‘He caught fire?’ asked Jenna. ‘How, exactly?’

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ the firefighter put in. ‘Until we do, we’re reserving judgment.’

  Jenna walked across to Nathan and stood facing him. ‘Professor Underhill,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Professor Underhill, this is the second time in less than eight hours that you’ve figured as a witness in an inexplicable fatality.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why don’t you make my life a little easier, Professor Underhill? Why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on?’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Friday, 3:07 p.m.

  Henry showed them through to the boardroom and brought them coffee and bottles of spring water. Jenna and Dan sat down at the shiny mahogany table with Aarif and Kavita. Aarif’s nose had not been fractured out of alignment but the paramedics had given him a cold compress to hold over it. Both of his eyes were already swollen like dark red plums, and Nathan had told him to go home, but he had insisted on staying. He was determined not to miss any of the stages of Sukie Harris’ stem cell treatment.

  Nathan remained standing, looking out of the window at the downtown skyline. The sun had come out, and was glittering on the river, and the pale blue sky was streaked with thin horses’ tail clouds. The scene reminded Nathan of some of the illustrations he had seen in books of mythology, with strange creatures flying around the spires of medieval cathedrals.

  Jenna said, ‘This is where you do your research, Professor? Here at the Schiller building?’

  ‘That’s right. Schiller have been funding me for nearly a year now.’

  ‘And what exactly is it that you’re working on?’

  ‘Is that relevant?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is it?’

  Nathan turned around. ‘It’s no secret. I’ve been trying to recreate mythical creatures. I believe that their stem cells could help us to treat some incurable illnesses.’

  ‘When you say mythical creatures . . .?’

  ‘Creatures out of mythology. Basilisks, wyverns, gryphons. Right up until the Middle Ages there were dozens of them – from the adlet, which was like an Inuit werewolf, to the ziz, which in Jewish mythology was a giant bird whose wings could block out the sun. Some of them were purely imaginary, but many of them really existed. You saw that bird in my laboratory. My researchers and I created that bird only a few days ago. Or shall we say re-created it. It’s a phoenix.’

  ‘A phoenix? Are you serious? Isn’t that the bird that sets fire to itself, to get reborn?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘So is there any kind of connection between your re-creating a phoenix and Mr Kasabian catching on fire?’

  Nathan pulled out a chair and sat down. The surface of the table was so shiny that everybody sitting at it was reflected like the figures on playing cards.

  ‘Unlike the phoenix, Detective, I don’t think there’s any chance that Ron Kasabian will be coming back to life.’

  Jenna looked at Nathan narrowly. He hadn’t really answered her question, and she felt the same way about him that she had felt back at Temple University Hospital – that he wasn’t giving her the whole picture. Maybe not lying, exactly, but failing to give her some critical facts. She was convinced that there was a link between the death of Eduardo Delgado at the hospital and Ron Kasabian’s immolation here at Schiller Medical Research, and she suspected that Nathan knew what it was. The question was: why was he being so guarded?

  Dan opened his notebook. ‘The way that the victim was burned – could we run over it again? He came into the laboratory, right? How long was it before he combusted?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nathan. ‘Only a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Did he say anything before he caught fire?’

  ‘We exchanged a few words, yes.’

  ‘Just a few words? You didn’t argue? It looks like your two assistants here both suffered some injuries.’

  ‘They sustained those when Mr Kasabian caught fire. They fell.’

  Jenna turned to Aarif. ‘You fell flat on your nose? You didn’t put out your hands to save yourself?’

  Aarif shrugged. ‘I tripped over a stool. I hit my nose on the edge of the bench.’

  ‘And how about you?’ Jenna asked Kavita. ‘I’ve attended more domestic disputes than you’ve had hot dinners, young lady, and I know a slap when I see it.’

  ‘That was Professor Underhill,’ said Kavita. ‘I hit my head and he thought I was unconscious so he slapped me to bring me round.’

  Jenna stared at her disbelievingly for a moment, but then she turned back to Nathan. ‘Prior to catching light, did Mr Kasabian complain of feeling strange, in any way?’

  Nathan shook his head.

  ‘Was there any chemical in your laboratory that could have accidentally set h
im alight?’

  ‘Only methanol, and he would have had to empty a whole bottle over himself and set himself alight with a match.’

  ‘Or somebody would.’

  ‘What are you trying to suggest? That one of us killed him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Did you? The circumstances are highly suspicious, to say the least. And to be quite frank with you, I don’t buy this falling over on your nose and this slapping story. Did you and Mr Kasabian have any kind of dispute?’

  Nathan said, ‘Yes. We’d had a serious disagreement over money. Mr Kasabian had recommended to the Schiller board that they discontinue funding my research.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘This morning, though, he came in to tell us that he had changed his mind, and that our funding would continue – at least for the time being.’

  Jenna sat back, tapping her ballpen on the tabletop. ‘So there was no longer any bone of contention between you? No reason for you to argue, or to get physical?’

  Nathan shook his head.

  Jenna’s cellphone played ‘Blanket On The Ground’. She said, ‘Excuse me,’ and flipped it open.

  ‘Mom? It’s Ellie. OK if I stay over at Hermione’s tonight?’

  ‘What about your homework?’

  ‘It’s Friday, Mom. I can do it tomorrow.’

  ‘Did you eat lunch?’

  ‘I had vegetarian pizza.’

  ‘How much? Come on, tell me the truth.’

  ‘I had one slice. But I ate all of it, I swear.’

  ‘OK, then. But make sure that you eat something at Hermione’s. I’ll call you later, when I finish work.’

  She snapped her cellphone shut. She looked across the table to see Nathan smiling at her.

  ‘Kids,’ he said.

  Jenna refused to smile back. ‘I might need to talk to you again, Professor, once the medical examiner has taken a look at Mr Kasabian’s remains, and I get a full report from the fire department.’

  ‘OK,’ said Nathan. He checked his watch, and then turned to Aarif and Kavita. ‘Right now we have a pressing appointment with a certain young lady, don’t we, compadres?’