The Chrysalis

by Deneen, Brendan

  It had begun to snow again and the world grew much darker as a result, as if it had been draped with a funeral shroud. He turned to look at the snow and noticed that his tracks to the porch were already filling up. The dead-end neighborhood looked beautiful in the falling snow, the light fading behind a row of annoyingly large houses, some with smoke lazily curling from brick chimneys. It was like a postcard from a lost era, and something about it made Ray’s heart ache. He missed his wife … his ex-wife … and that realization made the breath hitch in his throat.

  The front door suddenly swung open behind him with a sharp creak, causing Ray to jump. God damn it, he thought. The last thing he wanted was to appear weak in front of this guy. He turned to face his customer, his best hope for a second chance at life.

  Decker stood in the shadowy doorway, wearing a ratty, stained, not-white-anymore T-shirt and a pair of ripped jeans. No shoes or socks despite the cold. His hair was shorter than the last time Ray had seen him but was even more greasy and wild, and he sported a full beard of patchy salt-and-pepper. Dark bruises stood out in contrast to the shocking paleness of his face, and his nose looked weird, bent at an unnatural angle.

  A strange odor wafted out of the house, like nothing Ray had ever smelled before. It was an earthy scent, similar to newly cut grass or dirt on a hot day after a brief rain, but there was something underneath that, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. A gold mine, he reminded himself. You need this.

  “Tom … uh, hey, how are you? Sorry I’m a little late. The roads…”

  “No problem,” Decker responded, a forced smile enveloping his face. “Please. Come in.”

  Ray attempted to do so, but Tom barely moved, forcing the more rotund man to shimmy past, sucking in his breath and large belly, stepping over a pile of envelopes as he did so, many of them emblazoned with the words FINAL NOTICE. Decker closed the door behind them, sinking the dining room into darkness.

  “So…,” Ray said, heading for the kitchen. “Having some trouble with your furnace, huh?” Decker followed him, silent. It was unnervingly dark in the dining room.

  “Well, it’s definitely cold in here … no question something’s wrong with your furnace.” There was even a nasty draft in the house. He looked at Tom’s outfit again. “Aren’t … you cold?”

  “Honestly, I hadn’t noticed,” Tom said, that stupid smile still on his face. “I’ve been painting, getting the blood going. I lose my mind a bit when I’m working.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  The two men stared at each other in the pale light from the kitchen fixture overhead. Snow tapped gently against the windows. Ray glanced down again at Tom’s shirt. Those weird, blue-black stains didn’t really look like paint, but what the hell did he know? When it came to art, he was clueless, never really understood why people went to museums or galleries when there was an entire world of real shit out there, not to mention the beauty of women and the excitement of sports.

  “How’s Mrs. Decker handling the cold?” Ray asked, thinking of beautiful women.

  Tom’s odd smile faded and he looked down at the floor, eyebrows beetling. Ray noticed that Decker was standing directly on top of that strange brown splotch that he’d dismissed during the inspection. He could probably charge a thousand bucks, at least, to redo this shitty old linoleum floor.

  “She’s … not here,” Tom said, his voice sounding dead. The lack of emotion sent an inadvertent chill of sympathy along Ray’s skin. Oh shit. This poor bastard got dumped, too. Look at that, we have something in common after all.

  “Roger that,” Ray replied, moving forward and clapping Tom on the back, a manly gesture he had performed hundreds, if not thousands, of times before, a way of telling another guy that you were on his side without being gay about it.

  Tom’s head snapped up and he knocked Ray’s arm away, his eyes burning with violence.

  Ray’s fingers curled into fists, and a switch flicked on deep in his gut, the instantaneous change from lovable teddy bear Ray to terrifyingly violent Ray. Even as a kid, he would routinely punish other kids for any perceived slight. A reverberation of the violence his father visited upon him, perhaps. He hated that part of himself, even if he sort of reveled in the fights. He was aware that his temper had driven away everyone he had ever cared about, and he knew he should be sorry about that, but secretly he loved that rage. Needed it.

  He was ready to pop this wild-haired fag in the face, another manly gesture he had performed on many a drunken night.

  The odd smile returned to Decker’s face.

  Ray worked to slow his breathing. Calm down, he told himself. You’re here to do a job. So, do your fucking job.

  “Sorry,” he forced out. He never apologized, a point of immense pride for him. “Look, let’s … can you just show me the furnace? I’m sure you don’t want it broken tonight … supposed to get down to zero, probably way below with the windchill.”

  Tom nodded and turned toward the closed basement door. “Downstairs,” he said solemnly.

  Yeah, Ray thought, No shit.

  The door glided open with a creak that echoed in the kitchen and made Ray notice for the first time how quiet the rest of the house was. The snow had stopped and there was no wind, or none that he could hear.

  “Come on,” Tom said before disappearing down the stairs. Ray shook his head, laughing quietly to himself. This guy was clearly off his rocker … had probably been dumped by his wife right around the holidays and lost his shit as a result. Had let his appearance and house go. A part of Ray wished that he could just walk out of there. The thought of Decker, standing alone in the basement for who knows how long, waiting for Ray to appear, was hilarious to contemplate, almost too good to pass up. He could drive home, open that new bottle of good tequila he’d treated himself to earlier that day, drink himself into a multiday stupor. But the thought of the tequila, of how many twenties he’d had to peel out of his wallet to afford it, also made him think about the pile of bills he had thrown across his piece-of-shit apartment the night before.

  Everything was riding on this job.

  Sighing, Ray headed down the basement stairs, nearly tripping over a large, jagged hole in the middle of one step.

  “Whoa!” he shouted. “Holy shit, you could warn a guy!” He closed his eyes as he caught his balance and tried to swallow his simmering rage. “I could fix this for you, too, wouldn’t take long at all,” he said, trying to sound friendly and helpful. Employable.

  He stepped over the broken step and walked the rest of the way down, surprised by how dark it was in the basement. How warm. And packed with garbage.

  “Decker?” he said, unable to see the man in the oppressive gloom.

  “Here,” Tom said.

  Ray peered toward the voice, squinting, barely making the guy out in the nearby shadows. “Aren’t there any other lights down here?” Ray asked.

  “Broken,” came the muddy reply.

  Of course they are.

  “That’s okay, I have my flashlight.” Ray reached down to his belt, but the flashlight wasn’t there. Fuck. He’d gotten into the bad habit of taking it off when he got into the truck. Didn’t like the way it pressed into his side when he was driving. “Shit, I … left it in the truck. I can be back in a minute.”

  He worried that a break in momentum, even such a small one, might kill the deal, but Decker smiled at him.

  “Just come see it first,” the guy said, his voice clear now and maybe a little urgent. Ray liked that sound—it meant Decker was more desperate than he’d been letting on. The aloof attitude, the one-word answers, that stupid smile … the guy was probably hiding how inept he was, putting on a brave face so Ray couldn’t take advantage of him. But Ray saw what was going on. He was going to gouge this pretentious motherfucker. Served him right.

  “Yeah, okay, sure,” he said, and began to follow the homeowner through a maze of junk, noticing that unlit Christmas lights had bee
n strung along the makeshift path. He marveled that Decker had been living here for however many months and hadn’t cleaned this hellhole up. Or maybe this shit was all his? Some kind of obsessive hoarder or something? Whatever. Ray didn’t care. Not his problem.

  It was impossible to see much of anything in the darkness of the basement, so he focused on Decker, whose white T-shirt was less dirty in the back, helping Ray navigate the twists and turns. He tried to keep his breath even. He had never loved dark, enclosed spaces. His mother used to lock him in a tiny closet when he was a kid and had done something wrong. She’d leave him in there for hours. He remembered with shame how many times he had pissed his pants in there.

  “The furnace … is this way?” he asked. He had an uncanny sense of direction, an innate instinct and understanding of where things were and where they were supposed to be, and something about this didn’t seem right. If he had built this house, he would have put the furnace and the hot-water heater on the other side of the basement, closer to the street. Every nerve in his body told him to turn around and walk, if not run, away—but he overrode the feeling. That was the terrified kid in the closet talking. If this was a harebrained scheme to get Ray down here so Decker could play some trick on him, the weak little hippie had another think coming. Besides, the internal structure of some of these old houses didn’t always make sense. People were idiots back then.

  Ray tripped over something and instinctively put his hands out, inadvertently using Tom’s back as support. He waited for another disproportionate, even violent response, but Decker simply said, “It’s okay. I’ve got you. We’re almost there.”

  Sure enough, they were approaching the far wall and there was something there … but it didn’t look like a furnace, at least not one Ray had ever seen before. No pipes extending up into the house, no pilot light gleaming out from underneath. If this was the furnace, no wonder the house was freezing.

  “That’s not…,” he said, then realized that the thing in front of Decker was an ancient refrigerator. The path ended in front of it.

  Decker smiled at him and said, “I just want to show you something first. I found something behind this refrigerator and I’m not sure what it is. But it’s amazing.”

  Ray’s imagination instantly ran wild. Had Decker found something rare and valuable—something whose worth the hippie didn’t understand? He’d tell the guy that he would take care of the situation, make it sound like a problem even if it wasn’t, and then abscond with the treasure, move away from this horrible part of the world. He was sick of snow and ice. Sick to death of it.

  “Let’s see,” he said, trying to contain his enthusiasm.

  Nodding, Decker took hold of the old fridge and strained to move it. His face turned red with the effort.

  For fuck’s sake, Ray thought. This guy really is a pussy.

  “It … sticks sometimes,” Tom huffed.

  “Here, let me,” Ray commanded, placing his toolbox on the floor and shouldering forward, none-too-gently shoving Tom out of the way.

  Decker shrank behind him, probably embarrassed. “Of course,” Tom said. “I’m curious to see what you think of it.”

  Ray’s fingers were slick with sweat. He wiped his hands on his jeans before grabbing the refrigerator, bracing himself for its massive weight.

  Surprisingly, the giant appliance swung forward with almost no resistance whatsoever. Ray had pulled with so much effort that he almost lost his balance. He leaned into the fridge to stay upright, stopping its movement. He could hear Decker breathing behind him.

  It was dark back there, behind the refrigerator, but he could tell that the wild-haired, batshit-crazy-eyed wackadoo hadn’t been lying. There was something there. The way it caught what little light reached it made Ray think it might be something valuable after all. It glistened, practically sparkling, and his mind conjured up images of rubies or emeralds hidden in this ancient wall decades earlier, of Decker accidentally unearthing them somehow in his utter stupidity.

  But no. As Ray’s eyes continued to adjust, it became clear to him that this was no odd collection of jewels. A huge, dark mass clung to the wall. It looked moist, which explained why it glistened. Ray abruptly realized that the thing was moving slightly, kind of throbbing, and that it gave off a strange but not unpleasant odor. It also seemed to be … wheezing? Ray’s brain tried to process what he was looking at, and failed.

  “What the hell—?”

  Hands on his back shoved him forward. Ray pushed back against the force, but his feet slipped on what felt like dirt on the floor, and he moved inexorably closer to the thing on the wall, realizing that it was some sort of pod. Was it alive? It seemed to be expanding toward him.

  I’m going to fucking kill this guy, he thought, furious. But his anger turned to terror as he stared at the pulsating veins that covered the thing on the wall and realized that it was very possible that he, himself, was about to die.

  “Get the fuck off me!” he shouted as his fear spiked and warm piss ran down his legs, staining his pants. He tried to get away, but Decker’s hands were clamped on to his shoulders, unbelievably strong and unyielding. “Please!” he cried, only inches from the mucus-covered mass. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  His forward momentum seemed to slow, and for a moment, a glimmer of hope crossed his mind. Maybe this was a prank after all. An elaborate one, but a prank nonetheless. They could laugh about it upstairs in the kitchen, later, before Ray beat Decker within an inch of his life.

  He felt Tom’s breath on his ear. “I’m sorry, too.”

  With that, Decker pushed him one last time and Ray’s face made contact with the thin, clear membrane that encased the dark thing. The pain of that touch was the worst he had ever experienced, bright and flaming agony.

  Ray Dallesander screamed, a pitiful sound, the scream of an animal or a child. A final scream.

  Tom held the man’s yammering, shuddering body in place, watching dispassionately as the chrysalis began to consume it. Ray’s one still-visible eye was going wild in its socket, and Tom leaned forward, feeling that the man deserved human contact in the last moments of his life, even if it was difficult, almost impossible to experience. Part of him wanted to walk away. But he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right.

  They made eye contact and Ray emitted a garbled shout, desperate, as if he could still somehow get out of this. It reminded Tom of that first squirrel from months earlier, and of all the animals since then.

  He hated this.

  But if the chrysalis didn’t feed, it didn’t give Tom what he wanted. What he needed. He could only imagine the reward for a meal this large.

  The chrysalis continued to feed as Ray flailed wildly. More of his face vanished. One of his arms. His nose. Tom grimaced while he watched. This was so much worse than he had expected. But it was important, he told himself. Necessary.

  The man’s unbearable screeching abruptly ended as his mouth was enveloped. The only part of his face that was still visible was that one damn eye.

  Tom made himself keep watching. Forced himself not to help.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  At last Ray’s face was gone completely, followed quickly by his entire head.

  The home inspector’s large body began to spasm, and Tom stepped back, afraid he’d be hit or kicked. The body … the corpse … went slack within seconds. That always happened. First the struggle, then a horrible limpness.

  Tom started to look away and then stopped himself. He clenched his jaw and tried to focus on what was left of Ray’s body, forcing himself to watch the entire process.

  As the chrysalis continued to feed, Tom noticed something bulging in Ray’s back pocket. When his brain processed the shape, he panicked and lunged forward, reaching into the pocket and scrabbling for its contents. His hand wrapped around the object just as the chrysalis’s membrane swept over that part of the man’s body—and Tom’s hand.

  Tom had touched the chrysalis dozens, if not hundreds, of t
imes, and it had never hurt him. But as the dark mass wrapped itself around Ray’s waist and Tom’s hand, wrist, and part of his forearm, a shooting pain raced up his flesh, as if he’d shoved his fingers into a raging fire.

  Yelling in agony, Tom fought to pull his hand free, keeping his fist clenched around the object he’d found in Ray’s pocket. The small, fast-disappearing, logical part of his brain insisted this was important, that it was essential, though at the moment he couldn’t remember why.

  The pain was almost unbearable.

  Jerking away from the chrysalis, Tom yelled again as his hand came free.

  He tried to catch his breath as he stared at the blackened husk of his forearm, reeling from the pain. Closing his eyes, he breathed through his nose, trying to clear his mind … Ray’s eye kept appearing in his inner vision, staring directly at him.

  After a few moments, Tom opened his eyes and frantically swiped at his wounded arm with his free hand. Most of the blackness seemed to be detritus from inside the chrysalis, but the skin beneath the muddy soot was charred red and oozing pus. The pain was breathtaking.

  He looked up at the chrysalis, surprised that it had hurt him, even a little offended. Thinking it through, he decided it must have confused him with Ray. The chrysalis would never hurt him intentionally.

  Tom Decker smiled and opened his scalded hand.

  Ray’s keys were unharmed.

  Thank God, Tom thought, knowing full well that God was nowhere to be found down in this particular darkness.

  MONTH NINE

  After her week of nightmares about it, Jenny was shocked to discover that the psychiatric hospital was nondescript, looking pretty much like any other medical building she’d ever visited. But staring at it, shivers running up and down her spine, she knew better. This place was different.

  Wet snow fell against the windshield of the rental car, blurring the building before obscuring it completely. She hit the wipers, making the building reappear, then watched it vanish again. She’d lost count of how many times she’d done this. Twelve? Twelve hundred?