Radu-Chapter XVII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)

Previous Installments:

Prologue And Chapters I-X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI

Radu-Chapter XVII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
(Nineteen pages approximate)

Chou could not believe what he was seeing. The blood cells were replicating, and they seemed to be in the process of becoming cancerous, but they never did. They just continued until, over a period of little more than half a week, what started out as one not quite full vial of blood was suddenly an ounce. By the time a two full weeks went by, this supply increased until it reached an apex of two and a half pints of blood. It was the most incredible thing he had ever seen in his life.

Then, inexplicably, the process slowed. Soon, though the blood doubled in volume, it took much longer. Then, the replication processed came to a complete halt. He tested the blood one more time. It was all the same blood, the same DNA genetic markers. There was absolutely nothing to suggest any contamination of the samples. Finally, the blood began to break down. He separated them into four distinct groups. He had made a discovery far beyond him and, if he could determine the origin, the cause, of this incredibly unique biology, he might conceivably win a Nobel Prize.

With the first sample, of about pint, he elected to separate the white and red blood cells, and so he did. This unfortunately told him nothing. Perhaps he waited too long, he should have done this before the blood started to break down. It was dying now.

For the time being, he froze one of the samples. The other he would allow to deteriorate until it was to all intents and purposes dead. It should coagulate, like any other blood sample left in the open and untreated. It should dry and become useless. That left one final sample. He took a fresh vial of blood from the same source, and he added it to the larger sample.

Amazingly, the supply seemed reinvigorated. Given enough time, he had no doubts this one sample of roughly one pint of blood would quite possibly double in volume over the course of a week. It was amazing. Yet, if he were to publish his findings in such a way as to leave his imprimatur, let alone develop a treatment he might patent, he had to find whatever enzyme, or protein, or DNA mutation was responsible for the anomaly.

He took the newly strengthened blood supply, and he ran it as well through the centrifuge device that separated the white from the red cells. He immediately saw that the replication process occurred in both samples in such a way as to evenly distribute the replication process. This was all that prevented the cells from becoming cancerous.

It would take some time to discover whatever enzyme or protein was responsible-he had all but eliminated the potential for the DNA mutation, as that should have been immediately evident, or at least it should have revealed itself by now. Yet, according to the DNA lab to which he sent the blood for analysis, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, he had to send it off after the replication process ceased, so he could not yet be one hundred percent sure there was not a genetic explanation, though it certainly seemed unlikely.

In the meantime, while he was waiting for the remaining test results to come in, he had more background research to conduct. For that matter, he was uncomfortable at the prospect of involving Grace Rodescu in anything, but the woman was adamant that she had seen Marlowe Krovell in her room-not when he, Chou, had discovered Krovell to be in her room, before the horrific explosion, but immediately afterwards.

What she claimed to witness was of course impossible, as rescue workers discovered Krovell’s body in Tariq’s office. The likely explanation was that her vision of Krovell was a hallucination, perhaps augmented by her subconscious mind’s awareness of his presence earlier. Despite this, the woman seemed insistent as to what she saw, though at the same time, mysteriously secretive.

Then, workers made a gruesome discovery. On top of one of the University Hospital complex buildings, across from the window of the room that housed the Rodescu woman, the discovered skeleton of a human infant proved that of the son of James Dooley, who had been Marlowe Krovell’s physical therapist.

Reportedly, a vulture had made off with the infant. In one of the most eerie coincidences in modern history, the skeleton of the infant turned up on the grounds of the hospital where the father worked-eight miles from where allegedly abducted. There were reports of a vulture flying around the hospital grounds that night. Finally, in perhaps the most bizarre twist of all, a very small sample of vomit found on the floor of Grace Rodescu’s hospital room, upon testing, proved to contain what apparently was human DNA, along with what seemed to be the digestive enzymes common to that breed of scavenger known as the black vulture.

And of course, the security reinforced steel mesh screen outside the window had been pried open, apparently with a crowbar wielded by someone of superhuman strength and determination.

Chou had never been a religious person. In fact, he was an atheist. Yet, when he was shown two feathers, found in Rodescu’s room, from what appeared to indeed be a black vulture, and he considered the improbability of the chain of events, he knew there was something going on that was beyond the mundane explanations of science.

Dooley did not know, of course, nor did the public. In fact, this was determined, in the course of an emergency meeting of hospital administrative staff, that this would be treated in as confidential a matter as possible. Unfortunately, the Dooley’s fell under suspicion of complicity in the disappearance of their child, especially the mother. Her story, despite the fact that her lover-who was also Mr. Dooley’s longtime rival-verified it, was simply not credible.

The Dooley’s lives destroyed by this affair, their marriage a technicality that would soon end by legal decree, Mrs. Dooley now openly moved in with her lover. Dooley now stayed drunk and quit work. Chou felt the Administrators of the hospital may have done the correct thing, for the good of the hospital, but it hardly seemed to be the human, compassionate thing from the standpoint of their employee, whose life was a wreck.

He wanted an explanation, and he knew that explanation had something to do with Marlowe Krovell. Grace Rodescu knew something she was not telling, and so as she began her final stages of release from the hospital, he approached her. To look at her, you would never know she had been here for more than a full month, had somehow narrowly avoided either dying, or being paralyzed from the neck down. The bullet wound she suffered merely needed one-sixteenth of an inch one way or another to accomplish either one of these results. She was lucky on both counts, yet seemed nonchalant. Perhaps she simply did not care. Yet, she was driven, and determined, in some strange way that was obviously apparent, yet unspoken.

“You say Krovell was in your room, so what I want to know is, after he took the reinforced screen off your window, what did he do when the vulture entered the room?”

“I wasn’t aware he removed the screen”, she said. “I guess he must have done that before I woke up.”

Grace was annoyed at Chou’s visits and his questions. She seemed to be annoyed mainly at herself for talking too much. Of course, she could not have been aware of Krovells death in the explosion in Tariq’s office.

“It was a damn dream, all right- Doctor Chou, is it?” Grace was making it clear she felt no obligations to answer him. “I don’t know how the screen came off the window. Maybe the damned explosion did it, did you ever think of that? But if you must know, in my vision, or dream, or whatever it really was, the fucking thing fed him, like Marlowe was its own baby. I guess you know how vultures feed their young. If you do not, go read up on it. I haven’t had lunch yet and I’d as soon not go into it.”

Chou left determined he had to find the truth, if not from Grace Rodescu, then from somebody. For the time being, his only option was the unfortunate patient whose blood seemed afflicted with the same unorthodox replication faculties as Marlowe Krovell’s had been. Her name was Lynette Khoska, a young girl about Marlowe’s age, yet who evidently had no contact with Krovell. In fact, she was originally not native to Maryland but was from New Jersey.

She recently experienced the grim tragedy of discovering her boyfriend dead in her own home, the victim of a gunshot would to the inside of the mouth. It would have seemed to be suicide were it not for the fact no gun was present. That gun turned up in the possession of a man who went by the gang moniker Spooky Gold, who was in fact the leader of the 17th Pulse. He apparently was responsible for not only the death of Marshall Crenshaw, but also the brutal murder of the Reverend Christopher George as well. Two reliable witnesses identified him as being at the apartment on the night and general time of the death of Crenshaw, along with the noted and controversial civil rights advocate, the Reverend Harvey Caldwell. Caldwell, unfortunately, was now legally insane, by any standard, and could give no reasonable account of the night’s events. Gold simply denied the murder of Crenshaw while refusing to discuss the death of George. Still, legal experts considered it an open and shut case, and Gold now waited in the Baltimore City Jail for his eventual trial.

As for Lynette Khoska, she was herself quite understandably distraught at the death of Crenshaw, while at the same time incensed at her parent’s objections to her relationship with the man whose connection with the Pulse was nebulous. Obviously, her parents objected due to the race of the man, and at first, she even accused them, especially her father, of complicity in his death. This further widened the breach between them.

At the same time, he understood her anger. Her father had the nerve to ask if his daughter was still a virgin, which was a question that infuriated Chou. It would be easy enough to assume she was not-the two of them after all lived together for going on three weeks before the murder, or, as the gang leader insisted, suicide-and to just forget about it. Martin Khoska, however, seemed to take his daughter’s relationship as more of a slight to him than as a matter of her daughter’s preference and judgment, be that for good or bad. From that point on, he dreaded seeing the man, and was relieved to see neither he nor his ex-wife here this day.

“You can tell my father I’m still a virgin”, she said upon his query as to whether they had this day been to see her. “He ain’t going to shut up about it until you do. And by the way, it is the truth.”

“I know it’s the truth, but I’m not telling him”, Chou declared. “It’s not just that it’s none of his business, it’s also of no interest to me. My main concern is your health, and from what I see, you are getting much better. I will need to take some blood from you, of course. I still have not isolated whatever enzyme it is that is causing your blood to replicate, but it seems to be gone from you now. Your blood pressure and pulse is almost completely back to normal, your breathing is good, your appetite is back to normal, and there seems to be no lingering fever, weakness, or dizziness. Therefore, I would say you are ready to go. I still want to keep in touch with you, of course, as an outpatient.”

“Of course”, Lynette replied, but she seemed melancholy.

“You are feeling better, are you not? If you need to see a therapist to help you cope with your loss-which I strongly recommend, by the way”-

“It’s more than that”, he said. “It’s my grandfather, Aleksandre. He’s furious with me. He can’t help it, he’s an old man, from Romania. He’s actually an Orthodox Priest, and I’m afraid he’s very troubled by all this. Damn, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I never intended to fall in love with Marshall, it just happened. Not only was he there when I needed a friend, he was so warm, and tender, and supportive. It just happened. But I never relaxed my standards, not even for him. Nor did he press me to do so. We slept in separate rooms, but to hear dad tell it, I’m ready to screw everything in Baltimore-just for starters.”

Chou just smiled sympathetically.

“I’m afraid this is pretty much out of my line of expertise”, he said. “’Try not to worry about it, it will eventually work out’ is about the best I can do and I doubt that is any comfort.”

Chou took the blood sample, and was about to leave, when suddenly a new visitor entered the room, one he knew only too well.

“Mr. Marlowe”, he said. “Were you looking for me?”

“No, I came to see Lynette”, he said. “She called and asked to speak with me, but I can come back later.”

“No, that is fine, I am finished here”, Chou said. He said his goodbyes to Lynnette, but lingered slowly outside the room. This was curious to Chou, but on the other hand, Brad Marlowe had recently reopened Krovell’s Funeral Home, having hired three new assistants to help him run the re-established business, which now included a crematorium. One of the first customers turned out to be Marshall Crenshaw, and from what he gathered from what seemed to be contracts Brad carried with him, Lynnette Khoska was now in the process of arranging for a future burial-or cremation, perhaps.

Whatever the case, though it was just one more of a long lime of curious coincidences, Chou decided it too was really none of his business. He proceeded back to the lab. The hospital granted him access for the purpose of experimentation that was really out of his realm. At the same time, he could not afford to trust anybody with a discovery of this magnitude. He was lucky the Administration was too overwhelmed by events of the last month to take the time to run him through a bureaucratic runaround that would end with a denial for request. Still, he endeavored to use his time wisely. He wondered what the result would be if ordinary blood from a different source was added to the samples from Lynette Khoska, and so he casually drew some blood from his own finger and added it to one of the samples. It actually seemed as though there was a subtle reaction, but nothing he could put his finger on.

Then, almost on a lark, he added some more of his own blood to one of the dried samples. Amazingly, the dried blood seemed to come to life. It was the most incredible thing he ever saw. The biggest shock, however, was yet to come. He elected to take some blood stored from Marlowe Krovell’s earlier test. They were completely dried, but when he added a drop of Lynette’s blood, they as well roared back to life.

All of the samples he ran through the various quick tests to determine RH Factor. Curiously, all samples seemed homogenous. It was as if no mixing of blood cells occurred. Of course, this was impossible, but one thing an electron microscope was worthless for was fabrication.

However, just to be certain, he decided he would take a more voluminous amount of his own blood. It was unorthodox, and against protocol and procedure, but he extracted an ounce of his own blood. Thankfully, by the time he finished the lengthy procedure, he noted that no one entered to see him do this. It would raise red flags, and he really felt foolish taking such a risk. Nevertheless, he had to make sure of this. Therefore, he added an appreciable amount of his own blood to Krovells sample.

Then, something happened that was totally unexpected. The Krovell sample reacted violently to the infusion of blood from Chou. Although not visible to the naked eye, under the revelatory light of the microscope, it seemed to actually bubble slightly. It seemed even to vaguely fume, as though determined to reject the foreign substance. It was the most unnerving reaction Chou ever saw.

He added some more of his blood, this time to one of the Khoska samples, which did not illicit the same kind of reaction. It was the same as before. What, he wondered, could possibly be the difference? The Krovell sample still waved and fumed. It put him in mind of a bizarre high school class chemistry experiment with two of chemicals added for the express purpose of gauging what the reaction would be. Most such endeavors were ill advised, and in some rare cases resulted in appreciable damage to high school lab equipment. If this reaction occurred at more than the molecular level, it might well elicit a similar reaction.

Hurriedly, he added a large amount of the Khoska sample to the Krovell. Amazingly, the reaction ceased almost immediately. Within under a minute, it was completely back to normal. This time he had to be sure, and so he took the sample to the main lab workers, and asked if they could kindly test the blood to see if they could spot any abnormalities. Their curiosity roused, the two men present in the lab agreed, but advised him it might take a few days, maybe even a couple of weeks, depending on what he was looking for.

He agreed. What else could he do? It occurred to him he would be obliged at some point to involve others in these investigations, as he would need witnesses for confirmation of his findings. Yet, for now, he had to begin thinking of other things. He had let his life get off track, and though his career had far from suffered for it, he felt himself becoming obsessed over events that were wholly out of his control.

James Dooley’s problems, while deserving of sympathy, were not his own. He had his own problems with a wife who was far too generous with his money, and children who unfortunately took after her spendthrift habits. One of them had already run upwards of twenty thousand dollars in debt and, now in her senior year of college, her grade point average was a dismal 2.4.

He found his attraction to alcohol a constant struggle, and had no understanding as to why this was. His life was not that bad yet. In fact, on balance it was pretty damn good. Still, he looked a little too forward to the time he could unwind, and when he did, away from parental and marital responsibilities, he would get a little too loaded, and end up feeling miserable.

Perhaps this obsession was a replacement for alcohol. If so, it was understandable. It was not often that you ran across a blood specimen that seemed to replicate. Two such specimens discovered over a period of less than one month, from two different people who had no notable personal or otherwise immediate connection, in the same city, the city to which one of them just recently relocated to-what were the odds of something like that.

He made it a point to stop by the home of James Dooley. The grass was a little high, but Chou told himself if he did not know the Dooley’s situation, he might not even have noticed this. Besides, the Dooleys would be leaving this home soon, would be selling it as joint property and dividing the proceeds down the middle. Just as well, Chou thought. Dooley did not need this large a home just for himself, and he seriously doubted he would be likely to get married any time soon, if ever.

Dooley invited him in for a drink, but Chou declined. The last thing the unfortunate man needed was for him to get soused and cry on his shoulder, and around Dooley it would be next to impossible to not do that. At the same time, Dooley seemed content, even casually satisfied with his life. It was an act, of course. Nevertheless, all of life was an act, was it not?

Dooley of course was yet unaware of the discovery of the infant’s skeleton on University Hospital property. It just turned up somewhere on the outskirts of Baltimore, he was told, a few miles from where he lived. Luckily, he was strangely uninterested in the location. Some jogger and his dog found the skeleton with the sheet nearby, in a park, and phoned it in to the police in the form of an anonymous tip. The jogger, of course, was a hospital staff member who actually picked out what seemed a suitable spot for the skeleton to be “found”.

Dooley now mentioned something to the effect of starting a fund for a memorial at the site, but then almost immediately changed his mind, to Chou’s relief.

“Why memorialize a place like that, right?”

“I would not want to personally”, Chou replied.

“I wish I had been at the hospital when that damn bomb went off”, the man now said. “Fuck it, anyway. Who can believe in God after you go through that kind of shit? I used to be a devout Catholic. Ain’t that a fucking laugh? It wasn’t but three days before the shit happened I had James Jr. baptized and consecrated into the church. Yeah, God, thanks a bunch, you hear? Talk about watching out for the weak and helpless. Here my baby dies what has to be as horrible a death as you can think of, I get so upset I leave the hospital, and the damn place blows up. Just an hour later, and I would be just another statistic.

“Of course, that would have made Jan and Willard happy, huh? Not that they ain’t doing great now. No, my loving wife seems to be doing just fine.”

Chou was beginning to see he might have made a big mistake in coming here. This man was obviously not ready for any kind of conversation, and he felt guilty actually coming here. Nevertheless, he had to ask.

“I really am sorry to bother you, James, but I did have a reason for coming here. It is about the patient you were with the day you left the hospital. If you would prefer not to talk about it-“

“Radu, you mean”, Dooley said with a cynical smile. “Yeah, how could I ever forget him? The motherfucker was standing there laughing when the cops brought me the news. I was too fucked up to think about it at the time, but I think the cops wanted to knock his ass out. I didn’t really think about it until later.”

“He called himself Radu?”

“Yeah, and he said something about waiting for a visitor”, he explained. “He kept saying, over and over again, that this Mircea, whoever that is, was sending a mutual friend over with lunch. He said it was somebody named-Cynthia, I think.”

“He called her Cynthia?” Chou asked, obviously bewildered. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, because he couldn’t digest the fucking hospital food-his words”, Dooley replied. “Otherwise, he just talked the usual senseless bullshit, same as usual.

“Oh yeah, and he mentioned something about you, and bad blood”.

“Bad blood?”

“Yeah, that was it. Like I said, the guy was a real whack job. Marlowe was his name, right? Yeah-Marlowe Krovell. He got it in the blast too, didn’t he?”

They talked for a few minutes more, whereupon Chou encouraged him to seek therapy, and even in time to think about returning to work. Suddenly, Dooley broke down and began crying. He tried to stop, but could not. Chou embraced the man, though he felt like a hypocrite. He waited a few minutes, and gave the man time to pull himself together, and then he decided he would leave. He was just one small step away from taking him up on his offer for a beer. Chou knew all too well how that would end up.

“James, I know it is none of my business, but if you ever decide to come back to work, I promise you I will do all I can for you. I do have some pull there, not that it should be necessary. And if you ever decide to see a professional, I would be happy to help you find a qualified practitioner.”

“Yeah, I’ll think about it”, he replied. “You know what I was thinking of doing? Getting a construction job, believe it or not. I was by the hospital the other day to pick up my check, and the noise from the repair crew was deafening. I thought to myself, just what I need, something where I can expend some energy and not have to hear myself think.

“But anyway, thanks. I’ll give it some thought.”

Chou left, and decided to return home. It was a struggle after that to keep from going to the nearest bar. Instead, he would return home to his wife and the one child who was still home, a daughter who seemed to hate him even more than she did his wife, and her mother. He would just eat a cold pastrami sandwich, as his wife was far too busy selling real estate to cook any more. He could easily hire a cook and housekeeper of course, but it seemed so unnecessary, even extravagant.

On the other hand, the place was a mess. His wife seemed to adopt the philosophy that if you cleaned one room well, you could spot clean other rooms here and there so it would just look like it was time to clean them again-not that, in reality, they hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned in half a year.

God, he wanted a drink.

Susan was bitching about some concert her mother refused to allow her to attend-a rap concert, of all things.

“I guess you are going to tell me no too, no doubt”, she said hatefully.

“You guessed right”, he said. “I’ve heard enough of that crap blasting out of your room to know it’s no place for you, no matter how badly you think you have to go there. The next thing you know you are going to be some “ho” for the 17th Pulse, dancing suggestively on one of Toby Da Pimp’s videos. Or maybe you’ll be the female cop down on her knees unzipping his leather pants while he has a gun to her partner’s head.”

“That was a white cop”, she said. “And you can go to hell”.

She stormed upstairs to her room, and Chou decided he could not take it any more. He unlocked the bottle of scotch that his wife insisted they keep on hand for the mythological guests she insisted could stop by any time, but which he suspected she really wanted to keep there to just taunt him.

He opened it and poured himself a double. He had no sooner put it to his lips than Susan reappeared, storming down the stairs and staring at him indignantly.

“Well, it finally happened, huh? How many of your patients have died from you being a drunk? You are disgusting.”

“Where was that fucking vulture when I could have used her?” He downed the double immediately after saying this, and realized it was a really shitty thing to say, even if he couldn’t help but think it.

“What vulture?” she asked. “You’re already soused, ain’t you?”

“Young lady, I’ve about had it with your mouth”, he said angrily.

“Oh, what the fuck ever!” She practically screamed in his face as she lowered her head to where their eyes were at an even level. He could not help but think it was the most hateful tone, with matching expression, he ever heard in his life. She was now on her way to the phone, as he poured another drink.

He looked at her and thought to himself, is it wrong for a father to despise his own child the way he does this one? She sat there, not eight feet away from him, and talked as though he were not even there, about how some alleged stud she liked the last school year was going to, when school resumes, “give me some of that whether he knows it or not”.

“Virgin?” she then said with a derisive laugh after a couple of minutes of silent listening to what amounted to teasing from her friend Amanda. “Sweetie, that virgin thing is like about two years in the past and about fifty seven cocks ago. Oh, and that other thing you asked me about a couple of nights ago? Believe it. It don’t taste that bad after the fifth or sixth time.”

“Susan” Chou now said to his daughter. “I need to tell you something.”

“You’re still here?” Susan replied. “What the fuck! Amanda, I have to hang up for a minute, I’ll call back later.”

Chou was amazed his daughter even considered acceding to his request to talk, but she solved that mystery herself when she lit into him.

“Do you make a habit of listening in to other people’s private conversations?”

Chou apologized as he reached into his pockets and extracted a set of keys, from which he separated two, which he then proffered her.

“You want to get out of here, be my guest”, he said. “If you drive fast enough, you might make the concert in time.”

She looked at him in a way that suggested disorientation by this sudden change of heart, but immediately recovered her composure.

“I guess you don’t have any money, do you?”

“Two hundred dollars-will that do it?”

“Yes, and if I could have my credit card back that would be even better”, she sniped. “I don’t suppose you know where mom hid it, do you?”

“No, and I’m afraid that’s something you’ll have to take up with her”, he replied. “I’m not getting into that.”

“Whatever”, she replied. “It’s not like I run up a ton of debt the way Chrissie has, I only owe about two hundred dollars. But of course, Prissy little Chrissie is special, we can’t say anything to her, we’ll just make Susie suffer to make it up. Nobody else, mind you, just-“

“Goddammit do you want to go or not?”

He shouted this, which shocked her. She seldom heard this kind of reaction from him.

“Wow, I was about to say you should drink that shit more often, but I’m not so sure now. Okay, damn, I’ll go.”

“Be damned sure you keep it down when you come in, your mother is a light sleeper.”

“Yeah, right”, she said as she snatched the keys and money out of his hand. She was out the word without a word of thanks or as much as a goodbye. As she slammed the door, Chou realized how the term “fucked up” applied to his life in an excruciating fashion. What was worse, he found himself unconcerned as to whether she ever returned. In fact, by the time he made it up to the bed, following another double-shot, he forgot all about her.

When he awoke the following morning, he saw that he was alone, though his wife was home. She was downstairs, already heading to work. He walked quietly downstairs and saw her in the process of checking herself out in the full-length mirror, which she had positioned by the door for just that purpose. One last, final check before she was out the door. She did have houses to sell and quotas to meet, and by God in today’s market that was not so easy.

He walked down the stairs, in pain. The morning light streaming into the room seemed like high noon. He walked over toward the sofa. As he did, he looked over toward the liquor cabinet.

“The next time you decide to drink the scotch, would you be so kind as to put the lid back on?” his wife said. “I hope you didn’t drink out of the bottle, by the way.”

“Of course I didn’t”, he said. “Since you saw the open bottle, I would assume you saw the shot glass as well. I am even guessing you put it up.”

Mia’s cell phone then rang, and she answered. She immediately adopted a more casual, even light-hearted tone as she walked into the kitchen. A client had called and she was in the process of telling him she would be no more than fifteen or twenty minutes late, at the most. She had as many as seven houses she could show him today, but one in particular she was sure would be to his liking.

“Byyye”, she finally said as she hung up from the call and walked one last time to the mirror.

“Must be quite a catch there”, Chou observed.

“Well, it helps pay the bills”, she said matter-of-factly as she once more perused herself in the mirror, taking special pains to pinch her cheeks, after which she turned her backside to the mirror and glanced back as she swooped down the back of her somewhat but not uncomfortably tight short skirt with her right hand.

“By the way, are you going to go to the conference this weekend?”

“Uhhh-what conference is that?” Chou was unaware of any conference.

“The Asian American Leadership Conference”, she reminded him. “You know-the one in Washington that I told you about two weeks ago, and have mentioned two or three times since then. I am going and I would greatly appreciate it if you would accompany me.”

Accompany her? What the fuck kind of wife talks this way to her husband in private, he wondered.

‘Look, if you don’t want to go, I don’t really care, but let me know something by noon, all right? I’ll call you when I take off for lunch”

The more Chou thought about it, the more he thought he might well go and drink like a fish, just to embarrass the shit out of her. On the other hand, he realized that would suit her fine.

“You go on”, he said. “I really am not interested in going.”

“Suit yourself”, she said, and then went out the door. He looked around for the key to the scotch drawer. Fuck it, he said, I’m going to drink the whole fucking bottle-and I’m not going to use a fucking glass, either.

Before he made it half the way to the cabinet, Mia re-entered with an obviously concerned look on her face.

“Where is the car?” she asked him.

“How should I know where your car is?” he demanded.

“Not mine, yours”, she said. “It’s not in the driveway, and it’s not in the garage. So what the hell is going on?”

“It’s in the shop for repairs”, he said. “I think it needs a new alternator, but I don’t know. I had it pulled in from the hospital and took a cab home.”

She looked at him suspiciously. Chou was a seasoned, expert liar from way back and could think of a suitable cover story for any situation at a moment’s notice. She was all too aware of this, and was one of the few people that could detect the little subtle signs that David Chou was lying his ass off.

“You didn’t wreck it, did you?”

“No, I did not wreck it”, he promised.

“Do you need a ride to the hospital”, she asked. “It’s not that far out of my way.”

“I’m taking the day off”, he said. “If I am called in I’ll take a cab.”

She looked at him curiously, as she suddenly drew closer to him. He almost cringed at the thought of her touching him, but she suddenly stopped. As unusual as it was for him to take off a day from work, she decided it was not anything that could not wait. She had houses to sell.

“Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”

He left and then he almost collapsed in his recliner. Susie, he had forgotten all about her. She had not returned home yet, and it was eight o’clock in the morning. What in the hell was going on? Where could she have gone, and with whom? He also wondered what in the hell he was thinking giving her his car keys. He decided to take a shower, and after that, he ate a bowl of cereal. He needed to keep his strength up, despite the fact that his stomach churned in rebellion at the thought of any food.

He wanted to hit the scotch again, but he was amazingly calm about it. He wanted to, but he would not. He had to stay clear-headed today, of all days. After a couple of hours of trying not to think about it, but doing so anyway, it occurred to him-the phone was turned off. He would never have heard it ring, but the answering machine might have picked up her attempt to call last night or early this morning.

Unfortunately, no messages from Susie or anyone else waited. This would be one hell of a miserable day off, he decided. When the phone rang, he felt as if he wanted to jump through the window. He was struggling with one tenacious hangover. He wanted to vomit, but dreaded it. He picked up the phone, to hear Scott, from the Hospital Administration.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I wondered if you might be able to come in for just a little while”, he said.

“Sure”, Chou replied. “It might be a little while, though, as I’m having somewhat of a problem with my vehicle. I will have to take a cab.”

The Administrator told him it could wait, but Chou said he would try to be there within the hour. He hated that. It was obviously important, to call him in on a day off, he would be god damned if he would wait out the weekend with yet another worry on his mind. He changed the message on the answering machine to reflect this abrupt departure from his weekend plans, and then he called a cab.

Scott Reese was one of those hands-on Administrators that wanted to be in the loop in everything, whether it was vital or not. He had little if any trust in the various department heads. He should not have been here on a Saturday, so obviously something was afoot. As usual, when Chou entered his office, Reese extended his hand with a curt smile, and then invited him to sit. He apologized for any interference in Chou’s weekend. Chou just asked him what was on his mind.

“I’m interested in the experiments you have been conducting”, he said.

“They are not experiments”, Chou said. “Lynette Khoska is my patient, as was Marlowe Krovell. They share a blood anomaly which is most curious-as I’m sure you are aware.”

“Shared”, Reese replied. “Since Krovell is dead, I see no point in speaking as if he is still among the living, do you?”

“I never meant to imply otherwise”, Chou replied. “However, his blood samples are still most active.

Reese looked now at Chou in that questioning manner which Chou read as more critical than was necessary.

“I’ll get right to the point, David”, the man said. “There are specialists that are eminently qualified to research blood anomalies. It is already a matter of record that you discovered the replication faculties of these extraordinary samples. No one wishes to take credit away from you. At the same time”-

“They are mine”, Chou replied. “No one is taking a goddamn thing away from me, I will promise you that.”

“Well, actually David, that is not true”, the man replied with a bemused smile. “The samples first of all belong to the donors, but in the second place, they are currently the property of Johns Hopkins University Hospital. You are of course a visiting attending physician here. This is not a matter of territory, however. This is a matter of what is in the best interests of your patients, particularly your surviving patient. What is in her best interests is of the paramount importance.”

“And you should never forget that she is my patient”, Chou replied.

“Uh, well-that is because she was referred to you, specifically by me”, Reese said. “There was a reason for that, having to do with Krovell. She claimed to have seen him, on numerous occasions, after his death. Were you aware that she was near death at one point before her admittance here? Upon her admittance here, in fact, she demanded we release her, because she needed to be with him. Are you aware that her blood level was dangerously low, but nothing was ever determined as to what the cause of this was?

“Are you aware”, he said as he stood and glared at Chou, “that several people remarked as to having seen a strange man exiting a hospital window, from the fourth floor? Were you aware this man, when described, bore a striking resemblance to Marlowe Krovell? Did you know a vulture reportedly flew into and out of the same window, immediately before Krovell’s sighting there? As if that were not enough, the woman who was a patient in that room reported seeing him in there when she awoke from her coma.”

“That is a lot of poppycock”, Chou replied. “I saw Krovell. His body was mangled, but it was his, and not only did his uncle verify this, but dental records proved it was him. What are you saying?”

“I am wondering exactly what you are saying”, Reese replied. “You were informed about the vulture’s presence on this facility’s grounds, and the finding of the Dooley infant’s skeleton, due to some curiosity about your activities. We extended you a professional courtesy out of suspicions as to your patient’s involvement in these matters. These things are not only strange-they are downright bizarre. Records can be fabricated, by the way.”

“Well, I did not fabricate them”, Chou said. “I certainly do not make a habit of stealing infants to feed to vultures. Could you explain to me what the point of that would be?”

“I don’t know”, the man said. “I do know this. When the police informed Dooley of the circumstances surrounding his son’s disappearance, he was so distraught he lost track of the patient he was at the time attending. That patient, Marlowe Krovell, found his way to the hospital room of Grace Rodescu, where he seems to have managed to pry apart the screen that enclosed her window-a reinforced steel mesh screen, at that. He later managed to make it back to her room, at just about the time of the explosion. Yet, curiously enough, you were both seen to exit that room less than an hour prior to this.”

“Yes, I found him there. I went looking for him for an appointment we had, and a nurse directed me to the part of the hall where she had just seen him. I checked several rooms before I found him.”

“Would you like to hear something interesting?” Not waiting for a response, Reese pushed a button on a tape player. What Chou heard chilled him to the bone.

“There is a bomb in the basement. It will go off sometime today, probably very soon. When it does, it will destroy the entire area, and do severe damage to other floors as well. You are advised to leave as soon as possible.”

Chou had no doubt whatsoever as to whom the voice belonged.

“Marlowe”, he said. “Play that back, please.”

Reese did as Chou requested, and Chou not only was sure of who he heard, but noted that Marlowe, at the end, right before hanging up, seemed to restrain himself from laughing out loud.

“So, do you have an explanation for this?”

“He was insane”, Chou said. “Otherwise, it proves nothing. Furthermore, if you are accusing me of culpability, I would advise you-I can afford damn good lawyers. I would imagine Mr. Dooley, while a man not quite of my means, would certainly find someone willing to take a case such as his. Assuming of course he was to learn the truth as to what happened to his son, and where the remains were truly found.”

Reese looked at Chou, thunderstruck.

“Oh, you son of a bitch, you are good”, he said. “You know, I’ll be honest, I was against bringing you into this from the start. I always suspected you of complicity in Krovell’s actions. Most of the staff thought you were an innocent pawn at most, so I was overruled. But you know something, I’m glad you were brought into it, because I think the others just gave you enough rope for me to hang you with.

“You see, I don’t really think you are much of a physician, to be blunt. I do however think you know enough to be able to identify a body. Not being a physician myself, about all I know is it is impossible for a living human being to have the same identifying characteristics as a dead body.

“And as for Mr. Brad Marlowe, I wouldn’t hitch my saddle to that horse if I were you, because Mr. Marlowe is under investigation himself. Seems certain families might well exhume the bodies of loved ones he worked on. I don’t know why, but he is under a restraining order for the time being, and can temporarily no longer practice. I’m sure if we look into Krovell’s dentist we might find something like a drug or alcohol problem, or perhaps gambling. What about you, Chou? Might there be any skeletons on your rooftop?”

“You go to hell you son of a bitch”, Chou said. “As you pointed out, I am not an employee of this hospital, I am a visiting resident. I can leave any time, and when I go, I will take my patient’s samples with me. There is not a fucking thing you can do about it, besides see me in court. And if you breathe a word about my involvement with any of these ridiculous conspiracy theories you have spouted today, I will soon be moving into a new home-after I have auctioned off what parts of your furniture I don’t particularly like, that is.”

“Looking for a new home, Chou?” Reese asked him, not in the least impressed or dismayed by the doctor’s threats. “Why, problem with the wife, or the kids?”

“Yes, they don’t like my pet vulture”, Chou replied. “Are we finished here?”

Reese looked at Chou as though he were the scum of the earth, and then told him they were through for now. Chou was hopping mad, and determined he would remove the blood samples from this hospital today. First, he had to inform his patient-his lone one presently at John Hopkins-that he would no longer be seeing her there, and so would discharge her. When he went to her room, he was surprised to see an old man who was evidently a priest. He realized this had to be the grandfather she spoke of earlier.

Lynette seemed not only awake, but also aware, and according to her charts, her blood supply was completely normal. He talked to her at length, and asked her if she ever knew Marlowe Krovell. She informed him she did, but only through an on-line dating site. She never met the man in person. She was surprisingly unaware of ever having mentioned seeing him while in a disoriented state. She completely forgot about it. The old man was surprised at all this, and genuinely concerned. Why, he never elaborated, nor in fact did he say anything. Chou just knew.

Chou advised her there was no reason to keep her here any longer, as he felt the hospital was “no longer safe”. He already prepared her discharge papers, so she could leave within two hours. He then made a stop at the lab, where Bernie, the main lab tech on duty that day, told him he was under orders not to release the samples to Chou. He was incensed, and demanded to know why.

“Well, it’s really a matter of public safety”, he said. “Those samples contain trace amounts of latent bubonic plaque, in addition to syphilis. Actually, it is probably only a matter of very little time before we will be required to hand them over to the CDC. I’m very sorry, Dr. Chou.”

Chou was livid, and had to restrain himself from assaulting the lab tech. They would pay for this breach, he decided. He went to his sparsely furnished office, provided him as what he jokingly now thought of as a mere professional courtesy. Soon, he had no doubt the hospital would reassign it. He unlocked the bottom drawer on the desk, and extracted the fifth of Scotch. Why in the hell not, he asked himself. He poured a shot and quickly downed it.

He wondered if he should really do what he now planned. He wondered if one more shot would help him make the proper decision. He decided it could not hurt, and so he downed another double-shot, and called James Dooley. His new friend was understandably upset, and hurt, by the information Chou provided, but after all, what were friends for, but to give them as many reasons as possible to hate the people they hated themselves?

James Dooley was no longer hurt by the time he made it to the hospital, and to the office of Scott Reese-he was madder than hell, so much so, the first part of him that entered through Reese’s door was his right foot. Reese looked at him in terror, as he assured the now vicious former employee that he knew nothing about his wife’s dalliances with other hospital employees, including two Administrators. If this were true, he assured him that he was not one of them.

“So how is it my baby’s remains were found on top of one of the buildings, on this property? Why was I lied to? Don’t bother to deny it, because I have fucking proof. I want answers, now.”

Reese mumbled something about looking into it, though he was sure it was nothing but a vicious rumor, when Chou entered, encouraging Dooley to calm down.

“Oh, I’ll calm down, all right”, Dooley replied. “It will help when I go see my fucking lawyer-my civil lawyer.”

Dooley then stormed out of the office.

“You son of a bitch”, Reese hissed. “You’d better straighten him out, or”-

“Oh, stop worrying, Scotty”, Chou replied. “I’m sure once the truth comes out, James will be more than happy to settle for a quite handsome sum, say ten million dollars, for example. I would settle fast if I were you. Otherwise, you might not dissuade him from telling his soon-to-be ex-wife, and who knows how much she will demand? Who knows if she will even agree to settle? However, have no fear. I’m sure I can-how is it you put it-straighten him out.”

Reese sunk back in his chair. Chou had him, and he knew it. The victorious, though yet agitated and now obviously drunken Doctor leaned over Reese’s chair and leered at him with a malicious smile.

“Me, I don’t want that much”, he said. “I just want my fucking samples, and I want them now.”

By the time Chou made it back home, Susie had returned, with his car, thankfully still intact. She was noticeably sour, though this was actually an improvement.

“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “Do you know what your mother would say if I told her you’d been out all night? What the hell is wrong with you, Susan?”

“I stayed with some friends last night”, she replied. “I had some things I had to think about, so I just-did something I needed to do. It’s no big deal.”

She was definitely upset, Chou decided. Not once did she say or even imply that where she was amounted to none of his fucking business. No rolling of the eyes, no sarcastic tone, not so much as a hateful look. She seemed depressed. Then, he noticed the plastic bracelet around her wrist.

“Have you been to the hospital? Oh my God, that is it-you are pregnant.”

“Damn!” the girl exclaimed, obviously annoyed at herself for having forgotten to remove the bracelet.

“No, I went to the clinic”, she informed him. “No, I am not pregnant-not anymore. God, I feel sick.”

Chou was not surprised in the least. He was in fact somewhat relieved.

“You should go upstairs and rest, those procedures take a lot out of you. We will keep this between the two of us. Your mother will raise holy hell with the both of us if she finds out. Just go up to your room. I would like to take some blood from you, if you do not mind. Those facilities are far from pristine in their conditions, despite what you might have heard. I assume they gave you a prescription for antibiotics?”

“Yeah, and some pain medication as well”, she said. “Look, there might be some friends coming over later, I hope you don’t mind.”

“Fine, fine”, Chou said, growing ever more impatient. “The blood?”

“Alright, alright”, she said, after which Chou extracted a pint of blood from his daughter in the basement in his makeshift home lab.

“You need this much?” she asked.

“Just go up to your room and rest. When you wake up, make sure you eat something with a lot of iron and protein. That will help you build it back up. Oh, and by the way, you should stay here for a couple of days until your strength is back up to normal. I know you hate the idea, probably, but I am a doctor, remember?”

“Fine”, he said. “I’m not in the mood to argue”, she said.

After she left, he could not set up his lab quickly enough, determined to add her blood to the Krovell samples. He would look for the same effect as the day he added his own blood. Did the earlier reaction have something to do with a strange aversion to Oriental blood? No, he decided, that was ridiculous. There was only one thing different about Lynette Khoska from himself and his daughter that he knew of. They all three, in fact, had the same blood types, which was O-. Krovell’s was O+, so the reaction made no sense.

Marlowe Krovell was obsessed with bad blood. He wanted to leave the hospital because Chou insisted on giving him a blood transfusion, and even remarked he should have the blood of a virgin. Lynette Khoska was in fact a virgin, while his daughter was the biggest whore in town that he knew of. When the Khoska sample was added to Krovell’s, the latter sample reacted positively. It reacted negatively to his, yet returned to normal after the addition of the Khoska sample that also contained his own blood.

There was no such reaction when he added his blood to the Khoska sample, even though it exhibited the same replication process as Krovell’s. This, he decided, was quite a selective anomaly. What could it mean? He now added the blood of his whore daughter to both the Khoska and the Krovell samples. Now, he determined to see what the long-term results would be. He was certain that such an effect as he witnessed in the actual blood supply of a person would result in serious incapacitation, along with physical deformities and running sores. Left uncorrected, the long-term result would inevitably be death.

Yet, he now was stunned to note that the blood from his daughter Susan had the same effect on the Krovell sample as it did the Khoska one. In fact, both samples reacted positively. Under his electron microscope, he noted that the replication faculties of both samples seemed enhanced by the addition. This was wholly unexpected.

He was strangely disappointed, yet did not know why. There would be no valid scientific reason for Krovell’s blood, or anyone else’s, to react negatively to infusion of blood from a non-virgin and positively from a person of chaste character. There was no genetic or otherwise scientific reasoning for such a thing, and what he thought smacked of superstition. He should be relieved, in fact. If his suspicions were correct, how would he present his findings? How could he hope to prove such an outlandish claim?

He could not let it go. He had something he had to do, as foolish as it seemed. He called Brad Marlowe, but the only answer he received was the answering machine. There was no way he could leave a message about a topic this important. He would have to go to the Krovell Funeral Home.

He made sure the samples were secure. He was not completely convinced the CDC would not attempt to find them, and come to his home in an attempt to do so. If they did, Reese would regret it, and so would Johns Hopkins, but he could hardly sit and guard them day in and day out. It would do him no good if he did that anyway. He went upstairs, and saw that his daughter was talking quietly on the phone to someone. He went on out. He was not in the mood for yet another confrontation.

When he arrived at the mortuary, he entered quietly once he ascertained the sound of a familiar female voice. He drew closer to the main office, and was certain the voice belonged to Grace Rodescu. He overheard Brad Marlowe telling her he was relieved she found the DVD, that it held a lot of personal memories, and feelings, for him. She asked only one thing in return.

“I don’t know who he was”, Brad said. “All I know for sure is he was a friend of Marlowe’s grandparents, Martin and Nancy. He’s not even visible, yet you claim you recognize the voice. Are you sure? This was like fourteen years ago.”

“Believe me, you never forget certain things”, she said. “That voice is one of them. You don’t remember anything about him, other than he filmed this home movie?”

“I don’t remember even so much as what he looked like”, Brad assured her. “I only saw him that one time, and never again to my knowledge. Neither Martin nor Nancy ever mentioned him again. Actually, I believe they were only casual acquaintances, someone they met at some function involving Americans of Romanian descent, friends for a brief time that just drifted apart. I’m really sorry I can’t be of more help. Believe me, I am more than happy to pay you for the DVD.”

“Yes, I’m sure you are”, Grace said. “And believe me, I’m sure you will. I hope twenty thousand dollars doesn’t seem exorbitant.”

Chou noted the two of them fell into silence for a few seconds, and he suddenly wondered if he should announce his presence. On the other hand, he was here to learn. Perhaps he inadverdently stumbled onto something he had not expected. He felt sneaky, almost dirty even, but still”-

“It’s a lot”, he said. “It will take me a few days, maybe even a couple of weeks, to round up that much, but yeah, I guess I can do it. That will be it though.”

“Of course”, Grace replied. “I am not an unreasonable person.”

So, Chou thought. Grace Rodescu was blackmailing Brad Marlowe. Though he was hardly surprised, he was indeed curious. Reese mentioned something to the effect of Marlowe being under investigation. If that was true, it seemed likely he was privy to a connection somewhat with the nature of his investigation, though he certainly had no idea what it could be.

“Hey, wait a minute”, Marlowe suddenly said. “I just thought of something. I don’t know if this will be any help to you or not, but I remember Richard had a nickname for that guy. He called him ‘The Molecule Man’.”

“The Molecule Man?” Grace repeated.

“Yeah, I think that was some old comic book character from way back. Richard was a comic book collector from the time he was a kid. It remained a lifelong hobby. I remember the guy was curious about that, like he did not get it, but to Richard, it seemed to fit. I was in and out that day, so I did not get all of what was said. I just kind of put it out of my mind until now. It was just idle chit-chat to me that didn’t really mean anything. Does it make any sense to you?”

“You never heard an actual name?” Grace asked.

“Not that I remember”, Brad replied. “We were introduced, shook hands, spoke briefly, and that was it. I just never gave it any thought afterwards.”

Chou decided at this point that it might be a good idea to make his presence known. Whatever this conversation was about, it obviously did not concern him, and he had no business spying. Also, he was in a hurry and wanted to get this over and done. He addressed Brad from outside the door, and asked if he was busy. Brad walked to the open office door, asked how long he was there, whereupon Chou said he just came in.

Grace looked at him suspiciously when she walked through the door out into the main reception room, having decided she no longer had a reason to stick around.

“Are you still engaged in your dream research, Doctor Chou?”

“Something to that effect”, Chou said cordially. “I am happy to see you up, out, and about. You are recovering nicely, it would seem.”

“I’m still a little weak”, she replied. “But yes, I seem to be coming along nicely, thank you. Brad, I have to be going. We’ll talk some more in a few days.”

“Of course”, Brad said. He motioned Dr. Chou into his office as Grace saw her way out.

“I’ll get right to the point”, he said. “I understand that there is a Krovell family mausoleum down in the basement of this building, so I am assuming you have Marlowe’s remains entombed there. Am I correct?”

“Yes, that’s true”, Brad said, obviously upset, but whether over the current topic of discussion or his former one with Grace, Chou could not discern.

“I know this is going to be a very unorthodox request, but I would like to see the remains”, Chou announced to Brad’s immediate discomfort. “You are sure they are his, by the way.”

“Of course I’m sure”, Brad replied. “What is this all about? You identified them yourself.”

“Yes, but you do concede they were quite mangled. Unfortunately, a DNA analysis was not required, or this unpleasant business would be unnecessary. But as it happens, certain questions have arisen, questions that cast a shadow over the legitimacy of our respective identifications.”

Chou went on to explain to Brad the recent suspicions of his nephew as told him by Reese, suspicions currently held by a small number of hospital administrative staff. Brad was becoming angrier by the minute.

“I should sue those bastards”, he said.

“It would suit me if you did, in fact I would willingly help you should you decide to do that”, Chou replied. “Unfortunately, it might not be that easy. It is a fact that Marlowe did indeed phone in a bomb threat to the hospital, not more than an hour before the actual explosion. In fact, his activities, while they might have been innocent, circumstantial, and coincidental, might have provided a good deal of inadvertent aid to the persons who did indeed plant the bomb.”

“Marlowe was crazy”, Brad replied. “He wasn’t responsible for his actions. He would be incapable of hatching such a bizarre plot, for that matter even of thinking up something like that up, let alone carrying it out. I think these people are just trying to cover their asses for their own lax security and using an innocent, insane patient as a convenient cover, someone who can no longer defend himself. Hell, he was incapable of defending himself when he was alive at that time. Those fucking bastards!”

He now slammed his fist on the desk so hard Chou was surprised it didn’t break either the desk top or his fist. Brad was exhibiting a fury, hatred, and strength Chou thought previously would have been beyond him. He was quite taken aback by this display. Brad Marlowe had always seemed like a mild mannered man, the kind of man who was generally a doormat for other, stronger, more assertive and aggressive personalities. He was now pacing back and forth in the office, ranting about the hospital being responsible for his nephew’s death. He would see them all in hell, he exclaimed, as David Chou wondered, what in the hell has come over him?

Then, as quickly as it flared up, his anger seemingly evaporated into thin air, he regained his composure, and actually stammered an apology.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what come over me”, he said. “It’s not your fault.”

“That is quite all right”, Chou said, though he regarded Brad with some degree now of wariness and caution. “Nevertheless, it might well be advisable to check on the remains, just to be on the safe side.”

Brad agreed, and so they made their way down into the basement, and toward the one area that housed the coffins, encased within the concrete wall, each separate enclosure memorialized by the name of a different Krovell family member. The oldest one was a girl named Martha Krovell, who died in 1903 at the age of fourteen. Two younger children, a boy aged six and a girl aged four, died the very next year, seemingly on the same date in February, while yet another boy died later that same year at the age of seventeen. More than a century ago, Chou considered, this one family underwent the heart wrenching tragedy of four children dead within the space of little over a year’s time.

Brad Marlowe was busily removing the bolts that held on the engraved tomb marker for Marlowe, the latest Krovell tragedy, himself dead just a few months following the deaths of his parents. He considered how little he knew about the family, though he had been the family physician for going on seven years. How little did he really know about all of his patients, in fact? It was considered advisable to refrain from any kind of personal relationship with a patient, and though this was ethical and wise, it was such a loss. He would never have imagined Richard, for example, to be a comic book collector. How else did they live their lives, pursue their dreams? They were dead all in under a years time, yet their lives, though they were his patients, were every bit as much a mystery as those of the four unfortunate children who died more than a century ago.

He no longer even knew his own wife, his son and two daughters. Their lives were complete mysteries to him, in a sense, so far apart they drifted over the last few years. All he knew for sure was that Chrissy was going to bankrupt him with her addiction to credit cards and shopping. Brian was a drifter, going from job to job. Susan was a slut party girl who imagined abortion was just another form of birth control. His wife could care less about any of it so long as the real estate market made her enough spending money to fill her boredom. Meanwhile, she could pretend to be a concerned Asian-American politically active businesswoman. Of course, the housing market was going into a slump, and if it did not pull out of it soon, it would have a negative effect on all their lives

As for David Chou, sometimes he knew less about himself than he might a perfect stranger. He was an alcoholic with a preference for Scotch, who was tired of fighting his addiction. His determination to remain the one sane, stabilizing force in his family had made him an emotional wreck. Like his wife and kids, he was approaching that nebulous area of non-concern that seemed to lead to, if not happiness, then at least a form of contentment that comes with acceptance of reality.

Brad finally succeeded in removing the bolts out of the sealed crypt memorialized with the name of Marlowe Krovell, but as Chou approached, he saw something that took him by surprise. Beside Marlowe’s crypt was another, with no dates, either of birth or of death, and with only one given name-Radu.

“Who was this”? Chou asked.

“I think that was Magda’s husband”, he said, going on to explain that Magda was an old gypsy woman that came with her daughter and son-in-law to America from Romania in 1887. These were of course the ancestors of this branch of the family, the only branch in America, in fact.

“He may actually have been her father, I’m not sure.”

“But this is a new crypt”, Chou said suspiciously. “It looks to have been recently inscribed, right about the same time as Richard’s, Mabel’s and Marlowe’s.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a long story”, Brad replied. “To tell you the truth, Marlowe found him in an old trunk, buried with Magda out in the yard. It was an iron trunk, partially rusted, but sealed with some kind of pitch. He actually opened it up thinking there might have been money or jewels in there, but there wasn’t anything but this old mummy. The most horrible sight I ever saw in my life. I had nightmares for two weeks afterwards.

“The worse part of it was, it stunk up the whole place for two whole days”, he said. “I still get sick just thinking about it. Anyway, Marlowe demanded he should have a decent funeral, so we gave him one, and this crypt. At the same time he kept the old woman out in the yard where she was at, as that was what she wanted.”

Brad now stopped and looked at the crypt that held the ancient set of remains, and looked morose.

“You know, I think that’s when Marlowe really started to get crazy”, he said. “He was getting weird and maybe even a little crazy before, in fact he always was, well, kind of different. Okay, very different. But after he dug this thing up, he really went into a different dimension. He just got worse and worse every day, and then, to top it off-I don’t know this for a fact mind you, but I think he might have murdered that black girl they found ripped apart, drained of all her blood.”

“The Sandusky girl?”

“Yeah, that’s her”, Brad confirmed. “He came back here in the most horrible shape I’ve ever seen anybody in. He didn’t even look human. He had all these welts all over him, running sores, all over his body and face, and he was weak and in pain. He actually seemed to be in agony. Then, when I helped him up to the bathroom, he”-

“Maybe you shouldn’t tell me anymore”, Chou said as Brad hesitated. He did not want to be in the position of being an accessory after the fact of such a heinous crime as this, if it were true. At the same time, his curiosity was aroused to such an extent he offered not even a meek objection when Brad persisted.

“I’ve kept this to myself so long, I really need to tell somebody”, he said. “We do have a patient-doctor confidentiality thing, right?”

“Yes, of course”, Chou replied. He honestly was unsure whether that would apply in this situation, but he was loath giving voice to this concern.

“He vomited up blood, that night. I mean, it looked like one or two gallons of it. It looked like an entire person’s blood supply, to be sure. It wasn’t his blood, he told me that. I just heard about the murder, and asked him if he knew anything about it, because I know he knew the girl. She was supposedly a virgin, someone he met on a Christian dating site. He said it was all a filthy bunch of lies.

“The strange thing was, after he vomited all that blood, he started to change back to normal. The welts and sores went almost but not quite completely away. Then, later that night, he attacked someone he thought was me. He intended to kill me, but actually attacked an emergency tech sent by the hospital in response to my calls. If I hadn’t sent for them I’d probably be in one of these crypts right now. He was like a madman that night. It was almost like he was possessed. Believe me, the more I think about it, the more I think about Radu, and those gasses.”

“Gasses”? Chou asked. “What sort of gasses?”

“Those gasses that stunk the place up when he opened that trunk. Those were bodily gasses, built up over God only knows how long, held in place by the strength of that old cast iron trunk and the pitch, and the fact they were buried in the ground most of the time. This guy was, to tell you the truth, supposed to have lived centuries ago. I don’t even know what his full name was, or even if he was a Krovell-or a Krovelscu. I assume he was just some ancestor of Magdas.”

“The gasses might well explain the bubonic plaque”, Chou said. “It might possibly even explain the syphilis. It might well explain a hell of a lot more. You need to come back to the office for another checkup, by the way. Your exposure to those gasses might have affected you as well. I doubt it, as it should have manifested in some way by now, particularly if you came down with syphilis, or the plaque. Still, just to be on the safe side”-

“Sure thing”, Brad said. “I’ll come in Monday, will that be all right?”

“That should be fine”, Chou replied. “Now, if you will be so kind as to extract Marlowe’s coffin, we can look at him and get this unpleasantness over with.”

Chou assisted Brad in withdrawing the coffin, held in place by a pulley with wheels by which they guided it to its position some four feet from the ground. Brad then unlocked the coffin, and they proceeded to open it. Chou stared at the remains. Yes, it was definitely Marlowe, he was even surer of it now than he was when he first identified him. Even his face was by now almost back to normal. He was quite impressed with Brad’s work. Brad explained to him that, while he probably should not have engaged in this endeavor, as he also did with Richard and Mabel, it did not feel right to entrust them to the hands of relative strangers.

As he talked, Chou realized something. This was definitely Marlowe, but something was missing. There were no tattoos on his hands. He opened the shirt. Missing was the bat wing tattoo and the spider web that adorned his chest. He checked Marlowe’s tongue, only to find no evidence of any piercing, as was also the case on his ears. There was also no evidence of any resulting healing scars from the piercings.

Yet, there was no doubt that this was Marlowe. At the same time, Chou noted something even more disturbing. In his first examination of the corpse, Chou noted evidence of trauma because of the explosion. Although some of this evidence was still present, it seemed not as bad as before. Other things faded completely, as though they never existed.

Brad had moved away during the course of Chou’s examination, briefly, but not returned.

“So are you sure now it’s him”, he asked.

Chou was not sure of what to say. The improvements Chou noted in the condition of the corpse seemed not accomplished through any kind of mortuary cosmetology, and possibly occurred sometime between the time of the body’s release to Brad Marlowe’s care, and the time the mortician embalmed the body.

It, like the blood, replicated. Chou found himself wondering, if Brad had delayed embalming the corpse, might it have continued replicating. Might it even be capable of sustaining life?

“Yes, it is obviously him”, Chou replied. Those missing tattoos still bothered him, but he said nothing.

Brad was almost crying openly when he said goodbye to his nephew, and closed him back up in the crypt. Chou knew of course what one explanation was, but dared not say it to Brad or to anyone. The replication faculties of Marlowe Krovell’s blood went further than what he imagined they would in his wildest dreams. He was not about to mention any of this to Brad Marlowe, however.

Chou was unable to sleep that night, and lay in bed as Susan and her friends talked, and laughed. He could not make out what they were saying, but he was almost surprised when they left the house close to twelve midnight, yet Susan remained home. Yes, he thought, the world is definitely turning on its head.

He decided he would call his other kids. Chrissy, however, was not home, and Brian said he just got in from work, and had to go in early the next day. He sounded beat, so Chou let him go. The hell with it, he decided. He may as well call Mia. It was twelve midnight exactly, which meant either Mia was at some Washington nightclub, or in some hotel room with God knows whom. He almost hoped she was. He thought that would be quite humorous, to hear her act as if she was all alone. Unfortunately, she never answered, so his little joke would have to wait for the next Asian American conference.

To his surprise, by the time he woke up the next morning, she was home, had in fact been home for three hours.

“You’d better be glad you didn’t attend”, she told him. “The food was atrocious, the lectures and seminars were all boring as hell, and the people there acted like a group of Chinese peasants pretending to fawn over a bunch of Communist Party officials. It was disgusting.”

“I told you”, he said. “I don’t know how many times you have to attend these things to see it’s just a way to get money from the gullible, people who cannot seem to comprehend that these people are only concerned with justifying their six figure salaries with nothing but promises and hot air.”

“You might have actually enjoyed the seminar on Chinese herbal medicines and their growing acceptance by the American medical establishment”, she told him.

“No I would not”, he said indignantly. “You have no idea how many patients I have who have asked me if I perform acupuncture, or if I could recommend ginseng or dong quai as an alternative to everything from Demerol to Viagra. I have had one so far this month. I average about two a month. One month, about a year ago, I had seven. It is very insulting, and frustrating.”

“Well, I didn’t sell a single house, after spending all day Friday”, she said. “At least you don’t have to worry about the market for physicians falling through to the basement-or the sewer.”

“Well, that is what you think, as I most certainly do have to worry about it”, he replied. “Any time the economy takes a hit in any sector, I feel a pinch. Not that I am complaining, mind you, as it would do me no good.”

His wife obviously had something on her mind, as she seldom engaged him in conversation this long. He knew he was only two short years away from divorce papers being filed, and was always squirreling money away, whenever possible, for that eventuality. Unfortunately, after going on five years of squirreling, what he amassed amounted to roughly the equivalent of a pile of acorns. He looked at her and knew something bothered her.

“Do you have something on your mind?” he asked.

“What is all this with Susan?” she asked. “She has been acting so strange.”

“I have no idea”, he replied, and immediately regretted it, as Mia’s eyes now narrowed with even greater suspicion.

“So I take it you had no plans whatsoever to tell me about the abortion”, she said. “Yes, David, she told me about it, this morning, so don’t try to deny it. And what is this about taking her blood? Was there anything wrong with it?”

“Of course not”, he replied. “Those facilities are very thorough in guarding against infections. I am sure the medication they gave her is quite appropriate. Abortions are actually quite simple procedures, especially in her case. I am sure she was early in her second trimester at the latest.”

“According to her you said the exact opposite”, Mia said, now becoming cold and distant in her matter-of-fact tone of disapproval.

“I don’t want her to think abortion is a convenient way to deal with an unwanted pregnancy”, he said. “That kind of thinking will lead her to nothing but trouble.”

“A lot of her thinking will lead her to nothing but trouble”, Mia replied. “That never seemed to bother you before”.

“Damn, Mia, I’m sorry I concerned myself with my daughter’s welfare, I promise you it will never happen again”, he almost shouted, growing more irritated as he glanced toward the liquor cabinet.

“There is something going on with you”, she said. “You are up to something. I do not know what it is, but these last few weeks you have been acting very strangely. If it involves Susan, or any of my children, I want to know about it.”

“It doesn’t involve them”, he replied. “It is just some research I am conducting which I am not at liberty to discuss. My interest in Susan’s blood was just an incidental distraction. Considering the kinds of friends she typically has, I would think you would actually be relieved to see her do something that is arguably responsible. At the same time, I feel it is my duty as her father to insure her health has not been damaged. Is that so hard for you to comprehend?”

“So, I see I will not get a straight answer from you”, she said. “Well, I don’t have time for your foolishness. It is time for mass, which is where I am on my way to. I would ask you to come along, but I know what my answer to that would be. I am going”.

She made it to the door, stopping to check her appearance in the full-length mirror. As always, she checked her backside, this time as well the slits that ran two thirds of the way up her medium length black skirt. She opened the door, and then turned to face him.

“We aren’t finished with this, David”, she said. “Not by a long shot.”

“No”, Chou replied, “I am quite afraid we are not”.

By that time, however, Mia was already out the door.