He reached his building, a huge block of concrete squatting on the corner like a white toad. He moved, brooding, through its wide automatic doors, past the sleepy woman at reception, past the elevators to the stairs. As he climbed slowly, he felt himself pursued, still. As if something terrible were coming up behind him, its footsteps muffled on the thick green carpet. His legs felt shaky, weak, as he climbed.

He reached the third floor. A long, long hallway. He had to push through heavy fire doors, one pair and then another and then another. His arms began to feel shaky now too. His whole body began to feel heavy and thick.

Midway down the hall, he reached his door. Fumbled with the key. Let himself into the small flat, and punched the lights on with the side of his fist. He slipped out of his trench coat, made to hang it on the edge of the closet door. It fell to the floor instead.

The light on his answering machine was blinking. He ignored it. Trembling, he moved into the kitchen. Ran himself a glass of water. Carried it back into the sitting room, to the sofa. Sank down into the cushions wearily. Only then did he reach out and weakly hit the machine’s playback button.

“Hello? Hello? Is it recording now? Damn these things.”

Harper. Her voice sounded far away. Hollow. Echoing.

“Richard? I’ve come across something I think you should see … see … see …”

The words seemed to him to reverberate foggily. He looked around him at the yellow walls and matted flower prints and the falsely gilded mirror. At the colorless chairs and the orange blocky thing on which he sat. All foreign to him. All dead and strange. What was he doing here anyway?

“It’s a little something … something … something … called ‘The Alchemist’s Castle’ …”

He raised the glass to his mouth and the water jerked from it, spilled over his pearl-buttoned shirt, but he still didn’t realize what was happening. His hand was shaking violently, but it too seemed foreign, far away, dead, strange. And then the glass slipped from his fingers. Struck the leg of the sofa. Shattered. Fragments and glistening slivers on the carpet. A spreading colorless stain. Sophia, he thought. And he looked down blankly and saw another stain spread over the thigh of his jeans. A single razor of pain sliced through his forehead. And, finally, he understood. He clutched his temples with his two hands. He raged—raged—against the relentlessly rational: the implacable scientists, the doctors at Cedars-Sinai with their bland, pitiless expressions.

“The Alchemist’s Castle … The Alchemist’s Castle …”

Six months, you bastards! he cried out in his heart. You told me I still had six months!

Then the convulsions struck and he fell to the floor, unconscious.

III

THE
ALCHEMIST’S
CASTLE
OR
THE
VIRGIN’S
FATE

1