The Chrysalis Read online

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Thank you for buying this

  Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  This novel is dedicated to

  comic books made before 1990

  and scary movies on VHS

  and the smell of old paperback horror novels

  PROLOGUE

  The basement gaped open like a mouth.

  In the kitchen, the linoleum floor streaked with freshly spilled blood, a man and a woman struggled for control of a twelve-inch carving knife. The woman held it in a frenzied grip and tried desperately to plunge it into her husband’s neck. The man, clawing at her hands, was bleeding from numerous wounds to his face, chest, and arms. His lips opened and closed like a suffocating fish as he wrestled with his wife, their battle silent except for an occasional grunt and the soft sound of midnight rain against the windows.

  For a moment, he thought he was gaining the upper hand. They were about the same height, but he was stronger—normally. Tonight, her strength surprised him. As had the strange smile that wrapped itself around her face a few minutes earlier, when he’d told her he was sick of her secrecy and declared that he was heading down into the basement to get some answers.

  As he’d made his way across the room, she started stabbing him.

  Though his head was swimming as the life leaked out of him, he managed to get hold of the knife handle, his fingers intertwined with his wife’s in some kind of sick intimacy. He pushed the blade toward her. A sound bubbled up from the back of her throat, and at first he thought she was crying. Then he realized, his stomach dropping, that she was laughing. They’d been married for forty-six years, and he’d never heard her laugh like that: coarse, guttural, unnatural.

  He remembered the last time he had heard her regular laugh: weeks ago, before her trip to the desert. He’d begged her not to go. She was retired, after all. Why was she volunteering for a high school trip? They were supposed to be spending their golden years together, finding new hobbies to enjoy and taking it easy. He just wanted to putter around the house during the day, maybe head into town now and then, and watch TV at night. But she had insisted. She missed her work, she said. The field trip was a way for her to reconnect with the woman she had once been. And he had relented. Of course he had. He loved her.

  She’d returned from that trip a changed woman, clutching something wrapped in a dirty cloth that she refused to show him, babbling about the perverted nature of the students and other adults who had gone with her.

  She hadn’t laughed once since that day. Not with her real laugh, the one he missed. The one he used to hear all the time, before that visit to the desert and his wife’s strange obsession with the basement. He glanced across the kitchen at the open door and the stairs that led down into pitch darkness.

  That was all the distraction she needed.

  “It’s mine,” she hissed, her fetid breath curling against his face.

  She shoved him with the hand not struggling for control of the knife. The man’s bare feet slipped on the blood—his blood—pooling on the kitchen floor, and he went down hard, the air knocked violently from his lungs. Before he fully registered what was happening, she was on top of him, stabbing over and over again.

  “Mine, mine, mine, mine…,” she whispered.

  As his vision dimmed, the man’s gaze focused on the basement doorway. He’d read in a newspaper article years earlier that the moment of death was usually accompanied by an overall sense of peace, but his terror only increased as he stared at the dark entrance to the basement and his consciousness slipped away.

  Soon, the only noises in the room were the knife repeatedly entering flesh and the woman’s strange laughter rising above the growing sound of the storm.

  MONTH ONE

  Tom Decker looked haunted.

  He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, the weak light from the fluorescent bulb pulsing down on him as he attempted not to puke his guts out. Jenny was asleep in what passed as their small bedroom, cut off from the rest of the apartment by a flimsy room divider, legs tangled up in the whatever-thread-count cotton sheets they’d received from some cousin for their wedding a year earlier. Even though Tom had shut the door, he heard her heavy breathing through the thin walls. His long, greasy hair hung in his eyes, but he could still see himself—and he looked like shit. It was 2 P.M. on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Or was it Sunday? He honestly had no idea.

  Racked by a violent cough, he spat, then ran the water to wash away the evidence. How many cigarettes had he smoked the night before? He felt even sicker just thinking about it. He really needed to quit. Then again, he’d been telling himself that for years. Ever since he was a teen and had started sneaking butts from his dad’s never-ending packs. His father had died from lung cancer. It’d been ugly at the end. Tom blinked and shook away the memories of the man’s sallow face, refocusing on the present. On the far different life he was trying to create for himself in New York City, away from his past.

  He and Jenny had closed the dingy Alphabet City bar yet again, an easy task since he worked there most nights as the sole bartender. Easy to lock the door at 4 A.M. and stay inside with a few customer-friends and his wife and drink a couple more before he finally kicked everyone out.

  It wasn’t unusual for Tom and Jenny to stumble the few blocks to their apartment while the sun was coming up, to pass shocked, offended, or disgusted neighbors heading out for early-morning activities. The couple would laugh guiltily as they tripped up the stairs and collapsed into bed, sometimes too drunk to fuck, sometimes not.

  Last night he’d switched from beer to bourbon a little after midnight, a rookie mistake. Now his head was pounding and his stomach was a gurgling mess, but he prided himself on throwing up as seldom as possible. Plus, he was a loud puker, raging-lunatic loud, embarrassingly loud, and he didn’t want to wake Jenny.

  Leaning over, Tom splashed water onto his unshaven face. It was a crapshoot at any given moment whether their tiny apartment would have hot water, but right now he welcomed the feel of the icy-cold liquid; it tamped down the nausea. How much sleep had he gotten? He didn’t have a clue, but it felt as though he’d slept for about twenty minutes.

  “Tom…,” Jenny called softly from the bedroom.

  He pushed his straggly hair up and out of his eyes, exhaled, and blinked several times. The water droplets on his face, through his blurred vision, gave him an almost alien look. He smiled at himself without any real mirth and wiped the water away before shutting off the light, opening the door, and returning to his bed and his wife.

  * * *

  Jenny Decker sat at the dining room table and watched her husband through bloodshot eyes. Their apartment was a glorified studio, so calling the tiny piece of furniture a “dining room table” was a stretch, but they’d
done their best to create areas that replicated the spaces of a larger home. Since this table was in the designated “dining room,” it was the dining room table.

  Rain beat against the nearby “living room” windows, making Jenny feel even sleepier. Shadows danced on the exposed brick above the small, nonfunctional fireplace.

  The coffee that she was trying to suck down should have been delicious, especially considering how much sugar she’d dumped into it, but her hangover was bad enough that the heat flowing down her throat and into her stomach was all that mattered.

  Tom looked as bad as she felt. He had that faraway expression on his face that told her he was trying not to throw up. He was playing with his Zippo, a habit she loved and hated at the same time. She loved the sound the lighter made but hated how much her husband smoked. Her grandfather, a colossally heavy smoker, had died from lung cancer when she was twelve. It was one of the things she and Tom had bonded over when they first met.

  Still, the deaths of his father and her grandfather weren’t enough to get him to quit smoking, and eventually he gently asked her to stop berating him about it, explaining that he needed to do it on his own schedule. She no longer brought it up, but it broke her heart every time he lit up.

  Across the table from her, though pale and sickly, Tom still looked good to her, with his crown of dark, shoulder-length hair and ratty white T-shirt, his dark tattoos peeking out of the sleeves. She smiled at the sight.

  It had taken them a little while to figure out that it was Sunday, which sucked because it meant she had to work the next day. But at least Tom had the night off. It was pouring rain out, so Jenny took solace in the fact that after drinking coffee and picking at the stale bagels that had been in the cupboard for at least two days too many, she and Tom would snuggle down on the couch and watch bad TV on their unintentionally stolen cable. When they’d moved in a couple of years earlier, they found what was clearly an antenna wire sticking out of the wall facing the street. Was it their fault that when they plugged it into their TV, they had almost every channel known to humanity?

  Tom caught her looking at him and gave Jenny that crooked grin she’d first noticed a little over three years earlier, when he’d been tending bar at a coworker’s going-away party in the same Alphabet City dive bar where he still worked. That was the first time she’d stayed at any bar after closing time. Tom’s lips had tasted so good that night.

  They’d dated for only a year before he proposed, getting down on bended knee at a restaurant, embarrassing and exhilarating her at the same time. He had said the most amazing things in that moment, things she had always wanted to hear from a man. He seemed to understand her perfectly. She had gotten down onto the floor with him, whispered yes, and hugged him with a fervor that surprised even her. The restaurant’s other patrons applauded, and someone sent over a bottle of champagne. They never found out who had done it.

  “Hey,” he said softly, bringing her back to the present.

  “Hey, what?” she answered, mock serious.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  “I love you, too, baby.”

  * * *

  Monday morning was a little more forgiving.

  Jenny was up early, as usual on a weekday, and had left for work before Tom woke up. He hated when he missed her getting ready. Watching her slip back into their bedroom after a 6 A.M. shower, pulling on her underwear and bra. Pretending she didn’t know he was watching as she pulled her long dirty-blond hair into a ponytail and put on the designer track suit with that stupid corporate logo, which should have looked horrible but somehow made her even hotter than usual.

  He often tried to coax her back into bed but failed almost every time. She was way too dedicated to her work to let some quick morning sex jeopardize her job, no matter how good it was. Tom didn’t understand that kind of dedication to a nine-to-five job but respected it nonetheless. So he contented himself by watching her suit up for her day as a personal trainer to a bunch of douchebag investment bankers.

  By the time he got up at nine thirty that Monday, Jenny had probably been at that fancy basement gym inside the Swiss investment bank for more than an hour. As if missing her morning routine wasn’t bad enough, his hangover from the previous day was still lingering.

  Fuck, he thought, climbing out of bed and making his way to the bathroom. I must be getting old.

  Still, he had nearly a whole day in front of him, before he had to clock in at the bar, and could spend the time painting. He’d won awards in high school for his work and had dreamed of moving to New York City and taking the art world by storm. His teachers had told him he was destined for greatness, and he’d believed them.

  What an idiot, he thought.

  Jenny kept telling him not to give up. She loved his art. She believed in him. These days, he painted for her more than for himself, yet he still dreamed of somehow striking it rich through his art. Of giving Jenny the kind of life she deserved.

  He would do anything for her. He would give up anything.

  * * *

  Jenny knew the old dude was looking at her ass.

  He came down to the gym almost every day but barely worked out. Jenny suspected it was just a ploy so he could watch her while she guided his stretches and half-baked attempts at weight training. Still, the guy was a senior vice president in Mergers and Acquisitions, so if he got his rocks off by checking out her chest and backside for a few minutes each morning, so be it. So long as he kept his wrinkled old hands to himself and her modest check cleared each week.

  After the perv finished his session and hobbled off to the locker room, Jenny made her way to the front desk, where her manager, Sean, was typing away at the computer. A short redhead, he was seriously jacked for his size, and was generally nice, though sometimes he acted as if he were saving lives, not catering to a bunch of entitled 1 percenters.

  “Hi, Sean,” she said, forcing a smile. He was constantly telling her to smile. “I’m done with—”

  “One sec,” he mumbled, fingers blazing over the keyboard, updating his client database. Sean loved his database and labored over it for hours every day. Jenny kept the smile plastered on her face while attempting not to stare at the prominent, mildly disgusting veins that traversed his forearms.

  “Oooo-kay … what’s up, Jennifer?” he said, sounding distracted. He glanced at her for only a second before looking back at the computer.

  Since Jenny’s grandfather had died, Sean was the only person who called her Jennifer, and she hated it. But he was her boss, so, much like the ogling banker, he got a pass.

  “I’m done a little early with Mr. Schrum. Is there anything you want me to do, or should I go on break?”

  “Let’s see … Yeah, if you could mop the women’s locker room, that would be super-helpful. Apparently, Mrs. Griffin had a little accident in there. At least that’s what I’m told. I don’t even wanna know!”

  He laughed at his own joke without looking up, and Jenny laughed along through clenched teeth. It wasn’t her job to clean anything—the building had custodians for that kind of thing—but she was in a good mood, so she let it go. After all, how bad a mess could it be?

  * * *

  Tom’s art studio sucked.

  In fact, calling it an “art studio” wasn’t even close to accurate. Every once in a while, he’d retrieve a stack of newspapers from their building’s garbage/recycling area, spread them on the floor of the apartment’s tiny kitchenette, then set up his easel and stare at a blank canvas, waiting for inspiration. Technically, there was more space in the dining room or the living room or possibly even the tiny bedroom, but Tom liked how the light filtered in through the small window above the sink. It faced an adjoining apartment building, but the reflection of the sun against their neighbor’s always-shaded window was often dizzyingly beautiful and inspiring.

  Today? Not so much.

  Tom’s head still throbbed from Saturday’s drinking. He held the paintbrush in his slightly trembling ha
nd but couldn’t figure out where to start, or even which color he wanted to start with. Honestly, he just wanted to go back to sleep. But if Jenny came home and found him in bed, he knew she’d be silently disappointed in him. Hell, he’d be disappointed in himself.

  Maybe if he cracked a beer …

  The blaring of his cell phone made him jump and drop the paintbrush onto the newspaper-covered floor. He laughed at himself, surprised at how on edge he was, then muttered, “Fuck…” The phone was on the couch, where he’d zoned out for an hour or so after dragging his ass out of bed. He caught the call on the last ring.

  “What’s up, Kev?” he said after a glance at the screen. He headed for the living room window, which led to the fire escape and a much-needed cigarette.

  Kevin Jenkins was Tom’s best friend, had been since they met in elementary school back in their tiny Pennsylvania town. They’d stayed in touch after high school graduation, no matter how much distance separated them, but these days, even living in the same city, they didn’t hang out or talk as much as they used to. Kevin’s bullshit corporate sales job, the kind of work they both used to mock, kept him far too busy, especially after a recent promotion.

  “I’m surprised you’re awake,” Kevin said, the slight echo indicating that he was on his headset, something Tom also made fun of.

  “Of course I’m awake,” Tom answered. “Wait, what time is it?”

  Kevin laughed but Tom pulled the phone away from his head and looked—11:42 A.M. At least it was still morning.

  “When are we hanging out, man?” Kevin asked. Tom could hear the computer keys clicking in the background while they talked, another thing he found annoying about his friend’s work habits.

  Shit, he thought, I’m in an awful mood. He squeezed himself through the open window and sat down on the rusted metal fire escape, feeling the post-rain wind push through his hair. He fished the last cigarette from a crumpled pack, cupped it in one hand, and lit it with his Zippo. He gently tossed the lighter and the empty cigarette pack back through the window, onto the couch.