Free The Architect by Keith Ablow

to take her back,” her father told Crosse.
    “You’re being tested,” Crosse told him.
    “And if she dies? How am I supposed to live with that?”
    “By knowing you tried to save her.”
    “There are things that happened to her... as a child,” Van Myer said.
    “She isn’t a child anymore,” Crosse said flatly.
    But the Van Myers” will was broken. Whatever demons terrorized Chase now had them terrorized, too. They let her retreat back into their home, emptied the library of books and filled it again with her childhood memories and bed and increasingly ragef ul art—a clay sculpture of a woman’s head with nails for teeth, anotherof four babies broken into pieces, a painting of a young girl nailed to a cross.
    They let the devil into the sacred space Crosse had created, violating God’s great design. And the malignancy spread. Life turned out no better for Chase, and far worse for the rest of the family.
    The Van Myers began to fight constantly. Their other children began competing with Chase for attention. Her sister Gabriela landed in the emergency room twice, with cocaine overdoses. The youngest sibling, a sixteen-year-old boy, dropped out of school.
    Over the last month, Scout Van Myer had called Crosse, his Bones brother, panicked, watching his life unravel, unable to see any way out of the maze he had helped to build.
    Now, there was only one way out.
    Crosse walked over to the bed. He picked up one of the lengths of gold silk rope.
    Chase smiled.
    He fastened her right wrist securely to the bedpost.
    She stretched her left hand toward the opposite bedpost.
    He fastened her left wrist, then her left ankle, then her right. “Try to get out,” he told her, with no emotion. He was a surgeon now. A soldier for the Lord. He felt no excitement, no sorrow, no fear, no pity.
    She pulled hard against her tethers, flexing her arms and legs the little she could.
    “Good,” he said. “Lie still.”
    She obeyed.
    He unbuttoned his shirt, took it off, unfastened his belt, removed his pants, then his underwear.
    She stared at him wide-eyed.
    He walked to the bedside table, opened the drawer, and removed a white silk scarf. He folded it into a blindfold.
    She lifted her head off the pillow.
    He tied the blindfold around her head. “Can you see?” he asked her.
    “No.”
    He reached back into the drawer, took out a bottle of chloroform and another white scarf. He poured the liquid over the cloth, then held it over her nose and mouth.
    She struggled only weakly before falling asleep.
    Crosse was certain he knew why she didn’t fight harder: Chase Van Myer understood better than anyone that her life was bringing her and her family more pain than pleasure. And she knew there was no end in sight. Why else would she try to commit suicide again and again?
    He reached into the drawer, removed a tourniquet and a syringe filled with the paralytic agent succinyl-choline. He tied the tourniquet around Chase’s arm, and injected one milligram. Within fifteen seconds he saw Chase’s arms and legs, then her face and neck, begin to twitch with disorganized contractions as the suc-cinylcholine relentlessly stimulated each and every one of her muscles. He knew that even her heart and diaphragm were tightening in on themselves over and over again, unable to stop squeezing. Her body had itself in a death grip and would not let go.
    Crosse was not moved. He was certain that what he was doing was in service to liberty, and that freed himto do whatever was necessary with a firm hand and a clear conscience.
    Within one minute, Chase’s muscles were so fatigued, her system so poisoned with the metabolic waste products of physical exertion, that she lay completely still, paralyzed. Her heart might occasionally shudder, but would no longer pump any blood. Her lungs would move no air. Her respiratory and circulatory systems had collapsed. She was suffocating in silence.
    Crosse untied her arms and legs, removed her blindfold, and pulled