He can feel a scream building in his throat, but he struggles against it, knowing if he shows how terrified he is, it will only be worse. Besides, even if anyone heard him scream, they wouldn’t come to help him.
They never do.
One of the orderlies opens the door, and the other one pushes the gurney inside. The boy catches a glimpse of the box on a table against one of the walls, and feels the knot in his stomach turn into a ball of fire.
And suddenly he has to go to the bathroom.
He tries to tell the orderly, but now he is so terrified that his mouth has gone dry, and the only sound that comes out is a choking sob as he struggles not to cry.
He shuts his eyes: maybe if he doesn’t watch, it won’t happen.
When he hears the door open and close, and the familiar voice ask if everything is ready, he squeezes his eyes shut tighter, as if by closing out more of the light he might close out the sound of the voice as well.
The darkness, though, is even more frightening than what he has seen, and when he finally risks a peek, he knows it is going to happen again.
The wooden box is open, and the man is taking the bright metal plates out of it.
Though the boy tries not to watch, he can’t help himself, and his eyes never leave the metal contacts as the man applies a gooey substance to them, then snaps them into a heavy band of rubber.
One of the orderlies fastens the band around the boy’s head.
As the boy braces himself, the orderlies bend over him, pressing his body down against the gurney. He squeezes his eyes shut again.
The first shock jolts through him, and every muscle in his body convulses, jerking his limbs against the restraining straps with so much force he thinks his legs and arms must be broken.
But even worse is the hot wetness spreading from his crotch and the stink coming from behind his buttocks.
Crying as much from shame as from the pain, the boy waits for the next shock.
And the next.
And the next …
Melissa Holloway exited the front door of the bank just as Ed Becker’s Buick pulled up to the curb.
“See how prompt I am?” Bill McGuire got out of the passenger seat and held the door for Melissa. “Give me a schedule, and I adhere to it.”
Though his inflection was bantering, the nervous look in the contractor’s eyes belied his tone, and as Melissa waved him into the front seat while she herself got into the back of the big sedan, she tried to allay his obvious fears.
“This is only a formality, Bill,” she said. “I just think I ought to at least take one good look at the project, since suddenly it’s going to be my name signing off on the final approval for the loan.”
“Yours, and the board’s,” Ed Becker reminded her.
“Mine and the board’s,” Melissa agreed. “But why don’t I think it’s the board that’s going to get fired if anything goes wrong?”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” Bill McGuire assured her as Ed turned up Amherst Street. “Jules was all set to fund the loan when—”
“Jules isn’t here anymore,” Melissa cut in, deciding it was time for her to assert herself a little more strongly. “And let’s not forget that we’re not quite out of the woods on the audit yet. If the loan has to hinge solely on Jules’s last recommendation, I’m afraid it’s not going to fly.” She saw the two men in the front seat glance uneasily at each other, but neither of them said anything. “Let’s also not forget that it was the way Jules ran the bank that got us into trouble in the first place.”
“But the Center Project is perfectly sound—” Bill McGuire began. This time it was Ed Becker who cut him off.
“Melissa knows the math better than either one of us,” the lawyer told him. “She knows it works on paper. But a good banker wants to know it’s going to work in the real world too.”
“I know.” Bill sighed. “It’s just that ever since this whole thing began … well, you both know what I’m saying.”
Though neither Ed Becker nor Melissa Holloway replied, they did, indeed, know exactly what Bill was saying. For the last four months, ever since Bill’s wife had miscarried their second child, only to kill herself a few days later, a sense of foreboding had fallen over the town. When the news had spread that there were problems at the bank, and then Jules Hartwick disemboweled himself on the steps of the Asylum, the foreboding had turned to apprehension. No one, though, had expected Martha Ward to be next. Her fiery death ignited a conflagration of fear and suspicion in Blackstone. The very atmosphere throbbed with anxiety. Neighbors who for years had greeted each other with cheerful hellos had now begun to cast wary eyes on their fellow townsmen, as if trying to ferret out who might next fall victim to whatever curse had been visited upon the town.
And each of them prayed that he might be spared.
Their arrival at the Asylum did nothing to dispel the mood that had descended over all three of them. As Melissa Holloway got out of the Buick’s backseat and gazed up at the building’s grimy stone facade, an unbidden vision of the hospital in which she herself had once been confined came into her mind, and she wondered if she really wanted to venture through the great oaken doors. But as Bill McGuire turned the key in the lock and the heavy door creaked open, Melissa firmly put her memories aside, reminding herself that what had happened in Secret Cove when she was a child had nothing to do with Blackstone today. Taking a deep breath—a breath that almost succeeded in calming her nerves—she followed Ed Becker and Bill McGuire as they led the way into the Asylum.
Little was left of the splendor that had graced the building in the days before it had been converted from a private mansion into a hospital for the insane. What had once been a series of large, elegant rooms had at some point been subdivided into a warren of tiny offices. Bill McGuire led them from room to room explaining the building’s original floor plan and describing what it would look like when the reconstruction was completed. “This will become an atrium,” he said as they returned to the entry hall. As they threaded their way through the maze of empty rooms on the west side of the building, the fading sunlight that filtered through the dirt-encrusted windows did little to dispel the ominousness of the place. Finally, toward the rear of the building, they came to the foot of what once must have been an impressive staircase.
“The stairs are original,” Bill pointed out, “but somewhere along the line the mahogany banisters and balustrades were replaced with metal ones. Probably at the same time the sprinkler system was put in.” He gazed sourly up at the network of pipes suspended from a Celotex ceiling of the kind that had been popular back in the late forties and early fifties. “The last remodeling was done only a couple of years before they closed the place.”
“Why did they close it?” Melissa asked.
Bill McGuire and Ed Becker exchanged glances. In the silence that followed, each of them seemed to be waiting for the other to speak. It was Ed who finally said, “No one really knows exactly what happened.” He paused. “Oliver Metcalf’s father was the superintendent, and when Oliver and his twin sister were almost four, his sister died. There were all kinds of rumors at the time. Most people thought it was an accident, but some people blamed Oliver. There were even a few who blamed Dr. Metcalf. It was before my time, of course, but local lore has it that things went downhill from there. Metcalf never really recovered from the tragedy. Over time, many of the patients were moved to other places, and there weren’t any new ones. In the end, when Metcalf died, the trustees decided to shut it down instead of trying to find a new director.”
“So the building just sat empty for forty years?” Melissa asked. “What a waste.”
“On the other hand, at least they didn’t tear it down,” Bill McGuire said. He had started up the stairs and motioned for them to follow. “There’s still enough left that it can be restored and expanded.” As he led them up to the second floor, he explained how the reconstruction would be done, first by restoring the original entry hall and return
ing both the second and third floors to the galleries they had once been. “The bedrooms up here were huge, but they got chopped up into cubicles just like the rooms on the ground floor. They’ll make terrific shops, and down on the first floor, the kitchen’s still almost up to commercial standards. We’ve found enough pictures of the original dining room that we can restore it almost perfectly.”
As the light continued to drain away, Bill McGuire flipped on the flashlight he’d brought along. Moving steadily through the rooms on the second floor, he carefully explained to Melissa the plans for every area, and what kind of shops had already agreed to lease space. Then, on the third floor, they discovered some rooms that weren’t quite empty. In one of the old patients’ rooms there was still a Formica-topped table and a chair; in another they discovered an old oak dresser. Its finish was nearly gone and its top surface slightly warped, but its frame was still solid, its brass fittings and pulls still intact though blackened with age.
Ed Becker pulled one of the curved drawers out of the dresser and took it to the window, where enough light was still leaking through for him to examine the dovetail joinery that a craftsman had used to fit the corners together. Though the light was nearly gone, he could see that the joinery had all been done by hand, and that its gracefully curved expanse had been carved from a single block of wood, not fitted together from pieces.
“What are you going to do with this?” he asked.
Bill McGuire shrugged.
“Any chance of buying it?”
“You’d do better to ask Melissa than me,” Bill said.
“What was done with the rest of the furniture?” the young banker asked.
“I had Corelli Brothers come and haul it out a few months ago. It was all auctioned off, and the money was put into the Center account, They must have just missed a few things up here.”
Melissa’s brow furrowed. “Well, there’s not enough left to be worth an auctioneer’s time. What do you think it’s worth?” Ed Becker eyed the dresser, calculating how much of an underestimation of its value he might get away with, but Melissa seemed to read his mind. “Given that it’s hand-carved, I don’t see that it would go for much less than a thousand at auction, do you, Bill?”
“I think she’s on to you, Ed,” the contractor said, grinning. “But look at it this way—by the time you finish restoring it, it’ll be worth twice that.”
Ed Becker’s eyes moved over the dresser, appraising its workmanship again. Though he and Bonnie couldn’t afford quite that much right now, he knew the chest was worth at least the thousand Melissa had suggested. Moreover, there was something about it—something he couldn’t quite put his finger on—that made him feel he had to own it. It was a beauty, after all.
Whatever the reason, he wanted the dresser. “No slack, huh?” he asked.
Melissa and Bill shook their heads. “You’ll have to clear the purchase with the rest of the Center’s board of directors,” she told him, a smile playing over her face. “They might claim you have a conflict of interest.”
Ed Becker rolled his eyes. “They’ll be so happy to get a thousand dollars out of me, they won’t argue for a second.” Putting the drawer back in the dresser, he moved to follow Bill McGuire and Melissa Holloway out of the room, but turned back at the doorway to look at the old piece of furniture one more time.
Even at a thousand dollars, he decided, it was still a hell of a deal. From the zippered portfolio he was carrying, he extracted a legal pad and pen and wrote in bold capitals: PROPERTY OF ED BECKER. DO NOT REMOVE. And folding the paper so it would hang from the drawer when closed, he staked his claim.
But as he turned away from the chest once more, he felt a sudden chill, as if he’d been struck by a draft from an open window.
He glanced around the room again, but the window was closed tight and none of the panes was even cracked, let alone broken.
As he hurried to catch up with Bill and Melissa, he dismissed the strange chill, telling himself it must have been nothing more than his imagination.
Chapter 4
Clara Wagner gazed down at the handkerchief that still lay in her lap, exactly where Germaine had left it. Since her daughter had left the room half an hour before, Clara hadn’t moved at all. The fire on the hearth had burned low, but for once she hadn’t called out, hadn’t banged her cane on the floor to bring Germaine or Rebecca running to do her bidding.
For half an hour she’d done nothing at all except sit in her chair, gazing at the handkerchief.
Why did it look so familiar to her?
And why did the very sight of it so frighten her?
Somewhere deep in the recesses of her mind, this small scrap of linen with its elaborate floral design had stirred a memory, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t quite grasp it, couldn’t get it quite close enough to pull into the light. Annoyingly—maddeningly—its significance hovered in the blurry fringes of her memory, refusing to come into focus.
Was it possible that Germaine hadn’t been lying, and that she’d actually found the handkerchief in Janice Anderson’s antique shop?
She supposed it was barely possible, though she’d never admit as much to Germaine. A strong and certain sense within told her she had seen this handkerchief before. And it came from no shop.
The handkerchief had stirred her memory the moment she laid eyes on it. And not a pleasant memory either.
Her stomach—delicate even when she was feeling at her best—had instantly churned, and bile boiled up into her throat, leaving a sour taste in her mouth. For a moment she’d even thought she might vomit. She hadn’t, of course; instead she’d sat motionless, willing her body to respond to her wishes, just as she’d willed it to respond when she decided she no longer wished to walk. That memory still made her smile, for when Germaine had brought Dr. Margolis to see her, he hadn’t been able even to find a reflex in the legs she’d decided never again to use. Philip Margolis—and a host of neurologists and orthopedists to whom Germaine had dragged her—agreed that she couldn’t walk. None of them could determine the cause. The wheelchair—and Germaine—had become her legs.
Precisely as she’d intended.
Ever since that day eighteen years ago, Clara had felt completely in control of everything about her life. Her daughter did her bidding, and her cleaning girl did her bidding.
Now Rebecca Morrison too did her bidding.
But for some reason—a reason she couldn’t quite fathom—the handkerchief was upsetting her. Picking it up as gingerly as if it could have burned her, she held it under her reading light, examining it more closely.
It had indeed been skillfully done, every loop and knot of the tatting perfectly even, every tiny stitch of embroidery executed with such remarkable precision that she could find neither a knot nor a tag end of the fine silk thread showing anywhere.
Suddenly an image from the past flashed through her mind. An image of a woman, clad in nothing more than a thin cotton nightgown, sitting on the edge of a metal-framed bed, gazing straight ahead, seemingly at nothing.
But in her lap, her fingers were working so quickly they were little more than a blur as she wove silken thread into a square of fine linen.
Clara’s fingers tightened on the handkerchief. But of course the idea that was forming in her mind was impossible. More than half a century had passed since Clara had so much as set foot in that building! Whatever that woman had been working on had disappeared as utterly as had the woman herself.
Despite her own logic, Clara examined the handkerchief yet again, unable to take her eyes from it, searching for … what?
Something that—once again—she couldn’t quite grasp. As her memory refused to respond to her demands, and the recollection she sought remained hidden in the shadows, her frustration grew. For a moment she was tempted to hurl the handkerchief into the fireplace. She crumpled it in her hands, squeezing it hard, as if she might be able to wring the memory from its folds, then drew her hand back in preparation for tossi
ng it into the dying flames. At the last second she changed her mind.
She wouldn’t destroy the handkerchief—yet.
First she would remember.
Then she would burn it.
As the clock on the mantel above the fireplace struck six, she shoved the handkerchief deep into the pocket of her dress, then placed her right hand on the wheelchair’s control panel. With a nearly inaudible hum, the wheelchair rolled out of the room onto the mezzanine.
“For Heaven’s sake, Rebecca, can’t you be more careful? If you drop it, Mother will kill you.”
Rebecca tightened her grip on the silver tray bearing the teapot, three cups and saucers, a pitcher of cream, a sugar bowl, a basket of scones, and a box of candy. Germaine had been insistent that she couldn’t use the tea cart in the butler’s pantry—she must carry the tray in herself, and she mustn’t let even a single drop of either the tea or the cream spill. Still, Rebecca knew she had steady hands, and Germaine’s reluctance to let her use the cart was no more strange than her demands regarding the preparation of the tea, which she insisted on tasting and had made Rebecca prepare no fewer than four times before declaring that it was satisfactorily brewed.
As she followed Germaine out of the kitchen and through the dining room to the foyer, Rebecca took tiny, careful steps so the surface of the cream barely even moved, let alone threatened to slop over onto the tray. She stopped just outside the dining room door, just as Germaine had instructed. A clanking, followed immediately by the sound of the machinery in the attic coming alive, announced Clara Wagner’s imminent arrival. As she and Germaine waited side by side, the brass elevator slowly descended from the mezzanine to the first floor, its door opened, and Clara, her small frame sitting absolutely erect in her wheelchair, emerged from the metal cage. Her eyes fixed balefully on Germaine and Rebecca, almost as if she was sorry they were waiting for her. Rolling the wheelchair across the enormous Oriental carpet that covered all but the edges of the entry hall’s walnut floor, Clara inspected the tray. Rebecca could almost feel her searching for something to complain about, and it took her only a moment to find it.