But of course he couldn’t.
After all, the stereoscope was only an amusement, and the images it offered no more than illusions of reality.
Still, it was a toy that would make a perfect gift.…
To be continued …
PART 5
DAY OF
RECKONING:
THE
STEREOSCOPE
Prelude
To any creature of the daylight, the dark shape would have been all but invisible as it moved through the inky corridors of the ancient stone building. Nor would any but the sharpest ears have heard it, so certain were its footsteps, so easily did it avoid any of the floorboards that might have betrayed its presence with the slightest creak.
Yet even in its silence and invisibility, the figure carried with it an aura of evil that spread before it like a chill wind, reaching into every room it neared, lingering even after the figure had passed by.
But unlike the dark figure’s forays on earlier nights, when it had moved with eagerness through the halls and passages of its domain, on this night it crept almost reluctantly from its lair, drifting slowly through the corridors as if it had no wish to reach its destination. And indeed it did not, for tonight it would part with one of its most precious treasures, and though it was eager to revel in the madness the stereoscope would cause, still it was loath to give up the cherished memories the object held for it.
Prologue
Though he was barely eighteen, the boy had the heavy bones of a man who had long since reached his full maturity, and his large frame easily bore the muscles he had spent every day of the last four years building into indestructibility. Even now, though both his wrists and ankles were shackled to chains that were in turn affixed to heavy iron eyebolts mounted in the room’s thick stone outer wall, he still exercised his body every day, maintaining his strength toward the time when he would escape from this room, slip free of the gray walls that surrounded him, and return to the world beyond.
The world where all his fantasies—all his darkest dreams—could once again be brought to life.
The room in which he was shackled held nothing more than the barest necessities:
A metal cot, as firmly fixed to the wall as the eyebolts that secured his chains.
A metal chair, screwed to the floor next to a metal table just large enough to hold the tray on which his food was brought.
A single barred window that pierced the wall, allowing him to gaze upon the village at the bottom of the hill with malevolent eyes.
A lone bulb, unshaded but protected by a thick glass and metal casing, was mounted in the exact center of the ceiling. The glaring light never dimmed, depriving him nightly of a haven of darkness in which to sleep.
A peephole in the door allowed the staff to keep watch on him. Though he could never see the eyes that observed him, he always knew when they were there.
He had been allowed only a single object to distract him from the endless empty hours his life had become: a stereoscope, brought to him by his grandmother.
“He’s a good boy,” the old woman had told his doctor. “He didn’t do what they say. It’s not possible. I’ll never believe it.” She had pleaded long and hard, and finally the doctor, convinced more by the size of the check she left behind than by her entreaties, agreed: the boy could have the instrument, along with the dozen images his grandmother had provided.
Since that day, the boy had whiled away most of his waking hours staring through the lenses of the stereoscope at the three-dimensional images. They were all pictures of home—the home they said he would never see again.
All the rooms were there for him to behold:
The big formal living room in which his parents entertained their friends.
The dining room, where two dozen people had often gathered for holiday feasts.
The nursery in which he’d spent the first two years of his life, before his brother had been born.
There were exterior views of the house too, of the enormous yard filled with spreading trees. Beneath these branches, he had first begun dreaming his wonderful fantasies.
His favorite image, though, was the one he was gazing upon today.
It was of his room.
Not this room, but his room at home, the room he’d grown up in, the room that had provided him refuge when the fantasies began.
The room in which he’d brought his darkest dreams to life.
It had been easy at first. No one noticed when the squirrels that had always annoyed him so much began to disappear from the trees outside his window; even the disappearance of a few yowling cats hadn’t caused any trouble.
The next-door neighbors, though, and the people down the street had come looking for their dogs. Of course, he denied knowing anything. Why, after all, should he have told anyone that he’d skinned their pets alive, and hidden their bodies in the back of his closet?
When his best friend vanished, he had shed the proper tears—though he didn’t really feel any emotion except relief that one more annoyance was removed from his life—and afterward decided not to bother with friends anymore.
For a while things had been all right. Soon, though, the little girl—his sister—started to annoy him, and he began to fantasize about sending her to join the others.
It made him furious when they finally came and took him away from his room. He struggled, but there were too many of them. Despite his screams and his shouted denials, they brought him up here and chained him to the wall.
They watched him.
He’d screamed every time they came near him, pouring out vivid threats of exactly what he’d do when he got loose and had his knives back. Finally, it seemed they decided to leave him alone. Except for the orderly who slid his meals through the slot in the door, he hadn’t seen anyone for a long time.
Which was fine with him.
At least if they stayed away, he wouldn’t have to kill them.
Not that he’d mind killing them, since killing what annoyed him had turned out to be the perfect way not only of satisfying his anger but of realizing his dreams.
He was still gazing at the image of his room at home, constructing a wonderful fantasy of what he might do if he were there right now, when he heard a noise at the door. Startled, he turned to see three men entering his room. He dropped the stereoscope and stood up, his fury at their invasion of his space already blazing from his eyes.
“Take it easy,” one of the men said, glancing at the chains warily as if expecting the boy might free himself from his shackles. “We’re only here to help you.”
The boy’s eyes narrowed, his jaw tightened, and he crouched low, ready to strike the moment they came within range of his fists. If he could just wrap one of his chains around one of their necks …
For interminable seconds no one in the room moved. Then, very slowly, the three men began edging closer.
Every muscle in his body tensed; his face contorted with fury.
“You can’t win,” one of the men said softly. “You might as well not even try.” With a flick of his right hand that signaled his colleagues to act, he lunged for the boy.
Twenty minutes later, when the battle finally ended, the boy lay strapped to a gurney with thick bands of leather, his eyes still glittering with rage, his muscles knotting as he struggled against his bonds. Of the three men who had come for him, two had broken noses and the third a crushed hand. Although the patient had finally been controlled, he still had not been subdued.
“Do you understand what is going to happen to you?” the doctor asked. The boy glared up from the gurney and made no reply, except to spit in the doctor’s face. The doctor impassively wiped the glob of phlegm away from his cheek, then began reading aloud from a document that had been issued by the court six weeks earlier. When he finished his recitation, he glanced at the team around him. The three injured orderlies had been replaced by three others, and two nurses stood by. “Shall we proceed?”
The team in the o
perating room nodded their agreement. The orderlies moved the gurney into position next to an operating bench that had been constructed specifically for the procedure the doctor was about to carry out. A notch was cut in the bench, allowing the end of the gurney to slip under the open jaws of a large viselike clamp.
The boy’s head was held immobile as the jaws were tightened on his temples.
Using a pair of electrodes, the doctor administered a quick series of shocks to the boy’s head, and then, before the temporary anesthetic the shocks had provided could wear off, he went to work.
As a nurse peeled the boy’s right eyelid back, the doctor found his tear duct and inserted the needlelike point of a long pick into it. With a sharp rap to the other end of the pick, he drove the point of the instrument through the orbital plate. Measuring the distance carefully, the doctor slid the pick into the soft tissue inside the boy’s skull until its tip had sunk two full inches into his brain.
Satisfied that the tool was properly placed, the doctor expertly flicked it through a twenty-degree arc, tearing through the nerves of the frontal lobe.
The boy’s body relaxed on the gurney, and his twisted grimace of rage softened into a gentle smile.
The doctor withdrew the pick from the boy’s tear duct and nodded to one of the nurses. “That’s it. His eye might be sore for a day or so, but frankly, I doubt that he’ll even notice it.” His work done, the doctor left the operating room.
One of the nurses swabbed the boy’s eye with alcohol; the other taped a bandage over it.
While one of the orderlies released the clamps that held the boy’s head immobile, the other two loosened the leather straps that bound him.
The boy did nothing more than smile up at them.
Three days later, when the bandage was removed from the boy’s eye, he picked up the stereoscope and peered once more through its lenses.
The image of his room was still there, but it no longer looked the same, for when the doctor had plunged the pick into the boy’s brain, it had cut through the optic nerve. He no longer saw in three dimensions, so the illusion provided by the stereoscope was gone. It didn’t matter, though, for everything inside the boy’s head had changed.
His fantasies were gone. Never again would he be able to make his dreams come true.
The dark figure lingered in the cold, silent room, his fingers stroking the smooth mahogany of the stereoscope’s case. But he knew the moment had come. Reluctantly, with a last, loving caress to the satiny dark wood, he bent and placed the stereoscope in the fourth drawer of the oaken chest, sliding the drawer closed.
Soon—very soon—his gift would be in other hands. The hands carefully selected to receive it. Once more the past would return to haunt Blackstone.
Chapter 1
Ed Becker shuddered as he gazed up at the grimy stone facade of the Asylum. “Sometimes I wonder if the whole idea of trying to turn this monstrosity into something nice makes any sense at all.” Though it was an early Friday morning that promised a perfect spring day, even the bright sunlight couldn’t wash away the ominous aura that seemed to him to hang over the building. “I have an awful feeling we might all wind up taking a bath on this deal.”
Bill McGuire got out and slammed the door of his pickup truck. He barely glanced at the looming form of the building as he dropped the tailgate down and pulled the hand truck out of its bed. “You’ve been reading too many novels,” he told Becker. “It’s just an old building. By the time I’m done renovating it, you won’t even recognize it.”
“Maybe so.” Becker sighed as they mounted the front steps. He and Bill, along with others, had returned here on Wednesday, and again yesterday, to search the cold, dark rooms and every inch of the ten-acre grounds for Rebecca Morrison, with no success. Now he said, “I’m starting to wonder if Edna Burnham’s right and whatever’s going on around here has something to do with this place.”
As the contractor’s face flushed with anger, the attorney wished he’d kept his thought to himself. It was too late now. “Look, Bill, I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to imply that what happened to Elizabeth was—well …” He floundered, struggling to find a way to extricate himself from his gaffe, but decided anything more he might add would only make matters worse. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I should have kept my mouth shut.” For a second or two he braced himself, thinking McGuire might take a swing at him, but then saw the anger drain from the contractor’s expression.
“Forget it,” McGuire said. “I don’t know why I still let it get to me. I mean, it’s not as if I’m not hearing those ugly whispers from everyone else in town. It’s not just Edna Burnham anymore.”
It was true. In the two days since Germaine Wagner’s body had been discovered crushed beneath the elevator in her own house, rumors had been sweeping through Blackstone like a virus, a contagion of fear and suspicion. Clara Wagner had been moved to a nursing home in Manchester only yesterday. Witness to her daughter’s hideous death, she had suffered a massive stroke that robbed her of language; Clara would never reveal the events of that awful night her daughter had died. Germaine had been quietly buried as soon as the coroner had finished the examination of the body. By her own request, found neatly filed among Germaine’s papers, there had been no funeral.
Steve Driver, the deputy sheriff, had searched every corner of Clara Wagner’s house with as much energy as the fire chief had expended in sifting through the ruins of Martha Ward’s place after it had been destroyed in a devastating conflagration a few weeks earlier. But his investigation proved equally fruitless.
There was obvious evidence of violence: nearly everything in Germaine Wagner’s bedroom was overturned, her bathroom mirror shattered, blood everywhere. But even the criminalist Steve had immediately called in from Manchester had found no signs that anyone but Germaine had been involved. Blood samples from the bedroom and bathroom, from the stairs, from the Oriental carpet on the floor of the great entry hall were the same: all were Germaine Wagner’s.
Most disturbing of all, Rebecca Morrison had disappeared. The only possible witness who might be able to describe these terrible events had vanished. Where was she—and was she in danger, if indeed she was still alive? Had Rebecca witnessed a dreadful accident—or a horrible crime? Had she fled in terror—or in guilt? Or had some unspeakable tragedy befallen her as well as the Wagner women? Searches of the town and the surrounding countryside had produced no trace of her, nor had appeals for information brought forth any clue. Even the Asylum had been combed, to no avail. Speculation burned like wildfire: Some said Rebecca had suffered a mental breakdown and turned on her benefactor. Others recalled that there was a dark side to Germaine Wagner’s generosity, and that while it was true that she had employed Rebecca and given her a home when Rebecca’s had burned down, she had also been treating Rebecca for years with the kind of patronizing attitude that no one but Rebecca would have tolerated for more than a minute.
Had Rebecca finally been pushed too far, into an act of cold-blooded murder from which she had fled?
Steve Driver found these whispered theories ridiculous. He’d known both Rebecca Morrison and Germaine Wagner for better than twenty years. He was unable to imagine Rebecca in the role of murderess. Moreover, she would never have been able to inflict the kind of wounds Germaine had sustained without injuring herself as well. The litter of broken glass in the bathroom alone gave the lie to that idea. Nor had he been able to find even a sliver of evidence that anyone except the three people who lived in the house were there that night.
Blackstone was pressing for answers, no one more so than Oliver Metcalf, and Driver had none, not a single thing that made any sense. On Thursday evening Oliver had burst yet again into the deputy’s office, demanding a report of Driver’s progress. At a loss, and before he could stop himself, Driver sardonically suggested that maybe Germaine had been the recipient of the same kind of “gift” that had brought tragedy into three other Blackstone houses over the la
st few months. To his utter shock, Oliver Metcalf’s face paled.
“Oh my God,” Oliver whispered. “It was my fault. I gave Rebecca a handkerchief. It had an R embroidered on it.… I—I thought it would be perfect for her.”
“For Christ’s sake, Oliver!” Driver said, astonished. “I was kidding! Don’t tell me even you believe that crap Edna Burnham’s been spreading around!”
Though both men would have been willing to swear they’d been alone in the deputy’s office, the rumor of another “cursed” gift had swept like a plague through the town.
When the latest rumors had reached Bill McGuire, though, he’d dismissed them in disgust. Now he repeated to Ed Becker the same words he’d spoken to Velma Tuesday afternoon when he’d stopped in at the Red Hen for a piece of pecan pie and a cup of coffee after his tour of the Asylum with Ed and Melissa Holloway. “What happened to Elizabeth was a direct result of her miscarriage. It had nothing at all to do with the doll that showed up at our house. Megan still has the doll, and nothing’s happened to her, has it?”
“Of course not,” Ed Becker agreed. “And nothing’s going to either.”
Bill McGuire unlocked the Asylum’s huge front door. As it swung open, Ed Becker felt a chill as a mass of cold air rushed from the building. Unbidden memories of stories he’d read as a boy blossomed in his mind, and he shivered as he remembered that a mass of cold air in a room invariably presaged a ghostly presence.
Or merely a lack of heat in a big old building on a warm morning, he told himself as the chill passed as quickly as it had come. But when he stepped inside, it seized him again. The door closed, shutting the bright sunlight out, and the gloom closed around him like a suffocating shroud.