The Blackstone Chronicles

  “So if there was an explosion and a flash, where’s the fire?” the first voice demanded.

  And that was the eerie thing. There was simply no fire.

  From the moment the gas had exploded in the basement, Ed had waited for his house to burst into flames, certain that by the time the first fire truck arrived, the building would have become an inferno like the one that destroyed Martha Ward’s house only a few weeks ago. But as the sound of the sirens grew louder and louder, and not just one, but three fire trucks converged on Amherst Street, the house remained silent and dark, looking for all the world as if nothing had happened. As the fire trucks braked to a stop, their sirens were abruptly cut off, then three crews began pulling hoses from the reels on the trucks. Larry Schulze pulled up in the white Chevy Blazer that served as his chief’s car and hurried over to Ed.

  “What happened? Where’d it start?”

  “It was gas,” Ed explained. “I smelled it coming out of the basement, and got Bonnie and Amy out just before it blew. But I don’t get it—how come the house isn’t burning?”

  “You mean ‘how come it isn’t burning yet,’” the fire chief corrected him. “Just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not on fire.” Dispatching one man to shut the gas off at the main, he beckoned to two others to follow him as he started down the driveway.

  “I’m coming with you,” Ed said.

  The fire chief turned back, his stony expression clear even in the shadowy light of the street lamps. “No you’re not,” he declared in a voice that carried every bit as much authority as any judge Ed had ever dealt with in a courtroom. “You’re going to stay right here until I’ve gone around the house and then gone through it. When I’m satisfied there’s no fire and that it’s safe, then you can go in.”

  As Ed was considering the merits of trying to argue with the chief, Bonnie laid her hand on her husband’s arm. “Let him do his job, Ed,” she said. “Please?”

  Ed nodded his thanks to Bonnie as Schulze and his men set off. In less than ten minutes they had circled the exterior and were back in front of the house. “So far it looks okay,” the chief called as he mounted the steps to the front door, which was standing wide open. “Is the gas off?”

  “Thirty seconds after you asked!” one of his men shouted back.

  “Okay! We’ll be out in a couple of minutes.”

  The crowd waited, finally falling silent as the fire chief inspected the house. When he emerged a few minutes later appearing just as calm as when he’d gone in, an audible murmur of relief rippled through the bystanders, except for two small boys who sounded sorely disappointed that they weren’t going to see the firemen use their hoses.

  “You got lucky,” Schulze told Ed Becker as his men began rewinding their unused hoses onto the reels. “If you’d had the kind of trash in your basement most people do, you could have lost the whole house.”

  Bonnie Becker stared at the fire chief in disbelief. “You mean it’s all right? It’s not on fire?”

  “That happens sometimes,” Schulze explained. “You have to understand what goes on with gas. When it lights off, which probably happened when the freezer kicked on, it goes so fast that unless there’s something in the immediate vicinity that’s pretty flammable, it literally blows itself out. You lose all the windows, and the doors too, but that’s about it. You can take a look now, if you want. But I’ll go with you.”

  Ed gazed at the house, remembering just how close he’d come to dying that night. If the gas had exploded as he’d opened the basement door—

  He cut the thought short, trying to shut out the image that rose in his mind of a boiling mass of fire erupting around him, snuffing his life out in an instant, or leaving him so badly burned he would have prayed to die rather than suffer the pain the flames would have inflicted.

  Though he didn’t want to think about what might have happened to him, he knew he had to go back into the house.

  Into the basement, where the explosion had occurred.

  With Larry Schulze following close behind him, Ed started toward the front door. “Is it okay to switch on the lights?” he asked as they stepped into the foyer.

  “Can’t. I shut off the power, just in case. Use this.”

  Turning on the flashlight Schulze handed him, Ed moved cautiously through the foyer, shining the beam into every corner, barely able to believe the house had suffered no serious damage. But it seemed to be true—everything looked normal; nothing seemed even to have been disturbed. But as he entered the kitchen, he stopped short. “Jesus,” he said, staring at the door to the basement.

  Or, more accurately, what had been the door to the basement. It now was a heap of shattered lumber so torn by the explosion that it was barely recognizable as having been a door at all. All that remained within the frame were a couple of fragments of wood clinging to the hinges that had been half torn from the frame itself. “That’s where I was standing not more than a minute before it blew,” Ed said, his voice barely above a whisper as the unbidden vision of the exploding fireball rose in his mind once more. Stepping over the shredded wood that had been the door, he gazed down the stairs.

  Oddly, the basement looked normal too. It wasn’t until he’d started down the stairs that he realized he’d been expecting everything to be blackened. But apparently it had happened so fast that not even any charring had occurred.

  As he came to the bottom of the stairs, he shined the light around and stopped short.

  Blood!

  There was blood everywhere!

  His gorge rising, Ed braced himself against the wall as his knees threatened to buckle beneath him.

  The blood was smeared on the walls, puddled on the floor, dripping from the beams overhead. But it was impossible! When the gas exploded, there had been no one down here!

  Besides, the blood he’d seen before had existed only in a dream. Yet here it was.

  First the explosion, sounding exactly like the shotgun Paul Becker had been aiming at him.

  And now the blood.

  The blood of the people his clients had murdered splashed through his basement as if in retribution for his having defended the undefendable.

  But it was impossible! It hadn’t happened! It was only a dream!

  “Ed?” Larry Schulze was gripping his shoulder. “Ed, are you okay? I know the paint’s a mess but—”

  Paint?

  Paint!

  Or course! Not blood at all! Paint!

  Though the fire chief was still talking, Ed Becker no longer heard his words. The strength finally coming back into his legs, he moved deeper into the basement.

  As he looked around, using the flashlight to explore every corner, the same feeling of horror that had come over him when Riley died that morning crept up on him once again.

  Though it hadn’t been the roar of a shotgun, the explosion of the gas had sounded exactly like one.

  And though the red stains on the walls and the floor and even the ceiling weren’t blood, they looked no different from the terrifying crimson vision he’d witnessed in his dream.

  It had happened again.

  For the second time, his nightmare had come true.

  Chapter 8

  The crowd in front of the Becker house dispersed almost as fast as it had gathered, and though Bonnie Becker knew the thought was uncharitable, she had a distinct feeling that at least a few of those who’d rushed out of their homes were just a bit disappointed that there had been so little to see. Within minutes after Ed and Larry Schulze emerged from the house, only Bill McGuire was left. Bonnie, feeling at sea, was perplexed—and perhaps just slightly resentful—that none of her neighbors had offered to take them in for the night. Was it possible they actually thought she would go back into the house tonight? Or take Amy back inside?

  Bill McGuire read her expression perfectly. “You don’t get invited to stay at anyone’s house until you’ve been here for at least two generations,” he explained, displaying the first semblance of
a grin Bonnie had seen on his face since his wife died. “It’s the price Ed has to pay for having married out of town. But don’t worry—I married out of town too. You’ll all stay with Megan and me. Besides, if I know Mrs. Goodrich, she’ll have a pot of tea on.”

  Far too upset by fear and its aftermath to offer even the feeblest of polite protests, Bonnie gave Bill a hug instead. “I promise it won’t be for more than a night or two,” she assured him. “I just have to know it’s safe.”

  Just as Bill had thought, the teakettle was whistling and Mrs. Goodrich was bustling about the kitchen as they entered his house, which was across the street. Amy, already having converted the night into a wonderful adventure, slid onto a chair at the kitchen table and demanded a glass of milk.

  “Say please,” Bonnie automatically instructed her daughter, but Mrs. Goodrich was already setting a tumbler in front of the little girl.

  “Please,” Amy parroted as her hand snaked out to take a cookie from the plate the old housekeeper offered.

  Ten minutes later, with Amy making no more than a token protest against having to go to bed, Bonnie tucked her daughter in next to Megan McGuire. Megan was fast asleep, looking angelically peaceful with her arms wrapped around the doll that had been her inseparable companion since her mother died.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Amy breathed, gazing at the doll’s porcelain face. “Can I have a doll like that?”

  “We’ll see,” Bonnie temporized. “I’m not sure we can find one. But maybe tomorrow Megan will share hers with you. Now, go right to sleep,” Bonnie told her, bending over to kiss her daughter. “And don’t wake Megan up. All right?”

  “All right,” Amy promised. But as soon as her mother was gone, she reached over to touch the beautiful doll.

  “Don’t,” Megan said, her voice startling Amy, whose hand jerked back before she’d made even the slightest contact. Megan’s eyes were wide open, and Amy realized she hadn’t been sleeping after all.

  “She’s mine,” Megan went on, “and she doesn’t like anyone else to touch her. She doesn’t like it one bit.”

  Megan’s eyes closed and she said nothing else, but for a long time Amy lay awake. She stared at the doll. In the dim light from the street lamp outside, it almost seemed to be sleeping. But Megan’s words kept echoing in her mind.

  She didn’t try to touch the doll again.

  * * *

  “It happened again.”

  Ed and Bonnie were in the McGuire guest room. Bonnie was already in bed, and Ed was standing at the window, gazing out at the house across the street and one lot down the slope. His house. His sanctuary, meant to provide shelter from the storms of daily life as much as from winter’s icy blasts. In the last twenty-four hours his refuge had become instead a place where his nightmares came true.

  “What happened?” Bonnie asked, though her heart was beating faster in anticipation of his reply.

  “I dreamed it.” Ed turned away from the window and sat on the edge of the bed. In the shadowy darkness of the room, he told her about the dream he’d had, and what he’d seen in the basement only a little while ago, when he and Larry Schulze had gone down to assess the damage.

  “But it wasn’t a gunshot,” Bonnie insisted when Ed was finished. “And it wasn’t blood. It was paint, Ed. It was just a can of paint whose lid got knocked off in the explosion.”

  “But—”

  “But darling, it really was just a dream.” Feeling utterly exhausted as the remembered terror of the explosion closed in on her, she said softly, “It will all seem different in the morning. Can’t we talk about it then? Please?”

  Ed hesitated, but as Bonnie held her arms out to him, he slipped into bed beside her, holding her close. She was right, he decided as he kissed her gently. In the bright light of day, none of it would seem so terrible. And, in truth, there had been no permanent damage, nothing they wouldn’t easily recover from. Tomorrow they’d look for a new puppy for Amy, and with a couple hours’ work the mess in the basement would disappear as completely as if the explosion had never happened. Bill McGuire had already promised to put in an automatic detection system to guard them against another accident. In a few days everything would be back to normal. As he felt Bonnie’s breathing drift into the gentle rhythm of sleep, Ed Becker closed his eyes, yielding to oblivion.

  Ed stood on the sidewalk, staring at the house.

  Around him the night had become eerily quiet, as if the explosion had silenced every living thing in Blackstone.

  Ed knew he should turn around and go back to Bill McGuire’s house, slip back into bed with Bonnie, and let himself surrender to sleep. Instead, he moved toward the house, irresistibly drawn inside.

  His house—yet not his house.

  In the living room, all the furniture he and Bonnie had brought with them from Boston was gone, and the heavy Victorian decorations from the long-ago days when his grandmother had lived here were all back in place. The room looked exactly as it had when he’d viewed the picture in the stereoscope. The stereoscope itself sat on a mahogany gateleg table upon which a lace cloth had been spread. Moving closer to the table, Ed lifted the cloth and ran his fingers appreciatively over the perfect satin finish. There was a drawer at one end of the table, and Ed’s hands closed on its pull. He hesitated, remembering the carnage let loose when, in his dream, he’d pulled open the drawers of the oak chest from the Asylum. Yet even as his mind cried out against temptation, Ed’s trembling fingers slid the drawer open.

  He found himself gazing at a .38 caliber pistol.

  The pistol was clutched by a hand hacked off at the wrist, blood dripping from its severed veins.

  Shuddering, he slammed the drawer shut. He stood still, waiting for the sick feeling in his stomach to pass.

  It was not there, he told himself. I only imagined it.

  But he didn’t try to open the drawer again, instead dropping the tablecloth back in place to conceal the drawer, to make it disappear.

  He left the living room and moved into the dining room. A gleaming cherry-wood table surrounded by eight armchairs stood where only a few hours before his own teak table had been. Against the wall a Victorian break-front was filled with Limoges china in an ornate pattern of royal blue and gold. On one shelf three dozen heavy crystal goblets glittered in the dim light.

  He reached for a glass. As he took it, it filled with blood.

  Dropping it, Ed spun around. The table, bare only a moment ago, was set now as if for a feast. Twin candelabra, each of them glowing with a dozen candles, cast a warm glow over an elegant display of silver and crystal.

  At each place, a serving plate had been set, and on each plate there was a single object.

  The severed heads of eight of Ed Becker’s clients stared at him with empty eyes. Their lips were stretched back from their teeth in grim parodies of smiles, and pools of blood filled the plates upon which they sat.

  “No!” The word caught in his throat and emerged only as a strangled grunt. Backing out of the dining room, he turned to flee, but instead of taking him out of the house, his legs carried him up the stairs until he stood at the door to the master bedroom. His heart pounded. He tried to make himself turn away from the closed door, to go back down the stairs, to leave the house.

  Powerless to stop himself, he reached out and pushed the door open. As it swung back on its hinges, the room was revealed, not as the cheerful sunshine yellow space Bonnie had made it, but as a dark chamber dominated by an ornate four-poster bed, its curtains drawn back to reveal a heavy brocade coverlet.

  Then he saw the figure of the man.

  He recognized it instantly, for its face was bathed in silvery light pouring in from the window.

  Ed Becker was staring at himself.

  And he was hanging, broken-necked, from the chandelier. The hands of the lifeless corpse reached out as if to grasp the living man and draw him too into the cold grip of death.

  A scream of horror rose from Ed Becker’s lungs, boiling out of
him, echoing through the room, shattering the night.

  Chapter 9

  For a second Ed Becker didn’t know where he was. His mind still half entangled in the nightmare, he tried to twist away from the clawlike grasp of the dream. The terrible vision remained before him; he could still hear his own howling scream. Beside him, though, Bonnie slept quietly. As he sat up, willing his heartbeat to slow, his thoughts to focus, she sighed and snuggled deeper into the quilt, but did not wake.

  Imagination. These hideous images were merely the product of mental stress—the culmination of months of anxiety over the awful tragedies among his friends, his worries over the fate of the Blackstone Center, capped by the close call they’d had tonight.

  Imagination—overwrought and out of control.

  Ed got out of bed and went to the window, where he could just make out the silhouette of his house against the starlit darkness of the sky. “It really was just a dream,” he said quietly, repeating his wife’s comforting words to himself like a mantra. A dream. Just a dream.

  But he knew he didn’t believe it.

  Knew he had to see for himself.

  Even as he opened the front door, he could sense that something had changed.

  Everything about the house was different.

  The way it smelled.

  The way it felt.

  He reached for the light switch, remembering the power had been turned off only when there was no response to his touch. Making his way through the foyer, he came to the dining room door. Though it was almost pitch-black, he could see the vague outline of a table and chairs.

  Big, heavy furniture, unlike the teak set he and Bonnie had brought with them from Boston.

  An illusion!

  It had to be an illusion, born of the darkness and the memory of the dream. But then, as he remembered the vision of his clients’ severed heads displayed on the table, he backed away from the dining room. Crossing the threshold into the living room, he stopped.

  The room was not empty.

  He could feel the presence of someone—or something—waiting in the space that yawned before him. As in the dream, he tried to turn away and leave the house.