With trembling fingers he loosened the latches, then raised the lid.
Oliver Metcalf gazed upon the razor, and an image rose unbidden—unwanted—from the deepest realms of his, subconscious.
It was a vision of the razor’s blade, gleaming so bright a silver that it nearly blinded him as it arced in the air—slicing through his sister’s throat.
His hands shaking, Oliver picked up the razor and opened it.
And heard his sister’s dying scream …
Rebecca lay inside a swirling cloud of fog, a mist that engulfed her but, strangely, did not make her feel afraid, for out of the mists was emerging an image that had appeared in her dreams and fantasies for as long as she could remember. A knight, his armor burnished to the finish of a mirror, astride a great horse. A horse as black as coal, with a flowing mane and tail that whipped in the wind as the stallion bore the knight toward her, his banner—a streaming scarlet flag woven of the finest silk—billowing in the breeze with the softness of a cloud.
Now, far in the distance, muffled by the eddying mists, she thought she could hear the horse’s hooves, and a thrill of excitement ran through her as she waited for the knight to be revealed to her. His strong face. His kind eyes.
Oliver.
It would be Oliver, riding to her rescue, racing toward her through the misty twilight to lift her up and swing her onto the steed’s mighty back, where she would slip her arms around him and cling to him as they sped away.
But then, as the sound of hoofbeats grew nearer, she felt the first faint stirring of apprehension.
Abruptly, the fog closed in. She could feel the danger lurking everywhere around her, hidden just beyond the limits of her vision, waiting for the fog to thicken and the twilight to turn into night before creeping close, circling her, preparing to strike.
Ghostly faces appeared.
Eyes, feral and glinting with the fire of evil.
Snouts, tapering to cruel points.
Fangs, dripping with yellow saliva.
More eyes, yellow, and sunk deep beneath coarse brows, fixing on her with a glare of hatred.
Demons in search of souls to consume.
She tried to scream, but her throat constricted. Deafening shrieks of clattering laughter beat at her ears as if a pack of hyenas was closing on its prey, attacking, tearing it to shreds.
Rebecca turned to flee, to run from the hellhounds that drew closer with every passing second.
She twisted, turning first one way and then the other. No escape, no place to run.
The terror that had been escalating inside her erupted into panic. She threw herself hard to one side. A sharp pain shot through her shoulder, and a muffled screech of agony filled her throat, causing her to gag. Her breath caught in her lungs with a terrible, wracking heaving that convulsed her whole body—and brought her abruptly out of the clutches of the nightmare. But she awakened into the numbing fear that had held her for what seemed to be an eternity.
She became aware again of the tape that covered her eyes and mouth, blinding her and imprisoning the hacking coughs that continued to convulse her lungs until she thought her chest might actually explode.
Now, fully awake, she felt once more the aching cold that had slowly taken possession of every cell in her body, and for a moment she almost wished she could retreat into the fog of her dream. But then, as the fearsome, leering faces she’d seen in the mists rose before her once again, she knew that sleep—and the terrors it would bring—could no longer protect her from the horror to which she had fallen victim. Banishing the visions from her subconscious, Rebecca slowly regained control over her weakening body. The queasiness in her stomach began to ease, and the tightness in her chest to loosen. Her shoulder, which she’d smashed against the hard, cold surface next to her when she’d tried to thrash her way out of the grip of the nightmare, was throbbing painfully, but she knew that with time even that ache would slowly fade.
Unless, of course, she died.
It was going to happen; she knew that now. Sooner or later, she would succumb to something that was finally too much for her to bear. Silently, lying still in the darkness, she prayed that her body would fail her first, for she had already glimpsed the terrors she would face if it was her mind that finally betrayed her. Hell could hold no horrors worse than to be submerged forever in the dreams that tormented her, or the cold, dark prison in which she lived.
Then, so slowly she was barely aware it was happening, her racing pulse at last began to slow, and one by one she began to put her terrors aside.
She was not dead yet, nor had she lost her mind.
Somewhere, she told herself, beyond the blackness and the bonds that held her, Oliver was still searching for her, would still come to rescue her from the eternal night into which she’d vanished. But even as she clung to that sweet thought, she heard once more the echoing hooves of her nightmare, and for an instant thought that perhaps her mind had failed her after all.
Not the beat of hooves sounding in the darkness.
Footsteps.
The Tormentor was drawing close.
To feed her?
To slake her thirst?
Or to offer her up to some new terror she would not be able to anticipate until it was actually upon her?
Click.
She heard the latch of the door release, then the creak of unoiled hinges.
The sound of leather soles on a hard floor.
She sensed him now, standing above her.
Could he see her?
Did he know who she was?
Did he even care?
Or was she only someone who had come to hand? As she’d run through the darkness of that night that was now nearly lost in the dim recesses of her memory, fleeing the Wagners’ in hope of getting help, had her abductor found her by accident?
Rebecca held herself perfectly still, and uttered no sound at all, determined to let him know nothing of her fear or her pain.
If he sensed her weakness, surely he would kill her.
The dark figure gazed down upon his prize. Everything was almost right, everything in readiness.
Yet not quite.
Things were not exactly as they had been, not precisely as he saw them in his mind’s eye.
He reached down and turned a tap.
The tub in which his prisoner lay slowly began to fill.
Then he turned away, having no need to watch until the climactic moment came.
The moment for which he’d waited, had prepared for so many years ago, and that now had finally arrived.
But not yet.
Not quite yet.
Not until the tub was filled.
And every memory savored.
For a moment, when she heard the trickle of water from a tap, Rebecca felt a flash of hope—he’d come to give her water.
But then, when no fingers tore the tape from her mouth or held a glass to her lips, she realized that it was something else.
And when she felt the icy water touch her legs, felt the freeze of winter truly begin to numb her flesh, she realized what her fate was going to be.
She understood the cold smoothness of the surface her face had touched, grasped the meaning of the hardness of everything around her. She was lying in a tub, and the Tormentor was filling it with water.
He was going to drown her.
Unless, before she drowned, the chill of the near-frozen water killed her first.
She felt the courage and determination she’d mustered only a few moments ago drain away, and knew, at long last, that the end was near.
Chapter 7
Oliver stared at the razor in his hand. Everything around it was lost in darkness. He could see nothing but the razor’s glistening blade and, on its bright steel surface, the blood. The blood glimmering in the dark, slick and fresh, scarlet and thick. As he stared at it, it seemed to come alive, flowing across the blade toward the fingers that clutched the razor’s handle.
His fingers.
&nbs
p; Yet, strangely, not his fingers.
Then he heard a voice: “Daddy? Daddy, I don’t want to! I want to go outside!”
The voice echoed in Oliver’s head. A frightened, small voice. A stranger’s voice, yet not unfamiliar.
“Please?” the voice begged. “Please can’t I go outside?”
The voice sounded more familiar now, and a shiver of fear crept down his back, but still he couldn’t quite place it.
Then another voice spoke, with a timbre that was hard and unyielding and instantly recognizable, though he hadn’t heard it in nearly forty years. “You’re a bad boy,” the voice said. “You’re a very bad boy, and you’ll do as I say!”
Oliver’s fear congealed into a terror that crawled up from his subconscious like a demon from Hell, reaching out to grasp him in its sharp-clawed fingers. His father’s voice.
“Tell me what you did, Oliver.”
Oliver tried to shrink away into the darkness—shrink from the voice, cower away from the demon inside that was quickly taking possession of him, draining his strength, twisting his reason, threatening to destroy his mind. But there was no escape, no place to hide, neither from his father’s voice nor from the terror within.
“Tell me, Oliver,” his father’s voice commanded again. “Tell me what you are. Tell me what you did.”
“I’m a bad boy,” the little boy’s voice said again, and now Oliver recognized it clearly.
His voice.
He was hearing his own voice.
“I’m a very bad boy.”
“That’s right,” his father’s voice replied. “You’re a very, very bad boy.”
The darkness around the gleaming razor began to fade to the silvery gray of dawn, and slowly the razor and its glistening coat of blood began to fall from focus. But the light kept brightening, until finally Oliver had to squeeze his eyes closed against it. Then he heard his father’s voice once more, and knew he was powerless to disobey.
“Open your eyes, Oliver,” Malcolm Metcalf’s voice commanded. “Open them.”
Oliver is standing just inside the front door to the Asylum. His father’s hand is squeezing his own so tightly it hurts, but Oliver knows there is no way he can pull his hand free and run from his father into the sunshine outside.
He flinches as the huge oak door swings closed behind him with a thud that seems to echo through the great open room forever.
No one else, though, seems to hear it.
His father is moving now, taking such great long strides that Oliver, even though his stubby legs are moving as fast as he can make them, can barely keep up with him.
There are people all around him.
Some of them he recognizes. Women in white clothes. Nurses. Men in white coats. Doctors. There are others too, whose clothes look to Oliver just like the ones the doctors wear, but he knows they aren’t doctors.
Until a little while ago, he hadn’t known what the other ones—the ones who weren’t doctors—did.
But now he knows, and when one of them says hello to him, Oliver doesn’t say hello back.
There are other people too, people dressed in pajamas and bathrobes even though it isn’t even close to bedtime, even for Oliver.
Finally, they come to the top of a long flight of stairs, steep stairs that descend into darkness. Oliver’s heart begins to thump and it’s hard for him to breathe. Down. They go down the stairs into the blackness below until they come to the bottom and his father leads him down a long hall. There are closed doors on both sides of the hall, and Oliver tries not to look at any of them, fearful of what might lie beyond.
At last, his father opens one of the doors.
“No, Daddy,” Oliver whimpers. “Please, Daddy, don’t make me—”
But it is too late. His father drags him through the door, then closes it behind them.
There is a sharp click as the lock slides home.
His father lets go of his hand, and Oliver, so terrified that his legs have lost their strength, falls to the floor, then scuttles back against the wall. Whimpering with fear, he watches as his father goes to a cabinet, opens its door, and takes out a long metal tube, from one end of which two shiny metal nubs stick out.
“No, Daddy,” Oliver whispers. “No …”
As Oliver cowers against the wall, his father presses the end of the metal tube against the bare skin of Oliver’s leg.
“Don’t talk back to me, Oliver,” Malcolm Metcalf says, his voice harsh. “Don’t ever talk back to me!”
A jolt of electricity shoots through Oliver’s leg. He shrieks as the muscles of his leg jerk spasmodically, and his foot strikes his father’s shin.
“Don’t kick,” Malcolm Metcalf commands. “Don’t you dare kick me!”
Again the metal tube touches Oliver, this time on the other leg, and instantly a second shock buzzes through him. His foot smashes painfully against the tiled wall, and another squeal erupts from his throat.
His father towers over him. “Be quiet! Take it like a man!”
As the terrible metal tube hovers near him, Oliver tries to scuttle away. He is crying now, partly from fear, partly from the burning sting of the prod, as his father comes after him with the metal stick.
Shock after shock jolts through him; his muscles contract spasmodically with each one until he is wailing, a high, keening cry, punctuated with screams of pain every time a shock courses through him.
“Be quiet, Oliver!” his father demands. “You must learn to do as I tell you!”
Oliver tries once more to wriggle away from his father’s wrath, but there is no escaping the towering figure.
Zap!
Another shock. Another spasm.
On all fours, Oliver tries to crawl between his father’s legs.
Zap!
His arms and legs splay in every direction, and he drops onto his stomach.
Zap!
He rolls over, curling into a tight ball.
Zap!
He feels a hot wetness spread from his crotch, and begins to sob.
Zap! “Stop crying, Oliver!”
Zap! “I told you to stop crying!”
Zap! Zap! Zap!
Oliver’s bowels suddenly turn to liquid, and a terrible odor fills his nostrils as one more jab of the prod costs him the last of his self-control.
Sobbing, lying in his own filth, he wraps his arms around his legs and clamps his eyes shut. His whole body shakes as he waits for the next shock. It does not come. Instead there is his father’s voice.
“What are you?” Malcolm Metcalf asks.
“A bad boy,” Oliver whispers. “I’m a very bad boy.”
Without another word, his father unlocks the door and leaves the room. When the door closes, Oliver has just the briefest moment of hope, but then he hears the click of the lock as his father turns it from the outside.
Crying softly, the little boy remains on the floor for a few more minutes, waiting for the pain in his body to subside. Then, knowing what he must do before the door will be unlocked again, he begins cleaning up the mess on the floor, using his shirt as a towel, washing it out over and over again at the little sink that is bolted to one of the room’s walls.
He is, he knows, a very bad boy indeed.
So bad that neither his father, nor anyone else, will ever love him again.
The darkness closed around him, and once again all Oliver could see in the blackness was the glimmering blade of the razor.
The razor, and the blood of his sister.
Chapter 8
Everything had changed.
It seemed to Oliver that he was hanging, suspended, in some netherworld that had no relationship to Blackstone, or to the life he had lived there.
It wasn’t dark—not exactly—and yet he couldn’t see.
He felt as if he were deaf, yet there was no sense of sound at all, no feeling of vibration in his head, or distant muffled noises that he thought he should have heard more clearly.
His sense of touch had de
serted him too, and he couldn’t be certain whether he was moving or standing still.
He could have been sitting, or lying down, or even curled up, his arms wrapped around his knees the way he’d liked to sleep when he was a little boy.
A little boy …
The thought hung with him in the void.
That’s what he was: a boy. A little boy. He was no longer Oliver Metcalf, forty-five and a responsible adult, editor of the town newspaper. Somehow, he had been transported into some other world, the world of his childhood that, without knowing it, he had years ago closed off behind a curtain of blackness. But now the curtain was parting. Before him, as he waited, the gray half-light brightened.
The first thing he knew was that he was afraid.
Afraid because he’d done something wrong.
Bad! He was a bad boy! A very bad boy!
He was a bad boy, and his father was going to punish him.
And he deserved to be punished.
Oliver waited quietly in the not-quite-dark, not-quite-light. Somehow he knew that was the right thing to do. Sometimes his father didn’t come for a long time, and sometimes he came right away.
But Oliver knew he must be quiet, and he must wait. Because if he was bad, more bad things would happen.
Scraps of images began to float around him, and suddenly, the light was momentarily brighter again and he was able to catch glimpses of things.
A little girl.
She had a pretty face, framed by long blond hair, and she was holding something in her hands. A doll. A doll with a pretty porcelain face and golden hair.
Suddenly, from out of the twilight silence surrounding him, Oliver heard his father’s voice. But now his father wasn’t speaking to him. He was speaking to the little girl. “You can’t have it anymore,” his father decreed. “Little boys don’t play with dolls. They play with balls and bats!”
Now Oliver could hear the little girl, her sobs enveloping him the way his father’s voice had a moment ago. He saw her face, saw it change, saw the blond locks fall away, heard the cries reach a crescendo then fade away, and the strange silence fell over Oliver once again, and the child’s face took on the same odd grayness that was all around.