The Blackstone Chronicles

  The grayness of death.

  The little boy was dead.

  Dead, like Oliver’s sister.

  And in the twilight Oliver’s father was whispering. “Do you understand?” he asked. “Do you understand why he died?”

  Oliver nodded, though he didn’t understand at all.

  “We’re going to put the doll away,” his father’s voice whispered. “We’re going to put it away in the secret place. But you’re going to remember, Oliver. You’re going to remember all of it.”

  His father’s voice faded again, leaving Oliver enshrouded in the grayness where, as before, he felt as if he was hanging in a void, suspended in a world without sensations.

  A world in which there was no difference between night and day, no difference between sound and silence.

  No difference between life and death.

  Then a point of light appeared.

  “Watch the light, Oliver,” his father’s voice instructed, penetrating the silence from an echoing distance that was nowhere yet everywhere.

  Like the twilight itself, his father’s voice was simply present.

  “Watch the light, Oliver,” his father’s voice said again. “Watch the light and see what it does.”

  The light reappeared, a flame now, flickering in front of Oliver’s eyes.

  Then the flame began to move, and now Oliver could see something else.

  An arm.

  An arm covered with soft skin, soft and smooth and pale. A woman’s skin.

  The flame moved closer and closer to the skin.

  Oliver wanted to cry out, to move the flame away from the woman’s skin, but the twilight held him in its thrall as tightly as if it were made with ropes and straps.

  The flame licked at the skin on the arm, and then, from out of the silence, came a sound.

  The roar of a dragon.

  The roar sounded again, and then Oliver saw the dragon looming out of the twilight, its eyes glowing like twin rubies, its golden scales glittering even in the strange gray light. Its mouth opened, and once again it roared, a great bellow that hung in the air as a blast of fire burst from its throat.

  As suddenly as it had appeared, the dragon vanished into the twilight, and all that was left was the vision of the woman’s arm, the skin charred black, great chunks of it peeling off, dropping away to reveal the raw flesh beneath.

  Then, from somewhere in the gray eternity around him, Oliver heard the dragon roar once more, and the flesh before his eyes burst into flame.

  Now he heard his father’s voice. “Do you understand, Oliver?”

  “I understand,” Oliver silently breathed.

  “You will remember?” his father’s voice demanded, and though the words were formed into a question, Oliver understood what would happen if he forgot.

  “I will remember,” he promised.

  “We will put the dragon with the doll,” his father’s voice whispered. “And when next you see it, you will know to whom it should belong.”

  Once again time and space melded together.

  Oliver hung in the gray silence.

  More images flickered in front of him.

  A scrap of cloth, intricately embroidered, a single letter, mirrored, worked perfectly into one of its corners.

  A face appeared, and snakes writhed about him, and once again he heard his father’s voice.

  “Remember what I’m showing you, Oliver. Remember what I’m saying. If you forget, you know what will happen.”

  Oliver knew he would not forget.

  And after his father had spoken, and hidden the scrap of cloth away with the doll and the dragon, those images too fell away into the gray morass, as surely as if they’d never been there at all.

  “But you’ll remember,” his father’s voice whispered. “When it’s time, you will remember.”

  “I promise, Daddy.” The words were no more than an unvoiced whimper, but they echoed in Oliver’s mind as loudly as had the dragon’s now-forgotten roar. “I promise …”

  More images rose out of the gray, took focus for a moment, then disappeared so utterly that they might never have existed. And as each of them flickered through his consciousness, only to be lost again an instant later, Oliver’s father’s voice kept whispering.

  “You’ll know what to do, boy. When the time comes, you’ll know what to do as surely as if you had become my own reincarnation. You are all that’s left of me, and you’ll do it. After they’ve destroyed me—after they’ve sent me away and destroyed my work—you will still be here. You will be my sword of vengeance. You will do exactly as I tell you, and it will be as if I’d come back myself, to destroy the destroyers.

  “And do you know why you’ll do it, Oliver?”

  “Because I’ve been bad,” Oliver whispered. “Because I’ve been a very bad boy, and I have to do whatever you want me to do.”

  “That’s right, Oliver. You’ve been a bad boy.” His father’s words lashed out with the sting of a whip. “Killed them! Killed your mother! Killed your sister! Evil, vile child!”

  Oliver tried to shrink away from the accusations, tried to find a way to drop back into the comforting silence of the twilight abyss, but there was no escape. Wherever he turned, his father’s words were there, piercing into his consciousness, jabbing at him, torturing him, until finally, the last of his resistance crumpled.

  “I understand, Daddy,” he said. “I understand.”

  It was then that the darkness closed around him once again, and he sank gratefully back into an oblivion that was free not only of the strange images but of the sound of his father’s voice.

  It was not, though, an oblivion in which Oliver could dwell forever.

  Sooner or later, consciousness would inevitably return.

  Consciousness, and the evil pleasure his father demanded.

  Oliver woke up in darkness.

  Not the familiar darkness that blanketed his room when he woke up at night, thinking at first there was no light at all, only to find that the shadows that moved on the walls and ceiling, cast by the street lamp outside, were old friends. In that kind of darkness he could snuggle down deeper in his bed, pulling the covers up tight under his chin as he let his imagination run wild, seeing all kinds of wonderful things in the dark shapes on the walls. He liked that kind of darkness.

  Some nights he imagined he was in a tent in the jungle, and the shadows he was seeing were cast by lions and tigers and elephants.

  But the darkness in which he awakened this time was different.

  An empty, scary kind of darkness.

  The kind of darkness that made him think that things he couldn’t see were watching him.

  The kind of darkness that made him shiver, even though it wasn’t cold.

  “Daddy?” he called out, keeping his voice soft enough so that if there were any wild animals lurking in the darkness, they might not hear him.

  There was no answer. As Oliver came fully awake, he realized he wasn’t in his bed at all.

  He wasn’t even in his room.

  And his whole body was sore.

  The blackness turned to a funny gray color; then, as it grew brighter, became a bright, blinding white, as a powerful, naked bulb switched on.

  White tiles on the floor. And on the wall.

  White paint on the ceiling.

  And then his father’s face, looming above him, flanked by two big men in white coats.

  “You’re not a very good boy, Oliver,” his father said. “You’re a bad boy. A very bad boy, who killed his sister.”

  “I didn’t!” Oliver cried. “I—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, his father pressed a button in a wooden box. Oliver convulsed as the jolt of electricity passed through him. Then, as his body relaxed, he cried:

  “No!”

  His father pressed the button again. This time as the shock shuddered through him, a gush of vomit spewed from his mouth.

  “Clean him,” Oliver’s father said, and the two
men in white coats stepped over to the table and began wiping the vomit away with a towel.

  His father pressed the button again. He was sobbing now, whimpering, his stomach churning, his throat filling with bile as his body reacted to the torture.

  Then, in a small voice that seemed to come from somewhere outside himself, Oliver heard himself say, “I’ve been a bad boy. A very bad boy.”

  “That’s right,” his father said. “A very bad boy. And now I’m going to tell you why you’re a bad boy, and what you did.”

  His breath coming in short, shallow gasps, Oliver listened as his father explained how he had taken the razor and what he had done with it. His father’s voice droned on and on, and as he spoke, tears came into Oliver’s eyes.

  Tears of sorrow, and tears of shame.

  And at last, when it was over, and he understood everything his father had told him, he slipped from the white tiled room and pulled the door closed behind him. Outside in the corridor the cries and screams that had echoed through the building for so long could still be heard, but not by Oliver Metcalf.

  All he could hear as he slowly mounted the stairs toward the first floor was the sound of his father’s voice, repeating over and over what he, a very bad boy, had done.

  And telling him what still was left to do.

  Chapter 9

  Rebecca Morrison was staring at the face of Death.

  She had no conscious memory of when the apparition had appeared; nor did she have any idea how long she had been gazing upon it.

  It was simply there, hanging in front of her in the darkness.

  It was a pale, bloodless face, almost lost in the folds of a deep hood whose black cloth blended into the surrounding darkness so perfectly that the face itself seemed almost to be a part of the blackness. Though there seemed to be no source of light, the face was limned in shadows, shadows that moved and seemed to shimmer with a life of their own.

  Yet the face was dead.

  Wattles of skin hung around the neck, and the jaw was slack, causing a lipless maw to gape wide, exposing the rotted teeth within. The tongue, covered with open sores, was coated with a yellowish goo that strung out to the broken teeth like strands of a spiderweb; a spiderlike creature, fat and mottled black-brown, lurked deep in the specter’s throat, crawling out long enough for Rebecca to catch only a glimpse of it before scuttling back down into its fleshy lair. The creature set Rebecca’s flesh crawling, with its multiple hairy legs and the grizzly morsels that hung from its curving, dripping mandibles.

  Above the maw a great beaked nose curved out from a sloping brow, its grayish skin pocked deep with ulcerations. Mucus ran thickly from its nostrils. On either side of the hooked nose, glowering eyes were sunk deep in hollowed sockets. The eyes, like the rest of the specter’s mien, were gray and dead, but from somewhere deep within them, a cold harsh light—a flame of evil—flicked like the tongue of a serpent.

  The cigarette lighter, Rebecca thought. The present Oliver and I found for Andrea. It’s as if the dragon’s tongue were caught in the eyes of Death.

  She tried to turn away, tried not to look at the terrible face, but something about it held her in thrall. There was a terrible hunger in the face, a yearning in the coldly flickering eyes, a depraved lust as it gazed upon her.

  It’s come for me, Rebecca thought. Death wants me, and has come for me.

  All her senses were playing tricks on her now.

  She had no idea how long it had been since the Tormentor carried her up the stairs, no idea of what it was he wanted. When he’d finally set her down, she’d found herself lying on something hard and cold. As her hands, still bound behind her back, explored the smoothly rounded surface on which she lay, it had come to her.

  A bathtub.

  He’d put her in a bathtub.

  And then, almost at the very instant she’d realized where she was, he’d opened the valve.

  Not far.

  Just enough so that the water began slowly to fill the tub.

  Rebecca braced herself, tried to prepare herself for what might happen if he tore her clothes from her body. She turned her mind inward, searching within herself for something to sustain her through the ordeal she was certain was coming.

  Oliver!

  She would think about Oliver, and no matter what the Tormentor might do to her, it wouldn’t touch her.

  She wouldn’t feel it.

  Wouldn’t respond to it.

  And when it was over, it would be as if it had never happened.

  As the tub had filled, she conjured a picture of Oliver in her mind, imagined him smiling at her, saw his gentle eyes watching over her, felt his hands caressing her.

  Listened to his voice consoling her, encouraging her, giving her strength.

  The water slowly rose in the tub, covering first her feet and then her legs. The water, still carrying the icy chill of winter, numbed every part of her body it touched. Rebecca, inured to cold, turned away from the icy wetness as completely as she had turned away from the Tormentor, utterly closing her senses to it, putting herself in a place where she neither felt nor heard anything that did not emanate from within her own mind.

  In her mind she was not alone.

  Oliver was with her.

  Oliver was looking after her.

  Until, suddenly, Oliver was no longer there, and in his place the visage of Death hung before her again.

  Her senses too had come alive. She could smell the fetid breath of the specter, feel the frigid water.

  Was this what Aunt Martha had seen and felt as she died?

  When she’d gazed transfixed upon the face of her savior, had she too seen Death leering hungrily down on her?

  Had she already died?

  But no—she could still feel the hardness of the tub, the wetness of the water.

  The water still ran slowly into the tub. It covered her waist in an ice-cold blanket; its tentacles were reaching up toward her chest.

  In the darkness surrounding her, Rebecca saw the lipless mouth of Death twist in a grisly parody of a smile.

  Then, over the sound of running water, she heard something else.

  A door opened.

  Footsteps approached.

  The Tormentor had returned.

  Oliver stood in the center of his father’s office, so that the great walnut desk with the huge leather chair behind it loomed directly in front of him. His father would have to look neither to the right nor to the left to see him.

  That was important.

  When you were going to be punished, it was important to face it straight on. His father had told him that over and over again, but it was still hard.

  So hard, in fact, that Oliver hadn’t quite been able to look up. But now he heard his father’s voice: “Oliver.”

  Biting his lower lip to keep from crying out, Oliver finally looked up.

  His father’s chair was empty.

  He glanced almost furtively around the room, certain that his father must be there somewhere, but the sofa against the wall to the left was empty, and so was the wing-backed chair that faced his father’s desk. Then his eyes fell on the portrait of his mother that hung on the wall of his father’s office.

  There was a black ribbon draped over its frame.

  He was still gazing up at the picture when he heard his father’s voice again: “Come into the bathroom, Oliver. Come and look at what you’ve done.”

  Fear forcing him to obey, Oliver moved to the door cut into the wall to the right, turned its knob, and pushed it open.

  He saw nothing.

  “Look,” his father commanded. “Look in the mirror, and see what you’ve done.”

  Oliver moved to the sink and stared into the mirror that hung on the wall above it. But instead of seeing his own face, he found himself gazing upon the face of his father.

  The face in the mirror was covered with a soapy lather, and one cheek had been scraped clean.

  Then, from behind him, Oliver heard the sound of l
aughter.

  The laughter of children.

  Spinning around, he found himself once again staring at his four-year-old self.

  He was in the bathtub, and his sister was with him. They sat at opposite ends of the great claw-footed tub, laughing happily as they splashed each other, then smeared each other’s faces with soapy bubbles.

  “Stop that,” he heard his father’s voice say.

  In the tub, Oliver and Mallory kept splashing, kept laughing.

  “I said, stop that!” His father’s voice was angry now.

  In the bathtub, Oliver and Mallory, caught up in their game, ignored their father’s command.

  Then Mallory, with a silvery peal of happy laughter, stood up in the tub and used both her little hands to heave a great splash of soapy water at her father.

  The little Oliver in the tub, stunned by what his sister had done, froze, his wide and fearful eyes fixing on his father.

  And Oliver Metcalf, still standing at the sink, raised his right arm. In his hand, the blade of the razor he’d brought into the Asylum less than two hours ago glinted brightly.

  Rage filled Oliver as he heard his father’s voice once more, trembling with cold fury as he glowered down at his little daughter. “Don’t you dare laugh!” he thundered. “After what you’ve done, don’t you dare laugh!”

  But Mallory, caught up in her game, only splashed the water harder, her laughter growing louder and louder.

  Suddenly, Oliver’s arm flashed out, and then—

  The stab of pain seared through his head, wiping out the vision he’d just seen, plunging him into the familiar abyss of darkness. But even as he felt himself sinking into unconsciousness, he heard his father’s voice.

  “No, Oliver! Open your eyes! Open your eyes and see what you have done!”

  Slowly the blackness faded away, and the pain in Oliver’s head subsided. He opened his eyes.

  And found himself gazing at his sister’s naked body, submerged facedown in the tub.

  He was out of the tub now, and his father was putting the razor into his hand.

  “Look what you’ve done, Oliver,” his father told him. “It wasn’t me, Oliver. It was you! All of it is your fault! Your fault that your mother died, Oliver! She didn’t die giving birth to Mallory, Oliver! She died giving birth to you! And now you’ve killed Mallory too. Killed her, Oliver. Killed your sister!” His father’s voice grew louder and louder, until the words pounded in Oliver’s head, each one striking him like a blow. “Killed her, Oliver! Killed her!”