The Blackstone Chronicles (53 page)

The rest of the story disappeared under the fold of the paper, but it didn’t really matter: every word of it was etched in Oliver’s mind.

Every not-quite-true word.

He’d spent two hours talking to Bonnie Becker at the hospital the morning after Ed had fallen, listening to her strange story of Ed’s growing conviction that his dreams were somehow coming true, and how she’d awakened sometime before dawn to find him gone and had rushed across the street to discover the accident.

She’d also talked of a stereoscope that they found in the dresser Ed had taken out of the Asylum Friday morning.

Bonnie, exhausted and red-eyed, had looked at Oliver bleakly. “I know it’s crazy, but I keep remembering the gifts people are talking about.…” Her voice trailed off, and then she shook her head. “Forget I said that, Oliver. What happened to Ed was an accident. It didn’t have anything to do with the dresser, or the stereoscope, or anything else.”

But Oliver had known even as she spoke that Bonnie didn’t quite believe her own words. Nor did he. Yet when he sat down to write the story, he decided to “forget” the ruminations, as Bonnie had requested. No sense setting more tongues to wagging than already were.

And there was, of course, no proof.

No proof that the tragedies that had befallen the McGuires and the Hartwicks, Martha Ward and Germaine
Wagner, and now Ed Becker were connected in any way. There wasn’t—couldn’t be—any connection between Rebecca’s disappearance and Ed Becker’s near-fatal accident. Yet Oliver couldn’t help wondering. Still, despite his own doubts, despite the disturbing way his heart seemed to lurch in his chest every time he thought about Rebecca, it would be irresponsible to fan the fires of speculation. No point making people more frightened than they already were.

But Oliver Metcalf was frightened. Frightened nearly to death.

As the deepest shadows of night crept through the empty rooms of the cold stone building, the dark figure slipped one more time into the hidden chamber in which his treasures were stored. He didn’t linger tonight, for already the hour was late and there was much to do. Lifting a shallow, oblong box from the topmost shelf, he wiped it clean of the thick layer of dust that had settled over it, then released its latches and carefully opened it.

With latex-covered fingers, he removed a tortoiseshell object from the box’s velvet-lined interior and held it lovingly up to the few rays of moonlight that filtered through the window.

Its blade glittered brightly. So brightly, it almost seemed new. In the dimness of the light, he could only barely see the blood with which it was stained.

To be continued …

N
ight lay over Blackstone like a heavy, suffocating shroud, but it was not merely the darkness that had driven the town’s citizens from Main and Elm Streets, from the locked and shuttered library and the cozy camaraderie of the Red Hen.

Fear, as well as night, now held the people of Blackstone in its clutches. Terror had spread through the village like a virus, infecting first one person, and then another, until at last no one had escaped its icy touch.

Every night when they locked their doors, the people of Blackstone prayed that this would not be the night when evil came to prey on them. If it had to feed, let it find succor within someone else’s walls, destroy the lives of someone else’s family.

The fever of fear was no longer limited to the hours of darkness, for even in the bright sunshine of a springtime afternoon, there wasn’t a soul in Blackstone who couldn’t feel his neighbors’ eyes watching. Watching, and wondering.

Who would be next?

And how would it come?

The universal custom of hpnoring birthdays and anniversaries with gifts had abruptly stopped in Blackstone, for
everyone in town had heard that any object, even the most innocent-seeming gift, could carry the curse—a doll, a handkerchief, a silver locket—
anything
could bring home the reign of terror.

The flea market had been abandoned, for everyone had heard about the dragon-shaped lighter that Rebecca Morrison had given to her cousin. Janice Anderson hadn’t seen a customer in a week. The post office had begun returning packages of every description to their senders, all of them marked with the same message:
DELIVERY REFUSED
.

Every day the tension grew, and soon families who had been neighbors and friends for more generations than they could remember were looking at one another with undisguised suspicion. But it was at night that nerves jumped and heartbeats hammered, at night when everyone retreated to their homes and tried to bar their doors against fear. Behind their locks and barricades they knew precautions were useless, of course, for deep in their souls, each of them understood that if the madness came to invade his home, no locks would keep it out, no shutters hold it at bay.

It would slither in through the crevices and cracks, and by morning—

But none of them wanted to think about morning.

Just to get through the night was enough.

And this night—a night filled with moonless blackness made palpable by heavy fog—was the worst of all. On most other nights the people of Blackstone had been able to peek from their windows, searching the pools of light around the street lamps for signs of danger.

Tonight there was only darkness, and the viscous mist that turned keen eyes blind.

Through the fog and darkness a single figure moved, slipping unseen from the door of the Asylum, its cloak thrown loose around its shoulders. It drifted through the ebony night with wraithlike grace, a presence that crept from house to house.

In every house, the figure caught a glimpse of terror as it peered unseen through a forgotten shade or slightly parted curtain with a perfect, sinuous stealth that never betrayed its presence for an instant. The watcher could almost smell the fear, and shivers of excitement ran over its skin like a lover’s fingers. Moving, silently stalking. A shadow that briefly crossed from one window to the next. Savoring the suffering. Delighting in the disease it had unleashed upon the town.

It was close to dawn when finally the triumphal tour was near an end, and the figure came to the house upon whose step it would leave its most important gift.

At this house, the figure lingered long, gazing up at the darkened windows from which no light spilled. There was no movement within, nor was there the scent of fear that issued from every other house it had visited. As the cloaked intruder circled this house, rage began to build inside it, until, reflecting upon the vengeance this gift would wreak upon this house’s only occupant, the fury slowly ebbed away, leaving in its place a shiver of strangely erotic excitement.

Soon, soon, the wrath would descend upon this place too.

Caressing the gift one last time, the dark figure laid it lovingly at the front door, then faded into the blackness as silently as it had come.

N
umb.

Every part of Rebecca Morrison seemed to have gone numb.

A chill had crept over her that she’d never experienced before. She had always known what it felt like to be cold, of course, for growing up in New Hampshire meant winters wading through snowbanks and temperatures that sank far below zero. When she was a little girl, she loved those days. Her mother would bundle her up in a thick woolen snowsuit, and put mittens on her hands and a stocking cap on her head, and Rebecca would hurl herself into the snowy paradise outside with an excitement that sometimes made her feel like she would simply burst with joy. She would flop down into the snow, wave her arms and spread her legs, then jump up to admire the angel she had made. Sometimes she’d even leap right into a big drift and bury her face in the cold white cottony fluff because the frozen, wet purity was so refreshing, its aftertingle so deliciously shivery. Best of all were “snow days,” when school was closed, grownups stayed inside their warm kitchens, and she would go off in search of other kids to play with. Inevitably, she’d wind up in a snowball fight that—inevitably—required
her to shed her mittens since everyone knew you couldn’t make a proper snowball with mittens on. By the time the grown-ups came to chase everyone inside, Rebecca’s fingers would be freezing, and snow would have worked its way inside her sleeves as well. The cold she’d felt then had been an exciting cold, a happy, carefree cold that always vanished deliciously with a cup of hot cocoa covered with marshmallows, sipped in front of the fire blazing in the living room hearth of her parents’ house on Maple Street.

There had been other kinds of cold, though, that hadn’t been nearly as much fun.

The cold she’d felt when there weren’t enough blankets on the bed and Aunt Martha turned the thermostat low, to save money and save Rebecca’s “spendthrift soul.”

The icy cold of the first dip into the quarry in spring, when the water was barely above freezing.

The clammy chill when she’d gotten caught in a rainstorm with neither raincoat nor umbrella to protect her from getting soaked through to the skin.

That kind of cold, though, could be banished with an extra comforter, or a thick terry-cloth towel, or a change into dry clothes.

Even the chill of a fever that could rattle her teeth and turn her skin clammy was nothing like what she was feeling now, for even when she’d been in a fever’s grip, she always knew it was only a temporary thing, that in a few hours, perhaps even a day, it would pass and she would feel warm again.

The cold she felt now had crept up on her so slowly that she couldn’t really remember when it began; indeed, it was as if it had always been there. Every part of her
body either had gone so numb that she had no feeling at all or ached with a dull pain, an ache that had burrowed into every muscle, spread through every bone. She wasn’t frozen; she knew that. She could still move her arms and legs, still twist her neck and flex her back. But every movement was agonizing, every twitch of every muscle over which she had managed to retain control brought her a new sensation of pain.

The cold had even seeped into her mind, slowing her wits and confusing her so badly that she was no longer sure when she was awake and when she was sleeping; could not determine which of the sensations she felt were real, and which were the products of the dark nightmares that seized her whenever she slept.

It was the cold of death.

Rebecca knew that, knew it with a strange certainty that had grown in her mind until she’d all but given up any hope of surviving the ordeal that began when she’d fled from Germaine Wagner’s house.

How long had it been?

She had no idea, for time itself no longer meant anything to her.

Not only was there no longer any distinction between night and day, but the difference between a minute and an hour, a day and a week, a month and a year, had disappeared. An hour might be a lifetime, and a month no more than a minute.

It didn’t matter, for in the world into which Rebecca had plummeted—if it was this world at all—there was no longer any time.

Only cold.

The cold of the grave.

There were times when she thought she must have
died, when the darkness around her was so deep that she knew she must be buried in the earth. But then some brief sensation would penetrate the numbing cold; a sound perhaps, or a sharp twinge of pain that would rouse her, however briefly, from the strange not-quite-sleep into which she’d sunk.