The Blackstone Chronicles

Chapter 5

Oliver pulled his car into the parking lot of the white building that had housed Blackstone Memorial Hospital for the last twenty years. There were only three beds, and even they were rarely used: anyone who needed long-term care went either up to Manchester or down to Boston. For the last few months, though, the hospital had been busier than usual; first with Elizabeth McGuire’s tragic miscarriage, then with taking care of Madeline Hartwick. Jules Hartwick’s body had been taken first to Blackstone Memorial too, but even as the ambulance carried it downhill, everyone knew it was only going there as a matter of legal formality.
Oliver was still haunted by that terrible night when he’d found Jules on the steps of the Asylum and seen him plunge the knife deep into his own belly. It seemed to Oliver as if his headaches had been getting even worse lately, and yesterday, when his hand reflexively jerked away from the cigarette lighter Rebecca had bought for Andrea at the flea market, he’d been far more frightened than he let on.
Perhaps, if he hadn’t been suffering from the blinding headaches, he might not have been so frightened by the false message of searing heat that his involuntary nervous system had received. But in combination with the headaches, an idea had begun forming in his mind, and though he told himself it was ridiculous, he hadn’t been able to shake it all night long.
Brain tumor.
How else to explain the sudden onset of the unbearable migraines—when he’d rarely suffered from even mild headaches his whole life? How else to account for the odd flashes of vision—hallucinations—that seemed to accompany the hammering pain, though he could never quite recall their content after the headache passed. And yesterday … When he touched the lighter, he hadn’t had a headache. Yet he could still clearly remember the searing heat he’d felt in the brief instant when his fingers first touched the object.
The searing heat that—impossibly—was no longer there a second later, when Rebecca put the lighter into his hand.
Well, Phil Margolis would undoubtedly have an answer for him. Getting out of the Volvo, Oliver went into the hospital.
“All this does is take a picture of your brain,” Dr. Margolis explained. The CAT scanner sat in a small room that had been renovated specifically to house it after the doctor succeeded in putting together enough funds to buy the used machine five years ago. Serving not only Blackstone, but half a dozen other towns, the scanner had brought in enough money to allow the tiny hospital to operate in the black for the first time in its history. “Lie down on the table, and I’ll strap you in.”
“Do you have to?” Oliver asked. The moment he’d stepped into the room, he felt a wave of panic begin to build inside him. Now, his eyes fixed on the heavy nylon restraining straps, and his palms went suddenly clammy.
“I have to hold you immobile,” Margolis explained. “Any movement of your head, and the images will be spoiled. It’s easiest if you’re strapped down.”
Oliver hesitated, wondering where the panic was coming from. He’d never been claustrophobic—at least he didn’t think he had—but for some reason the idea of being strapped to the bed terrified him. But why? It couldn’t have anything to do with Phil Margolis—he’d known the doctor for years.
Could it be he was just frightened of what the CAT scan might show? But that was ridiculous—if there was something wrong with him, he wanted to know about it! “All right,” he said, lying down on the table. Fists clenched, he shut his eyes and steeled himself against the fear that instantly gripped him as the doctor began fastening the straps that would hold him immobile. His heart raced; he could feel the sweat on his palms.
“You okay, Oliver?” the doctor asked.
“Fine.” But he wasn’t fine; he wasn’t fine at all. A terrible fear was overtaking him, an unreasoning terror.
“Okay, we’re all set,” Phil Margolis told him. He stepped out of the room, and a moment later the machine came to life, the scanner starting to move down over his head as it began taking thousands of pictures from every possible angle, which a computer would then knit together to form a perfect image of his brain.
And anything that might be growing inside it.
Then it happened.
With no warning at all, a blinding pain slashed through Oliver’s head, and the room seemed to fill with a brilliant white light that faded to utter blackness in an instant. And then, out of the blackness, an image appeared.
The boy is in a small room, staring at a table to which heavy leather straps are attached. The man, looming above him, is waiting impatiently for the boy to get onto the table. In his hand, the man holds something.
Something the boy has seen before.
Something that terrifies him.
Instead of getting on the table, the boy retreats to cower in a corner of the room.
As the man raises the object, with two shining metal studs protruding from a long tube at one end, the boy whimpers, already anticipating the pain to come.
As the man advances toward the boy, the child, screaming now, starts to run. The man’s large, muscled arm reaches out—
“That’s it,” Philip Margolis said as he came back into the room. He unfastened the straps that held Oliver to the table. “That wasn’t so terrible, was it?”
Oliver hesitated. The fact was, he couldn’t really remember much of the scan at all. There had been a moment of panic, but then …
What?
A headache? One of the strange hallucinations?
Something—some kind of vague memory—was flitting about the edges of his consciousness, but as he reached out for it, trying to grasp it, the memory slipped away.
Oliver managed a grin as he sat up, the straps having released their grip. “Not so bad,” he agreed. “Not so bad at all.”