The Blackstone Chronicles

Chapter 10

The first copy of next week’s Blackstone Chronicle lay on Oliver Metcalf’s desk. Though Lois Martin had put it in front of him nearly an hour earlier, he had not yet touched it. Instead, he’d simply stared at the headline—a headline he himself had written—and wondered if he could, in good conscience, let the paper be distributed the way it stood, or whether he should try to recover every copy that had been printed, destroy them, and start all over again. He was no closer to an answer now than he had been an hour ago. Yet the headline—together with its accompanying story—would not release its grip on him.
Local Attorney Injured in Fall

In the latest in a series of apparently coincidental tragedies, Blackstone attorney Edward Becker was seriously injured in a fall at his home early Sunday morning. The house on Amherst Street had been the site of a gas explosion several hours earlier, in which no one was hurt, and Becker, 40, his wife, Bonnie, 38, and their 5-year-old daughter, Amy, had evacuated the house.
According to Mrs. Becker, the lawyer returned to the house despite the possibility that it wasn’t safe, and apparently stumbled at the top of the stairs. Fire Chief Larry Schulze states that both the gas and electricity to the house had been cut off for safety reasons. “I don’t have any idea why Ed went back before dawn,” Schulze said in an interview with this newspaper.
Suffering breaks in three vertebrae, Becker …
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 …




Part 6 Asylum



Prelude

Night 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.