The Blackstone Chronicles

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.
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.