The Blackstone Chronicles

Chapter 3

Oliver Metcalf was already starting to compose his editorial as he left the bank building, but instead of going directly back to his office, he turned in the opposite direction, walking a block farther down Main Street to the corner of Princeton, where the old Carnegie Library still stood in the center of the half acre of land that Harvey Connally’s father had donated nearly a century ago. Though most of the old Carnegie libraries that had sprung up in small towns all over the country had been replaced decades ago by far more modern “media centers,” the one in Blackstone remained as unchanged as the rest of the town. Part of the reason for its preservation was Blackstone’s sense of historic pride; part was lack of funds for modernization. Though there were a few new buildings—“new” being defined as less than fifty years old—most of the town still looked as it had a hundred years ago, some peeling paint and other signs of wear and tear notwithstanding; and some of it had gone unchanged for more than two centuries.
In Oliver Metcalf’s own memory, nothing about the library had changed at all. Perhaps the trees were a little bigger than they’d been when he was a boy, but even then the maples on the front lawn had been fairly mature, spreading their limbs wide, providing plenty of shade for the Story Lady, who had read to the children of the town every Thursday afternoon of the summer months. Now, forty years later, there was still a Story Lady, and she still entranced the children of Blackstone on warm summer Thursdays. Oliver suspected there would always be a Story Lady. Anyway, he hoped so.
Today, though, there was no storyteller or cluster of children in evidence as Oliver mounted the steep flight of concrete steps, deeply worn by generations of feet moving up and down, and pushed through the outer set of double doors that provided a buffer between the chill of the December day outside and the comforting heat from the old-fashioned radiators whose occasional clanging was the loudest sound ever heard within the walls of the building. The radiators provided too much heat, really, but nobody objected because Germaine Wagner, who had been the head librarian for nearly twenty years now, always insisted, “A warm room leads to the appreciation of good books.” Oliver had never been able to figure out what the connection between temperature and literature might be, but Germaine was willing to work for a salary that was no more modern than the building itself; if she wanted the heat turned up, so be it.
Now, as Oliver pushed through the second set of doors, Germaine looked up from the stack of books she was checking back into the library—still with old-fashioned cards bearing the due date and the signatures of the people who had borrowed them tucked into envelopes glued to the inside covers. Peering at Oliver over the tops of her half-glasses, Germaine stuck her pencil into the thick bun of hair that was neatly pinned to the top of her head and beckoned him over to the desk.
“I’m hearing rumors that there might be a problem with Blackstone Center,” she said in the professional whisper with which she could silence rowdy high school students from seventy feet away.
Oliver’s mind went over the possibilities. He supposed that Germaine had seen him go into the bank with Bill McGuire and immediately assumed the worst. The assumption would have been typical of her. Or someone else had seen them and told Germaine.
More likely, Germaine was on a fishing expedition, looking for a juicy tidbit to take home to her mother. Old Clara Wagner, wheelchair bound, hadn’t been out of the house in at least a decade, but she loved a good piece of gossip even more than Germaine.
To say nothing at all to Germaine was tantamount to guaranteeing that whatever rumor she passed on would henceforth have his name attached to it (“I asked Oliver Metcalf point-blank, and he did not deny it!”), so he decided the best thing to do would be to send her off in the wrong direction. “Well, I know Bill’s been pretty busy with some other projects,” Oliver said. “I suspect that once he gets them wound up, he’ll be pitching into the Asylum full-tilt.”
Germaine pursed her lips suspiciously. “It seems to me that leaving equipment idle up there is something Bill McGuire wouldn’t do,” she replied, her sharp eyes boring into him. “He’s never been one to waste a dime, Oliver.”
“Well, I’m sure he knows what he’s doing,” Oliver said. Then, before the librarian’s cross-examination could continue, he rushed on. “Actually, the Center project is the reason I came by. I’m thinking of running a series on the history of the building.”
The librarian fixed on him darkly. “I would have thought you’d have all the material you need right in your own house,” she observed, “given who your father was.”
Suddenly, Oliver felt like a little boy who’d come to school without his homework. “I’m afraid my father didn’t keep much in the way of memorabilia,” he said.
The librarian’s eyes narrowed slightly, and her already narrow nostrils took on a pinched look. “No, I don’t suppose he would have, would he?” There was a coldness in her tone that made Oliver flinch, but he tried to pretend that neither the look nor the words affected him.
Just as he’d tried all his life to pretend that looks and words such as Germaine Wagner’s had no effect on him.
“It’s only gossip, Oliver,” his uncle had told him over and over again. “They have no more idea of what really happened than anyone else. The best thing to do is simply ignore them. Sooner or later they’ll find other things to talk about.” His uncle had been right. As the years had gone by, fewer and fewer people gave him that curious look, or tried to ask him thinly veiled questions about what had really happened to his sister all those years ago. But of course Oliver had never known any more about it than anyone else. By the time he’d come home from college and gone to work for the paper, it had all but been forgotten.
Except that every now and then, with people like Germaine Wagner, he still found that a look could slice open old wounds, a tone of voice could sting. But there was nothing he could do about it; like Oliver himself, the Germaines of this world were going to have to go to their graves still not knowing the truth.
“I really don’t remember that much about my father,” he said carefully now. “Which, I suppose, is part of why I’m here. I thought that maybe now that the Asylum’s finally going to be put to a good use, it might be time for me to write up a history of how it came to be here in the first place.”
“Caring for the mentally ill was a perfectly good use for the building,” Germaine replied. “My mother was very proud of her work there.”
“As she should have been,” Oliver quickly assured her. “But it’s been so long since it was closed that I really don’t know much about it myself. And I suspect that whatever historical material still exists is upstairs in the attic here. I thought I’d see what I could find.”
He waited as the librarian pondered his request. Germaine Wagner, over the years, had come to think of the contents of the library as her personal property, and tended to consider so much as a one-day-overdue book as a personal affront. As to letting someone paw through the boxes and boxes of old documents, diaries, and memoirs that had migrated into the library over the course of the eight decades since it had been built, Oliver suspected that she would take his request as an invasion of her privacy.
“Well, I don’t suppose there’s any real reason why you shouldn’t be able to see what’s there,” Germaine finally said in a sorrowful tone as if she was already regretting having to make the admission. “I suppose I could have Rebecca bring down whatever we have.”
As if the librarian’s mere mention of her name was enough to summon her, a girl appeared from the back room.
Except that she wasn’t a girl; not really. Rebecca Morrison was in her late twenties, with a heart-shaped face that radiated a sweet innocence, framed by soft chestnut hair that fell in waves from a part in the center. Her eyes, slightly tilted, were a deep brown, and utterly guileless.
Oliver had known her since she was a child, and when he’d had to write the obituary after the automobile accident that left sixteen-year-old Rebecca an orphan, tears had streamed down his face. For weeks after the fatal car crash, Rebecca hovered between life and death. Though there were many people in Blackstone who had fallen into the habit of referring to her as “Poor Rebecca,” Oliver was not among them. It had taken months for the girl to recover from her injuries, and while it was true that when she emerged from the hospital her smile was sad and her mind was slower, to Oliver the sweetness that imbued Rebecca’s personality more than made up for the slight intellectual damage she had suffered in the accident.
Now, as she smiled at him, he felt the familiar sense of comfort her presence always gave him.
“Oliver wants to see if there is any information about the Blackstone Asylum in the attic,” Germaine Wagner briskly explained. “I told him I wasn’t certain, but that perhaps you could look.”
“Oh, there’s a whole box of things,” Rebecca said, and Oliver was sure he saw a flash of disapproval in the librarian’s eyes. “I’ll bring it down right away.”
“I’ll help you,” Oliver immediately volunteered.
“You don’t have to,” Rebecca protested. “I can do it.”
“But I want to,” Oliver insisted.
As he followed Rebecca to the stairs leading up to the mezzanine and the attic beyond, he felt the librarian’s eyes following him, and had to resist the urge to turn around and glare at her. After all, he thought, most of her problem undoubtedly stemmed from the simple fact that in her whole life, no man had probably ever followed her up the stairs.
Ten minutes later a large dusty box filled with file folders, photo albums, letters, and diaries was sitting on one of the immense oak tables that were lined up in two precise rows in the front of the library, close by the windows. Oliver settled onto one of the hard oak chairs, reached into the box, and pulled out a photo album. Setting it on the table in front of him, he opened it at random.
And found himself staring at a picture of his father.
The photograph had been taken years ago, long before Oliver had been born. In it, Malcolm Metcalf stood in front of the doors of the Asylum, his arms folded across his chest, scowling straight into the camera almost as if he were challenging it.
Challenging it to what? Oliver wondered.
And yet, as he stared at the black-and-white photograph, he felt a shudder take form inside him. As though it were Oliver himself who had brought forth Malcolm Metcalf’s piercing look of disapproval.
But, of course, it was the unseen photographer upon whom his father had fixed that look; he had not wanted the camera any closer to the Asylum than it already was.
In the photograph, Malcolm Metcalf was guarding the doors of his Asylum against the prying eye of the camera.
Oliver flipped the pages quickly, as if to escape his father’s stern stare, when suddenly an image seemed to leap forth from the pages of the book.
A boy is tied down to a bed.
His hands are tied, his ankles are strapped.
Across his torso, a shadow falls.
The boy is screaming ….
Blinking, and shaking his head, Oliver quickly flipped back through the pages, searching for the picture.
Only there was no such picture in the book.