The Blackstone Chronicles

Chapter 10

Oliver set Rebecca down only long enough to open the front door to his house, then gathered her into his arms again, carried her inside, and up the stairs to the guest room. Lowering her gently onto the bed, he pulled a blanket over her. “I’ll get you some towels and a robe,” he said as he started toward the door.
By the time he returned, the clothing Rebecca had been wearing since the moment she’d run out of Clara and Germaine Wagner’s house was lying in a heap next to the bed, and Rebecca was huddling under the covers, shivering so hard her teeth were chattering. Her skin was so pale it had taken on a bluish color, and her hair, matted, wet, and filthy, hung limply around her haggard face.
I did this, Oliver thought wretchedly. I did this to Rebecca. Dropping to his knees, he took her hand in both of his. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Oh, God, Rebecca, I’m so sorry. I’ll never—”
Rebecca frowned. “Sorry for what?” she asked. “You saved me, Oliver. You saved me from that horrible man who …” Her voice died away as a shudder shook her entire body at the memory of what she’d just gone through. Then, as Oliver started to speak again, she held her fingers to his lips. “Not now,” she pleaded. “Please? I’m so cold, and so tired, and so hungry.” Oliver choked as a sob rose to his throat, and Rebecca squeezed his hand. “Could you maybe make me some soup?” she asked. “Maybe if you could make me some soup, I could take a shower and get warmed up again, and then you can tell me all about how you found me.”
Oliver felt a terrible pain in his chest—a pain that stabbed directly at his heart—and wondered if it was possible his heart could actually be physically breaking. She doesn’t understand! She doesn’t understand at all!
“Please?” Rebecca asked again. “Just not right now, Oliver.”
Oliver hesitated, his mind churning, needing to make her understand the magnitude of the terrible thing he had done, but at the same time wishing there were some way he would never have to tell her at all. Even as the wish rose in his mind, he knew it was impossible. But certainly he could spare her the knowledge of what he’d done for a few more minutes. “Of course,” he whispered. “I’ll go find something for you. The bathroom’s just through there.” He started toward the door once more, but then looked back at Rebecca. “You’ll be all right by yourself?” he asked anxiously.
“Of course I will,” Rebecca assured him. “Besides, you’ll be right downstairs. What could happen to me?”
She smiled at him then, and Oliver tried to etch that smile so deeply into his memory that he could never forget it. Once she understood what he had done, he would never see her smile again. Then he turned away and left Rebecca alone.
He found a can of chicken soup in the kitchen, opened it, and emptied its contents into a bowl, which he put in the microwave. While the soup heated, he picked up the telephone and punched Phil Margolis’s number into the keypad. “It’s Oliver,” he said when the doctor came on the line. “I’ve found Rebecca.” Before Margolis could ask any questions, Oliver spoke again. “She was in the Asylum. I think she’s all right, but if you could come over to my house—”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Philip Margolis broke in.
Oliver hung up, then picked the receiver up again, and this time called Steve Driver. “Steve?” he said, after explaining that Rebecca was with him. “Edna Burnham was right. It was all connected.” A pause. Then: “And I know what the connection was.”
There was a silence. “Is that all you’re going to say?” Driver asked. “Or are you going to tell me what the connection was?”
“Me,” Oliver said softly. “It was me, Steve.”
Now the silence stretched out so long Oliver wondered if the deputy was still there. But then Steve Driver spoke again. “I guess I better come over.”
“I guess so,” Oliver said, his voice as spiritless as he suddenly felt. Hanging up the phone, he checked the soup, set the microwave to keep it warm until Rebecca came downstairs, then set a place for her at the kitchen table.
He was putting an English muffin in the toaster oven when, at almost the same moment, two cars pulled up in front of his house. After showing Philip Margolis to the room he’d given Rebecca, he led Steve Driver into the kitchen. “You want a cup of coffee or something?” His voice was as dull as it had been on the phone a few minutes earlier.
“I’d like to hear what happened,” the deputy replied. “Or at least what you think happened.”
Oliver cast about in his mind, trying to decide where to begin. A lot of what occurred in the Asylum that day was still jumbled in his memory. Images crowded into his mind, and he shuddered involuntarily as he remembered the scenes of his childhood suffering that had been unlocked from his memory.
“I think it started the day my sister died,” he finally said.
Steve Driver, frowning, sank into one of the kitchen chairs. “That was forty years ago,” he said.
Oliver nodded. “Uncle Harvey gave me something this morning, before he died.” The deputy’s frown deepened, but he said nothing, and Oliver continued. “It was a straight razor, in a mahogany box. He found it on his porch when he got his paper.” Oliver’s eyes met Steve Driver’s. “It was my father’s razor. My father used it to kill my sister. Then he convinced me that I did it.”
Slowly, forcing himself to speak evenly and without emotion, Oliver related what had happened to him in the Asylum that day, all the memories that had come back to him. At some point, while Oliver talked, Philip Margolis joined Steve Driver at the kitchen table. The two men listened silently. Steve Driver took some notes, but never interrupted Oliver.
“That’s what the headaches and the blackouts were about,” Oliver explained to Margolis. “It wasn’t anything physical at all. It was just too many memories that were too painful to face. And every time I went near the Asylum—every time the memories started to come to the surface—I shut them out. I gave myself headaches. I blacked out. I did everything to keep from remembering. And it was what my father wanted.” He shook his head, recalling the scenes he had finally relived, the veil of blackness now forever stripped away. “All those things that started showing up the last few months?” he said. “That doll belonged to Bill McGuire’s aunt. And the dragon lighter? That was Martha Ward’s sister’s. He showed me all those things when I was a child. And he planted it all in my mind.” A bitter smile twisted his lips. “It was his revenge. I was his revenge. His reincarnation, he told me, all that was left of him to do his bidding. He used me to send something back to every family that ever had anything to do with that place.” He fell silent for a moment, then spoke again. “It was I who kidnapped Rebecca,” he said quietly. “I kidnapped her, and I tied her up in there, and I—”
“No!”
The single word was uttered with such force that all three of the men in the kitchen flinched. Then, as one, they turned to see Rebecca Morrison standing in the doorway. She was wrapped in Oliver’s thick terry-cloth bathrobe, far too large for her small form, its belt sashed tightly around her waist. Her hair, clean and dry now, created a soft frame around her heart-shaped face.
Her eyes were fixed on Oliver.
“You didn’t hurt me, Oliver,” she said quietly. “You saved my life.”
Oliver rose and took a step toward her, shaking his head. “Rebecca, you don’t understand. I—”
Quickly, Rebecca crossed the kitchen and once more put her finger to Oliver’s lips. “I know what you did, Oliver,” she said. “I was there, remember? I was there when I was kidnapped, and I was there all the time that man held me in the Asylum. And I was there when you came for me.”
“But you don’t understand—” Oliver began again.
Rebecca took both his hands in her own. “I do understand,” she said. “I understand that you love me, and I understand that I love you. And that’s all there is.” When Oliver tried to speak again, she shook her head, repeating, “That’s all there is.”
Oliver gazed into Rebecca’s face for a long time, then finally tore his eyes away to look at Steve Driver and Philip Margolis. Regardless of what Rebecca had said, they must have understood the truth.
But Steve Driver was tearing his notes from his pad, and while he slid the notebook itself back into the inside pocket of his jacket, Philip Margolis spoke for both of them.
“It’s her word against yours, Oliver,” the doctor said. “And we all know that Rebecca doesn’t lie. She just plain doesn’t.”
Finally, Oliver put his arms around Rebecca and pulled her close, his lips nuzzling her hair as she clung to him. But then he caught a glimpse of the Asylum looming on top of the hill outside the window. He released Rebecca from his embrace and his expression hardened. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said. “There’s something I’ve got to do.”
Leaving the house, Oliver strode up the hill to the spot where the wrecking ball still stood, waiting for the work to proceed. Climbing into the seat in front of its controls, he found the starter switch, and the machine’s engine roared to life. He studied the controls, then began working the various levers.
A moment later the enormous lead ball swung back on its cable, paused for an instant at the end of its arc, then moved again, gaining momentum as Oliver aimed it at the great stone edifice.
As the ball smashed into the wall, glass shattered and rock exploded in every direction.
Again and again Oliver sent the ball crashing against the Asylum’s wall. With every blow a little more of the pain his father had inflicted on him when he was a boy was finally relieved.
The battering went on and on, until, too weak to stand any longer, the prisonlike wall of the Blackstone Asylum collapsed.
Oliver Metcalf at last was free.