The Blackstone Chronicles

Chapter 5

Elizabeth was holding her baby—a perfect, tiny boy—cradling him gently against her breast. She was sitting on the porch, in a rocking chair, but it wasn’t the porch of the house in Blackstone, nor, oddly, was the day nearly as cold as it should have been, with Christmas only three weeks away.
The summer mists seemed to part, and she realized where she was—back home in Port Arbello, on the porch of the old house on Conger’s Point, and it was a perfect July day. A cool wind was blowing in off the sea, and the sound of surf breaking against the base of the bluff was lulling her baby into a contented sleep. She began humming softly, just loud enough so her baby could hear her, but quietly enough not to disturb him.
“Rockabye baby,
In the tree tops,
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock …”
The words died away to nothing more than a murmuring hum, and Elizabeth began to feel drowsy, her eyelids heavy. But then, just as the song faded completely from her lips, a movement caught her eye.
A child was emerging from the woods across the field.
Megan.
Elizabeth was about to call out to her daughter, but as the child grew closer, she realized this little girl wasn’t blond, sunny Megan at all.
It was her sister.
It was Sarah!
But that wasn’t possible, for Sarah looked no older now than she had on that day so many years ago when she’d been taken away to the hospital.
Yet as the little girl drew closer, walking steadily across the field, directly toward her, Elizabeth felt a terrible chill.
Sarah was carrying something cradled in her arms. She was holding it out now, offering it to her, and Elizabeth recognized it instantly.
An arm.
Jimmy Tyler’s arm …
Reflexively, Elizabeth looked down at her baby.
Her son was no longer sleeping. Instead, his eyes were wide open, and he was screaming, though no sound came out of his mouth. But worse than the silent scream, worse than the terror in the infant’s eyes, was the blood spurting from her child’s left shoulder, where the arm had been hacked away.
Elizabeth felt a scream rise from her lungs, but at the same time a terrible constriction closed her throat, and her howl of anguish stayed trapped within her, filling her up, making her feel as if she might explode into a million fragmented pieces. There was blood everywhere now, and Sarah, still holding the bloody arm that had been torn from the baby’s body, was drawing closer and closer.
Elizabeth tried to turn away; could not. Finally, with an effort that seemed to sap every ounce of her energy, she hurled herself out of the chair and—
Elizabeth jerked awake. For an instant the terrible vision still hung before her. Her heart was pounding and she was gasping for breath. But as the dream quickly retreated, and as the hammering of her heart eased and her breathing returned to normal, she realized she wasn’t back in Port Arbello at all.
She was in her room in Blackstone, on a December afternoon, and her baby was still safe in her womb. Yet, as if from a great distance, she once again heard the lullaby she had been crooning in the dream.
“When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall,
And down will go baby,
Cradle and all …”
Elizabeth rose from the chaise on which she’d been sleeping and stepped out into the hall. The lullaby was louder now, and coming from Megan’s room. Moving silently down the wide corridor that ran two-thirds of the length of the second floor, Elizabeth paused outside her daughter’s door and listened.
She could still hear Megan, humming softly.
As she herself had been humming.
She opened the door a crack and peered inside.
Megan was sitting on her bed.
She was cradling the antique doll in her arms.
Elizabeth pushed the door wide. The lullaby died on Megan’s lips as her eyes widened in surprise. Her arms tightened reflexively, pressing the doll close to her chest.
Elizabeth crossed the room until she was standing over her daughter. “We decided the doll would stay in the closet, didn’t we?”
Megan shook her head. “You decided,” she said. “I didn’t.”
“We all decided,” Elizabeth told her. “Daddy, and Mommy, and you. So I’m going to put the doll away again. Do you understand?”
“But I want her,” Megan protested. “I love her.”
Reaching down, Elizabeth took the doll from her daughter. “She’s not yours to love, Megan. Not yet. Perhaps someday, perhaps even someday soon. But not now. I’m putting it back in the closet,” she said. “And you’re not to touch it again. Do you understand?”
Megan looked up, saying nothing as Elizabeth left the room and closed the door. For a moment Megan felt hot tears flood her eyes. Then she realized: It didn’t matter where her mother hid the doll. She would find it, and it would be hers.
Elizabeth carried the doll back downstairs and was about to put it back in the closet when she changed her mind. The closet would be the first place Megan would look. Leaving the hall, she went through the arched entry into the living room, then beyond it, in the library, saw the perfect place to put the doll: the top shelf of one of the pair of mahogany cases Bill had built to stand on either side of the fireplace.
The top shelf—one she could barely reach herself—was empty. Even if Megan spotted the doll up there, she wouldn’t be able to get to it without a ladder. Positioning the doll as far back on the shelf as she could, Elizabeth was about to leave the library and return upstairs when her eyes fell on a portrait.
Along with the treasured books Elizabeth had brought with her from Port Arbello, there were framed pictures of her family and Bill’s, and even an old Ouija board she and Sarah had played with when they were children. The portrait to which her eyes had been drawn was of one of Bill’s aunts—the one named Laurette, Elizabeth dimly remembered, who had killed herself long before Bill had been born. Though Elizabeth had seen the portrait dozens of times before, this time something about it caught her eye. She stared at it, trying to understand what had captured her attention. Then her eyes returned to the doll that now sat on the top shelf of the mahogany case.
There was an odd resemblance between the doll and the woman in the portrait, Elizabeth realized.
The same blue eyes.
The same long blond hair.
The same pink cheeks and red lips.
It was as if the doll were a miniature version of the woman in the painting.
A thought flitted through Elizabeth’s mind. Could it be possible that the doll had actually been modeled on this woman? Perhaps even been owned by her? As quickly as the thought came, Elizabeth dismissed it.
Going back upstairs, she stretched out on the chaise once more, and this time, when she slept, she didn’t dream.
Megan McGuire’s eyes opened in the darkness. For a moment she was startled, unsure what had awakened her, but then, on the far wall of her bedroom, she saw a shape.
The shape of a witch, inky black, with pointed hat and flowing gown, astride a long broomstick. In her hand—held high aloft—she grasped a sword.
The witch was moving now, flying higher, moving up toward the ceiling, hurtling through the air, then down toward Megan.
The little girl shrank into her pillow, pulling the covers tight around her neck as a shiver of fear passed through her.
Closer and closer the witch came, sword brandished.
Megan pressed deeper into the pillow.
Then, just as Megan could feel the first tingling of the sorceress’s touch, the apparition vanished as suddenly as it had come, snatched away by an enormous flash of light.
As she always did, Megan lay still for a moment, savoring the delicious thrill that the shadow always gave her, even though she knew perfectly well that the soaring witch was no more than a momentary vision produced by a car driving up Amherst Street, then vanquished by its headlights the instant the car passed by the house.
The room returned to its familiar shape as the sound of the car faded away, but as Megan released her grip on the blanket that covered her, she heard something else.
A sound so soft she almost couldn’t hear it at all.
The sound grew louder as she listened, and then she knew exactly what it was.
Someone was crying.
A little girl with long blond hair, pink cheeks, and blue eyes.
A little girl wearing a ruffled white pinafore and a garland of flowers in her hair.
A little girl who wanted to be her friend, but whom her mommy had sent away.
Getting up from her bed, Megan pulled her robe over her flannel nightgown and slipped her feet into the woolly slippers Mrs. Goodrich had given her for Christmas last year. Pulling the door to her room open a crack, she peered out into the hallway. Farther down the hall, halfway to the stairs, she could see the door to her parents’ room.
It was closed, and no light shone from the crack beneath it.
Silently, Megan crept along the hall, then down the stairs.
The little girl’s crying was louder now. When Megan reached the bottom of the stairs, she peered through the dining room and butler’s pantry, into the kitchen.
No light came from any of the rooms, nor could she hear the television droning in Mrs. Goodrich’s room.
Save for the sound of the little girl’s sobbing, the house was as silent as it was dark.
A last, sorrowful sob faded away, and a moment later Megan heard something else.
A voice calling her name.
“Megan … Megan … Megan …”
It was as if the voice had become a beacon. Megan followed it away from the kitchen and the housekeeper’s quarters to the other side of the house. Through the darkness of the entry hall, she moved, through the deep shadows of the large living room, gliding as easily as if it were daylight, then pausing at the door to the library.
The voice grew louder: “Megan … Megan …”
The library was almost pitch-black. Megan stood in the darkness, listening. Then, through the French doors leading to the flagstoned side patio, the first rays of the rising moon crept into the room. In that first instant of faint illumination, Megan saw them.
The eyes of the doll, gleaming in the moonlight, gazing down at her from the top shelf of the tall case that stood against the wall to the right of the fireplace.
So high that her mother thought she wouldn’t be able to reach it.
But Megan knew better. As silent and surefooted as she’d been when she crept through the upstairs hall and down the stairs, she crossed the library and began climbing up the shelves of the cabinet as easily as if they were the steps of a ladder.
Elizabeth jerked awake, not from the terror of another nightmare, but from a loud crash, immediately followed by a terrified shriek. Then, a long, wailing cry.
Megan!
Heaving herself out of bed and ignoring the robe lying on the chaise longue, Elizabeth stumbled through the darkness toward the bedroom door. She fumbled with the two old-fashioned light switches set in the wall next to the door. A second later the overhead fixture in the center of the ceiling came on, filling the room with harsh white light. Blinking in the glare, Elizabeth jerked the bedroom door open and stepped into the hall, now lit brightly with its own three chandeliers.
Megan’s door was closed, but as Elizabeth started toward her daughter’s room, another scream rent the night.
Downstairs!
Megan had gone downstairs and—
The doll! She’d found the doll and tried to get it, and—
Heart beating wildly, Elizabeth lurched to the top of the long flight and started down. When she was still three steps from the bottom, the lights in the entry hall came on, illuminating Mrs. Goodrich, wrapped in a tattered chenille bathrobe, shuffling toward the living room.
As still another cry echoed through the house, Elizabeth came to the bottom of the stairs and rushed through the living room. At the door to the library, she reached for the bank of switches, pressing every one her fingers touched. As the lights flashed on and every shadow was washed from the room, the vision Elizabeth had seen only in her mind a few moments before was now revealed in its terrible reality.
The mahogany case had fallen forward. Beneath it, Elizabeth could see Megan struggling to free herself from the massive weight pressing down on her. The pictures and curios that had filled the case’s shelves were scattered everywhere, shards of glass from broken picture frames littered the carpet, and figurines lay broken all around her.
Megan’s shrieks had deepened to a sobbing cry.
Choking back a scream, Elizabeth rushed across the room and bent down, her fingers curling around the front edge of the cabinet’s top.
From the doorway, realizing what Elizabeth was about to do, Mrs. Goodrich cried out. “Don’t! You mustn’t!”
Ignoring the old housekeeper’s plea, Elizabeth summoned every ounce of strength she could muster and heaved the case upward, lifting it off her daughter. “Move, Megan,” Elizabeth cried. “Get out from—” Her words cut off by a terrible flash of pain that felt as if a knife had been thrust into her belly, Elizabeth struggled to hold on to the cabinet while Megan, finally responding to her mother’s voice, squirmed free. A second later the weight of the cabinet overwhelmed her and it crashed back to the floor. Elizabeth sank down onto the carpet as another wrenching pain ripped through her and she felt something inside her give way.
“Call … ambulance,” she gasped, her hands clutching protectively at her belly. “Oh, God, Mrs. Goodrich. Hurry!”
Wave after wave of pain was crushing her. Elizabeth felt a terrible weakness come over her, and the light began to fade.
The last thing she saw before darkness closed around her was Megan, on her feet now and looking down at her.
In Megan’s arms, utterly undamaged by the accident that had smashed everything else the cabinet had held, was the doll.