The Blackstone Chronicles

Chapter 8

The crowd in front of the Becker house dispersed almost as fast as it had gathered, and though Bonnie Becker knew the thought was uncharitable, she had a distinct feeling that at least a few of those who’d rushed out of their homes were just a bit disappointed that there had been so little to see. Within minutes after Ed and Larry Schulze emerged from the house, only Bill McGuire was left. Bonnie, feeling at sea, was perplexed—and perhaps just slightly resentful—that none of her neighbors had offered to take them in for the night. Was it possible they actually thought she would go back into the house tonight? Or take Amy back inside?
Bill McGuire read her expression perfectly. “You don’t get invited to stay at anyone’s house until you’ve been here for at least two generations,” he explained, displaying the first semblance of a grin Bonnie had seen on his face since his wife died. “It’s the price Ed has to pay for having married out of town. But don’t worry—I married out of town too. You’ll all stay with Megan and me. Besides, if I know Mrs. Goodrich, she’ll have a pot of tea on.”
Far too upset by fear and its aftermath to offer even the feeblest of polite protests, Bonnie gave Bill a hug instead. “I promise it won’t be for more than a night or two,” she assured him. “I just have to know it’s safe.”
Just as Bill had thought, the teakettle was whistling and Mrs. Goodrich was bustling about the kitchen as they entered his house, which was across the street. Amy, already having converted the night into a wonderful adventure, slid onto a chair at the kitchen table and demanded a glass of milk.
“Say please,” Bonnie automatically instructed her daughter, but Mrs. Goodrich was already setting a tumbler in front of the little girl.
“Please,” Amy parroted as her hand snaked out to take a cookie from the plate the old housekeeper offered.
Ten minutes later, with Amy making no more than a token protest against having to go to bed, Bonnie tucked her daughter in next to Megan McGuire. Megan was fast asleep, looking angelically peaceful with her arms wrapped around the doll that had been her inseparable companion since her mother died.
“It’s so beautiful,” Amy breathed, gazing at the doll’s porcelain face. “Can I have a doll like that?”
“We’ll see,” Bonnie temporized. “I’m not sure we can find one. But maybe tomorrow Megan will share hers with you. Now, go right to sleep,” Bonnie told her, bending over to kiss her daughter. “And don’t wake Megan up. All right?”
“All right,” Amy promised. But as soon as her mother was gone, she reached over to touch the beautiful doll.
“Don’t,” Megan said, her voice startling Amy, whose hand jerked back before she’d made even the slightest contact. Megan’s eyes were wide open, and Amy realized she hadn’t been sleeping after all.
“She’s mine,” Megan went on, “and she doesn’t like anyone else to touch her. She doesn’t like it one bit.”
Megan’s eyes closed and she said nothing else, but for a long time Amy lay awake. She stared at the doll. In the dim light from the street lamp outside, it almost seemed to be sleeping. But Megan’s words kept echoing in her mind.
She didn’t try to touch the doll again.
*  *  *

“It happened again.”
Ed and Bonnie were in the McGuire guest room. Bonnie was already in bed, and Ed was standing at the window, gazing out at the house across the street and one lot down the slope. His house. His sanctuary, meant to provide shelter from the storms of daily life as much as from winter’s icy blasts. In the last twenty-four hours his refuge had become instead a place where his nightmares came true.
“What happened?” Bonnie asked, though her heart was beating faster in anticipation of his reply.
“I dreamed it.” Ed turned away from the window and sat on the edge of the bed. In the shadowy darkness of the room, he told her about the dream he’d had, and what he’d seen in the basement only a little while ago, when he and Larry Schulze had gone down to assess the damage.
“But it wasn’t a gunshot,” Bonnie insisted when Ed was finished. “And it wasn’t blood. It was paint, Ed. It was just a can of paint whose lid got knocked off in the explosion.”
“But—”
“But darling, it really was just a dream.” Feeling utterly exhausted as the remembered terror of the explosion closed in on her, she said softly, “It will all seem different in the morning. Can’t we talk about it then? Please?”
Ed hesitated, but as Bonnie held her arms out to him, he slipped into bed beside her, holding her close. She was right, he decided as he kissed her gently. In the bright light of day, none of it would seem so terrible. And, in truth, there had been no permanent damage, nothing they wouldn’t easily recover from. Tomorrow they’d look for a new puppy for Amy, and with a couple hours’ work the mess in the basement would disappear as completely as if the explosion had never happened. Bill McGuire had already promised to put in an automatic detection system to guard them against another accident. In a few days everything would be back to normal. As he felt Bonnie’s breathing drift into the gentle rhythm of sleep, Ed Becker closed his eyes, yielding to oblivion.
Ed stood on the sidewalk, staring at the house.
Around him the night had become eerily quiet, as if the explosion had silenced every living thing in Blackstone.
Ed knew he should turn around and go back to Bill McGuire’s house, slip back into bed with Bonnie, and let himself surrender to sleep. Instead, he moved toward the house, irresistibly drawn inside.
His house—yet not his house.
In the living room, all the furniture he and Bonnie had brought with them from Boston was gone, and the heavy Victorian decorations from the long-ago days when his grandmother had lived here were all back in place. The room looked exactly as it had when he’d viewed the picture in the stereoscope. The stereoscope itself sat on a mahogany gateleg table upon which a lace cloth had been spread. Moving closer to the table, Ed lifted the cloth and ran his fingers appreciatively over the perfect satin finish. There was a drawer at one end of the table, and Ed’s hands closed on its pull. He hesitated, remembering the carnage let loose when, in his dream, he’d pulled open the drawers of the oak chest from the Asylum. Yet even as his mind cried out against temptation, Ed’s trembling fingers slid the drawer open.
He found himself gazing at a .38 caliber pistol.
The pistol was clutched by a hand hacked off at the wrist, blood dripping from its severed veins.
Shuddering, he slammed the drawer shut. He stood still, waiting for the sick feeling in his stomach to pass.
It was not there, he told himself. I only imagined it.
But he didn’t try to open the drawer again, instead dropping the tablecloth back in place to conceal the drawer, to make it disappear.
He left the living room and moved into the dining room. A gleaming cherry-wood table surrounded by eight armchairs stood where only a few hours before his own teak table had been. Against the wall a Victorian break-front was filled with Limoges china in an ornate pattern of royal blue and gold. On one shelf three dozen heavy crystal goblets glittered in the dim light.
He reached for a glass. As he took it, it filled with blood.
Dropping it, Ed spun around. The table, bare only a moment ago, was set now as if for a feast. Twin candelabra, each of them glowing with a dozen candles, cast a warm glow over an elegant display of silver and crystal.
At each place, a serving plate had been set, and on each plate there was a single object.
The severed heads of eight of Ed Becker’s clients stared at him with empty eyes. Their lips were stretched back from their teeth in grim parodies of smiles, and pools of blood filled the plates upon which they sat.
“No!” The word caught in his throat and emerged only as a strangled grunt. Backing out of the dining room, he turned to flee, but instead of taking him out of the house, his legs carried him up the stairs until he stood at the door to the master bedroom. His heart pounded. He tried to make himself turn away from the closed door, to go back down the stairs, to leave the house.
Powerless to stop himself, he reached out and pushed the door open. As it swung back on its hinges, the room was revealed, not as the cheerful sunshine yellow space Bonnie had made it, but as a dark chamber dominated by an ornate four-poster bed, its curtains drawn back to reveal a heavy brocade coverlet.
Then he saw the figure of the man.
He recognized it instantly, for its face was bathed in silvery light pouring in from the window.
Ed Becker was staring at himself.
And he was hanging, broken-necked, from the chandelier. The hands of the lifeless corpse reached out as if to grasp the living man and draw him too into the cold grip of death.
A scream of horror rose from Ed Becker’s lungs, boiling out of him, echoing through the room, shattering the night.