The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,10

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.

Chapter 4

As he had often done before, Bill McGuire paused on the sidewalk in front of his house for no better reason than to gaze in satisfaction upon the structure in which he’d spent almost all his life. The house was a Victorian—the only one on this particular block of Amherst Street—and though Bill was perfectly well aware of the current fashion of turning houses such as his into pink, purple, or lavender Painted Ladies, neither he nor Elizabeth had ever been tempted to coat the old house with half a dozen colors of paint. Instead, they had faithfully maintained the earthy tones—mustards, tans, greens, and maroons—of the period, and the elaborate white trim, meant by the original builders to resemble lace that gave the house a feeling of lightness, despite its mass.

The house was one of only six on the block, and all of them had been as well taken care of as the McGuires’ Amherst Street, which sloped gently up the hill, eventually turning to the left, then back to the right, and finally ending at the gates of the old Asylum, could easily have been set aside as a sort of living museum of architecture. There was a large half-timbered Tudor on one side of the McGuires’, and a good example of Federal on the other. On the opposite side of the street were two houses that had been built early in the Craftsman era, separated by a large saltbox that, to Bill at least, appeared slightly embarrassed by the Victorian effusiveness of its across-the-street neighbor. Still, all six houses sat on spacious enough grounds and were surrounded by so many trees and shrubs that the block was unified by its parklike look, if not its architecture.

Today, though, as he gazed up at his house, with its profusion of steeply pitched roofs and dormer windows, Bill had a strange sense that something was not right. He searched the structure for some clue to his uneasiness, but could see nothing wrong. The paint wasn’t peeling, nor were any shingles missing. He quickly scanned the ornate trim work that he’d always taken special pride in keeping in perfect repair, but every bit of it looked exactly