The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,145
accidental, there would have been as many rumors about his sister as there now were about what had really taken place in the Wagners’ house.
As had happened so often over the days since she’d disappeared, an image of Rebecca rose in Oliver’s mind. Since her mysterious disappearance, he’d felt an emptiness inside him, a hole at his very core that grew larger with each passing day. His frustration had grown too, as he’d realized there was nothing—nothing at all—he could do to help her.
But of one thing he’d become absolutely certain: when Rebecca was found—and he wouldn’t let himself even think of the possibility that she might not be found—he would ask her to marry him.
But now, as his uncle’s words echoed in his mind, he knew that when Rebecca returned, he couldn’t ask her to marry him. Not until he’d banished the demons—the demons that brought the blinding headaches and the terrifying blank spots in his memory. This morning he had at last found the source of those demons.
And the reason he had not been able to make himself go to bed tonight was clear: he knew that the time had finally come to face the demons, and vanquish them.
Sometime during the day it had come to him, a slow and dawning realization of the reason he could not bring himself to enter the Asylum: the certainty that the “accident,” the terrible thing that had happened to Mallory, must have taken place within those dark stone walls. From the moment he realized this, he knew that until he walked through those great oaken doors, he would not sleep. Yet as the afternoon had passed and daylight gave way to darkness, the courage of the sun had yielded to the shadowy terrors the moon brings with it. Now, as the clock downstairs struck midnight, Oliver knew he could put it off no longer.
He must enter the Asylum tonight or forever abandon hope of destroying the demons that haunted him.
Forever give up the hope of Rebecca.
Pulling on a jacket, he took his flashlight from its charger, checked to be sure the beam was at its brightest, then removed the key to the Asylum’s door from the hook next to his own. Even then he hesitated, but finally pulled his front door open and gazed up at the shadowed building looming atop the hill, fifty yards away.
Dark, silent, it stood against the night sky like some great brooding monster, quiescent now, but ready to come to furious life the instant it sensed an unwelcome presence. Oliver started up the path, moving carefully, stepping lightly, as if the mere sound of his feet crunching on the gravel might be enough to bring forth whatever evil lurked within the blackened stone walls.
At the foot of the steps leading to the heavy double doors, he hesitated again. Already a headache was stalking the fringes of his consciousness. As he mounted the steps and inserted the key into the lock, the first waves of pain washed over him. Steeling himself, Oliver drove the pain back into the dark hole from which it had crept, pushed the heavy oak panel open, and stepped inside.
Turning on the flashlight, he played its beam over the shadowed interior.
Where? Where should he go?
But even as the questions formed in his mind, some long-buried memory seeping out from his subconscious guided him through the warren of offices until he stopped in front of a door.
It seemed no different from any of the others, yet behind this door, he knew, were the rooms that had been his father’s office. His hand trembling, Oliver reached out, turned the knob, and pushed the door open.
Still outside the threshold, he let the flashlight’s beam inch through the room, searching every corner it could reach for whatever dark menaces might be lurking in wait.
But the room was empty.
His heart pounding and his right temple dully throbbing, Oliver forced himself to step through the doorway, expectant, unconsciously holding his breath.
There was nothing.
No sound. No sense of an unseen presence.
Only three bare walls, long stripped of the pictures that had once adorned them, and a fourth wall, lined with empty bookshelves.
He had no real memory of this space at all, yet still felt as though the room should be bigger than it was. But of course the last time he would have been in this room he had still been a little boy and it would have seemed huge.