The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,176

pocked deep with ulcerations. Mucus ran thickly from its nostrils. On either side of the hooked nose, glowering eyes were sunk deep in hollowed sockets. The eyes, like the rest of the specter’s mien, were gray and dead, but from somewhere deep within them, a cold harsh light—a flame of evil—flicked like the tongue of a serpent.

The cigarette lighter, Rebecca thought. The present Oliver and I found for Andrea. It’s as if the dragon’s tongue were caught in the eyes of Death.

She tried to turn away, tried not to look at the terrible face, but something about it held her in thrall. There was a terrible hunger in the face, a yearning in the coldly flickering eyes, a depraved lust as it gazed upon her.

It’s come for me, Rebecca thought. Death wants me, and has come for me.

All her senses were playing tricks on her now.

She had no idea how long it had been since the Tormentor carried her up the stairs, no idea of what it was he wanted. When he’d finally set her down, she’d found herself lying on something hard and cold. As her hands, still bound behind her back, explored the smoothly rounded surface on which she lay, it had come to her.

A bathtub.

He’d put her in a bathtub.

And then, almost at the very instant she’d realized where she was, he’d opened the valve.

Not far.

Just enough so that the water began slowly to fill the tub.

Rebecca braced herself, tried to prepare herself for what might happen if he tore her clothes from her body. She turned her mind inward, searching within herself for something to sustain her through the ordeal she was certain was coming.

Oliver!

She would think about Oliver, and no matter what the Tormentor might do to her, it wouldn’t touch her.

She wouldn’t feel it.

Wouldn’t respond to it.

And when it was over, it would be as if it had never happened.

As the tub had filled, she conjured a picture of Oliver in her mind, imagined him smiling at her, saw his gentle eyes watching over her, felt his hands caressing her.

Listened to his voice consoling her, encouraging her, giving her strength.

The water slowly rose in the tub, covering first her feet and then her legs. The water, still carrying the icy chill of winter, numbed every part of her body it touched. Rebecca, inured to cold, turned away from the icy wetness as completely as she had turned away from the Tormentor, utterly closing her senses to it, putting herself in a place where she neither felt nor heard anything that did not emanate from within her own mind.

In her mind she was not alone.

Oliver was with her.

Oliver was looking after her.

Until, suddenly, Oliver was no longer there, and in his place the visage of Death hung before her again.

Her senses too had come alive. She could smell the fetid breath of the specter, feel the frigid water.

Was this what Aunt Martha had seen and felt as she died?

When she’d gazed transfixed upon the face of her savior, had she too seen Death leering hungrily down on her?

Had she already died?

But no—she could still feel the hardness of the tub, the wetness of the water.

The water still ran slowly into the tub. It covered her waist in an ice-cold blanket; its tentacles were reaching up toward her chest.

In the darkness surrounding her, Rebecca saw the lipless mouth of Death twist in a grisly parody of a smile.

Then, over the sound of running water, she heard something else.

A door opened.

Footsteps approached.

The Tormentor had returned.

Oliver stood in the center of his father’s office, so that the great walnut desk with the huge leather chair behind it loomed directly in front of him. His father would have to look neither to the right nor to the left to see him.

That was important.

When you were going to be punished, it was important to face it straight on. His father had told him that over and over again, but it was still hard.

So hard, in fact, that Oliver hadn’t quite been able to look up. But now he heard his father’s voice: “Oliver.”

Biting his lower lip to keep from crying out, Oliver finally looked up.

His father’s chair was empty.

He glanced almost furtively around the room, certain that his father must be there somewhere, but the sofa against the wall to the left was empty, and so was the wing-backed chair that faced his father’s desk. Then his eyes fell on the portrait of his mother that hung on the wall