The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,64
the orderly closed the incinerator door, mercifully blocking her view of what had been done to her baby. As they turned away from the incinerator, both the nurse and the orderly glanced up at her window, but if they recognized her, neither of them gave any sign. A moment later they too vanished from view.
For a long time she remained at the window, gazing out at the lonely, lifeless landscape that now seemed a perfect reflection of the coldness and emptiness inside her.
Her own fault.
All her own fault.
She should never have told her parents about the baby, never have let them bring her here, never have let them make the decisions that should have been hers.
And now, because of what she’d done, her baby was dead.
At last she turned away from the window, and now her body, as well as her spirit, felt numb. As if in a dream, she left her room and went to the dayroom. Seating herself in one of the hard, plastic-covered chairs, she stared straight ahead, looking at no one, speaking to no one. Hours passed. Sometime late in the afternoon a nurse came into the dayroom and placed a small package in her lap.
“Someone left this for you. A little girl.”
It wasn’t until long after the nurse had gone that she finally opened the package. She peeled the paper away. Inside was a small box. She opened the box and gazed at the object inside.
It was a cigarette lighter.
Made of a gold-colored metal, it was worked into the shape of a dragon’s head, and when she pressed a trigger hidden in its neck, a tongue of flame shot out of the dragon’s mouth.
Click. There were the flames that had shot hungrily from the mouth of the incinerator. Click. The fire leaped and consumed her baby.
She held the flame to her arm, and though her nostrils quickly filled with the sickly smell of burning flesh, she felt nothing.
No heat.
No pain.
Nothing at all.
Slowly, methodically, she began moving the dragon’s flame over her skin, letting the fiery tongue lick at every exposed piece of her flesh, as if its heat could burn away the guilt that was consuming her.
As the rest of the patients in the dayroom silently watched, she burned herself—arms, legs, neck, face—until at last there was no more flesh to torture.
The dragon, its flame finally extinguished, was still clutched in her hand when the orderlies finally came and took her away.
Within the hour, her own body had joined her baby’s.
The dark figure’s gloved hand closed on the dragon, and he smiled.
It was time.
Time for the dragon, after nearly half a century hidden in this dark lair, to emerge once more into the world beyond these cold stone walls.
Chapter 1
Oliver Metcalf turned up his collar, huddled deeper into his old car coat, and glanced up at the sky, which was rapidly filling with rain clouds. It was Sunday, and he’d intended to spend the afternoon in the Chronicle office, catching up on the unending details that always managed to pile up until they threatened to overwhelm the newspaper’s small staff, no matter how hard they worked. He was wading through a sea of paperwork when, an hour ago, Rebecca Morrison had turned up with a shy smile and the suggestion that he give up his boring old work in favor of accompanying her out to the flea market that had taken over the old drive-in theater on the western edge of town. Her eagerness was infectious, and Oliver quickly decided that none of the bills and correspondence that had waited for his attention this long couldn’t wait a day or two longer. Now, however, as he shivered in the chill of the late March day, he wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake. They were still two blocks from the drive-in, and it seemed the sky might open up with a downpour at any moment. “How come they’re open so early? Aren’t they afraid they’ll get rained out?”
Rebecca smiled serenely. “They won’t,” she said. “It’s the very first day, and it never rains on the first day of the flea market.”
“That’s the Rose Parade,” Oliver corrected her. “And that’s on New Year’s Day, in California, where it never rains. Unless it’s flooding, of course.”
“Well, it’s not going to rain today,” Rebecca assured him. “And I like the flea market on the first day. It’s when all the things people find in the attic or the basement over the winter are for sale.”