The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,97

Martin shrugged elaborately. “You said it, not me.” She hesitated, but then decided she might as well tell him everything Edna had said. “She also said something about Rebecca having seen someone at the Hartwicks’ the night of the party—presumably the someone who left the locket, I suppose. Furthermore, Edna maintains that each and every one of the families who received these objects has some connection to the Asylum. Or at least did have, back when it was open.”

“Aha!” Oliver said, as if Lois had finally delivered incontrovertible proof of the ludicrous nature of Edna Burnham’s speculations. “Find me a family in Blackstone that didn’t.” Oliver’s eyes glittered with challenge. “The Asylum was the mainstay of the economy around here for years. Everyone in town had a relative working there, and half of them had relatives who were in the place, for God’s sake!”

Lois held up her hands as if to fend off his words. “Hey, I’m not the one you have to convince. It’s Edna—” She paused, then grinned with malicious enjoyment. “—and the hundred or so other people she’s probably convinced by now.”

“Oh, Lord.” Oliver groaned again. “What am I supposed to do? Write an article about some ancient evil that’s suddenly come forth from the Asylum to wreak havoc on us all?”

“Hey, that’s not bad,” Lois deadpanned. “I can see the headline now: ‘Beware the Blackstone Curse.’ ”

“How about this one instead,” Oliver shot back: “ ‘Beware the Unemployed Assistant Editor.’ ”

He was smiling as he turned and headed toward the rear of the building to the renovated office that Bill McGuire had finally finished last week. He busied himself readying the paper for the press, but try as he did to put Edna Burnham’s outrageous theory out of his thoughts, Oliver found himself coming back to it over and over again. As the day wore on, and Edna’s speculations kept popping unbidden back into his mind, he knew the idea must be churning around other minds in Blackstone as well.

Finally, shortly after noon, with this week’s Chronicle put to bed but his thoughts still restless, he gave up. “I’m going home,” he told Lois. “I might even go up to the Asylum and take a look around.” He managed a grin he didn’t quite feel. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll even find something that will prove Edna’s right.”

“Better if you can find something that proves she’s wrong,” Lois replied.

“More likely, I won’t find anything at all.”

Leaving the office, he thought about stopping into the library to see Rebecca Morrison, then remembered the dark glares he’d received from Germaine Wagner the last few times he’d turned up during working hours. Better to come back at closing time, when Germaine might not approve but at least would have no reason to object if Rebecca chose to let him walk her home.

Walk her home? He sounded like a high school kid. Obviously, the spring fever was back!

As he started up North Hill, Oliver found himself eyeing a few crocuses he might just steal for Rebecca later on in the afternoon. But then, when he came to the gates of the Asylum and stopped to look directly at the building, his good mood vanished.

Just the idea of entering the deserted building was enough to make his stomach cramp, and it wasn’t until he had turned away from the Asylum, walked back down the hill and entered his own house that the knot of pain in his belly began to ease. But his restlessness would not be tamed. He paced the living room, wandered into the kitchen, then back, feeling as though he needed to look for something—something that eluded him.

Almost unconsciously, his eyes moved to the ceiling.

Upstairs?

What was there to search for upstairs? There were only the three bedrooms and the bathroom. Nothing unusual to be discovered there.

Still, he found himself mounting the stairs, entering each room and pulling open the doors of the closets in all three bedrooms, looking for … what?

He’d been through these closets dozens of times—maybe hundreds—and knew exactly what was in each of them. Old clothes he hadn’t wanted to throw away, boxes of Christmas decorations, his luggage. But nothing from the Asylum.

Still, he searched each one a second time, then started back toward the top of the stairs, where he paused and found himself looking up once more.

The attic?

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been up there. But as he regarded the old-fashioned, spring-loaded, pull-down ladder, it occurred to him that if there really