TWIST OF FATE: THE LOCKET
PreludeThe full moon stood high in the night sky above Blackstone, bathing the stones of the old Asylum atop North Hill in a silvery glow, even penetrating the thick layers of grime that covered its windows so that its dusty rooms were suffused with a dim light. Though the dark figure who moved silently through these rooms needed no light to guide him, the luminescence allowed him to pause now and then to savor the memories this place held for him: vivid memories. Images as sharp and clear as if the events they depicted had occurred only yesterday. He was their keeper, even if those same memories had faded from the minds of the very few in Blackstone who might have shared them.
And this room, with its shelves filled with mementos, was his sanctuary, his museum, to which he had added something new.
It was an ancient ledger, which he'd come upon in one of the basement store rooms. Covered in faded red leather, it was a ledger like the ones used in years gone by, in which was recorded all the minutiae of the Asylum's busy life. Taking the book to the shelf-lined, square room, he stroked its cover with all the sensual gentleness with which a man might stroke the skin of a beautiful woman. Hoping it might jog delicious memories even his brilliant mind might have mislaid, he finally opened its cover, only to feel a pang of bitter disappointment: despite its age, its yellowed leaves proved blank. Then disappointment gave way to a tingling excitement. There would be a new use for the book, an important use.
An album!
An album containing accounts of the madness unleashed upon the town that had spurned him.
Now, hunched over the album in the dim moonlight, he opened its cover and read once more the familiar words of the two articles he had painstakingly clipped and carefully pasted to the brittle pages within.
The first described the suicide of Elizabeth Conger McGuire, despondent over the premature birth--and death--of her son.
Nowhere had the newspaper account mentioned the beautiful doll that arrived at the McGuires' a few short days before Elizabeth's death, returning at last to the house from which it had been carried so many years ago in the arms of a child who had entered this very building, never to leave it again.
The second article, lovingly pasted into the album, had appeared three days later, noting the burial of Elizabeth McGuire and listing all the people who had gone to the cemetery to mourn her.
People who, soon enough, would be mourned themselves.
Closing the album, the dark figure caressed its cover once again, shivering with anticipation as he imagined the stories it soon would contain.
Then, as the moon began to drop in the sky and dark shadows edged up the walls, he touched again the object he had decided to deliver next.
The beautiful heart-shaped locket, in which was contained a lock of hair....
