“CON!” Frank shouted as he knelt down by his friend and gently placed his fingers against his throat, checking to see if he was still alive.  Behind him he heard Biff pick up a phone and then curse loudly.  

“There’s a phone off the hook somewhere!”  

“Use your cell!” Frank yelled at him, trying to get through the shock he could see his friend was in.  “He’s alive!”  As Biff called 9-1-1 on his cell phone, Frank felt Con moving beneath his hand.  

“Take it easy,” he instructed, as his eyes appraised the amount of blood and knew the cop was hurt badly.  He swallowed back the bile in his throat as he could smell the blood.  “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”  

Seeing the wound through the rip in Con’s shirt, Frank gently pressed down on it in an effort to slow down the bleeding.  Con moaned as the touch caused a new lancet of pain through his back.  

“I’m sorry,” Frank said softly, even as his mind screamed with questions:  What happened?  Where was Joe?  Where was Will?   Where was his brother?  

“F-Frank…”  The voice was barely a whisper, and the dark-haired teen was shocked that Con was still conscious.  He leaned in close to hear what the cop was saying. “he’s…got…J-Joe…”  

“Shhh, Con, you need to save your strength.”  It was the hardest thing for Frank to do, as he just wanted to shake the story out of the cop, but he knew that Con was weak and needed to conserve his strength, or else he might not make it.  

But the officer was not to be put off so easily, and he managed to shake his head ever so slightly as he whispered, “No…Frank.  Get…Joe.  Hall…the hall…” his mumbling trailed off, and Frank couldn’t make out anything else he said.  

“The ambulance is on its way,” Biff said, coming back into the kitchen. He had left the room to get better reception.  

Frank looked up at his brother’s best friend and his eyes shone with unshed tears. “Will has Joe, Biff.  Con told me.  He’s taken Joe….”

* * *

Fenton and Sam pulled up behind Frank’s van and hurried towards the house.  In the distance they could hear the sound of sirens and knew the backup was on its way.  

Pushing open the unlocked door, Fenton called out, “Frank?  Con?” and was rewarded by a shout from the kitchen.  

“We’re in the kitchen Dad!”  

Crossing the living room quickly, the two sleuths were stunned by the scene that greeted them, as Frank hurriedly filled them in on what Con had told them.  

“A hall?”  Sam repeated, his face screwed up as he tried to make out some sort of connection, as Fenton knelt down beside his son to assess Con’s injury.  “That doesn’t make much sense.”  

“I know—”  Frank started to agree, but stopped mid-sentence, and traded a look with his father.  “—unless Con didn’t mean ‘A’ hall, but ‘the’ hall like—”  

Fenton cut him off grimly.  “Like Foundling Hall.”  

Biff sucked in his breath – William’s old stomping ground – and he quickly said, “Well what are you guys waiting for?  Go get Joe.  I’ll stay with Con until the paramedics arrive, and fill the police in.”  By now they could all hear the sirens.  The muscular youth was already kneeling down next to Frank, ready to take over putting pressure on the stab wound.  

“You’re sure?” Frank asked, although he did stand up and let Biff take over.  

“Just get Joe away from that psycho, once and for all, okay?”  

Frank squeezed his friend’s shoulder and nodded. “You know I will.”  

And then he was gone, with his father and Sam only a heartbeat behind him.

* * *

Joe’s heart was racing as he looked up at Usher Hall.  

He knew that if Frank didn’t figure this out pretty quickly, then he’d never see outside those brick walls again.  

After Will had handcuffed Joe with Con’s handcuffs, he then dragged the cop into the kitchen, wanting to delay his discovery as long as possible.   

Con was still conscious, and as they were leaving the kitchen, Joe had managed to say, “I should have known Foundling Hall would be the death of me someday.”  

Will had snorted, “Yeah…I just love the poetic irony of it all, don’t you, dear brother?  We’re going right back to where it started.  Just you and me again, sweetie….Just like old times….”  

Joe was counting on Con overhearing and hopefully being able to pass that tidbit on to Frank.  But it would be up to Frank to figure out that Will would not take Joe to Foundling itself ,but into one of the deserted buildings.  That gave him a 50/50 shot of picking the right one.  

Of course, that was putting a lot on his older brother, but Joe knew Frank was smart and he had no doubt he would figure it out.  He just wasn’t as confident that it would be in time.  

Joe couldn’t run.  His leg had him hobbling, and he knew he’d never outrun William anyway.   

This is not exactly what I had in mind when I thought about stalling, Joe through grimly after William hide the SUV around the back of the building and then pulled him into the old building and mostly dragged him up two flights of old decrepit stairs.  

“Lovely place you have,” he couldn’t help but mutter, even if did cost him a ‘love’ tap on the top of his head by his psychotic brother.  

“Well honestly, little brother.” Joe winced to hear William call him that.  “I think it’s quite fitting that it’s here we’ll end this, once and for all. Usher Hall.  What is it Edgar Allan Poe wrote? Then the ‘deep and dank tarn...closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher’….”  As he spoke, he pulled Joe towards a door at the end of a hallway on the second floor.  

The younger boy stumbled as he tried to resist, but William just gave his arm a yank.  “Did you ever read ‘The Fall of the House of Usher?’. It’s about madness, and the madness of twins…a lot like you and me, actually….And this shall be our House of Usher!”  

Oh great, Joe thought, transcendence.  He’s going to glorify it through literature.  

FRANK! WHERE ARE YOU!!!!

* * *

“They’re on their way to Foundling Hall,” Biff told Chief Collig as the paramedics readied Con for transport.  The grizzled police chief had arrived shortly after the paramedics.  

He was standing with Biff and another officer as the ambulance crew gently worked on Con; his eyes were saddened to see the state of one of his finest officers, and he hoped he would be okay.  

“Foundling Hall?” The other officer standing next to them, a shorter man with a receding hairline, echoed, “That’s a coincidence.”  

“What do you mean?” Ezra demanded, already knowing he wasn’t going to like the answer by the way the man shifted in front of him.  

“Well, that’s where Doug Ranier lives.”  

“Doug Ranier?” Biff repeated the name, unsure of its connection to any of this.  

Collig’s face darkened.  “Ranier is the kid ‘William’ supposedly carjacked to get to the Hardys’ house last night.”  

“But that wasn’t…” Biff’s voice trailed off, and Ezra finished:  

“But that wasn’t William.”

* * *

Joe stood in the small room and watched his brother warily.  His body was trembling in anticipation of whatever cruelty William had in store for him this time.  His hands were still cuffed behind him, leaving him defenseless to whatever was coming.  

William appraised him quietly, and then taking out the same knife he had used to stab Con with, he backed Joe up to a cold stone wall and then cut Joe’s shirt, leaving him bare-chested and terrified.  

“Let me see,” he demanded and Joe slowly turned around, knowing that William wanted to see the results of his handiwork…the scars.  

Joe quivered as he felt the cold touch of his brother’s hands on his back.  He closed his eyes and begged for this to be over with quickly.  

He felt his twin exhale against his shoulder as William whispered, “Miss me, sweetie?” and then Joe screamed as something hot was pressed in against his back.  He hadn’t even been aware that Will had lit a cigarette!  

Before he could fully recover from that shock, William grabbed him and tossed him roughly down into the only piece of furniture in this room – a straight-backed chair.   

William quickly pulled something out of his pocket, and Joe felt all the blood drain from his face.  It was a tie…two, to be exact.  

Two ties that Joe recognized from his own closet.  

Closing his eyes as an unexpected wave of fear washed over him, he was once again reduced to the terrified child that Will locked in closets and beat whenever it pleased him; he barely noticed his legs being tied to the chair or his already cuffed wrists being painfully pulled back and secured to the back of the chair he was sitting in.  

All he knew was that this new burn refreshed the horror of Will’s last attack, and Joe knew he wasn’t going to survive this one.  

William stood in front of him and finished his cigarette, his vibrant blue eyes gleaming in anticipation. When he was finished he leaned in closer to Joe, pleased when he saw the younger boy try to draw away from him.  

“Now baby brother,” William mocked him with contrived affection, as he ran a finger across Joe’s bare chest and felt him shudder, “Don’t you be going anywhere, I have a surprise for you!  One that you’ll just die for….”  

He left the room, and when he came back a few minutes later, Joe felt a new kind of fear.  William was carrying cans of kerosene…and as Joe watched, horrified, the demented twin started to douse the whole room.  

And then as he turned and walked towards the helpless teen, William smiled – and it was a truly terrifying thing.  “I saved the best for last.”  

Picking up his last can of accelerant, William unscrewed the lid and stood over his brother.  “You really have no one to blame but yourself,” he said, and then as he prepared to pour it over Joe he finished, “You were born.”