“You’re in love with the idea of him. The man you love is a monster by nature, something you can’t save. You witnessed what he did to my uncle. You’ve seen what he’s capable of.”
Vivian felt like breaking down. Of course she felt stupid for still clinging to those feeble feelings for Milo—but Camilla had no idea how it felt to be emotionally chained to him! Vivian pictured a future with this man that entailed marriage, children, and a lifetime of marital bliss until death parted them.
Now it seemed death was the only bond they shared.
Despite her dormant yearning for Milo, she hated him. She loathed him for manipulating her like a plaything, for spreading a memo around the hospital about her HIV diagnosis, and for seducing her that night at his house. He was a master at the craft of deception and she despised him for making her question his devotion.
No, of course it was fake.
His affection was a lie. Every sweet promise he whispered to her in bed was a travesty on her soul.
He was only using her to get close to his sister.
“You’re coming with me to stop this,” Camilla said firmly. “Lover or not, we’re ending this now. And call him by his real name. Ezran is a psychopath who needs to be stopped, even if that means killing him.”
The idea of murdering him nauseated Vivian, but she feared there could be no alternative. Everything inside her cried out to deny that Milo was a deviant wretch. But nothing could bury the fact that he made the decision time and time again to brutalize the innocent.
She wanted to save him and hurt him in equal doses. Her emotions had deformed into an ambivalent cyclone of denial, desire, hatred, and confusion. She stood somewhere in the eye of that chaos, trying to find her way out before the combined forces tore her apart.
NINETEEN
The train bore Vivian and Camilla past winter-scalded forests to the town of Náchod. Stepping off the platform felt like taking the plunge into an ice cold river. The frost goaded them faster on the path to the woodland asylum.
Malevolence settled like dew over the forest, audible enough in the form of bestial moans and wind playing with wiry branches. That malevolence lingered and metastasized like an infection taking hold of the wildlife. Vivian and Camilla ventured mostly in silence to the grounds of the Magdalene Midnight Mission, tempted to venture off the path if only to avoid the end destination.
When Vivian looked upon the asylum, every nerve in her awakened to fear. She shuddered to think she could have ended up here. The Magdalene Midnight Mission looked like a hybrid of a Victorian chateau and a rotting prison. Its Gothic-styled spires and balconies almost looked fit for a wedding—which should have been the last thing on Vivian’s mind.
After all, she was here to murder the man she dreamt of marrying.
She winced as an icy chill slithered through her. This place had come to represent the accumulated failures of her life. She instantly decided the asylum would look better as a pile of ashes sinking into the ground. She wouldn’t mind burning this place once their business was concluded.
“We don’t have a phone signal out here. We’re cut off,” Camilla said, speaking for the first time since they set out on the forest path.
Vivian kicked open the door to the asylum. Even as they stepped inside, something scrabbled like insectoid appendages in the darkness. Camilla illuminated the disconcerting layout of corridors and dorms that innervated the laundry.
“How did the girls survive here?” Vivian asked.
“It’s nothing short of a nightmare what they endured. The nuns ensured the girls didn’t make any friends during their stay. They were even assigned numbers in place of their names. Your identity ceases to exist within these walls.”
Camilla’s flashlight flickered through a few dorms packed with multiple beds. The walls looked like ulcerous wounds burned into the plaster. The corridors groaned and sang in low tones of self-destruction as they teetered at the edge of collapse.
“Many survivors will carry scars for the rest of their lives,” Camilla whispered. “Once you’ve had a taste of dehumanization, it’s hard to forget. Bathing in cold water with lice was one of many punishments meted out to the girls if they stepped out of line.”
“That could have been my fate if I didn’t run away from home. It almost makes my time in the alleys seem like a vacation, doesn’t it?”
They finished a sweep of the first floor, anxiously waiting for Milo to reveal himself. The chapel, presumably the most comforting place in the asylum, felt like the epicenter of the wretchedness. One glance told Camilla this chamber was anything but a holy place. The statues in alcoves were unrecognizable aside from the vaguely human features. The entire chapel was a façade of the cruelest intent.
“There’s something back there. Do you see it?”
Past stained windows they crept until they stood at the altar. Camilla was half-expecting another umbilical cord but Milo had likely run out of body parts to bestow by now.
Instead, there was a human-sized crevice in the chapel wall, barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through. The stench of ammonia and arsenic assaulted her from beyond the darkness.
“Why would they wall this section off?” Vivian asked.
“Hold on a minute.” Camilla’s flashlight cut through the haze and illuminated the crevice. A cascade of blood rimmed the cavity. Tendrils of some unknown nature protruded from the wall cavity and knotted across the tiles.
“Shall we?”
Camilla kept her arms pinned at her sides as she slipped through the grotesque portal. It took a period of adjustment before she could see in the crawl space. The area behind the chapel was immense and barren, save for a few doors that seemed welded shut. The floor was rotting and felt like a web cobbled together with wooden planks.
“This looks like a shelter they might have used during an emergency. Maybe we’ll find some lighting back here.”
Vivian continued down the corridor in search of a fuse box or anything that might remedy the darkness.
Despite the calm face Vivian put on, Camilla’s paranoia grew. The hairs stood rigidly on her neck like pins quivering in her skin. On instinct, she looked over her shoulder and saw him.
The same pale figure that lurked outside her bedroom window stood in the wall crevice, silently plodding behind them.
Camilla screamed.
Vivian stood rooted to the spot, staring at the ghastly face of Milo. He looked inhuman as he shuffled toward her like a lobotomized patient. Hefting her gun, Vivian tried to pull the trigger but the blood coagulated in her veins.
A dim glow erupted in the far corners of the room, throwing light on a pair of emaciated feet. The rest of the body stepped out of the shadows, revealing a lanky figure with an eviscerated face. Its ghoulishly black eyes and slashed mouth greeted Vivian with glee. The sanitarium stalker uncurled her fingers, ready to lay waste to the rest of Vivian.
She refused to label that thing as a woman. Her face and body were too abnormal to associate with a female, even though traces of her humanity lingered.
Vivian turned her gun on the new target while all thoughts of Milo fled her mind. The stalker advanced at an alarming rate. Vivian squeezed off two bullets before a claw seized a handful of her stomach and lifted her into the air. She was brought down against the rotting floorboards in a wave of pain. She fired frantically at the woman until she emptied every cartridge onto the floor. Her spine felt like it would splinter from the blows when she heard and more importantly felt a popping sensation. The boards collapsed underneath her.
Camilla’s shrieks echoed above as Vivian tumbled through the floors. Something struck her head and the lights around her were snuffed out in an instant.
When Vivian awoke, she was floating. She found herself in a flooded, bathing chamber with brown tiles and drains. Chains stretched across the walls and dangled just below the showerheads.
“Ca… Camilla?” The water growled like a heart palpating under her feet.
; As soon as she stood up, the room seemed to sway in the opposite direction. Her skin itched like it wanted to crawl off her bones. Her motions felt choppy as she sloshed through the water. This primal fear felt like an acid trip she might have experienced before—except this time, the acid trip wouldn’t end. This would stretch on for eternity. She needed to escape. Her body didn’t feel right—it felt alien to her.
Vivian was mentally coming undone.
Her knees almost gave out. She thought of Milo’s treachery. Her vision reeled around the bathing room and its plethora of bloodstained manacles.
I’m in hell.
Something latched onto her thigh and dragged her under. She screamed as rank water swarmed into her throat. When the filth lifted from her eyes, the stalker’s head submerged in front of hers. The cleft in her face opened to a nest of teeth that seemed preternaturally large for a human.
Vivian’s lungs locked up no matter how she tried to scream. She landed a solid blow on her stalker’s eye as they scuffled. Breaking the surface to gulp down air, she submerged again.
The air blasted from her lungs when she felt something scrape against her belly like teeth. The thought of that thing’s jaws outstretched below amplified her paranoia.
She almost slammed head-first into a grate barring her way. Vivian emerged from the water into the linoleum prison. Noises akin to muffled voices bounced off the tiles.
The sound unnerved her so much that she barreled ahead through the dangling chains—directly into the woman’s embrace.
A fist slammed into Vivian’s chest, knocking the breath out of her. She doubled over as another punch caught her in the gut. Vivian lifted her arms in defense and they were batted aside.
Knuckles ground against Vivian’s sternum, razing the skin to flesh. The pain was dulled but within seconds it blistered into nerve ends on fire.
Nothing less than survival screamed through Vivian’s brain.
With the stalker all but fixed to her body, she tried to reach for the knife in her pocket. She always expected to wield it against a violent thug or maybe a groping drunk in the street—but not this. Her breath bled out as another punch slammed into her breastbone. At this rate, she was trying to punch her way into Vivian’s rib cage like a rotten piece of fruit.
Vivian closed her eyes and swooned. She was dying. That must have been the last dregs of life ebbing from her. She hoped God would be merciful to her in the next life. Take me somewhere without pain.
She grunted as knuckles imprinted her chest, sending flecks of her blood into the water. Her fingers jerked as they wrestled with the polished handle of the pocketknife.
No. Milo can’t have me like this. You can break every bone in my body but I’ll keep hunting you down.
With a howl of rage, Vivian yanked the knife from her pocket. Her fingers slipped on the blade as she rammed it into her assailant’s neck. That was it—all of her strength poured into one explosive strike.
Vivian choked for breath as the stalker leaned over her. If she was going to die in this ugly shower room, the moment was upon her. There was nothing Vivian could do to defend herself now.
With weary eyes, she studied the monstrosity with four inches of steel protruding from her neck. The deformed woman reached for her.
Vivian closed her eyes.
“Fuck you,” she hissed with a smile on her face. Water violently covered her head. When she could see again, she was alone. The stalker was floating lifelessly with the blade in her neck. Vivian sighed and wiped the blood from her lips. There was a gaping hole in her shirt centered by a bruise. The burning sensation required medical attention, but she couldn’t leave without Camilla.
“That was satisfying,” someone crooned. She froze and scanned the far corners of the bathroom.
“Milo?”
The voice seemed to carry through the pipes, transforming his eloquent sonnet into something hollow and foreboding.
“I always pined for another who understood the torment pulsing through my soul. You seemed like the ideal girl who could share that burden with me. Your sins weigh heavy on you, I know. It just took a matter of nudging to bring it back out.”
Vivian rose from her knees.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I thought of you as a social experiment,” Milo’s voice rang out from above. “I was intrigued when you trusted me with your none-too-wholesome past. I sincerely wondered if I could push you back to the brink of ruin. In a way, I wondered if I could make you similar to me.”
Vivian laughed, but it did little to blunt the rage swelling inside her.
“How did you do it? How did you spread tuberculosis through the hospital?”
“As you must have learned by now, I was sent to a tuberculosis sanitarium at a young age. It shouldn’t be a mystery why I despise society for allowing those slave institutions to flourish. I wanted to return the favor one day. It wasn’t very difficult, given my position at the hospital. I transmitted tuberculosis through blood transfusions, but you figured that out, didn’t you? You were catching on to me the more time you spent obsessing over the outbreak. It wasn’t enough to just fake your blood results.”
“Fake my results?”
“You don’t really have HIV, Vivian. It’s easy for me to switch results when I have access to the blood lab. I spread rumors about your diagnosis until word reached Crenshaw and he was forced to take action. You were on my trail. I had to do something to force you out of the hospital.”
Vivian couldn’t form words. She felt elated at this revelation, but it hardly mattered tonight. HIV wouldn’t claim her life but Milo surely would.
“Your lies destroyed everything I worked so hard to achieve!” she yelled. “I can’t go back to the nursing program because of you!”
“I could have killed you the night you spent with me,” Milo taunted. “How many times have I asked myself why you left my home with your head still attached? You truly have spun your way into my heart. I feel for you, Vivian, as much as I try to deny it. However, those sentiments are outweighed by the trouble you’ve caused me in recent days. You’ve come in between me and Camilla too many times.”
“I’ll never let you hurt her again. This is as far as your twisted game goes.”
“I can hear in your voice that I’ve taught you how to hate.”
Vivian scooped up the gun she dropped earlier. All she needed was one last bullet to end this.
“You’ve taught me much more than that. If you thought I was a thorn in your side before, you haven’t the slightest idea what waits for you.”
Vivian gripped a chain dangling from the ceiling. Despite the throbbing in her chest, she began to climb out of the abyss.
* * *
Camilla remembered darkness overtaking her. Nightmarish images of her brother floated through her brain. Winter gasped through the curtains of a nearby window, jolting her from sleep. She opened her eyes to a bedchamber that appeared pallid like a shed skin. It harkened to the existence of a tenant who would never return.
“This was our mother’s room.”
Milo “Ezran” Vesely stood behind the curtains. He was little more than an ethereal figure before the window.
Camilla’s eyes fell to his hand. He grasped a flail ending in three wickedly curved tails.
Standing in his gaze was like standing before a roaring furnace. Camilla could almost feel his hypnotic pull over her, entrancing and potent. Though she was free to run, she didn’t dare.
“What are you?”
Milo was calm but she sensed the volatility simmering inside him. He was so close to achieving his end goal and that prospect excited him.
“You tried to atone for our family sins by shutting down the asylums. I try to atone by ending our existence. I suppose we have our own methods for dealing with the treacherous past.”
Milo rolled the flail’s barbs between his fingers.
“I owe everything to Alyssa, the homeless woman who was brought to the Unive
rsity Hospital during Vivian’s first day at clinicals. I collected a sample of her blood when I learned she was infected with skin tuberculosis, which was the cause of death. I kept a reservoir of her blood to use for contamination.” He eyed Camilla oddly. “How strange that your charitable efforts brought her to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Alyssa was housed in the Magdalene Midnight Mission for her severe condition. She lived under the care of nuns with plenty of food and rest. When the asylum was condemned, the streets became her home. At least she was fed at the laundry. She still had a bed to sleep on when it rained or snowed.”
Camilla shivered as the chill of winter hissed through the rafts.
The flail slithered like a serpent over the tiles as Milo approached.
“You see, had you not condemned the Magdalene asylums, I never would have found Alyssa. I never would have harvested samples of her blood and used them in transfusions. I never would have found you.”
Camilla’s stomach sank in despair. How could her act of kindness result in something so heinous? As he drew closer, she struggled against the invisible bonds he put in place. His presence alone forbid her from running. Her only thought now was finding and saving Vivian from this monster.
“I was working at the hospital as a matter of convenience to punish society one day,” he continued. “I never would have suspected you would deliver Alyssa to me. I never anticipated this weapon falling into my hands. Knowing your weak heart, I knew I could use it to reach you.”
“How?”
“To lure out you out of hiding. Your guilt is a powerful tool, Camilla. I saw how it compelled you to shut down asylums that you had no part of. You had no hand in their creation or the abuses perpetrated by nuns, but you campaigned for their abolition. How many articles must you have written about the misconduct there?
“One might suspect you were trying to atone for some grievous sin. Of course, it was much simpler than that. I learned I could use that guilt to my advantage. I knew you wouldn’t hide from me while innocents are dying in the hospital. Not when you feel like their deaths rest squarely on your shoulders. Not when you can stop me from inflicting more suffering.”
Arsenic for the Soul Page 17