There was a personality trait in Kyle that did not allow him to stand down. He needed to be that person they all looked up to: the person at the center of attention, the toughest of the bunch, the one who had seen and done things they could only dream about. When, point in fact, Katie, Mike, and Clara saw Kyle as a bullshit artist for the most part—a guy who talked a big game and made up stories in order to make himself appear bigger, stronger, and more worldly than he ever was—yet they never let on to Kyle about this. They allowed him to play the role of tough guy and protector. They enjoyed the stimulation Kyle brought into their lives by simply allowing him the space to be who he wanted to be.
Katie soon jumped in on the same conversation. Kyle and Katie were now sitting at the same computer, sharing the keyboard, both responding to Clara at different times, each noting who they were by name.
Kate, imagine Kyle knowing about ALL of my life and THAT STUFF! Clara wrote, knowing Kyle was right there, reading it.
Kyle didn’t bite. He wasn’t interested. He had known enough about Clara by then to know that she led a life that was screwed up, according to her, and she needed a friend like him to help her fix it.
Clara moved on and talked about an upcoming day where they were all getting together to practice “gwchyndo,” a fighting style she claimed to have designed and developed. She wanted Kyle to train with them so she could personally show him her style of fighting. Clara knew Kyle was into swords and fighting a certain way; he liked to go out into the woods by himself and practices for hours.
I have studied gwchyndo briefly, CJ, told you that, Kyle wrote.
It was pronounced “gwin-chin-do,” Kyle explained. “For Clara, this ‘gwchyndo’ was something that was unique and exotic and, most important, something that made her feel special. It’s like, when she said, ‘I am a practitioner of gwchyndo,’ and you said, ‘Well, hey, what’s ‘gwchyndo’?’ she then had to explain it because you didn’t know. It made her the center. It’s the same reason why some people wear strange medallions on their chest, because they want people to ask them about it.”
If you enter my world, you learn about my personal life, Clara wrote.
You will learn about mine as well, so we will be even.
Clara next broke into a rant about not wanting to live. Kyle presumed it to mean that she was figuring on ending her life. This was Clara’s manipulative way—so honed and manufactured by then—of bringing the conversation back around to him (and maybe Katie) feeling sorry for her.
Is there anything I can do? Kyle asked, after allowing Clara to share how bad her life was and how much of a pain in the ass Patrick had been for dissing her lately.
Clara encouraged Kyle to meet her the following day.
He finally agreed.
Clara then asked what Kyle had meant by helping her with “anything” he could do.
Kyle said in whatever way he could, of course.
Then she talked about how she had been “driven” recently to “extreme depression” and “mental breakdowns,” and “the state” she was in was not so good.
I am there for you, CJ. I will do all I can, Kyle wrote back.
Well, I am thankful I don’t have weapons here . . . well, weapons I can kill myself w/
Please don’t say such a thing, CJ.
As the conversation continued between Kyle and Clara, Katie went away. Kyle said that Katie and Mike began to have sex in front of him, which was something they often did while he was on the computer talking to Clara.
Kyle continued speaking with Clara. They talked school. Kyle encouraged her to “ditch it” and find some fun in life. When she asked, “Like what?” he suggested “pyrotechnics!”
Then Clara said: How strong are you?
How do you measure strength? Kyle asked, hoping she’d clarify.
Yes, Clara answered.
I have been up for 4 days solid, Kyle said, hoping that alone would prove to her how tough he was.
Strong enough to stop me from doing something that harms me? Clara wondered, unimpressed by the fact that Kyle didn’t need a lot of sleep, apparently.
Maybe I would do whatever I deemed necessary to keep you safe.
Ok!
I found a new torture. Self-torture, Clara wrote, changing the subject.
I need to explain something before I go farther with what I would do to keep you safe, ok? Kyle had thought by now Clara understood this. They had talked about it on the phone and in person so many times, but he wanted to be clear.
Ok, go ahead.
I live by the code of the warrior. . . . I believe you already know that.
Yeah.
And therefore, I have codes I follow.
Yep.
And I follow them at all costs.
Ok.
Because that is the way my life is lived.
Go ahead. . . .
If I need to do something in accordance with my desideratum I do it by whatever means I deem necessary.
Ok.
And is whatever works the quickest at the time.
Ok.
If you were trying to hurt yourself ... I would first try to reason with you, which never lasts long with me.
Then?
Then if I thought it necessary ...
You’ll what?
I would probably first hold your wrists.
In some cases that wouldn’t work!
Then if you got violent, I would increase my hold until you finally calmed down. . . .
Kyle went on to say that if Clara displayed a lot of anger, he would allow Clara to take it out on him.
She said that wouldn’t be a “wise idea” with her: Especially w/ my mastery.
This sort of talk merged with Clara specifically going into her Lord Chaos character, while it was clear that Kyle was speaking about his personal rules for the way he played the game of life. There was no distinction here for Kyle between the Underworld and the real world. He was laying it out for Clara. She could take it and put it into any type of terms—and world—she wanted.
Kyle went into “teaching” Clara how to handle a staff, how to manage it to her advantage. He wanted to end the conversation there. There was only so much he could teach through the Internet.
Sleep? Clara asked, sensing he wanted to go.
No, I have to call someone.
Okay.
I hurt when I teach as well it is the only way to learn. I will see you tomorrow.
Yep.
Goodnight, CJ, sleep well. . . .
Clara turned off her computer. Although she never wrote about this particular moment, as she drifted off to sleep that night, Clara had to be considering that she now had Kyle Hulbert right where she needed him—and it was probably time to give the order.
CHAPTER 33
I FEEL THE utmost hatred for him, Clara wrote, before calling her father the one in the world who is the biggest, greedest [sic], hypocritical, most lying shithead. Clara wished that the OG would rot in hell (if it exists).... She wanted him to suffer greatly, [to] understand how psychotic his actions on Earth [were], and how much of a fucking liar he was to everyone.
What did she mean? Was Robert Schwartz putting on some sort of front? Was he one person at work, in front of the neighbors and family, and another, more immoral man at home with only Clara?
Clara Schwartz was sixteen when she wrote that passage. The anger, the unadulterated disdain she felt toward this man who had raised her, was palpable in every word she penned in her diary then.
Kyle had encouraged Clara to write everything down—specifically, a list of times her father had abused her.
“Keep track of it all,” he said one day. “Collect the evidence.”
Maybe he needed to see it in black and white more than she did?
Clara agreed; she told Kyle that she’d been doing that all along.
“I have journals and journals full of it all.”
“Good!” he said.
Some of what Clara wrote in those j
ournals—Clara’s aunt on her mother’s side later claimed in a letter to the court—should be taken seriously. Yet, the way the aunt described things inside the Schwartz house during those pivotal years (1996 through 1997) when all seemed to fall apart for Clara, it was Clara’s deceased mother who would have been the main abuser, not Robert Schwartz. (In speaking to the police, Clara’s sister would later agree.)
Clara’s aunt talked about the tortured history of the family on Clara’s mother’s side. She mentioned how Clara’s grandparents had engaged in arguments so loud, the neighbors would intervene and ask what in the hell was going on inside the house. This became shameful to the sisters (Clara’s aunt and Clara’s mother). They learned to live under a cloud of embarrassment, humiliation, and scandal.
One time in1966, Clara’s aunt claimed, she was asked by Clara’s grandfather to go and look after Clara’s grandmother. The woman was in a terrible place: Highly disturbed, unhappy and aggressive, and at one point she attacked me, the aunt wrote. More than that, in detailing a pattern of behavior within the family, the grandmother showed signs of “hallucinations and delusions,” and after “forty-eight hours of trying to calm her down” on that night, they had to admit her to the psych ward of a local hospital, where she was diagnosed as manic-depressive and placed on the psychological drug lithium carbonate, also called Eskalith, a drug designed as a treatment for “manic episodes of bipolar disorder” or “manic-depressive illness.”
The grandmother never recovered from that alleged manic break. Two years later, she developed intestinal cancer and died. The aunt gave no reason for it, but “there was no funeral” for the woman. Clara’s aunt never said what they did with the body or how they mourned her—only that she was dead and gone.
Looking at how the aunt defined the ebb and flow inside that Stone House where Clara’s mother, Joan, her aunt, and her uncle grew up—and where Clara now lived with the OG—one would have to draw a conclusion that anyone living there was doomed to disturbing and insane behaviors. If what Clara’s aunt later said is factual, there were generations of questionable and troubling behaviors going on. According to the aunt, there was cross-dressing, drug trafficking, lots of LSD use, rage-fueled arguments, tantrums, and beatings throughout the years she lived there. The mental and emotional abuse alone, she pointed out, was enough to drive even the most emotionally hardened person over the edge. It was as if the house itself was possessed, like that fictional Amityville horror story, and had caused chaos in the world of these kids, before Clara was even born and the OG ever came into the picture.
In her letter, Clara’s aunt called her parents, Clara’s grandparents: emotionally unpredictable . . . distant, and unrespon-sible [sic]. There was mental, emotional, and “some physical abuse” going on at any given time. And the odd thing was, no one, she claimed, ever talked about it or ever brought it up. It all became a bad dream—a nightmare—the entire family ignored. It was a white elephant they all just seemed to accept would defecate, at will, all over their lives.
“He’s dressing up in my clothes,” Clara’s aunt told her parents one day, speaking of someone she knew.
“It’s your fault!” her parents said, to her utter shock, blaming her.
Because nothing was ever done about it and the entire incident was never discussed, this person began to involve the neighborhood kids in the behavior. Soon the other parents called the house; the offender ultimately got psychiatric treatment.
Joan, Clara’s mother, had her own set of problems, her sister told the court. Joan had met Robert while she was in rehabilitation. Joan had been committed because of what her sister described as having “a breakdown.” Joan had been married before meeting Robert. That marriage ended in a bitter divorce and Joan had turned to drugs to deal with it, her sister claimed. That was the reason she had entered rehab.
We had been in touch over the years, the aunt wrote, speaking of her sister, but her behavior could be problematic.
Joan’s other sibling had once spoken, the aunt wrote, of incidences with Joan which were disturbing and indicated emotional instability as well as alcohol abuse.
There was one time when Joan took one of the kids—not Clara—to England to see the aunt, who had seemingly moved as far away from the family as possible. The child was eight. There was a family reunion. Robert didn’t attend, apparently. Walking around the party, Joan appeared to be out of it. Not necessarily drunk or high, but not in her right frame of mind.
Her thought processes were fragmented, the aunt wrote, and her behavior was distracted.
When she returned home after the reunion, Joan was hospitalized “immediately” and diagnosed as “manic-depressive.”
Like her mother before her, Joan was put on lithium.
The cycle was complete.
Where Robert Schwartz was concerned, the aunt described him as a guy without patience. She said that during the few times Joan and “Bob,” as she called him, visited her in England, she observed a man who was “easily angered” and “often belligerent.”
The aunt explained in the letter to the court that she had never been back to the Stone House after moving away, likely wanting to steer as far and clear away from that dark, twisted abode as possible. Still, she talked about her and Joan’s other sibling going back to the house and how, when they later chatted, he relayed stories of a couple—Robert and Joan—who were always screaming and yelling at their children and each other. It seemed that the Schwartz family epitomized the term “dysfunction,” and took over the role set in place by Joan’s parents before them.
Their other sibling, the uncle, “disliked Bob intensely,” the aunt reported. It was no secret that visiting Bob and Joan reminded the siblings of their youth while growing up in that same house. They could not escape their past. Now Joan and Bob were perpetrating on a new set of children the very same madness that Joan had managed to live through.
It was 1997 when Joan realized that a cough she had was much more than an infection or bronchitis. Joan had developed lung cancer and was very ill by the time doctors got to it. She would die that year, 1997, not having learned how badly the family and all that chaos had affected Clara, who was fifteen.
Those . . . children were living in an isolated farmhouse with two raging parents and one dying from lung cancer, the aunt wrote.
Counseling was mentioned as something the kids should undergo, the aunt said, especially Clara, who seemed to be taking it all the hardest: Bob refused to allow it. He didn’t want any of his kids in therapy. It meant admitting defeat. They could work things out themselves—that’s how families grew stronger.
It was always a given that Joan favored Clara more than Clara’s brother and sister, the aunt said. The aunt met with Clara after Joan’s death. The child didn’t seem right. She was terribly antisocial (especially within the family), not to mention oddly quiet. She kept to herself. She rarely smiled. She seemed perpetually depressed. Clara’s aunt later wrote that the family was greatly “concerned” about Clara’s well-being and her future.
Why?
Clara was living alone with her father, the aunt concluded.
CHAPTER 34
ON NOVEMBER 9, around three in the morning, as most of the world around them slept, Kyle and Clara found themselves online, chatting innocently at first about mundane issues. Clara lived alone in a dorm of about seventy kids, a decaying building behind a gas station. Her window faced the interstate. It was a dark, desolate place that kids chose to live in, in order to isolate themselves from everyone else. A saying around campus was that if a student chose to live in the dorm Clara did, he or she “wanted to be left alone.” The one thing—and it happened to be her JMU major—that kept Clara busy, however, was that computer and its glowing light echoing off her face and the walls of her dorm room. Clara had found solace, anonymity, and companionship on the Internet. She could be who she wanted to be. She could project any type of persona out into the world she had created. Perhaps most important, she could cont
rol and manipulate whomever she liked.
Kyle was crashing at Mike’s again, using the computer in Mike’s basement bedroom inside his mother’s house. For the first five or ten minutes, Kyle and Clara discussed swords and fighting styles. It was friendly, even adolescent chitchat between two goth, computer-savvy kids who liked to enter into that fantasy world the Internet facilitated and inspired. All this talk about fantasy seemed guileless and, well, pointless. But as they chatted, Clara’s motive became apparent—if not to Kyle, then to anyone reading the transcript later.
Clara talked about Patrick more often than she had in the past, although she was dissing his fighting skills, perhaps hoping to feed Kyle’s ego.
Kyle didn’t want to discuss Patrick, however; he liked to keep the focus on himself.
Clara wondered why he wasn’t sleeping (it being the middle of the night, after all), adding, I sleep so much [myself these days], my friends, what little remain, think I have mono or insomnia.
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