by Lola Swain
“That was different,” she said. “That was before.”
“And this is now. Nothing different. I’ve already had you, Athena and you cannot refuse me. There is no other man who will have you now that you’ve been defiled by the Devil’s prick,” Alexander said and pushed himself on top of his cousin.
“But, I said I don’t want to,” Athena said.
“And I do not care what you said,” Alexander said and clawed between Athena’s legs.
“It hurts, Alexander,” Athena said. “Please stop. Perhaps tomorrow—”
“No, there will be no tomorrows,” Alexander said and sighed as he made up his mind.
Alexander eased off Athena’s body and Athena believed that the assault was over. She relaxed a bit into the sofa.
“Thank you,” Athena said and closed her eyes.
“Do you know what Jesse used to say about the fright?” Alexander said and stroked Athena’s legs over her dress.
“Who?”
“Jesse said that the fright was the only thing that was real. Even though you couldn’t see it, if you bottled the fear and poured dye into the bottle, you would see a huge red mass glowing bright and dancing.”
“I don’t understand,” Athena said and shook her head.
Alexander smiled and unbuttoned the small pearl buttons on Athena’s blouse, exposing her corset. He jammed his hands into the top of her corset and separated each hook from its eye, exposing Athena’s firm, tender breasts.
“You said you would stop!” Athena said.
“Shhh,” Alexander said and kissed Athena’s breasts. “No, I didn’t. As I was saying, Jesse was convinced that the fright was its own force and I tend to agree. It’s the fright that does this.”
Alexander grabbed Athena’s hand and rubbed it back and forth over his trousers. He was rock hard and Athena debated whether to scream or will herself to faint—anything to end the fear.
“But the thing about the fright, well, once it comes, it cannot be stopped. You see, if I stop it, it will destroy me and we can’t have that, can we?”
“I don’t want to do this. I’ve been hurt,” Athena said and closed her eyes. “I think I’m bleeding. You know, down there.”
Alexander leaned back and pushed the skirt of Athena’s dress up over her waist and inspected her knickers. Athena thought she’d die from the humiliation and Alexander reached up and pulled her eyelids apart.
“Yes, you are,” Alexander said and smiled. “It happens. But don’t worry, the blood is not a hindrance for me and like the fright, it is arousing.”
Alexander took off his coat, lowered his suspenders and unbuttoned the fly of his trousers. He pulled his cock out of the opening and stroked it. Athena’s eyes grew wide and she breathed rapidly.
“Alexander, please.”
“Don’t worry, you shan’t feel a thing. It’s better for me at that last moment, when life is on its way out and the death convulsions begin. It’s always been this way with me. Some may think it odd, but to me it is natural. Of course, you leave me in a bit of a conundrum. What shall I say to the family?”
Alexander pulled the beautiful silk ribbon on the top of Athena’s knickers and ripped them from her body. When Alexander looked at Athena, he revealed his true face and at that moment, she knew what was to come.
“I will scream,” Athena said as she looked down her body at Alexander.
“No, you won’t,” Alexander said and pulled his machete from its sheath. “You won’t be able to.”
Athena opened her mouth to scream, but she got no further. Alexander’s arm shot out and he nicked her jugular vein with the tip of the machete’s blade. He dropped the knife to the floor and slammed himself into Athena, forcing her eyes open. He loved seeing the life leave their eyes and the blood that covered both Alexander and Athena created a spine-tingling friction as Alexander thrust into Athena’s body. It took four beats from Athena’s young heart before the death convulsions began. Alexander’s favorite part.
After he emptied himself into Athena, Alexander began to clean her mess. And what a mess it was. Blood pooled everywhere and was even splattered in thick strips across the plaster walls of the cottage. Alexander looked up and smiled as he saw drops of Athena’s blood even on the ceiling.
He peeled off the rest of his clothing and set about to dispose of Athena where he disposed of the others over the years, under the floorboards and into the crawlspace. He amassed quite a collection of bodies when he began doing this on his own after Jesse Pomeroy’s incarceration and now the beautiful Athena would be added to his prizes.
The one thing that Alexander did not count on was Mr. Whorley, the mail carrier on Elmwood Avenue, coming into the garden. Every Wednesday when he delivered the Battle’s correspondence, Mrs. Battle left Mr. Whorley a small cake and glass of port on the front porch atop a silver tray. On that day, Mrs. Battle apparently forgot about him so Mr. Whorley went around to the side gate hoping to run into Mrs. Battle so he could hand her the letters personally and perhaps illicit his treats.
Mr. Whorley wandered through the Battle’s secluded garden and was disappointed not to find the garden empty. But as he turned to leave the garden, the quaint building in the back of the property caught his attention. Mr. Whorley was alarmed as he saw a shirtless man who looked like he was bleeding walk past the parted velvet drapes in the cottage.
When he pressed his face to the window of the cottage, it took Mr. Whorley a moment to register what he saw. There, inside the office, Mr. Whorley saw a naked Alexander Battle covered in blood. Worse still, Mr. Whorley witnessed Alexander Battle dragging a nude and quite dead Athena Battle across the wood floor. Mr. Whorley took two steps back from the window, rubbed his eyes and walked back to the glass to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. When he realized what he witnessed, he ran from the garden and down Elmwood Avenue leaving his mail cart at the garden gate.
Once back at his office, Mr. Whorley debated what to do. At that time, life could become precarious for a person of lower class to accuse the upper crust of a crime. Often, the lower status person who had the audacity of accusing someone of wealth would find themselves turned into the accused. It was very much a notion of the land that the upper class would never do anything unseemly.
But Mr. Whorley was more disturbed by what he saw Alexander Battle doing than his concern about his wellbeing and left his office and went straight to the authorities. It took some convincing and the six officers who walked with Mr. Whorley to the Battle home still questioned whether or not the distraught Mr. Whorley was sober. However, as Mr. Whorley was a well-respected, working-class man, they agreed to investigate his claims.
When Patrice Battle opened the door to the officers and she was told they were there to investigate a strange happening in Alexander’s office, she fainted. The officers stepped over Patrice’s unconscious body and walked through the home, out the back door, through the garden and barged through the door of Alexander’s office.
They drew their weapons on the nude man who was covered in blood as he was stuffing the naked body of a young girl underneath the floorboards. And as they surrounded him, Alexander Battle looked up at the officers and smiled, as if they came to help him with his task.
“Good evening, officers,” Alexander said and bowed.
Alexander did not fight as the officers surrounded him and even thanked them for allowing him to dress before they took him into custody. Upon hearing the news, Alexander’s father bribed the jail officials to take his son out of Middlesex County where they lived and detain him at the Charles Street Jail in Boston.
In his first and last visit with his son, Mr. Battle begged Alexander to do the right thing and plead guilty and waive his right to a trial, hoping that the story would simply go away and minimize the Battle family’s humiliation. Of course, the story did not go away. One could not pick up a newspaper and not read of the details of the Battle family.
The bones and rotting corpses of twenty-three children mixe
d amongst heavy layers of lime dust were eventually unearthed from under the floorboards of Alexander’s office. Word spread quickly among the citizens of Massachusetts and a bounty was put on Alexander Battle’s head as some of the fresher kills were identified. Suspicion was immediately cast on Alexander’s parents—how could they not have known what their monster of a son was up to?
For his part, Alexander Battle enjoyed his newfound notoriety as he became something of a celebrity. Perhaps because Alexander was an extremely handsome man, despite the viciousness of his crimes, many women of questionable morals came by the Charles Street Jail hoping in vain to service the Lascivious Lucifer, as he was named in the Boston Globe.
In Alexander’s name, many gifts, marriage proposals and even offers from novelist Henry James to write Alexander’s biography were left with the overburdened desk clerk at the Charles Street Jail.
Interest also escalated in the mysterious hotel on Cape Cod that Alexander was building before his incarceration. Alexander’s father, acting with his son’s Power of Attorney, told foreman Thomas Conway that it was business as usual at the job site and to proceed on or ahead of schedule. Mr. Battle was desperate for the Battleroy to be completed so it could start generating income as a number of his lenders began to call in his loans after the scandal. As his son also murdered his brother David’s only child, Alexander Battle no longer had the luxury to call on his family for support and was quite desperate.
While the younger Battle left Thomas Conway on his own to build the Battleroy, the older Battle harangued the foreman and insisted on daily updates on the smallest details. But Thomas Conway was no fool. He saw how his kind friend Charles Pomeroy’s life was destroyed after Charles’ brother Jesse’s scandal came to light and Thomas Conway set about to insure his future.
Knowing what he did of Battle’s precarious financial situation, Thomas Conway was worried that he and his men would not be paid for their work at the Battleroy. So, he set about to find anything he could to present to Mr. Battle to ensure quick payment for services rendered. He found it in the library in the curio box Alexander Battle place on the mahogany shelf when he visited the site with his cousin Athena.
Thomas Conway told the senior Battle that he would sell Alexander’s diary to the highest bidder, a diary which contained his son’s detailed writings about his murders and his close friendship with the detestable Jesse Pomeroy. As the pièce de résistance, Thomas Conway told Mr. Battle that his son’s diary also included, quite curiously, details which alluded to the fact that Patrice Battle knew that Alexander was a murderer many years before he was caught.
Thomas Conway only expected to be paid his due and he was shocked as he watched Alexander Battle whither into a pitiful old man in front of his eyes as he fell to his knees at Thomas Conway’s feet and begged him not to further humiliate his family. Thomas Conway left that meeting with Alexander Battle not only with all amounts paid to him, but all land and property deeds for the Battleroy site transferred into his name.
The former bricklayer and petty thief walked away with a fortune. What started as labor in 1890, turned into a labor of love as descendants of the Conway family continue to run the Battleroy Hotel today.
The newest celebrity guest was quite a handful for the officers at the Charles Street Jail. Between the constant gift-givers and death threats, they knew they didn’t have the resources to house Alexander Battle so transfer talks began. Alexander, speaking as if he had a choice in the matter, requested to be transferred to Charlestown Prison so he could reunite with his old friend Jesse Pomeroy. Instead, Alexander was sent straight to the Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
Life for Alexander was not good at Bridgewater, which ironically was where he probably should have been all along. The conditions at the prison hospital were abhorrent and inhumane. Many cell blocks lacked toilets, the inmates were expected to sleep on stone floors and were not given clothes. While it is true that the conditions at Bridgewater were repulsive during that time, it was also true that Alexander never saw himself as either a criminal or insane and therefore, was convinced he did not belong.
The inmates and guards detested him alike and all hoped that someone would teach the spoiled rich man a lesson.
That lesson came on August 21, 1900 when Alexander was relaxing in his weekly bath. Someone stabbed Alexander in the side of the neck with a homemade chisel. Whether Alexander died from blood loss or drowning was of no concern to anyone at Bridgewater and the perpetrator was never punished.
Patrice Battle read of her son’s death the same as the rest of the population did and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. In the few years since her son was incarcerated she and Mr. Battle went through much heartache. Their family turned their backs on them, complete financial ruin was imminent and she knew in her heart that her husband was months away from death. In learning of his boy’s death, Alexander Battle took to their bed and refused to move.
But Patrice thought that she still had some life left to live and now that her son was gone, she hoped it was only a matter of time before the Brahmins opened their arms and let the Battles back into the fold. One week after her once-revered son’s body was chucked into an unmarked pauper’s grave, Patrice Battle decided to reenter society.
She dressed in her best clothes and went to the Parker House Hotel, hoping to mingle with some old friends. She was prepared to tell anyone who asked that the abhorrent things her son did were not her doing.
When she tried to enter the restaurant at the Parker House, the maître d’ recognized Patrice and refused to grant her access.
“On what grounds do you have the audacity to refuse me?” Patrice said.
“On the grounds that you, Patrice Battle, are a blight on the good people of Boston,” the maître d’ said.
Dejected, Patrice then wandered up Newbury Street hoping to see her old friend Magda Richter. As she walked up the sidewalk, a servant spotted and recognized Patrice as the murderer’s mother. The servant caught up with Patrice, grabbed her arm, spun her around and spit in Patrice’s face. Patrice stopped at a local chemist’s shop for a package, before walking the rest of the way home.
That evening she made a gorgeous cake, just like the cakes she used to make for Alexander. She dressed in her most formal dress and brought the cake to the bed she shared with her husband for forty-six years. Patrice woke her husband from his uneasy sleep and presented the cake. His eyes wet with tears, her husband sat up in his bed and stared at his wife who had never looked more beautiful to him.
Patrice and Alexander Battle feasted on the cake until it was nearly gone and fell into a painful sleep. The couple’s bodies were found the next afternoon by their maid. The cook later found a glass jar containing the arsenic that Patrice mixed into the cake batter that killed her and her husband.
The Battle name finally died.
PART III
“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds. we are cut with our own dust.”
John Webster
I awoke in the rafters with my head resting on the book James brought me as the sun rose. I looked down and a copy of the Boston Globe sat on the edge of the box-spring below me. On the cover of the newspaper, Heiress Brutally Murdered At Troubled Hotel was written across the front page.
I was tired of being alone, despite my self-imposed exile and I missed James terribly. I came down from the rafters and glanced at the newspaper.
“Well, I suppose that’s it,” I said.
I knew I wasn’t alone in the suite and when I walked into the living room, I found James sleeping on the chaise sofa. I knelt on the floor beside him and watched him sleep. He opened his eyes after a bit and smiled.
“Hi,” I said and rubbed his forehead.
“Hey, you came down,” he said. “I’m glad.”
“Yes. Thank you for bringing me the paper and the book.”
“You’re welcome,” he said and stretched. “Did you read them?”
�
�I read the entire book last night, but I haven’t read the paper. I felt you in the room and I wanted to find you first. Thank you for taking care of me,” I said and kissed his cheek.
“I will always take care of you, Sophia. Even when you don’t like me very much and even when I don’t like you very much.”
“Forever?” I said and smiled.
“And ever.”
“I love you,” I said and took a deep breath. “Don’t say it back. I know you’re not like that, but I am. I’m impulsive, obviously, and sensitive. I feel things differently, but I mean them. It’s who I am.”
“Sophia, I am different than you,” he said.
“I know,” I said and smiled, “and that’s okay too.”
I stood up and took off my dress and James shifted to his back as he watched me. I knelt on the sofa between his legs and unbuckled his belt.
“What are you doing?” James said and arched his back.
“Has it been that long? I mean, I know you’re old and all, but you sure don’t fuck like I imagine an old man would,” I said. “I am removing your pants. I want to feel you inside me.”
James didn’t argue with me, he didn’t even speak. He did just as I said and helped me remove his pants.
His cock stood straight up in front of me and I bowed toward it, as if a blasphemous Muslim engaged in a profane Salah. I sucked the tip of his wide cock into my mouth and relaxed my throat and took him all the way down. I ran my tongue back and forth over each ridge and vein and as I came up from my prostrate position, I sucked hard until I reached the head of his cock again. James dug his fingernails into my shoulders and raked them down my arms. I smiled as I watched his legs tremor.
“Fuck, Sophia,” James said, “ease off a bit.”
I took my mouth off his cock and looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because, if you keep sucking on my cock like that, I’m not going to last very long,” he said and closed his eyes.