It was then that I received a history lesson. She explained that the Blood Countess was only convicted for eighty deaths, and reports of her bathing in the blood of virgins were added later after Bram Stoker published his famous tome. The countess, like most of the aristocracy of her day, disciplined her servants harshly to prevent any sort of uprising and to maintain total supremacy. The countess excelled at keeping those she considered hers in line; the occasional death was not uncommon. The death of a peasant was not considered a capital offense. It was only when the countess began to discipline the daughters of minor nobles that any sort of fuss was raised, and that was only after her political usefulness had been depleted by the crown. Her objection to paying her share of the crown’s debts owed by her and her family was also a factor in her being brought to trial.
Still, the countess hadn’t acted alone. She had a little gang of cronies who carried out her will and in some cases enforced it without the countess ever having said a word. They would end up betraying their mistress at the trial, saying she ate bits of her victims’ flesh. Their testimony would serve as the basis for bloody tales in the future. Then, as now, people wanted to cash in on whatever was popular to make money. It worked, and the infamy of the countess grew while her cronies disappeared into the fabric of history.
If I didn’t believe her, I could read her translation of the countess’s diary. She would happily give me a copy.
The diary mentioned in the trial had been lost or, more accurately, misplaced by the countess’s castellan, Imre Vasvary. He was in charge of her affairs after her arrest and managed her personal papers as well as her husband’s. Her beloved count had died in service to the emperor. It was his death that truly spelled the end for the countess. Emperor Matthias II sought to take control of the vast holdings that had been created by her marriage to the count. Vasvary lived for many years after his mistress’s death and served her son, Pal (Paul), and the other Bathory children until his death.
Atalik found the diary on one of his trips to Hungry. It had been authenticated using letters written by the countess, but it had never been released to be authenticated by the academic community. Atalik didn’t want to share his prize with anyone. Emily opted to keep it a secret because its release would do nothing to repair the tarnished reputation of the countess and would also bring the connection between Bath and Bathory into the public’s eye. One branch of the family choose to change the name shortly after coming to the U.S. It was common for new arrivals to change difficult names or in the case of the Bath family make a break from the past.
While the journal was recovered, the final resting place of the Infamous Lady was never found. It was reported that she was buried at the church at Cesjthe in 1614, only to be moved three years later to the Bathory estate. The crypt there and at a family estate in Nyirbator had been opened at various points; neither contained her remains.
The manner in which Atalik Bath passed from this life to the next was just as mysterious as his infamous ancestor. Atalik died in his home, attended by no one. He, like the Countess Bathory, was found dead at two in the morning after complaining that his hands were cold the night before. His death certificate listed the cause of death as heart failure. Atalik was just sixty-four years of age.
Atalik’s methods of research were unorthodox; he used psychics and thieves. Psychics were used to locate leads genealogists couldn’t, and thieves were used to steal artifacts buyers wouldn’t part with, sometimes even resorting to grave robbing. Everything was verified by a separate set of genealogists or psychics, depending on how the information was originally obtained. The results they yielded were still questionable, but Atalik was confident his money had bought him the truth. A lack of confidence was never his weakness—perhaps a tragic flaw, if there had ever been an ounce of goodness in him.
Emily’s father was far more discreet than the countess ever had an occasion to be. People didn’t die; they simply vanished or died with a reasonable explanation as to the cause. Atalik’s abusive nature intensified after his banishment. He had always been a sexual sadist, but the number of former employees increased exponentially afterward. Court records from his five divorces confirmed that all of his wives accused him of various degrees of sexual deviance. All but one of them recanted their accusations after receiving a generous settlement.
Marcella Bath, Emily’s mother, died in a car accident prior to any agreement being made. Her parents claimed that Atalik was responsible, but no connection was ever found. They died in a house fire six months to the day after they had buried their daughter. They would never see their granddaughter.
Em agreed to give me the names and contact information for some of her tutors growing up; she wasn’t sure they would talk to me, but there was a chance, now that her father as well as the New York statute of limitations on child abuse had expired. She produced two of her father’s scrapbooks, which contained photographs and notes on his sexual encounters with two of the tutors.
The first scrapbook documented five years of his relationship with Martha Vane, the Latin tutor. The first page contained a copy of her resume and a photograph of Ms. Vane. It was black and white and faded. She looked like June Cleaver, with her permed hair and a carefully tailored suit. Before turning to the next page, Em finished her glass of wine and returned to the kitchen for the bottle. I finished my glass in one swallow after seeing what those pages contained.
“You looked at these?”
“Yes, of course.” Her tone was oddly down-to-earth, but she didn’t offer to explain.
“All of them?”
“Yes, all twenty-seven.”
I nearly choked on the next sip of wine. “Why in God’s name would you look at all of them?”
“To prove to myself that it wasn’t just a bad dream. My therapist said I needed to confront my past in order to stop living in it. So yes, I looked at every single page and photograph.”
“Are there pictures of you?” My words stumbled out of my mouth, trying to shake the images of bodies tangled. The reality that some of the young faces staring feebly back from the photos were Atalik’s own children. He had molested his own kids, taken pictures, and then lovingly created twenty-seven albums. “But why keep them?”
“Proof that my father was insane. That my siblings and myself were victims not complicit in his crimes. I know that doesn’t necessarily mean they were innocent as adults, but I know in my heart they weren’t evil like him. As we continue, my brothers’ innocence must be maintained. I can’t bear the thought of their memories being dragged through the muck. They deserve better.” Em’s eyes watered, but she didn’t start to cry. She took several deep breaths and regained her composure.
“Is this why you didn’t have them buried with your father at the estate?”
“Yes, but my father isn’t buried there either.”
CHAPTER THREE
Atalik’s body, according to the county records, was interred on his estate in the family mausoleum. The magnificent mausoleum rivaled that of Heinrich Schliemann’s in Greece, shaped like a temple with marble columns and carved reliefs. It wasn’t an original part of the estate but had been built shortly after the property was purchased.
The architect, Matthew Rodriguez, worked on many of the renovations made to the estate. The mausoleum was one of his last projects. He was fascinated with secret passages and giving his clients a little something extra in each design whether they requested it or not. He died in a car accident returning to the city one weekend after a party at the estate. His will, which was immediately contested by his family, left everything, including his portfolio, to the count. It even when so far as to say that Atalik was the sole executor, which gave Atalik the right to dispose of his body however he choose. Knowing Matthew’s mother was old-school Catholic, he had the body cremated and the ashes mixed in with the cement for a planned extension to the house’s foundations. Atalik had everything in it shipped to the estate.
Atalik liked to infer that he came
from old money, so the deceased members of the Bath family were moved from their original resting places to the mausoleum after its completion. It cost him a pretty penny in bribes to move the bodies and begin a cemetery on private land. At one moment he even thought of abandoning the project due to cost, but being defeated by a penny was not something he could allow. Eventually the site was even sanctified by a member of the local clergy to ensure the peaceful rest of its inhabitants. He had never had close relations with any of his family after he graduated from high school. The few living relatives he did have stayed as far away as they could. None of them ever seemed tempted to ask their cousin for a favor beyond being left alone.
According to Em, her father had a secret crypt built in the basement of the house for himself and his “special” wives. It was for the three women who gave him a child. Each one received a cash payment of a million dollars and a swift divorce, and died within two years.
Each was brought back to the estate and interred. All total, Atalik was married seven times, but only three of his wives survived him. Helena Jacqueline Antoinette Bath was in the process of divorcing the old scoundrel when he died. She left the house prior to the funeral, taking her small spending allowance with her. Her refusal to stay and see him buried surprised no one, once she knew the contents of the will. In the nearly decade-long marriage, he had never changed his will. It hadn’t been changed since the year after Emily was born. Her allowance was a provision of the will that allowed for her to receive a cash disbursement of three thousand dollars once a month for five years after his death; after that time the amount would be cut in half. The money was less than a third of what Antoinette spent in a month on clothing, beauty treatments, and entertainment. It was her entertaining of young men that incited the divorce proceedings.
The first time Em saw the crypt was when she was six years old. The youngest, most precocious of the children, she was always wandering away or, in the words of the nannies and tutors, sneaking off. It truly wasn’t malicious. She was just a naturally curious and restless child. Mihaly called her Houdini because of her repeated seemingly impossible escapes from their lessons and training. One moment she was working quietly alongside her brothers, and the next she was gone. It didn’t seem to matter who was watching her; there was always a moment when no one was looking, and she knew how to take advantage of it.
She was smart enough never to explore when her father was in attendance. More than one nanny was fired for failing to keep an eye on little Em. It was impossible in his mind that she could be so clever or they so absent-minded.
It was late in the evening when she slipped out of her room and made her way to the basement. Like the rest of the estate, it was unbelievable huge and mostly off-limits to the children. The buildings were under constant repair and renovation since its purchase. In her young mind, the basement, with its stone floors, timbers, and dust, was King Minos’s labyrinth beneath his Cretan palace, where Athenian youth were sacrificed to the bloodthirsty Minotaur.
Em was pretending to be the hero, Theseus, who saves the princess from the beastly Minotaur, when she heard the rhythmic sounds of footsteps hitting the stone floor in unison. She swiftly moved behind one of the wine racks. Her father, his manservant, Gerald, and four robed men came into the chamber. The men, who worked in various positions on the grounds, were carrying a long ebony box. The party came to an abrupt stop at the far end of the room. It seemed like they would have continued to walk forward into the stone wall if Gerald’s arm had not flowed up as a signal to stop.
Fear and intrigue held her tightly in place. She thought they would merely be depositing the crate and returning momentarily. After all, there was no place for the men to go except the way they came. She crouched as low as she could while still keeping an eye on the strange group.
Her father raised his arms and began muttering in Latin. When he finished, a section of the wall slid back, and the ensemble entered the newly formed doorway. Em nearly snickered at her father’s horrid elocution; had she demonstrated such poor pronunciation, she would have received a beating that would continue until she corrected the error. Consequently, she and her siblings practiced continually, drilling one another until they had mastered each lesson. Mihaly led his younger siblings in these drills. Sometimes they sneaked into one another’s rooms to prepare for assessments. No matter how intensely they practiced, their father and the tutors always found a reason to punish them.
The door closed as quickly as it had opened. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it didn’t deter Em. This mystery was too much for her to pass up, so she waited, watching, shivering on the icy floor. The Minotaur was safe for another night.
By the time they came out of the chamber, Em had nearly fallen asleep; only the return of rhythmic footsteps sounded just in time to keep her from nodding off completely and banging her head on the floor.
She waited until after the stomping sound had ceased to echo before she moved to investigate. It didn’t take her long to find the floor latch and open the crypt’s door. Secretly, she praised the Hardy Boys novels she had recently finished for helping her quickly locate the trigger for the door. Not that she would ever tell Mihaly, who had suggested the series. It just wasn’t proper to let your big brother know you thought he was cool or appreciated his advice.
The chamber was lit from an aperture running around the perimeter between the wall and stone floor. A shiver dashed down her spine when she noted the eerie similarity of this chamber to the one in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.”
In the center was a stone sepulcher with her father’s name etched into it, along with his birth date and an epitaph—the date of his death waited to be carved. Along the walls three ebony boxes exactly like the one she had seen carried in were standing on end facing the sepulcher, except these boxes appeared to have glass fronts. There was one for each of the three walls before her.
Had Em been a fearful child, she would have run from the room and not taken another step. However, the physical and emotional abuse she had endured prevented her from experiencing the normal fears of a six-year-old child; she had seen too much and knew it wouldn’t kill her.
The boxes were like shiny bobbles left out for a magpie to snatch; the least she could do was inspect them. Em moved towards the one on the left for no other reason than her eye had turned in that direction. As she advanced on her target, an unexpected queasy feeling built in her stomach. She attributed it to the cook’s latest experiment, not knowing any better.
There are some things in this world that every child should be prevented from seeing, but Em continued forward, as she always had and always would. It only made sense in her mind to keep moving. She had no way of knowing what the crypt truly held or how similar its contents would be to one of Poe’s chilling tales.
The faint light caused her eyes to strain; however, the figure of a woman was becoming clear. Forward. Always forward. A foot away from the glass, details came into focus. Another chill ran through Em. The woman’s face was obscured by a veil, so Em tried to balance on her tiptoes for a better look. Her failure landed her face first on the frigid stone floor.
Her head ached, but her eyes widened when she read the name—Marcella E. Bath, her mother’s name—etched on the base in golden script. To her credit she didn’t scream or run from the room. She did crawl to the next black casket and then the last, reading the names of her brothers’ mothers.
Making her way back up to the main house, Em began to build a wall between her consciousness and the new knowledge, trying to shred apart the carefully constructed mental configuration that kept her young mind from collapsing in on itself. Children, after all, are the ultimate survivors. Forward, just keep moving forward. Back out of the basement, through the kitchen to the back staircase, up to the second floor, and down the hall to the nursery.
At six years old, she still slept in the nursery and would continue to do so until she turned eleven, when she had her first period. The de
cor of the nursery reflected Atalik’s predatory nature. The furnishings were all dark wood, and a mural of a jungle took up the largest wall in the room. The animals weren’t cute or cartoony, but realistic. In two of the corners, a hunter was positioned with rifle in hand, aiming toward the animals in the center. The opposing walls contained trophies from Atalik’s various hunting expeditions. A pair of kudos with their stately spiraled horns took up positions on either side of the door, with a lioness positioned directly over it. A few of the nannies interviewed by Atalik declined the position after seeing the room he had so thoughtfully decorated for his children.
The light flicked on as soon as she entered; Atalik sat on the bed, patting it slightly. His face wore its usual sinister smirk, a forewarning of his intentions. Em didn’t even freeze for a single moment. Hesitation would only make things worse. Forward she walked, taking her place beside her loving father and silently sliding the last brick in place. She had learned not to flinch when her father reached for her.
His hands gently brushed the hair away from her forehead. The grin dissolved when he noticed the mark blooming on her temple.
“Tell Papa how this came to be.”
“I was playing, and I fell, Papa.”
“And where was Ms. Kasik?”
She tilted her eyes down, trying her best to appear demure and innocent; manipulation was a survival skill she had learned early.
“Mmm,” she said as she bit her lips slightly, “I went into the cellar when she wasn’t looking.”
“The cellar is out of bounds, young lady.”
“I know, Papa. I apologize for breaking the rules. I wanted to play where the boys wouldn’t hear me. They think playing Theseus and the Minotaur is moronic.”
“I see. And that is how you got the bruise, fighting the Minotaur again?”
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