Blood Child

by Rose, Lucinda

  Em nodded a shy affirmation. The wicked grin returned as Atalik tucked her into bed, placing a tender kiss on her forehead. Exiting the room, he chose the door leading to Ms. Kasik’s room.

  As much as he relished disciplining his offspring, he never tolerated anyone else doing so without permission. The offense was especially odious if a visible mark resulted. Ms. Kasik was clearly guilty of neglecting and thereby injuring her charge.

  The next day Miss Amber Russo, the nanny for her brothers Andras and Sandor came in to prepare her for breakfast. Em asked about her nanny and was dismissed quickly. The next week a new nanny was hired, a Ms. Ingrid Picador from Newark, New Jersey. She would remain with the family for three years before exiting in a similarly mysterious manner.

  Atalik had a hedge maze built on the property for the amusement of the children. Em was allowed to play in the maze without her brothers under the supervision of her new nanny. She never went into the basement again to play.

  The fate of Ms. Andrea Kasik is unknown. No record could be found of her being employed after her dismissal. She wasn’t the first or last employee to go missing over the twenty-five years that Atalik lived at the estate. Detective Anderson told me when I spoke with him that there wasn’t anything they could do. No one could find anything substantial to link the estate with their disappearances—no bodies, no evidence, no crime. Strangely enough, very few missing persons cases were filed. They just vanished. Charges couldn’t be filed based on rumors and speculation.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The blood evidence alone could have been used for finger-painting, it was in such abundant supply after the weekend of the funeral, but Old Count Atalik couldn’t be charged. He had been dead a week. The crime scene photos Em provided were even more grotesque than the ones in the file. I guess paying for information didn’t guarantee you got everything. I wondered why she had them and how she got them. The partial reason was that her money and connections had greased the wheel more than mine had. The other part of the reason was because of Em’s therapy.

  She couldn’t remember what had happened, so she tried reacting to or stimulating the trauma with one of her therapists, using the photographs. It was absurd and didn’t work. The therapist quit, saying that helping Em gave her nightmares.

  Bodies were mutilated to the point that I wasn’t sure the mounds of flesh were really human until my eyes, seeking to make sense of the images, found the stray finger or a head staring blankly at the camera. It took the coroner’s office nearly a month and a half to put the bodies back together. It would be another month until the final report came out.

  Cause of death for most of the deceased was unable to be determined. The majority of the bodies had been dismembered in an “incomprehensible manner” while they were still alive. The lucky minority, including Em’s beloved brothers, were poisoned and then slaughtered. Every corpse had the same marks that Em’s body bore as scars.

  The investigator’s report indicated traces of an unknown substance in her system. Doctors speculated that a mystery drug, combined with the medication she was taking at the time, led to an altered mental state, possible amnesia. She had been prescribed antidepressants and anxiety medication since her sophomore year of college. The therapy started after she moved to Florida. It was the beginning of her quest for a normal life. Maybe that was the reason her home was so blah now. She just worked at being normal. An ordinary life was her goal. Her money would have allowed her to have whatever she wanted if only she let it, but normal to her wasn’t being trapped behind walls with bodyguards. She strove to be boring the way some people sought out fame. The bookshelves in her house were lined with just the right number of books to make her appear well-read without seeming cluttered.

  Nearly everything I saw could have been easily purchased on a teacher’s salary. It made me wonder what, if anything, she had done with her father’s money. She had also inherited her brother’s estates as well. She had sold their cars, condos, and possessions in a private auction a year after their deaths. The auction house had leaked news of the sale and her attendance to the press. Em didn’t show up for the sale, but plenty of other people did. She made over three million dollars. And she drove an effing Volvo. A rusty one at that.

  Her lack of recall about the weekend after arriving at the mansion and having dinner with her family and their guests was still stunning. Some of the tabloids reported that Em had spent her fortune trying to bring her memories back and prove her innocence. They also claimed that she had multiple personalities, and as soon as she remembered, the personality who was responsible was going to kill her. It was insane, but running her picture or a picture of someone who looked vaguely like her still sold papers.

  It is possible that the trauma she experienced caused the memory loss. More than likely she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, given her violent childhood and the bloody occurrences of the funeral. Diagnosing PTSD isn’t a straightforward process. Symptoms range from memory loss to memories of the event constantly intruding on the person’s life. Frequently, symptoms are ignored by health-care professionals because the traumatized person may be unwilling or unable to talk about the event and its aftermath. The lost memory and the scratches were clear indications she had experienced something; whether or not she would ever remember was the real question.

  The Lifetime movie about Em played up this PTSD angle to the point that one of her coworkers quit her job when she found out whom she was teaching next to. She even tried to get Em fired, saying Em was evil and tried to control her with blood magic. All Em recalls doing was going into her classroom, seeking a Band-Aid for a nasty paper cut. When she reached for it, a drop of blood fell onto the desk near a half-empty coffee cup. Em apologized and made some more coffee. The woman refused to drink it and began to harass Em about going to church. Since the days at First Methodist, Em had never really cared for church. Her refusal added fuel to the inferno, and the science teacher lost it. She also lost any chance of being rehired after she was caught on school grounds trying to cut the brake lines in Em’s car.

  Em was lucky that it wasn’t as easy as in the movies, and the woman was caught and taken away. She was still in Orlando’s Lakeside Mental Hospital. Every time she was released, she would seek out the “vampiric bitch,” as she called Em, and try to cure her. One of the patients who had contact with the deranged woman threw holy water on Em one day; the poor woman didn’t understand why Em hadn’t begun to burn. She was caught at a gas station a half-hour later, attempting to put gas into a Big Gulp cup.

  ***

  The next day Em left a message saying she wouldn’t be able to continue our discussion until the day after tomorrow. No explanation, just a new time and day, as if I had nothing better to do than to wait around for her. The assumption was entirely accurate, of course; it just bothered me. Dealing with people of Em’s stature and wealth, I had often encountered such attitudes. They were treated differently by the vast majority of society because there were people who believed that their money made them better than the rest of us working stiffs.

  Perhaps I was just being oversensitive. After all, Em had been quite generous with her time, as well as her wine. Given the nature of the interview, it was understandable that she would want to delay talking about it again. She had avoided interviews for nearly a decade. Her desire to talk now was both miraculous and mysterious.

  I needed to breathe, as my friend Anthony would say. It was his answer to nearly everything. Just breathe…It was good advice, even if I didn’t like to admit it or put it into practice. Anthony was preparing to help me locate people interested in buying the piece. He kept assuring me that if I succeeded in landing the story, it wouldn’t matter what Ashley said; someone would buy it. It was too big to allow a petty vendetta to stop it. The world still wanted to know about little Emily Bath.

  Admittedly, I was also becoming financially desperate. I was living in a run-down pay-by-the-week hotel that promised housekeeping. The onl
y thing I saw the maids cleaning regularly were the stairwells, which still smelled of urine. I felt like there should have been a chalk outline on the floor of my room; it certainly smelled like someone had expired in it, and the outline would have added a bit of charm to the place.

  I wanted and needed this to get back to work on a regular basis, maybe even back at a major newspaper, though the majority of newsrooms had shifted away from large staffs. It would mean that people would return my calls and e-mails. I had started writing under an assumed name, Frank Wisborn, but work is slow in the paid blogging world when you are an unknown entity. My career needed to come back before Frank Wisborn ran out of money and lost his lease.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Seven universities in Central Florida have psychology departments; after about an hour on the phone, I found a professor who was free for the afternoon and was willing to meet regarding PTSD. Sure, I could have looked up the information online, but getting an expert as a source for my article would add to its credibility. Plus, the smell of my temporary home was getting to me. I needed air. Dr. Margaret Harrell had doctorates in both psychology and neuropsychology. She had also published recently on PTSD, a bonus.

  Her office was located on campus, but I was meeting her at a local coffeehouse called the Golden Lion Coffee Lounge. Maybe she had googled my name while we were on the phone and didn’t want to be seen with me on campus, but then why meet me at all? I was paranoid, probably, but with good reason; frequent drunken decisions can burn a lot of bridges.

  The café was the usual offbeat hole-in-the-wall. Local art lined the walls, and secondhand sofas gave the place that just-past-college vibe. It was cool and in the now, with just a hint of hipster, which meant the place was too cool for working folks. I was eyeing the chalkboard menu when the door opened.

  The good professor was in that glorious stage of womanhood when it is nearly impossible to determine age accurately. A PhD might place her in her late twenties to early forties; judging by her online biography or curriculum vitale, she had been in academics for a while, so I estimated her to be in her mid-to late thirties. She was a petite woman with cocoa skin and chin-length braids. My eyes and thoughts began to travel lower.

  Focus and breathe, I could hear Anthony whispering in my mind. I was here to interview her, not to seduce her. Old habits die hard, especially when they were exhilarating ones.

  Apparently, she had googled me, because when she noticed me watching, she got up and came my way.

  “Please get this gentleman whatever he wants.”

  A slender man with lean muscles, a clean-shaven head, and a T-shirt with a T. rex swallowing a rainbow nodded and set to work without asking me for an order.

  “Cro, you are being rude. Ask him what he wants.”

  “Don’t need to, I know what he needs. Here, try this.”

  She rolled her eyes the way only a friend can, with both amusement and annoyance at the same time. Bemused, I took the offered concoction. It smelled strong and exotic. The taste was extraordinary. True to his word, it was exactly what I needed. The dredges of my hangover were washed away by the caffeinated goodness.

  Cro smirked as Dr. Harrell led me to a table.

  “I take it you are a regular.”

  “Actually, I am one of the owners, which is why I suggested it. It’s slow here. My office, however, is a different story. It is too close to graduation. The seniors are beginning to get on my nerves.”

  We both chuckled. I remember being one of those students harassing my professors for better grades, extensions, or just plain mercy. I didn’t recall any of them being as intoxicating as Dr. Harrell.

  “Amazing barista you have. This is quite the concoction.”

  “Please don’t let him hear that. His ego will go through the roof. So how can I help you?”

  “Yes, how would you know if a person was actually suffering from PTSD and if her memory loss was related?”

  “The person would be given a series of tests, as well as an examination of his service record. He would also need to be treated by someone who has experience with PTSD. Not all military doctors and psychologists have the necessary training to properly diagnosis it.”

  “What if the person isn’t a veteran?”

  “There would still be a series of tests and interviews with psychologists experienced in treating PTSD. However, even with a diagnosis, there is no way to determine if it was directly caused by a single incident or a series of them, but it is possible. And it is also dependent on what happened prior to the traumatic event. Adding to that, many victims have other disorders with similar or overlapping symptoms. Neurology and psychology are not exact sciences; we learn new things every day. Sometimes, unfortunately, we learn that we were wrong.”

  “So how would you determine if a person is telling the truth about losing her memory?”

  “There are lots of ways to determine if a person is lying.”

  “Such as?”

  “Mr. Clark, are we discussing a particular person?”

  “Yes. I am working on a piece, and I believe one of the individuals involved could be suffering from PTSD.”

  “Why don’t you tell me a little, and I can give you an opinion. But without meeting them, I cannot diagnosis them.”

  “Understandable. She is a victim of both physical and sexual abuse and may have witnessed the murder of her family.”

  “The abuse alone could cause memory loss as well as PTSD, depending on the severity of the incident. Was this person suspected of committing the crime? A person experiencing abuse over a number of years will develop different survival mechanisms,; memory loss among them. A woman in Pennsylvania was diagnosed with PTSD after working as a state social worker for thirty-five years. In her case it wasn’t just one incident, but many over the course of her career.”

  “So she could be telling the truth?”

  “What makes you think she isn’t?”

  “Twenty-three people, including her own brothers, were murdered, and she claims to have no knowledge of any of their deaths. It seems impossible—”

  “Oh my God, are you talking about Emily?”

  “You know Emily Bath?”

  “Yes, she is a friend, a good friend.” She made the last two words linger as an accusation and pulled out her phone. “Hollis,” she said a second later, “this is Maggie…I am fine. Look, I am sitting with a reporter who is asking about Em. Yes, that’s his name…OK, will do.” She disconnected the call. “Hollis is on her way.”

  “Um, who is Hollis?”

  “You didn’t meet Hollis yesterday?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, she is Em’s personal assistant.”

  “Why does a teacher need a personal assistant?”

  “You’re kidding me, right? Do you know how much work the average teacher does? If the average teacher could afford one, they would all have them. Did you know that a century ago, most families had servants to help them with their day-to-day activities? Like laundry, dishes, and child rearing—”

  Cro cut her off by sitting a cup of herbal tea down in front of her, along with a fresh cup for me, and mouthed the word PMS as he left. The good doctor didn’t fail to notice it and threw a napkin at him.

  “Hollis is a friend too, I take it.”

  She sighed, nodded, and sipped her tea.

  “Sorry, we are all really good friends. Hollis and I are pretty protective of Em. You aren’t the first reporter to ask about her. After the deaths of her family, reporters were popping up everywhere. Most, though, have done their homework and know we are friends.”

  “I am going to go out on a limb and say that most of the others didn’t speak with Em first.”

  “True…here is Hollis.”

  Maggie looked relieved when a young blonde walked in. Hollis looked younger than Em; she was dressed rather conservatively for someone her age, especially living in Florida. She had on a long-sleeved floral top with a blue pencil skirt and tights. Poor girl must have be
en dying in that outfit. Most Floridians I had seen her age were wearing as little as was fashionably tolerable.

  “Mr. Clark, a pleasure to meet you. Emily was terribly sorry she couldn’t meet with you today. She wanted me to tell you that she wasn’t putting you off.”

  “Migraine?” the other woman asked, the concern painted on her face.

  “Afraid so, Maggie. She says it is all right with her if you want to continue talking with Mr. Clark. I am sorry if Maggie was a bit abrasive with you. She didn’t lecture you on how teachers are overworked, did she?”

  Maggie’s red face answered for me.

  “I am sorry. The college cut her budget, and she lost her graduate assistant. She is just a tad bitter.”

  “No, I am not.”

  “Why don’t you both call me Ty?”

  Ignoring me, Maggie continued to ask Hollis questions. Apparently, Maggie was concerned that Em’s therapist was pushing her too hard again. Hollis denied it and told her Em felt it was time to deal with her past. She didn’t want to hide any longer. One of the most important lessons for any reporter to learn is how to listen. If you master it, you sometimes uncover gold. This conversation was looking very shiny.

  “Why now?”I inquired.

  “Why what?”They said in unison.

  “Why deal with the past now?”

  “I don’t think that is—” Maggie retorted.

  “Maggie, Em wants us to talk to him. She is done hiding. Em’s boyfriend, Aaron, broke up with her because he felt she wasn’t being honest with him. They had been dating for over a year when he found out about the incident in New York.”

  “She didn’t say anything about it at all to him?” I couldn’t hide my astonishment. So much for being a cool and collected reporter.

  “She doesn’t talk about it with anyone except us and Patricia, her therapist. We both knew her before Atalik died. She was never comfortable talking about that psychopath.”