After having met Patty, I knew the only person who had bugged her office was Patty. Maybe she had spooked herself like I had with too much information about the crimes. Adding in Em’s childhood recollections, it had driven her over the edge. I am guessing she hadn’t been too far from it when she started treating Em.
“Are you suing her?”
“Not right away, that would only ensure that some embarrassing detail was released prior to publication. She thinks that by releasing this book, she is helping me by bring the truth to light. Mr. McNeal, my attorney, is filing a grievance with the Florida Department of Health as well as the American Mental Health Association. She is going to lose her license.”
“Won’t that have the same effect?”
“Yes. This way, however, she won’t know a thing until it is too late. I may not be ruthless like my father, but I will not be taken advantage of.”
“She still believes she has your trust.”
“Yes.” The grin slid across her face. A chill ascended up my spine. I knew that smile; it wasn’t hers. It was Atalik’s. She had continued to see Patty after the revelation, never letting her know she had lost complete trust in her. She didn’t even tell her friends about it. She knew the doctor had gone over the edge. That one expression was making me feel sorry for the poor, crazy woman. Not very sorry, just a tiny bit.
She truly thought Em was an innocent, naïve young woman, a victim who was going to make her rich. Her scheme would also save Em.
Before the book hit the market, Patty was going to lose pretty much everything she had worked for in her life. The mortgage she had fallen behind on would soon enter foreclosure, despite the hours she spent on paperwork to save it. There would be no loan modification or refinance. The lawsuit being prepared by Mr. McNeal would mean that any profits would never reach her. It would be served only after the book was in its final stages. This way nothing torrid would be released ahead of the book.
A knock on the open door spun me around. A short, pudgy, balding man waited timidly at the door. After a nod from Em, he entered, carrying a large briefcase. I turned and failed to hide my shock. There was an honest-to-goodness hump on his back.
“I have the documents you requested from Mr. McNeal,” he said stiffly, trying his best to stand tall while eyeing me with jealous suspicion.
“Thank you, Alan. It was so nice of you to bring them yourself.” Turning to me, she said, “I thought it would be easier if you didn’t have to deal with Mr. McNeal.”
The implication that he was a pain in the ass was clear. Alan ignored this and nearly exploded with excitement when he handed over the documents, as if delivering the papers were the final step in his life’s work. He was actually blushing—blushing like a fifteen-year-old, not a grown man, meeting a Victoria’s Secret model. He was clearly enamored and lingered longer than necessary after handing over the documents, waiting for something more.
Em’s lips formed a smile just for him, a sweet innocent one. The one I had believed to be genuine. Seeing the other one, I knew this was just a façade, but it was still effective. She hid the darkness well, but once you knew it was there, you couldn’t forget it. So much for my keen reporter’s instincts.
Alan plodded out of the room, disappointed. Em hadn’t been rude or callous in any way. She had been completely professional and ladylike, saying good-bye to him just before he walked out the door and the skip in his step returned.
Three large expandable files were now piled on the desk between us. Two of them contained the employment files I had wanted. The third held the journals of Atalik Hedrick Bath, as well as his last will and testament. I hadn’t even known the journals existed. Em had known, but after seeing her father’s scrapbooks, she wanted nothing to do with them. I desperately wanted to open the file and start reading. Em excused herself and went to fetch Jayden. Staring at the muddy-brown file encasing the journals, I swore I could hear a faint but steady heartbeat. Lack of sleep was clearly affecting me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Alcoholics drink for a variety of reasons, but some like myself find comfort in the idea that drinking frees us. We are, of course, only free as long as we are drinking. My favorite craft beer, Old Rasputin, was helping me block out the last three hours.
When I told her about my idea to write a counter book, she jumped at the idea of getting the truth out there. Even if we weren’t sure what that was, it would be better than letting someone like Ms. Patty tell her story.
Anthony was still out with his Realtor, and with my afternoon meeting canceled, I decided to begin reading Atalik’s diaries. There were seventeen of them in all, spanning the course of his life. The oldest one was over sixty years old. It, like all the others, was handcrafted leather. The most recent journal cut off a week before his death. The last entry stopped in midsentence. It wasn’t as mysterious as it appeared; Atalik frequently would begin writing, then stop and return to his thoughts later.
The first entry was dated April 19, 1946, Atalik’s sixteenth birthday. He bought the journal as a present for himself. It was the only gift he had ever received on or for his birthday since he had left home years earlier. The boarding school where he had been exiled did not acknowledge student birthdays, nor did his parents. They had left Atalik at the school when he was eight years old, after the death of his younger sister, Amelia.
Her death at age six drove a wedge between Atalik and his parents. They openly blamed him for it. Surprisingly, nothing in what I read refuted it; much of the diary was written as if he expected his parents to read it. Some passages taunted their desire to know how and why she was killed. Others were far more graphic in nature, detailing what he called the perfect murder of a minuscule brat.
Some of the pages were filled with boasts of how he bullied and tortured his schoolmates, all of which was practice for his homecoming, when he planned to use his own special talents to return his parents’ kindness. Letters from his father, Fredric Bath, were occasionally tucked in the pages. The last letter was dated a couple of months after the birthday when he purchased the journal.
Dear Atalik,
Headmaster Davis has informed me that you wish to return for the Christmas holidays. The very idea of you entering our home distresses and disturbs your mother, especially given your last correspondence to her. How any son can write such venom to the woman who gave him life and cared for him so tenderly, I do not know. It seems you are incapable of remorse or anything pertaining to compassion.
I have already written and informed him that your latest request as well as any future requests will be denied. It is only moral and legal obligations that tie me to you. I will provide for your care and education until your eighteenth birthday; at such time you will no longer be under my dominion and may leave Seton Hall. A small trust has been created to take care of your needs thereafter, provided you do not attempt to contact your mother or me from this moment forward. Should you have any needs or concerns about the trust after your emancipation, you may contact Mr. Stewart Kane, Esquire.
Sincerely,
Fredric Bath
It is unlikely, given his fractured relationship with his parents, that they ever read any of his journals. The Baths would have been horrified to know that after their deaths in 1950, their son would produce a will declaring him their sole heir. His final revenge on them would be the removal of their bodies from Long Island and their re-interment at his estate. Amelia, his sister and perhaps his first victim, would also be removed and transported to the estate, although she was not placed with the rest of the family. The location of her body is unknown.
The official cause of death for Amelia Bath was listed as heart deficiency, a lie invented to spare the Bath family public embarrassment. Sweet Amelia was found unconscious, her young frame covered from head to toe in bruises. The doctor was immediately summoned. It did little for her; she never opened her emerald-green eyes. Everyone came to sit with her and watch her labored breaths except her brother.
; Most assumed that Atalik was simply too young to understand what was happening. But he did. He knew she was dying, or at least he hoped for it. She had never been much fun to play with, always whining and running to their mother. For the week that she lingered, he played happily in his room. Quiet for once. Not bothering a soul.
Atalik, the second son, the only surviving child, was the single possible suspect, if only in his parents’ minds. Atalik, in his own words, had always been an odd child. He believed since he was young that he was expected to fill the shoes of his dead older brother. Sometimes he even alluded to being the reincarnation of his sibling.
The first young Master Bath had been every bit the genius his younger sibling would prove to be, but his nature was far kinder than his brother’s. While he was his parents’ greatest joy, the second young master would be their worst nightmare. All they wanted after their first son’s death from tuberculosis was to start again. They tried for five years to have another child. Each time they tried and failed, their hearts broke.
Finally, it seemed a miracle occurred, and Emese Bath prayed that God would bless her again with another angel. Her prayer would go unanswered by heaven. She carried the baby to term, and when the unblessed day occurred, he was born. Despite her resistance to the idea, the child was named Atalik Hedrick Bath, the same name as his older dearly departed brother.
He would never be anything close to the angel his brother was in life or death, for the dead are nearly always sanctified in the afterlife. From that very first moment, he was different; in some intangible way, he was not a normal child. He cried less, but his appetite was insatiable. A wet nurse was hired to help with young Atalik’s demand, for nourishment required it. He listened intensely to everything that happened around him. His eyes seemed ancient from the first day he opened them.
He grew as any normal child would, despite his appetite, and basked in the warmth of his family. Their attention was all he craved. When it was diverted for any reason, he made his displeasure known. Servants who angered him or dared to breathe a word of his true nature met with an accident or were mysteriously terrorized until they left their positions. Nearly all the household staff suspected he was behind the accidents; his parents continued to see only the child they had prayed for.
The birth of his younger sister did not please him. He did like the way that people fawned over him when he held or tended to her. The euphoria of those encounters did not last long enough. The tantrums began again.
Amelia was a bright and genuinely loving child. It was only natural for people to gravitate toward her glowing presence and away from Atalik. If you asked any of the family’s acquaintances about the two, they would have said that both children were remarkable. Yet when it came to the invitations that were extended to the children themselves, Atalik found himself lacking in social opportunities, while his sister was never without one.
As soon as Amelia was able to walk, she was continuously having accidents. All of them happened when Atalik was home with her, never when she was alone. Her toys were always found broken and lying in odd places. Eventually Atalik was moved to his own room, but this did not decrease the number of incidents.
Emese feared for her daughter’s life, but when questioned by her husband, she could not justify her feeling that Atalik was the one to blame. A woman’s intuition was neither listened to nor trusted in those days. Fredric, more than his wife, could see his son and heir as a danger, but he had talked himself into the belief that all of Atalik’s peculiarities would vanish as he grew into manhood.
It was a laugh that revealed Atalik’s insidious nature. One single laugh shattered his father’s wall of delusions and confirmed his mother’s fears. The day Amelia was buried, it rained as if the heavens were weeping with the family. When her casket was being lowered into the ground next to her older brother, Atalik laughed and then smiled, looking up into his father’s eyes. Fredric had heard that laugh echo only once before—the day he found Amelia unconscious. Heaven could have the little pest, Atalik wrote in this journal.
It did not take long for a school to be found that would accept a student midterm. The Baths sold their home and moved south to Virginia after Emese suffered a nervous breakdown. She would never recover. Letters written in Atalik’s handwriting were repeatedly found in her possession. They confessed to horrible things and were always unsigned. Fredric spent a fortune trying to prevent Atalik from having any contact with his mother. He failed.
His parents’ deaths in a house fire made him rich, but not wealthy. It would be another fifteen years before he bought the company that would become Ecsed Enterprises. By that time he had taken an extended tour of Eastern Europe, returning with a Hungarian man he referred to as Gerald and a deepening interest in the occult.
The journals after his parents’ deaths became a jumble of messages to them and rants about his destiny, which for me was a mixed blessing, because my eyes were simply too tired to continue. Plus, I was out of beer.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The deeper I went into the journals, the less I understood. It was clear that Atalik was obsessed with the occult and the infamous Countess Bathory. Little else made sense. As Em had mentioned, references to tantric sex rituals were sprinkled about—rituals where power was raised through sex with one or more partners. Descriptions of the rites were vividly pornographic. The journals expressed clear enthusiasm for them even when they never accomplished their goals, although what those goals were was never directly stated. At times in the journals, he seemed to be two different people; the handwriting even changed along with the tone.
The more elegant of the scripts provided some insights. Atalik purchased a title from a down-and-out relative, despite the fact that it wasn’t genuine. Gaining the title made him feel like he was truly an aristocrat, above others and no longer the unwanted son. The pages dripped with venom for his parents, teachers, and his old headmaster. Even after the deaths of his parents and the headmaster, he was promising them bloody revenge.
My head was now aching from all the twisted paths my thoughts had taken me; there was just now way to straighten them out. The man was clearly insane, obsessed with his infamous ancestry. He believed that if she had not been stopped, the Countess Bathory, a relation of Vlad Dracula, would have achieved immortality. He joined more than one occult society and sought the aid of Aleister Crowley, the English occultist, despite the man’s death in 1947.
The only logical theory I had for the massacre was that someone knowing of Atalik’s obsessions had used his death to murder the people attending his funeral and had fled before the police arrived. It was weak and wouldn’t stand up in court, but we weren’t going to take it to trial. The court of public opinion was the only one that mattered for us.
And the public believed in monsters. Monsters living in the forms of human beings and preying on them, robbing them of their humanity. Their biggest fear was there were no monsters, and people were capable of all the despicable and disgusting acts committed throughout history. Atalik had placed himself in both the human and monster camps. Humans, he proved, could be evil, but they could also invite greater forms of evil into the world.
***
Anthony and I worked through the next night on a book proposal for a publishing house that he had contacts in; as I sat at 30,000 feet headed towards New York and home, they were reviewing it. Its acceptance was pretty much guaranteed, especially since Emily Bath was onboard with it. Literally. She was sitting next to me. Still, it was nerve-racking waiting to know for sure that it had been accepted.
My eyes keep wandering over and down to the soft mounds rising gently beside me. I am a horrible letch. It used to be one of my best qualities; now, without the aid of alcoholism, it was getting in the way. Anthony solicited a promise of no drinking while working on this project, and since I was working nonstop and would be until the book was finally birthed, I had begun to experience the newly sober man’s sense of remorse—a major crisis of conscience, where I ac
tually felt bad about ogling her. It forced my attention back to the outline, which I finished by the time we hit the ground.
The deadline was the reason Em was sitting next to me. The short flight would be our last chance to work together for the next month. The ending of Em’s active involvement in her father’s empire required her presence for nearly a week. Then she was off to the estate to make sure the latest round of repairs was moving along. It was being transformed into a group home and school for disadvantaged youth. She wanted the house to become a place of hope, not a macabre, haunted shell. It was the only way in her mind to begin to erase the damage her father did to the world. Beyond that, she felt that leaving the house as it was would only let the evil fester. Better to slowly drown it with positive energy.
Against all the advice of her friends, she intended on living and working at the estate as both the director of the school and as a teacher. Originally, she was only going to advise the director and commute. The move and change in plans was promoted by a series of stories being published in a European tabloid about Em and her family’s tragedy, including pictures of her house and current school. The director who had been hired to oversee everything immediately quit. Someone had been kind enough to deliver the paper directly to his doorstep.
Em felt it was best that she was present for the rest of the restorations and remodeling. The story also mentioned the plans to have her father’s body removed from the estate and cremated. A reporter had already been caught trying to climb the fence of the estate after his requests for interviews with the construction crews had been denied. Now, workers and security personnel were living at the estate full-time to complete the work and to ensure no further surprises.
Em was to be shuttled off to a private airfield for yet another flight to Buffalo, where her company was headquartered, while I was ferried around the city from meeting to meeting by various taxis.
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