Martin tensed in his seat, expecting the door to swivel open to a murky realm infested by his foulest nightmares. That horror did not come to pass, but his heart still beat frantically in his breast. At first, he didn’t even realize he had crossed the kitchen, reaching hypnotically toward the door handle.
The door yielded under his fingertips, revealing a staircase that delved deep underground.
The first step screamed in protest under his weight, and he winced. Was that what he heard earlier? Someone insidiously creeping up the stairs?
He halted at the bottom of the steps like a deer paralyzed in the headlights.
The cellar was mercifully free of the appalling Victorian décor that caked every inch of the household. It looked like any other basement, fashioned with plain cement and bedizened with cobwebs. Yet, there was something vaguely amiss here.
“Nikolai?” An overpowering stench steered him toward the corner. “The hell is this…?” He craned his head and peered down a narrow tunnel. Scarlet light oozed out in tendrils, flowing from the heart of a sickly, diseased nebula. “Nikolai, are you there?” An eerie ambience answered him—like a distorted instrument howling from the sewers.
Martin planted his foot in the passage and began to shimmy his way through. The sound of his breath resonated off the walls.
The passage seemed to extend for eternity, shrinking toward the point of origin. Martin swore he was only steps away from the end when it stretched on for another twenty feet. A jarring pain met his hips and he could move no further.
“Shit…” He tried to wiggle free, but the walls hugged him tight in its smothering embrace. What if he couldn’t return the way he came? Panic lanced through his brain. “Nikolai!” he yelled. He cursed under his breath as his asthma set in in sharp spikes.
He tried to feel for his inhaler tucked in his jacket’s breast pocket. Every second he remained without it pushed him closer to the point of no return.
“Nikolai…”
He jerked when he saw the figure at the end of the tunnel. Its head was shaped like a gas mask, illuminated by an arterial red.
The silhouette crooked his neck at a peculiar angle like an owl, the eye sockets of his gas mask glaring like open sores.
“Who the hell are you?” Martin barked. He looked down at the figure’s hand, drawn to the needle in his grip. “Shit! Oh shit!”
Martin’s gun was holstered on his left hip, pitifully out of reach of his right hand. Even his left shoulder was lodged in place like a victim in a body cast. He could sense the creature’s shadow drawing closer, an intoxicating presence he couldn’t ward off.
Martin’s aching fingers stretched for the firearm, just brushing against the hammer of his gun.
“Son of a bitch!” he screamed. The silhouette came to a stop, ogling him through the gas mask, mere inches away.
He slowly raised a finger to his mouth to hush Martin.
SIXTEEN
Morning carried the icy forewarning of winter, whispering through Vivian’s jacket. A premature frost glazed the sidewalks as she wound past empty houses.
Dilapidated cables hung from telephone poles like marrow stretched thin on bones. She cocked her head to the left as a silhouette on a bicycle melted into the mist.
Agate Rezník’s house awaited her. She tiptoed toward the gates that separated her slice of land from the rest of the world. Creeping vines snared the metal bars, bejeweled with gray petals that curled in the frost. She brushed her fingers against the flowers, taking in their corpse-like texture.
She winced as she recalled all the times she felt men’s blood flow through her hands and drip down her fingertips. Those memories surged forth in such crystalline detail, pouring into her from a font of horrors.
The most recent memory was inescapable, a sight that toyed with her mind every waking hour since… since last night.
Her victim’s face rose from the oily pits of her nightmares when she closed her eyes to sleep. Only after he scorched her soul with his death-defiant gaze did she wake to the sound of gunfire.
It was her hand that pulled the trigger. She had gunned down the homeless man in the alley on that fateful eve. She had good reason to do so, of course. Any sane human would defend his or herself against an armed man.
But had she resorted to lethal force all too eagerly? Was she so accustomed to violence that she sought no other alternative to her dilemma? Was she addicted to the thrill of seeing agony illustrated in their faces?
She tangibly felt the perfume of dead flesh clinging to her skin as a constant reminder of the life she claimed.
I’m a murderer, she thought. What separates me from the likes of Viktor Rezník? I may have defended myself, but somewhere deep inside… I’m afraid I… enjoyed it.
She wiped her hands against her jeans as an afterthought, eternally tainted with the blood of another human being.
She jumped as something squealed in the distance, sending a shot of adrenaline straight to her heart. Every sound resembled a police siren, and every shadow could be a squad car waiting to waylay her.
She needed to find shelter immediately. Vivian scratched the needle mark on her arm as she thrust open the gates.
Mother, you cannot hurt me anymore. Those words Viktor spoke still rattled in her head. She wondered what role, if any, his mother played in these murders—or in shaping the identity of a killer.
Vivian would have to frame her questions carefully, peeling away the layers to discover the true nature of Agate’s relationship with her son.
She knocked on the door. A few moments passed before a latch clicked somewhere inside. The door creaked open, and Vivian looked into stunningly green eyes. Agate Rezník was a woman who proudly wore her sixty-nine years of age. She was dressed in a vintage blue gown with her hair tied in a conservative bun. She was a relic of an older age, permanently imprinted with a sense of a simpler time.
Agate scanned her guest up and down, reserving silent judgment.
“Hello,” Vivian piped up. “I’m a former colleague of Viktor. I lent him a book and I was hoping to get it back.”
“What is your name?”
“Vivian.”
She felt as though she had seen this woman somewhere before. Agate pursed her lips together.
“Viktor hasn’t been by the house in ages. I’m afraid you won’t find anything here.”
“Please!” Vivian said as the door began to howl shut. “This book is very important to me! It once belonged to my mother.” Agate’s eyes flashed from the shadows congealed beyond the foyer. Vivian could almost see the seasons reflecting in those uncanny, glass orbs; misty winters of long past, honey gold autumns, and languishing summers.
Sixty-nine long years of loneliness and strife stared back at her.
“Come in then.” The door yawned open to a musty abyss. Ignoring the stench, Vivian entered. Antique clocks adorned the wooden walls and table. Every clock ticked in unison, a concert of grating metal like insects buzzing in the walls. How could Agate sleep in such a loathsome place? She glanced at a pump organ dejected in the corner. The ivory keys glowed a buttery orange in the slashes of sunlight peeping through veiled curtains.
Agate curled up in a rocking chair while Vivian took her rightful place on a yellowed, moth-eaten couch.
Agate stared hard at the young woman, equally fascinated and appalled by the red-eyed beauty.
“I haven’t spoken to my son in years. He dropped out of existence once he left home. I heard he wasted a decade of his life in medical school.” Vivian cringed at Agate’s apathy for her son. She hardly cared where he had disappeared to.
“He hasn’t stopped by to see you?”
“No, I’m afraid not. That’s the gratitude I receive for raising my own flesh and blood. One day he decides to abandon me to my lonesome self and escape into his studies. Speaking of which, tell me about this book you lent my son.”
Vivian hesitated, unprepared for the question. Agate studied her curiously.
/> “Well?”
“It was a psychology book my mother gave me. It was about nurturing children.”
Agate didn’t bat an eye. In fact, she seemed to instantly lose interest in the conversation, rummaging through her purse in search of something.
“My mother used to counsel youths with troubled pasts,” Vivian continued. “She grew to love them as if they were her very own children.”
Still no response bubbled forth from Agate.
Vivian decided it was time for a new tactic. She would outstretch her claws and go straight for the jugular.
“Viktor never mentioned anything about his family.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Agate snapped. “Family was the furthest thing from his mind. He was an impetuous child without a father figure in his life. Naturally, the burden of discipline fell on me. It became my duty to shape his character and rein him in when he strayed out of bounds.”
“How did Viktor misbehave?”
Her eyes rounded in awe when Agate set a peculiar device on the table. A syringe. It was pre-filled with a colorless solution, nothing like the Syllax currently residing in Vivian’s veins. She absently stroked her arm, recalling the poisonous bite of the needle.
“Viktor had a tendency to wander away from home. Sometimes he disappeared into the neighboring forest overnight. When he returned, he would bring wild animals home with him; pitiful creatures ridden with parasites and disease. He tried to nurse them back to health, but few survived. Of course, I didn’t allow Viktor to keep the animals as pets. I made him release them back into the wild.”
She rolled up her sleeve, exposing spider veins that twisted and turned under her parchment skin. Vivian also noted the many bruises from clustering injections.
“Eventually, Viktor took an interest in human disease,” Agate said, swabbing her arm with an alcohol wipe. “But he held no interest in diseases of the body. He was fascinated by mental diseases, how they originated and how they could be treated. He always expressed an interest in helping others.”
He certainly isn’t helping now, Vivian thought.
Agate could barely hold the needle steady as she attempted to administer the medication. The needle poked her fingers instead of her arm, drawing pinpricks of blood.
“Do you want my help?” Vivian asked.
“Please.”
Vivian took her trembling hand and picked up the syringe. “Glatiramer acetate” was printed across the affronting device in large, bold lettering. The word jogged a memory in the recesses of her mind, likely from one of her pre-med classes. Glatiramer acetate was commonly used to treat multiple sclerosis, an inflammatory disease that eats away at the myelin sheath surrounding the nerves and spinal cord. Over time, the disease would retard the nerve impulses and leave areas of scarring called sclerosis. The victim’s vision would disintegrate and the bladder would ultimately fail. She could only imagine the pain Agate must be subject to every day.
Vivian inserted the needle deep under the skin, through layers of muscle and fat. She coolly depressed the plunger, drinking in the smell of sterile alcohol to preoccupy her mind.
She shouldn’t be squirming at the sight of needles. After all, this was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To be a nurse and practice medicine on others?
Agate sank back with a heavy sigh.
“Viktor wanted to be a counselor, but he also excelled in medicine. He attended some school for psychology. I always wanted him to become an electrician, but he had his mind set on other silly things.”
“What’s so silly about being a counselor?”
“Therapists only enable problems with their petty assurances. They sit there, nod their heads, and tell those decrepit souls what they want to hear. At its core, therapy comes down to a bunch of psychobabble, hypnosis, and prescription drugs. Why don’t these psychiatrists tell those idiots to face their problems and move on?”
“I doubt it’s that easy.”
“Of course it is! My son used to be a troublemaker and a degenerate good-for-nothing, but I didn’t drag him to the doctor and spoon feed him drugs. I put him in his place and he never acted up again. I didn’t need any fancy pills or therapy to fix my son. Drugs are a crutch for the weak.” She leaned forward in her chair with a splitting creak. “Weak.”
Vivian bolted up as a high-pitched whistle screeched from somewhere in the house.
“I have some tea boiling on the stove,” Agate said. “Would you like some?”
“Yes.” Agate didn’t rise from her chair. “Please,” she quickly added.
That word seemed to release her from her rickety perch, and she shuffled toward the kitchen. Vivian glanced at the antique clocks overhead. Their incessant ticking left an itch in her brain—always grating and chiming in their eternal quest to scratch off one more second.
She couldn’t stand to be in this room any longer. Only a masochist would reside in a house stocked with this many clocks. At her wits end, she leaped off the couch and peeked inside the kitchen.
The reclusive woman was nowhere in sight. She couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that came over her in that moment. It felt as though she had been alone in the house the entire time.
Spinning away from the kitchen, she marched down the hall. The chuckling clocks and pendulums goaded her onward. Where had Agate gone? Had she only imagined the tiny woman who birthed a monster?
“Mrs. Rezník?”
Vivian nudged open a door to one of the rooms. The ghost of dawn oozed through the wilting curtains. A sewing machine rested on the chest of drawers, delicately awaiting Agate’s fingers to sew another dress she would never wear. To Vivian’s left, she saw a black and white photograph of a male silhouette, presumably her husband. She completely forgot to ask about what happened to Mr. Rezník. By the looks of the double bed, Agate once slept alongside him.
Propped against the wall was a vintage mirror dimpled with sunspots. What did Agate see when she gazed into the reflecting glass? A mother abandoned by her son? A young woman caged in a dying shell? She almost didn’t sense the pair of glass eyes watching her from the corner. Vivian lowered her gaze to a doll confined to a wooden cradle.
The sight chilled Vivian to the core. Dolls were so much easier to raise than flesh and blood children, after all. Its face was jeweled with aquamarine eyes, and tresses of raven hair fell to its Victorian dress. Her stubby fingers were raised to the ceiling in mock longing for a caregiver.
Vivian wanted to throw a blanket over the caricature of human life, but it would hardly remove the abomination from existence. Instead, she wisped out of the master bedroom.
A single door lingered at the end of the hall. It seemed to recede into the core of the house like a closet not to be disturbed.
Vivian was never one for respecting family secrets. The door creaked open under the weight of her fingertips.
The room was mostly bare except for peach-colored walls like the inside of a mother’s womb. A flimsy sheet was stretched over a bed frame like an ill-conceived tarp. The feeble attempt at comfort wasn’t even worthy of the lowliest tenant.
The only furniture consisted of a potty and a wooden chair.
Vivian couldn’t believe it. She had tracked Agate down only to find a barren room. She was expecting some clue to Viktor’s whereabouts, perhaps a journal or a note scribbled in a hurry. No such article had been left behind. In all likelihood, he didn’t want his mother to track him down.
“Viktor,” she whispered. The slightest mention of his name didn’t stir any secrets within. She traced her fingers along the wall, almost expecting to see words carved into the plaster.
You cannot hurt me anymore.
After a moment, she humbled herself on her knees and peered under the bed. Nothing but dust bunnies and cobwebs.
There was no titillating revelation awaiting her in his childhood home. Viktor’s origins would forever be shrouded in mystery. Vivian punched the rotting floor, trying not to scream in fury. Her knuckles split as another pu
nch rained down, rabid in her desire to punish everything and everyone for her failure.
She had failed to find answers.
Tears burned at the corners of her eyes as she lifted her knuckles mottled in blood.
Viktor’s mother had played some crucial role in the killings, but her explanation of his childhood didn’t shed any light. As far as she knew, he was still practicing medicine in his “silly” profession.
“You abused him, didn’t you?” Vivian whispered, scowling at her blood that shimmered freshly on the floor.
She squeaked in surprise as one of the floorboards sank under her knee.
In one swift motion, her head bashed against the wood. The surge of dizziness was immediate. It spilled into her brain like a tidal wave, pulling her body and mind in different directions at once. When she opened her eyes, she felt as though she was hovering space.
Her arm dangled pendulously through a hole in the floor—and her fingers brushed against something unnaturally soft.
She recoiled with a disgusted cry. She wiped her fingers against her jeans, imagining a steaming mass of flesh under the floor. When she peered down the hole, she sucked in a painful breath. Something had indeed been concealed underneath.
Something small swaddled in a blanket. Was it a deceased, parasitic twin entombed under the floorboards? A holocaust of forest critters that succumbed to winter and disease? She pinched her nose as she peeled away the blanket.
She feasted her eyes on a leather book. What was that strange sensation that suddenly crept across her face? A smile? She lifted a hand to her quivering lips. Yes, she was smiling as warm relief pooled through her.
She couldn’t put this off for another second. Long-awaited answers were finally within her reach, and she wouldn’t be denied.
Vivian cracked open the diary and the smell of old parchment wafted up to her. Many of the entries were faded or the pages had been ruefully torn out.
She flipped to the first legible entry.
August 11, 1968
Red Widow (Vivian Xu, Book 1) Page 20