Arsenic for the Soul (21 page)

“
Of course not. I want you
to be safe. I’m just worried, that’s all.”

“
I promise I’ll come back
in one piece. You’re not getting rid of me that easily. Remember, I
have experience dealing with psychopaths before, and something
tells me this one can’t take me down.”

Milo smiled coyly.

“
I pity the man who makes
an enemy of you.”

* * *

Twilight deepened in the lowlands
beyond Prague where they were awash in an amber glow. For the most
part, Camilla’s silent journey was marked by questions about an
uncle she hadn’t seen in years.

“
Don’t you think it’s
awfully weird that he can’t just tell you on the phone about this
family member?” Vivian asked. “Is it really necessary to see him in
person? It just seems rather quaint, doesn’t it?”

“
Uncle Sebastian raised me
like his own daughter. You might doubt his intentions but I trust
him with my life. He urged me to get as far outside of Prague as
possible. Maybe he wanted me to stay with him for
safety.”

“
But for how long? Until
you become a hermit like him? Something about this just doesn’t
feel right.”

Camilla gripped the steering wheel
tighter. The lights of the cottage glowed from atop a hill in the
distance. As they neared her childhood home, Camilla admired the
honeyed surface of Adršpach Lake. Had it truly been that long since
she left the hospitality of Uncle Sebastian?

She was so intent on orchestrating the
downfall of the asylums that she didn’t make time for her sole
family. She would make up for it tonight, she promised. She
couldn’t wait to sit down with Uncle Sebastian over tea and mull
recent events.

The car growled to a halt on a thin
stretch of dirt leading to the hermitage. Time didn’t leave its
mark on the cottage, as though it was immune or accordingly trapped
in the past. Camilla rapped her knuckles on the door and waited for
it to swing open.

Uncle Sebastian didn’t greet her with
a hug and kiss as expected. In fact, she didn’t hear anyone
stirring inside.

“
He might be asleep,”
Camilla said, and on a whim she pushed the door. Even as it
effortlessly swung in, her hairs stood on end. Darkness saturated
the cottage. Suddenly, she felt as though she was wading into a
viper’s pit. Faint candlelight undulated at the end of the hall,
whipping the shadows into a writhing sea of black.

“
Uncle
Sebastian?”

Camilla set foot in the dining room
and screamed. She floundered back into Vivian, jaw agape at the
atrocity awaiting her inside.

Vivian saw a figure in the
dark.

Sebastian Vesely sat naked at a table.
His mandible had been pried from his face, leaving only a tongue
hanging from a void.

His small intestines were wrenched
viciously out of his abdominal cavity. They stretched across the
room like bloody streamers with the ends nailed to the walls. For
all impression, it looked like tentacles outstretching from
Sebastian’s chest, transforming his flesh and blood into an occult
being.

The Vesely seal was painted in
arterial spray on the wall behind him. For the first time, Camilla
looked at the dinner spread. The table was decked with plates of
cheese, a loaf of bread, and a bowl of wine.

A mass of candles gleamed around
Sebastian Vesely, as if he was a morbid centerpiece to the feast.
His flesh looked waxy in the golden glow, lending itself to an
otherworldly creature.

“
Uncle Sebastian…” Camilla
whimpered, fighting down the tears as she cautiously approached.
She couldn’t look upon his disfigured face as she stumbled around
the table. She almost took his cold hand in hers, but she couldn’t
bear to touch him. It was like looking at a mannequin, not a man
who once lived and breathed.

They stared at the plate in front of
him, upon which lay a coil of flesh.

“
What is it?” Vivian
asked.

Sweat beaded on Camilla’s brow as the
stress threatened to catapult her into full blown panic.

“
Another… umbilical
cord.”

Vivian grabbed Camilla before she
could spill sideways onto the floor and vomit. She could hardly
hold her own weight now.

“
Another one?
Why?
” Vivian stared at the
horrendous object as if it might animate and slither
forth.

Camilla swallowed the lump in her
throat and noticed a few documents under the cord. Careful not to
touch the flesh, she extracted a birth certificate on faded
parchment, eager to be spill its revolting secrets.

“
It seems even children who
don’t exist get birth certificates,” she murmured, leaning closer
to read the fine print. “Camilla Vesely, child of James Vesely and
Ada Kysilka… Ada.” She let the name roll over her tongue as she
envisioned the woman who gave her life. At least she had a name to
put to her mother. She couldn’t dwell on the revelation for long
because she noticed a second birth certificate stuck to the first.
As she considered the umbilical cord before her, a sinking feeling
assaulted her.

“
Born December 11, 1973...
Sex: male. Child of James Vesely and Ada Kysilka.” Camilla’s tongue
dried. “Ezran Vesely.” She spun toward the mutilated face of Uncle
Sebastian, wondering how many secrets he harbored from her. “He
knew I had a twin brother. Why would he try to hide the
fact?”

Vivian drifted closer into the ring of
scarlet candlelight.

“
Maybe this will tell us
why.” Her hand shot out, clutching several letters bespattered with
Uncle Sebastian’s blood. “I found this along with his
mandible.”

Steadying her hands, Camilla pried
open the letters to learn about her brother’s fate. By all
accounts, Ezran Vesely was sent to St. Ignatius Sanitarium at a
young age when he became ill with tuberculosis. Uncle Sebastian
willingly surrendered him to the asylum when the symptoms first
came to fruition. The idea that her uncle would send her only
brother to such a place sparked fury and shock in her. In that rare
moment, Camilla almost felt pity for the child.

Ezran must have despised his father
and uncle for the betrayal. It wasn’t hard to imagine the boy
shifting that blame to his mother for bringing him into a painful
existence. While he was carted off to suffer in filth and
isolation, his sister lived a life of love and care.

As Camilla read on about her twin, her
horror grew. Several letters addressed from the sanitarium to
Sebastian painted the portrait of a troubled youth who graduated
from stalking to assaulting other inmates. During the rare times
when Sebastian visited Ezran, it almost always ended with violence
from the latter.

She turned to Sebastian’s cadaver
again. The savagery of the murder stunned Camilla to the brink of
tears.

That is, not to suggest that any
murder was more pleasant than the next, but this went beyond the
realm of rage or reason. This was violence for the sake of
violence.

“
He tore him to pieces,”
Camilla said, finally setting down the letters. “I’m not sure this
was ever about the Magdalene asylums or revenge for shutting them
down I think he’s hunting me for an entirely different
reason.”

She picked up the final letter, but it
didn’t continue to chronicle Ezran’s tragic life. Her eyes widened
in dismay.

Dear sister,

You are familiar with the
sins of our family. I have been searching endlessly for you. You
have tried to atone for our ancestors by shutting down the
Magdalene asylums and for this, I commend you. Unfortunately, it
isn’t enough.

We carry a cursed
bloodline infected with crimes against humanity, a disease perhaps
fouler than what I am dispersing. The blood of murderers flows
hotly through our veins.

You are the last remaining
descendant of the Vesely bloodline, the last thread in the tapestry
of our strange and intertwined lives.

You and I are living sin.
We were born out of the embers of lust. Our mother was imprisoned
because of our existence and we were condemned for
existing.

During my imprisonment in
St. Ignatius Sanitarium, my illness consumed my brain. I will never
cease punishing society with the same sickness that plagued me
until you are mine. Their blood will grow thick with disease as
long as you are beyond my reach.

You and I will write the
last chapter in our family history. As long as we still draw
breath, the sins of our family can never be laid to
rest.

You must die.

Let us end the Vesely
bloodline once and for all… where you left off.

SIXTEEN

Vivian and Camilla were no closer to
comprehending the end of Ezran Vesely’s letter when they returned
to Prague. Camilla was still reeling from the fact that she shared
a womb with a twin brother, not to mention that he was the ominous
stalker walking in her shadow.

While Camilla darted off to follow
this new thread in her investigation, Vivian scurried away to meet
Milo. She was tempted to follow Camilla but she also desperately
sought the comfort of her boyfriend. Did that make her an awful
friend?

Camilla needs some time to
herself
, she thought, trying to chase away
her guilt.

Vivian spotted Milo sitting on a bench
in Vysehrad Park. The sunlight floated across him, making him look
picturesque in the way only Milo could pull off. Vivian curled
around him and his touch seemed to rejuvenate her in a matter of
seconds.

“
What’s the matter?” he
asked. They had developed an intimacy where exchanged greetings
didn’t seem necessary anymore. It was as though they picked up from
the moment they last held each other.

“
I’m sorry, but I can’t
say. I trust you, Milo, but this story isn’t mine to tell. This is
something personal my friend is going through.”

“
Camilla? Is it why you ran
off the other day?”

“
Yes. I’m sorry if I’m in a
rotten mood.”

“
It’s okay. We all have
those days and there’s no shame in that. I wish there was something
I could do to comfort you.”

“
Don’t you know you always
comfort me? I’m the luckiest girl in the world,
remember?”

“
No, not quite yet you
aren’t.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
I’ve been thinking, you’re
under a lot of stress lately from Crenshaw and the program. I
thought maybe you could use a break to get away from it all. Far,
far away.” Milo handed her a brochure replete with lavish scenes of
a river and dazzling bridges pulled from a painting. Vivian’s heart
felt like it would implode as she admired the city floating on
azure waters.

“
My next world adventure
was already in the making, but I thought I could use a partner in
crime to ensure I come back safe and sound. What would you say to
floating down Venice with me?”

“
Oh my God, really? I … I
think I love you.”

Vivian almost choked. She couldn’t
believe she uttered those terrifying words.

“
You think?”

“
I know I love you, Milo,
and that’s coming right from my heart.”

She had scarcely uttered those words
for so long. Had she ever spoken them to a man and sincerely
understood the devotion they implied? This time she did.

She understood the bond that cries out
to be sated by a kiss or caress that only a lover can grant. It was
a hunger that only tears at the soul when it is not fed. Every
night she hungered for Milo and the calm that he brought after her
storms.

Yet, what scared her most of all was
the idea that she wanted to marry him.

Her mind was already racing at the
idea of traveling across Europe with Milo.

“
I love you, too,” he said
to her delight.

Vivian couldn’t describe this
lightheadedness. She always mocked the tenderness between couples
while other girls swooned at the sight of them. Vivian could pass
by a couple making out in the park and feel only pity for them.
When she thought of marriage, she thought of entrapment. She
imagined a life of boorish conversation repeated day after day,
squabbling over bills, tolerating each other, and sex that loses
its luster after two years.

Perhaps she mocked love because she
was so cynical about her own chances. It was easier to brush it off
as a whimsical fantasy that only naïve romantics fall
for.

Or maybe it stemmed from her string of
disastrous relationships, which all too inevitably ended in
lies.

Perhaps she enjoyed being a victim of
self-pity. It felt perversely comfortable to play the role of the
rejected girl. It was safer to lament about how all men were pigs
who only wanted to spread her legs instead of open her heart. That
sweeping generalization excused her from all the blame. The
bitterness was the only companion she knew.