Blood Child (6 page)

A
lcoholics 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.

T
he 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 actually 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.

***

The next two months passed by in a flash. The manuscript was 90 percent done, at least according to the outline.

The final chapters were just waiting to be released from my mind. All the interview notes and research needed for the final push had been aptly organized, thanks to Belinda. She had even tracked down handwriting experts who verified that even though the journal entries appeared to be written by two people, they were all written by Atalik. The change in handwriting was attributed to extreme changes in his emotional state while he was writing. The two writing styles were often featured in the same paragraph and once or twice in the same sentence. The mood swings that tormented so many of his employees were also present in his journal.

Yet no matter how disingenuous or temperamental he was to his family and employees, many in the business world swore they never saw that side of him. Many more thought he was a good and generous soul, just misunderstood by the world. Bee helped me by conducting interview after interview while I was in the writing trenches. It was also a lot easier for a sassy and intelligent redhead with a sparkling reputation to get access to high-powered executives.

One week, and then it was off to the editors. Instead of being holed up in my loft working like a maniac, I was on the road early, headed to the Bathory estate. Adam Sands, a mutual friend and photographer, was sleeping in the back seat.

Bee and Anthony, who had become surrogate parents, insisted I take a break from the work. I refused to listen until Bee forced me to look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I knew I had lost weight, but the lack of sleep and sunlight had caused me to take on an unhealthy gray pallor. Sleep only brought me pain. Avoiding it and focusing on the project just felt right. Well, it did until Bee shoved in my face her notes on the last fifty pages I had composed, declaring them utter garbage.

She was right. I conceded and wisely volunteered to take a trip to the country. The idea of finishing the book at the estate was mine. Bee wasn’t happy about it, but Anthony had convinced her that the trip would accomplish it, as well as give her some angles for marketing the finished product. I had been a huge pain in her ass for the last couple of months, taking her time away from her day job and Skyping time with Anthony. She finally relented, saying it would be excellent for publicity and would add to the authenticity of the project. Then she told me to pack.

I was biting my nails with terror and excitement. The gates had been closed on my prior visits to Wanaka. Rumors of guard dogs and armed security kept me from even trying to sneak a serious peek. Em confirmed that she had both wandering the estate grounds to keep out the morbidly curious. There had been a break-in at the family mausoleum eight months back, before the dogs had been added. Nothing except the door was damaged. Em believed it had just been some curious kids who wanted to scare themselves by drinking among the dead. The guards stayed at the house so they could be ready at a moment’s notice.

A newly built guardhouse stood at attention outside massive iron gates; a small brick doghouse was right next to it. The sentinel, a young redhead named Simon, greeted me, along with a very eager German shepherd, Loki. Simon didn’t look much older than eighteen. Loki looked like he had more experience protecting things.

I asked Simon if living and working at the estate ever creeped him out.

“No, not at all. The only creepy things around are the homicide groupies. Those chicks are flat-out freaky. But you better be moving on. We can talk more at dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Miss Em insists we all dine together whenever possible.” Seeing the confusion on my face, he just waved me through with a grin. The tall iron gates creaked as they opened. Adam stirred in the back seat.

“Wake up, sleeping beauty,” I called.

His middle finger shot up in response. His head and the rest followed a moment later. Adam wasn’t the best in the business, but he was still pretty damn good. He actually volunteered. By volunteering I mean he was working for photo credits only, something most photographers were happy to leave behind as quickly as possible. Adam loved life behind the lens. He took the assignments that interested him whenever possible; as a result he lived in his mother’s basement.

I felt for a moment like I was driving back in time. Huge black oaks lined both sides of the driveway, which curved to the right, revealing the baroque mansion with its three wings and ornate stone decoration. Driving a Toyota Corolla seemed anachronistic. Adam shrieked at me to stop and immediately began taking pictures as soon as his feet hit the ground. He had no romantic notions about time or propriety.

A young man in a uniform similar to Simon’s immediately came up to the car door, opening it as soon as my seat belt slid off.

“Sir,” the man in the uniform chimed, “Miss Bath is waiting for you. Michael and I will get your bags. Where is your companion?” Another uniform appeared beside him, standing just a step back. Stepford valets, anyone?

“Ben, I believe that Mr. Clark needs some air.”

“Please except my apologies,” Ben said with a slight nod, moving back to stand with Michael. Like Simon, they both looked too young for their jobs.

Adam came up the driveway, shooting as he walked. The man was in heaven. “Get a load of this house, man. It’s wicked. I think I have a few ideas for the cover.” He immediately shook the hands of the Stepford valets, and the boys relaxed. Adam had that effect on people, which was one of the reasons he was so good at his job. People couldn’t be nervous around him.

The lady of the house descended the stone steps, drawing our attention. Em—
Emily
—was dressed in dark jeans and a deep-red, fitted T-shirt. Her clothes were understated, but her presence was intoxicating. Even cool man Adam stopped breathing for a moment. Em, little Em, wasn’t plain anymore. The air of authority she lacked at home in Florida swirled around her now.

Adam was the first to recover and began talking with Emily about the architecture—how it reminded him of a palace he saw while backpacking in Europe. Emily soaked up every word, responding quickly. The boys looked about as happy as I felt watching the exchange. I didn’t even notice them moving into the house until Ben asked me for the keys to the car.

Adam and Emily were just inside the grand entrance when I caught up to them. Adam had stopped talking and was back shooting the entrance. Emily stood by the door, explaining the changes that had been made to the hall. Nearly everything had been torn out and replaced. Skylights had been added to lighten up the feel. Atalik would not have approved of this new, inviting space.

Emily had sold nearly all the household furnishings, using a European auction house to avoid unwanted attention. The renovation was so complete that little of Atalik’s palace remained. Even some of the marble floors had been torn out and replaced. It was the only way Emily could conceive of staying on. I was disappointed I wouldn’t be able to walk through the halls as Atalik had, though I understood why she did it. Seeing my disappointment, she explained that despite appearances, some rooms were unchanged. Her father’s office, the nursery, and the crypt were all intact. A shiver of excitement replaced the disappointment. I knew exactly where I would be finishing the book.

Em hadn’t been pleased with the idea, but had finally conceded. Her father’s office would be the perfect place for some photos, since it hasn’t been touched since her father’s death. Emily had left it untouched for the director who was no longer coming. The office doors were locked, but the housekeeper, a Ms. Maggie Bivins, located the key in record time. She had one of those ancient key rings that jingled as she sorted through the myriad of options. She didn’t try a single key, just repeated the same ritual over and over until she found the right one. She would hold a key up to the light, firmly clasping it in her wizened fingers. Then shaking her head, she would let it loose and sort through the keys until another candidate was located. Adam, of course, was snapping the entire time.

The doors were carved mahogany, featuring a huge tree with a dragon at its base. The lock didn’t want to accept its key at first. Ms. Maggie, as she preferred to be called, refused to give in to hardware. After a minute and a small spray of WD-40, it surrendered to her. The tree and its protector split in two with a dusty creak. The room beyond the threshold was covered in sheets and nearly a decade of dust. No one had used the study since its old master had passed away, not even once.

“You have a week in this room,” Emily said from the threshold. She refused to step inside. “Then it is being gutted as well.”

Ms. Maggie stiffened for a moment and then swiftly went about uncovering the room and calling for Ben and Michael to bring the cleaning supplies. Apparently the Stepford boys had duties beyond being valets and bellhops; calling them bellboys seemed wrong for the surroundings. They appeared moments later with cleaning accruements and respiratory masks around their necks. Adam and I were shooed out.