Arsenic for the Soul (12 page)

Vivian sniffled.

“
I wanted to save him,
Milo. I didn’t want it to end this way.”

He gave her shoulders an assuring
squeeze but even his eyes glistened with sorrow.

"You can't save everyone no matter how
hard you try, dear. Sometimes it doesn’t work out the way you wish.
All we can do is accept that it’s their time and pray for a
peaceful transition."

Vivian bowed her head as the truth
hammered down. She couldn’t come to terms with what she saw in the
trauma bay.

“
I take it you've dealt
with death many times here?”

Milo’s sympathetic gaze settled on
her.

“
More than you’re capable
of imagining.”

NINE

Camilla looked over her shoulder for
perhaps the fourth time since arriving in Kunatrice Forest. The
evening lay thick around her as she followed the muddy path dotted
with pines.

Streams swirling with ice cut silver
trails across the blackened horizon. Swan Lake was a distant jewel
borrowed from the pages of a fairytale, adding a sense of wonder to
an already mysterious woodland. For all those scenic displays,
Kunatrice felt like anything but an oasis tonight.

Kunatrice was to be the arena where
she would come face-to-face with the last breathing Vesely.
According to Gavin, the only one unaccounted for was her biological
mother—and she was just “the other woman” in her father’s
marriage.

Perhaps she held Camilla personally
accountable for her imprisonment in the Magdalene asylum—but she
would have no reason to condemn her for exposing the crimes of the
laundries.

Her use of the word “sinner” scrawled
in blood also baffled Camilla. Of course, the religious zealots in
her family would equate her actions with betrayal. There was no
such concept as innocence in the world, only lost souls who needed
cleansing or redemption. As for those who overstepped the brink of
salvation, there was clearly only one option left…

It was simply a matter of time before
her stalker came to retrieve her blemished soul.

Camilla played anxiously with the
pendant around her neck as the ashes swirled inside.

She settled down on a bench. She gazed
quietly at the sturdy trees encircling her. The sun set like an
amber pearl over Kunatrice Forest. Enough snow dusted the ground to
endow the land with a surreal glow. The trees looked as though they
were rendered by pastel in a blackish-blue void.

In the distance, she heard the faint
rumblings of the city and the sonnet of a bird, but everything was
removed from sight. Those sounds faded to an inaudible hum that
pierce the silence.

The sun became an orange puff of fire
in the fog, much like a great eye belonging to a creature hovering
above. The light transformed the woodland into a slick, metallic
landscape under the haze.

Camilla felt naked. She couldn’t
describe the sensations sitting in her gut as she waited. She
didn’t even know what she was waiting for.

Would she finally confront the
creature that walked in her footsteps? Would she find the answers
she so desperately sought?

Camilla’s fingers brushed against the
gun concealed under her cashmere jacket.

She tried to fall back into her
meditation routine. She had been practicing control over her
breathing and heart rate ever since the grisly discovery in her
apartment. She closed her eyes and exhaled through her nostrils,
retreating to a serene corner of her mind. Her pulse slowed like a
trickle of water.

A dull sensation passed through her,
forewarning something horrible and inevitable.

Firm hands seized her head from
behind. The shock made Camilla fumble with the gun in her hands.
Faster than she could imagine, it fell clumsily through her
fingers.

Full blown panic enveloped
her.

Camilla clawed at the hands and arms
restraining her, but the strength behind them was monstrous. She
tried to block out the needles of hot pain that dug mercilessly
into her brain. Her neck strained under the pressure as her
assailant tried to twist her head around. Her muscles pulled taught
in fierce resistance but it was futile. Even worse, she feared to
look into the same hellish eyes that glowed outside her bedroom
window.

The base of her skull prickled with
fire now, neon explosions of pain lancing through her spine. The
wind clawed at her mouth as she screamed.

Her hands sprang up to where she
imagined its face would be, digging her nails into its
eyes.

“
Bitch!
” A sharp blow to the base of her skull sent her sprawling to
the ground. Camilla painfully registered the pavement scraping her
face. As she refilled her lungs with air, she saw the figure
towering behind the bench.

He—
or she
—was dressed in a jacket and
clutching her face, thus shielding her identity. Spots swam before
Camilla’s eyes as her brain spilled into vertigo. She couldn’t tell
whether her assailant was a man or woman, much less the hair color
or complexion—
but she knew it was her
mother.

Camilla pawed at the cobbled walkway
as she rolled onto her knees.

Her eyes instantly settled on the gun.
She lunged for it as her mother rushed around the bench.

Camilla raised the gun and squeezed,
overcome with fear.

The bullet whipped past, grazing her
attacker’s shoulder and tearing a furrow through jacket and flesh.
What happened in those next few seconds didn’t immediately make
sense. Her vision was still swimming as oxygen tried to restart her
brain. Despite the lapse in reality, one thing was brazenly clear;
she was still alive.

She looked up to see the stalker
clutching her torn shoulder. She could have easily ended Camilla’s
life there. She barely lifted the pistol again.

Her mother took one look into the eye
of the gun and ran.

Camilla limped after the silhouette
fleeing into the darkened boughs of Kunatrice Forest. Her muscles
failed her and she fell to her knees again. She could barely lift a
finger despite the determination burning its way through her
heart.

“
No…
” she whispered. That word carried all the protest building up
inside her since the day this ordeal began. She couldn’t let the
answers slip away when she could barely touch them now. She needed
to know why. Through weary eyelids, she saw the figure melt over
the horizon. After a series of setbacks, Camilla won this round
against her stalker.

She slogged and stumbled to the edge
of Kunatrice until the tangled thickets were far behind and the
city sprawled before her. The yellow street lights made her temples
throb. The sudden weakness in her knees pulled her to the
ground.

Perhaps those hands winding around her
throat did more damage than she thought. A droning hum invaded her
mind as her cheek lay against the frosted streets. She kept
expecting to wake up because nothing felt real anymore.

A shadow fell upon her.

Could it be her mother returning to
finish the job? Camilla could barely fend her off now. Strangely,
she didn’t feel fear or much of anything.

The last thing she remembered was her
heels scraping against the cobblestones as someone dragged her
away.

* * *

Camilla lazily opened her eyes. She
found herself in a dark room with the sheer curtains drawn across
the window. Not long ago, she was surrounded by trees petrified in
the final hours of dusk. The smell of dew-speckled ferns still
whispered through her mind—as did the vision of her grisly
encounter with her stalker.

Her mother.

She remembered staving off death’s
sweet hold around her throat.

Frantically, she bolted up from bed
and looked into the most accusing pair of eyes she ever saw. Vivian
was sitting in the corner of the bedroom, watching her.

“
You…?”

Vivian folded her arms in
her telltale way of saying, “
You’re in
trouble
.”

“
You’re lucky I never get
tired of finding you passed out on the streets,” she said, finally
cracking a grin.

“
You make it sound like a
common occurrence.”

Vivian’s smile faded just as abruptly
as it crossed her lips. Clearly, the time for jokes and pleasant
tidings had dried up. Camilla sank back into the bed, wondering how
she would ever leave the room now. This was the second time she
acted on her own and brushed up against death.

“
She attacked
me.”

“
After luring you out to
the forest.” Vivian brandished a familiar photo that Camilla
received from her stalker. It depicted the mist-wreathed landscape
of Kunatrice Forest, which almost became her burial ground.
Vivian’s eyes glowed fiercely in the shadows, but it was an
expression born increasingly out of concern, not
betrayal.

“
I found this in your
jacket. I hate going through your things, but you’re obviously not
telling me everything. We can’t afford to keep secrets between us,
not when the silence can kill.”

Camilla looked down at her feet as if
she couldn’t meet her friend’s eyes.

“
I hope you understand why
I chose to confront my stalker alone. I know you’d do anything to
help me—but I couldn’t bear the thought of you dying on my account.
I didn’t want you getting hurt.”

Vivian laughed.

“
Have you forgotten what we
endured last year? Ill-fated encounters with a deranged killer and
backstabbing detective? Notice I said
we.
”
Vivian
sighed and plopped down on the bed. “You know what this reminds me
of?”

“
What?”

“
When my dad found that
money in my jacket. What an awful memory to pop into my head
now.”

“
Too bad you can’t send me
off to a Magdalene asylum.” No sooner had the words left her lips,
Camilla’s eyes popped wide open. She gazed out the window into the
gray void of morning light. “Actually, I think that’s precisely
where we need to go.”

Vivian whirled on her in
disbelief.

“
To a Magdalene asylum?
Just how badly did your stalker hit you in the head?”

Ignoring the quip, Camilla grabbed her
satchel and rummaged through a cache of tapes, notepads, and police
reports. In that moment it occurred to Vivian that Camilla never
carried a purse. She carried her entire life in a satchel brimming
with monstrous tales.

“
You mentioned a ‘she’
attacked you. Was it your mother?” Vivian asked.

“
I didn’t get a good look,
but I’m certain it was her. There’s no one else it could possibly
be.”

Vivian tapped her fingers against her
temple, wracking her brain for ideas. She watched Camilla spread a
map of the Czech Republic on the bed. Soon, she was canvassing the
floor in articles chronicling the downfall of various Magdalene
asylums.

“
We need a map of all the
asylums that I wrote about in
Blaze
,” Camilla explained. “Make a
note of every laundry that was shut down.”

“
How is this going to help
track down your mother?”

“
Just bear with me for a
moment.”

Soon Vivian was dotting locations on
the map as Camilla rattled off one institution after another. She
was amazed at the sheer number of laundries that once existed in
the Liberec region. Each dot represented thousands of anonymous
girls condemned to punishment. That punishment invariably bordered
the atrocities of the Spanish Inquisition.

“
This was formerly a
tuberculosis sanitarium,” Camilla said, stabbing a site on the map.
“St. Ignatius Sanitarium lies south of Prague. It used to house the
diseased, although you could argue its real function was to
segregate them from the populace.”

“
This is quite a
coincidence… We’re seeing an outbreak of tuberculosis on the heels
of these threats you’re receiving. And your family just happened to
run a tuberculosis sanitarium?”

Camilla sounded ethereal as she
lowered her voice.

“
Are you suggesting my
mother is behind the outbreak? What reason would she have
to…?”

“
Your mother was imprisoned
in an asylum since your birth. Just imagine what two decades of
torture could do to one’s sanity. Maybe she wants to share her
misery and hate with as many people as possible.”

“…
It was just two cases of
tuberculosis.”

Vivian was stunned by the blunt
statement, as if Crenshaw was speaking through her. It wasn’t
spoken with the same caustic venom, but those six words seemed to
refute her argument.

“
So you don’t believe me
either?” Camilla was ominously silent. “In the very least, we
should check out this sanitarium and see if there’s a connection.
If I’m wrong, I’ll drop this theory and never speak of tuberculosis
again.” Camilla folded up the map.