Arsenic for the Soul (24 page)

Nothing made sense to her
except for one insulting notion.
Milo used
me to reach Camilla.

* * *

Vivian drove home in a stupor and
walked through the front door without a word. She shut herself
inside the bedroom once she was safely alone. Now she was without
her nursing program and her future husband. She could barely
remember what his silken touch felt like against her
skin.

How keenly failure came after her.
Something wondrous finally happened to her only to be cruelly
wrenched from her grasp.

Vivian studied the framed portrait of
her and Milo on her dresser. It occupied the same pedestal that her
acceptance letter once did. She nearly came undone as she picked up
his last love letter.

Dear Vivian,

Some people may say that
what I feel for you is infatuation, not love. You may wonder if I
will remain this sweet and kind, if I will change, or if you
deserve this attention. Tell me whenever you have these doubts and
I will give you my answer.

You are the only woman who
makes me feel alive and when I look in your eyes, I see a million
precious memories waiting to happen. I want to be your best friend
and the best lover to you, someone who makes you feel desired,
appreciated, warm, and secure.

I want to make love to you
long into the night and give you sanctuary in my arms every day. I
can see your soul, your character, and your heart, and it is truly
beautiful to me.

I will never stop falling
in love with you. Once you’re comfortably in my arms, you don’t
have to fear me letting you go.

I will always be your
Milo.

Her heart ached with those final
words.

“
Fuck you.”

Tears burned like acid in her eyes.
Rage like no other possessed her and she smashed the
frame.

Everything he gave her was destroyed
as if it would remove this cancer from her heart.

The act of destruction didn’t sate
her.

Once she envisioned every detail of
how their lives would unfold in fairytale detail. They discussed
how many children they would raise, what to name them depending on
whether she gave birth to a boy or girl, their religion, and so
forth. Milo even hinted at moving somewhere beyond Prague to embark
on an exciting chapter in their lives.

It had only been a few months, but
Vivian already imagined when and how she would propose to
Milo.

“
It should never have
happened this way!” Pain gouged her heart as she slumped to her
knees. The glass from the broken frame cut into her flesh. She
relished the pain.

She craved more punishment as
inconsolable rage clawed at her soul. She was succumbing to her
toxic dependency on Milo, this arsenic ravaging her
soul.

Truly, what could be considered the
greater of two evils? The withdrawal from a drug or the withdrawal
from a relationship?

Versed in both, Vivian couldn’t
rightfully answer.

Her eyes glittered as the sunset’s
luminance cascaded over her, branding her in its scarlet
glow.

“
The whole time… was it all
a lie? Did the person I fell in love with even exist? How can you
be Ezran Vesely?”

The tears streaming down her face
resembled blood in the corrupted light.

“
You were dating that
monster?”

Every muscle went limp in Vivian. She
felt like a puppet snipped from its strings as she turned to face
Camilla in the doorway. How long had she been standing
there?

“
I… I had no idea until I
saw Milo’s employee record. He had a name change on file…” Camilla
looked like an apparition as she entered the room doused in hazy
red light. “He changed his name to Milo Dušan.”

“
Is this how he was able to
track me so closely? Through you?”

Remorse hung heavy over Vivian as she
bowed her head. Perhaps she shouldn’t feel guilty for being a
victim of Milo’s deceit, but guilt is rarely a rational
mechanism.

“
It wasn’t a coincidence
that Milo took me to the forest for our first date. I wouldn’t
leave it to chance that his car broke down either. He asked me to
call you because he knew you and I were close.”

“
And he counted on us
following him into the sanitarium? What was the point of
it?”

“
I don’t think he intended
for the sanitarium stalker to kill you. He was counting on you to
survive, but not me. We were just following his trail.”

Camilla drummed her nails on the
window sill as she peered outside.

“
Once you’ve written enough
stories about psycho stalkers, it’s easy to get inside their heads
and see how they view us. The stalking was only a fragment of
Milo’s twisted game to subjugate me. He takes pleasure in every
roll of the dice and every move we take. He wants to emotionally
isolate me before the killing stroke.”

“
You seem to have him
figured out. What do you suppose he has planned for us?”

“
His letter hinted that we
should finish where I left off. It only makes sense when you think
about my campaign to shut down the asylums. The last one to fall
was the Magdalene Midnight Mission, where our mother was confined.
It lies at the edge of a town called
Náchod
.
There’s only one choice left to us now. We need to hunt him
down and end this nightmare… permanently.”

Vivian swallowed the taste of sickness
in her mouth.

“
I can’t go after
him.”

Camilla gawked at her.

“
What do you mean
you
can’t?
In case
you haven’t noticed, he’s hell-bent on killing me! Not to mention
he’s taking out the rest of his mental problems on the
hospital!”

“
I know,” Vivian said
through clenched teeth. She couldn’t wrap her mind around how her
lover could be a depraved monster. How could these two aspects
belong to the same person?

Camilla’s eyes popped wide
open.

“
You still love
him?”

That question sent tremors of agony
through Vivian.

“
I just need to talk to
Milo and maybe he’ll realize what he’s doing. I can make him stop.
Maybe I can salvage what’s left of him.”

Camilla pulled Vivian close enough to
see the unquenchable fury in her eyes.

“
You’re in love with the
idea of him. The man you love is a monster by nature, something you
can’t save. You witnessed what he did to my uncle. You’ve seen what
he’s capable of.”

Vivian felt like breaking down. Of
course she felt stupid for still clinging to those feeble feelings
for Milo—but Camilla had no idea how it felt to be emotionally
chained to him! Vivian pictured a future with this man that
entailed marriage, children, and a lifetime of marital bliss until
death parted them.

Now it seemed death was the only bond
they shared.

Despite her dormant yearning for Milo,
she hated him. She loathed him for manipulating her like a
plaything, for spreading a memo around the hospital about her HIV
diagnosis, and for seducing her that night at his house. He was a
master at the craft of deception and she despised him for making
her question his devotion.

No, of course it was fake.

His affection was a lie. Every sweet
promise he whispered to her in bed was a travesty on her
soul.

He was only using her to get close to
his sister.

“
You’re coming with me to
stop this,” Camilla said firmly. “Lover or not, we’re ending this
now. And call him by his real name. Ezran is a psychopath who needs
to be stopped, even if that means killing him.”

The idea of murdering him nauseated
Vivian, but she feared there could be no alternative. Everything
inside her cried out to deny that Milo was a deviant wretch. But
nothing could bury the fact that he made the decision time and time
again to brutalize the innocent.

She wanted to save him and hurt him in
equal doses. Her emotions had deformed into an ambivalent cyclone
of denial, desire, hatred, and confusion. She stood somewhere in
the eye of that chaos, trying to find her way out before the
combined forces tore her apart.

NINETEEN

The train bore Vivian and
Camilla past winter-scalded forests to the town of
Náchod. Stepping off the platform felt like
taking the plunge into an ice cold river. The frost goaded them
faster on the path to the woodland asylum.

Malevolence settled like dew over the
forest, audible enough in the form of bestial moans and wind
playing with wiry branches. That malevolence lingered and
metastasized like an infection taking hold of the wildlife. Vivian
and Camilla ventured mostly in silence to the grounds of the
Magdalene Midnight Mission, tempted to venture off the path if only
to avoid the end destination.

When Vivian looked upon the asylum,
every nerve in her awakened to fear. She shuddered to think she
could have ended up here. The Magdalene Midnight Mission looked
like a hybrid of a Victorian chateau and a rotting prison. Its
Gothic-styled spires and balconies almost looked fit for a
wedding—which should have been the last thing on Vivian’s
mind.

After all, she was here to murder the
man she dreamt of marrying.

She winced as an icy chill slithered
through her. This place had come to represent the accumulated
failures of her life. She instantly decided the asylum would look
better as a pile of ashes sinking into the ground. She wouldn’t
mind burning this place once their business was
concluded.

“
We don’t have a phone
signal out here. We’re cut off,” Camilla said, speaking for the
first time since they set out on the forest path.

Vivian kicked open the door to the
asylum. Even as they stepped inside, something scrabbled like
insectoid appendages in the darkness. Camilla illuminated the
disconcerting layout of corridors and dorms that innervated the
laundry.

“
How did the girls survive
here?” Vivian asked.

“
It’s nothing short of a
nightmare what they endured. The nuns ensured the girls didn’t make
any friends during their stay. They were even assigned numbers in
place of their names. Your identity ceases to exist within these
walls.”

Camilla’s flashlight flickered through
a few dorms packed with multiple beds. The walls looked like
ulcerous wounds burned into the plaster. The corridors groaned and
sang in low tones of self-destruction as they teetered at the edge
of collapse.

“
Many survivors will carry
scars for the rest of their lives,” Camilla whispered. “Once you’ve
had a taste of dehumanization, it’s hard to forget. Bathing in cold
water with lice was one of many punishments meted out to the girls
if they stepped out of line.”

“
That could have been my
fate if I didn’t run away from home. It almost makes my time in the
alleys seem like a vacation, doesn’t it?”

They finished a sweep of the first
floor, anxiously waiting for Milo to reveal himself. The chapel,
presumably the most comforting place in the asylum, felt like the
epicenter of the wretchedness. One glance told Camilla this chamber
was anything but a holy place. The statues in alcoves were
unrecognizable aside from the vaguely human features. The entire
chapel was a façade of the cruelest intent.

“
There’s something back
there. Do you see it?”

Past stained windows they crept until
they stood at the altar. Camilla was half-expecting another
umbilical cord but Milo had likely run out of body parts to bestow
by now.

Instead, there was a human-sized
crevice in the chapel wall, barely wide enough for one person to
squeeze through. The stench of ammonia and arsenic assaulted her
from beyond the darkness.

“
Why would they wall this
section off?” Vivian asked.

“
Hold on a minute.”
Camilla’s flashlight cut through the haze and illuminated the
crevice. A cascade of blood rimmed the cavity. Tendrils of some
unknown nature protruded from the wall cavity and knotted across
the tiles.

“
Shall we?”

Camilla kept her arms pinned at her
sides as she slipped through the grotesque portal. It took a period
of adjustment before she could see in the crawl space. The area
behind the chapel was immense and barren, save for a few doors that
seemed welded shut. The floor was rotting and felt like a web
cobbled together with wooden planks.

“
This looks like a shelter
they might have used during an emergency. Maybe we’ll find some
lighting back here.”

Vivian continued down the corridor in
search of a fuse box or anything that might remedy the
darkness.

Despite the calm face
Vivian put on, Camilla’s paranoia grew. The hairs stood rigidly on
her neck like pins quivering in her skin. On instinct, she looked
over her shoulder and saw
him
.