House of Bathory (8 page)

Chapter 16

A
SPEN,
C
OLORADO
D
ECEMBER 8, 2010

S
o what are you doing for the solstice?” Kyle said, stopping by Daisy’s locker. “What do Goths do on their special holiday?”

Daisy had been avoiding him since he crashed into her that day on the Rio Grande trail.

“Kyle? Right?”

He shook his head.

“You
know
it is. We’ve been in the same class since August. Come on!”

Daisy raised her chin defensively. How was she supposed to keep track of his name? They had nothing in common, right? He was a jock, she was a Goth. Period.

“Anyway, you didn’t answer my question. What do you do?”

“The solstice? Dude, that’s not for a couple weeks.”

“But what do you Goths do?”

“Not much,” she said, banging her locker closed. “Listen to music, hang with a few Goth friends, maybe. Stay at home and channel energy.”

He looked disappointed. Daisy didn’t know why it bothered her.

“And visit the cemetery at midnight,” she offered.

His face lit up.
Like a freakin’ Christmas tree
, she thought.

“Hey, can I come with you?”

Daisy threw him a what-the-fuck look.

“Why? You aren’t into the Goth scene.”

“Maybe…I’m curious. And I read your blog about Goth stuff.”

Daisy dropped her jaw, making her white makeup crease. What did this guy know about her? Why was he interested?

Daisy glanced to see if anyone was listening to the conversation. There were a couple of popular girls giving them the eye, but they weren’t close enough to hear.

“And what is that crazy book with all the zoned-out pix you download?” he whispered, close enough to her she could smell his tropical fruit chewing gum.

“
The Red Book
.”

“It’s sick—those crazy illustrations. Wild colors. Like, was he on drugs or what?”

“He may have been ‘crazy’ when he drew them. He was exploring his psyche and his soul.”

Kyle didn’t say anything. He looked into her kohl-rimmed eyes. “I want to spend the solstice with you.”

“With me? Are you sure?”

“Yep. I’m sure.”

“Why not?” she said. Her tooth hooked over her lip, and she was trying to keep herself from smiling.

Betsy stifled a yawn. Her flight from New York had been delayed four hours due to another heavy snowstorm.

As she waited for Daisy to arrive for her session, Betsy pulled the Nine of Swords from her jacket pocket, setting it up on her desk. The image of the sobbing girl sent a shiver down her spine.

“What’s that?” said Daisy, entering silently through the door.

Betsy jumped. She snatched the card from her desk, shoving it into a drawer.

“Nothing, just…”

“It’s a tarot card, right? The Nine of Swords. Whew, watch your back, Betsy! Especially after that creepy dude broke into your house—”

“Let’s not bring that unfortunate occurrence into your therapy session,” said Betsy. “It had nothing to do with you.” She saw a beige book in her patient’s hand.

“What do you have there?”

“It’s the I-Ching,” Daisy said. “It’s like a Goth bestseller. Anyway, I read the foreword. Did you know it was written by your guy? Carl Jung?”

Betsy straightened her back.

“No. Yes! I mean, I had forgotten he wrote that.”

“I was thinking about my dreams and Jung’s theory of synchronicity,” said Daisy. “I’ve been doing a lot of research on the internet. I had no idea that Jung was so—freaking awesome.”

“So why did you bring the I-Ching?” Betsy asked. “This is your therapy hour, Daisy. Sit down.”

An enigmatic smile crossed Daisy’s face, exposing her crooked tooth. She remained standing.

“Ah, but you didn’t really tell me all there is to know about Dr. Jung,” she said. Her open palm thumped the book. “He was a fervent believer in coincidence.”

“Synchronicity,” Betsy said. “His theory of acausal connecting principles.”

“Yeah, right. That part you told me, remember?”

Had she told her?

“You told me synchronicity is like a coincidence. Like the coins and dice falling in a certain way that has almost zero probability. Or a roulette wheel hitting the same number over and over. Or the principle behind tarot cards. Meaningful coincidences. Woo-woo-woo-woo,” she said, making a comical haunted sound as she arched her black-penciled eyebrows up and down.

The conversation was unsettling. But the funny look on Daisy’s face made her psychologist laugh.

“What does any of this have to do with your therapy, Daisy?”

“You didn’t explain that this Jung guy was such a cool dude. Like he was into the occult, mandalas and Buddhism. And former lives.”

Betsy hesitated. Why did Daisy’s sudden interest in Carl Jung make her uneasy?

“He believed in exploring the unconscious, Daisy. That by examining your unconscious world, you can discover reasons for your behavior, your beliefs and fears. Jungian analysis—”

“No, he was—
Goth
. He believed in the spiritual world. Ghosts. Murmurs of the past…and how we are all connected.”

Betsy thought of the tarot card. She shook her head.

“Carl Jung did not believe in ghosts and he certainly was not Goth.” She straightened her posture. “He believed in the collective unconscious of the universe—”

Daisy flicked her ebony hair behind her shoulder, shaking her head vehemently. She opened the I-Ching, thrusting her finger at Jung’s foreword.

“Oh, yeah, he did, Betsy. Believe in ghosts, I mean. And collective unconscious?
Hello!
Totally Goth. And the wild visions—”

“Jung experienced the ‘menace of psychosis,’ as he termed it,” Betsy said carefully. “This was a very dark time for him, when he lost his grasp on reality.”

“What’s reality?” asked Daisy. “Hearing ghosts or me choking on my own spit for no reason?”

Betsy shifted in her chair, making the old floorboards creak.

“He is
so
freakin’ awesome. I’m telling all my Goth friends about him.”

Daisy closed the book with a definitive thud that resounded throughout the room. Ringo looked up at her, his brown eyes questioning.

Obsessive
, thought Betsy. Her patient had perseverated on Jung.

“OK. You’ve made your point, Daisy,” Betsy said, the tone of her voice rising in annoyance. “I am impressed with your research and the time you have spent learning about Carl Jung. Now, it is time for your session.”

“OK, Betsy,” said Daisy, collapsing into a wing chair, a victorious smile on her white-powdered face. “Ask me anything you want.”

Betsy nodded.
Who was this stranger who sat across from her now, so affable and open?

Chapter 17

C
ARBONDALE,
C
OLORADO
D
ECEMBER 10, 2010

I
t’s time to come back, says the voice from the shadows. A sweep of heavy cloth—taffeta? A waft of perfume, hints of rosemary.

A cold hand touches me, a finger under my chin. I am paralyzed.

Answer my call.

Betsy woke up from her dream to the persistent ringing of the telephone.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is this Dr. Path?”

“Yes.”

“I apologize for calling so early. This is Stephen Cox. I’m Dean of History at the University of Chicago. I have your number as an emergency contact for your mother, Dr. Grace Path.”

Betsy sat up quickly, untangling her legs from the sheets.

“Is something wrong? Has something happened to my mother?”

“Well, that’s why I’m calling. She was supposed to be back to teach a class yesterday, but she didn’t show up. I was only informed of it this morning or I would have called you earlier.”

“She’s not there?”

“No, the last we heard from her was when she submitted a monograph by e-mail for proofreading, and that was several weeks ago.”

Betsy’s pulse began to pound in her head. She forced herself to breathe deeply. The voice on the phone went on.

“We hoped she might have been in contact with you.”

“I had an e-mail from her a few days ago. Let me get it.”

She stumbled out of bed, clutching the phone, and opened her laptop.

The computer whirred to life. She clicked on her in-box.

“OK, here it is. It’s dated—December fourth, so six days ago.

S
ORRY
I
CAN
’
T BE WITH YOU AT THE
R
ED
B
OOK
D
IALOGUES
—I
KNOW YOU WILL ENJOY IT THOROUGHLY.
I
AM GOING BACK ONCE MORE TO VISIT
C
ACHTICE
C
ASTLE AND
B
ECKOV
C
ASTLE TOMORROW, HOMES OF
C
OUNTESS
B
ATHORY.

There was dead silence on the phone.

“Is that all?” the dean finally asked. “No mention of returning to Chicago?”

“No, nothing. She just ends, ‘I will send you a postcard, darling.’”

Again a silence. The dean filled it at last. “She was doing research in Slovakia and Hungary. She has a deadline for the book in mid-January.”

“I knew she was doing research, but didn’t know what she was working on.”

“She didn’t tell you? Yes, she has a publisher lined up and a title.
Countess Bathory: A Study of a Madwoman.
”

Betsy blinked in the early light filtering in through Japanese paper blinds. The bedroom was awash in an eerie rosy pink. “Study of a madwoman? What kind of historical treatise is that? She’s no psychologist, she’s a historian.”

“She told me the publishers came up with the title. The point is that she was in Eastern Europe researching Countess Bathory. She had a special week-long seminar on the Habsburg Dynasty to teach this week. I can’t imagine why she hasn’t written or called. She had a hundred and twenty students waiting for her to appear.”

“That’s not like my mother. She would never miss a class without—”

The heat clicked on and the floorboards creaked. A branch rasped against the windowpane.

Betsy realized she had stopped talking midsentence. She could hear a faint buzzing on the line.

“Yes,” the dean said at last. “That’s why I am so concerned.”

Betsy sat down at her computer and began to hunt through her e-mails. The pink glow of the rising sun reflected on her screen.

Shit, Mom. What have you gotten yourself into now?

Her mother was never good about itineraries, so the e-mail mentioning Countess Bathory was the only clue to where she had gone.

When Betsy looked on the internet, she found hundreds of entries for Countess Bathory, some spelling her Christian name as Elizabeth, some as Alzabeta or Erzsebet—English, Slovak, and Hungarian spellings. The countess had at least a half a dozen castles in the lands that were now Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia, but were then part of the Habsburg-ruled Holy Roman Empire. But Royal Habsburg Hungary was just a meager crescent, a stingy slice of territory. More than two-thirds of the once mighty Hungarian Empire was either part of Transylvania or had fallen to the Ottoman invaders.

In what remained of Royal Hungary, Countess Bathory owned more lands than the House of Habsburg itself.

Betsy checked the two castles her mother had mentioned in the e-mail:
Č
achtice and Beckov, both reduced to ruins. They were less than fifty kilometers from Bratislava and about fifteen kilometers from each other.

Why hadn’t she mentioned that she was researching Bathory, when she normally stuck to the Habsburg kings? Rudolf II and his younger brother Matthias, in their fraternal struggle for the crown, were usually her focus. Why, suddenly, this Bathory woman?

Betsy clicked on travel articles and excerpts of books. Most of the write-ups described the ruins of
Č
achtice, at the foot of the Little Carpathian Mountains.

Then she read:

B
LOODY
L
IZ WAS RUMORED TO HAVE TORTURED AND KILLED PEASANT GIRLS DURING HER MURDEROUS REIGN.
S
HE IS ACCUSED OF BATHING IN THE BLOOD OF BEAUTIFUL YOUNG VIRGINS IN ORDER TO KEEP HER YOUTHFUL APPEARANCE ETERNAL.
C
OUNTESS
B
ATHORY, ALONG WITH HER ANCESTOR,
V
LAD THE
I
MPALER, WAS THE BASIS OF
B
RAM
S
TOKER
’
S
D
RACULA.

Betsy realized she had stopped breathing. She drew a deep breath, filling her lungs to capacity, and tried to quiet her mind.

What twisted psychological condition did this woman have? Preying on girls, obsessed with their blood! Was it a genetic predisposition for psychosis, passed down through generations of inbreeding among the aristocracy?

A dog barked in the
neighborhood. Ringo growled.
She glanced up at the windows, but the paper shades were lowered. No one could see her. She turned back to the glow of the computer screen.

There were no hotels near
Č
achtice, not even a bed-and-breakfast. This was a tiny village at the foot of the mountains. The closest hotels were about thirteen kilometers away in the spa town of Piestany. Betsy couldn’t picture her mother staying anywhere fancy, so she began e-mailing every small hotel and B & B she could find in the Piestany area. She couldn’t think of what else to do. And the repetitive act of copying and pasting the same brief query about a sixty-five-year-old university professor, traveling alone, gave her something to occupy her mind. Command-V, command-V—paste, paste, paste.

Why would her mother be interested in a murderous psychopathic countess?

Betsy searched through her file cabinet. She had gone through the
P
s three times already, each time more carefully.

She stopped, thinking.
Of course!

Under M, for Mom.

Betsy found the file. Her mother had granted one session with her daughter, and one session only. It was a kind of graduation present to Betsy, to share the one dream Grace had ever remembered.

It was a dream Grace had had the night Betsy was born.

“Don’t you dare analyze me, Betsy. I’m only sharing this because I never, ever dream. It must have been provoked by indigestion or the first spasms of childbirth.”

It was clear that she wanted her daughter to hear this dream. Grace was such a left-brained academic, systematic and almost scientific in her meticulous research in history. She was so unlike Betsy or her husband, their Jungian world of dream interpretation dismissed as “malarkey.”

Once Grace started talking, her words flowed.

I dream I am floating through a dense cloudbank that hugs mountain walls. The air clears and it is a winter day in a river valley.

There is a village below me. A fairytale village, dusted with snow. I see a tall church steeple and wooden cottages with straw-thatched roofs. Rosy-cheeked children play in the streets, though I can’t hear them. They wear rustic clothes of long ago: the boys in wool caps and breeches, the girls with white kerchiefs and long aprons.

I feel that it is Eastern Europe, but I hear no voices, no accents to confirm this. It is a soundless dream.

I veer away to a pond. White steam rises from the water and ice clings to the bare branches of the weeping willows. Frost outlines the bark eyes of the birch trees, staring solemnly.

Everything glitters as the sun’s rays filter through the fog coming off the water in gentle waves, ghosts gliding over the pond.

A brittle shelf of ice lines the shore, a jagged silver plane on the dark water. Ducks float peacefully beyond, occasionally plunging to pull at strands of grass below the surface. They seem oblivious to the cold, their fat bottoms tipped up to the winter sky.

I feel at peace in a world of winter beauty.

Then I see her: a girl, submerged, coated in ice, her eyes open, blue and clear. She stares blindly, her long hair sparkling with frost. I have the impression she has tried to tear off her clothes, there is a rip in her bodice. A rose-colored mark blooms just above her breast, contrasting sharply with her flawless white skin.

Everything about her is beautiful. Except that she is dead.

Betsy shuddered and closed her eyes.

Where are you now, Mom?