The Unwanted (Black Water Tales Book 2) (11 page)

Jonathan had called her again the night before, leaving her yet another message. Jonathan Speckle, her young obnoxious attorney, whom she secretly nicknamed Sparky, was waiting on her reply, but she had no idea when he would receive it.

She should have called the Bakers, but she didn’t want to talk to them, deciding instead to write them. It was a better way to communicate. Her uncle and his wife wanted more money, lots more money, and the thought of giving it to them burned her to the core, not because she couldn’t spare it and not because she couldn’t bear the thought of parting with it. It was just the fact that their hunger for it suggested that she was not worth loving without it.

“Blaire,” Travis called as he approached the rocks. “You far enough out here?”

“Yes,” she yelled, looking up and smiling at her partner.

“We have files!” Travis announced as he sat next to her on the uncomfortable rocks. “Good,” she told him, but she knew this was not the news, something else was coming, and she waited.

Travis stared out into the sea and seemed to see the same frightening and majestic creation as Blaire. It was gray out there, but the sea had not a care, and Blaire wished she could be as strong.

“What is it?” Blaire asked.

“It’s Natalka,” Travis answered reluctantly.

“What happened? Is she okay?”

“Her family is not coming for her?”

“Why not?”

Travis exhaled roughly to get out what he had just learned. “They don’t want her.”

“She lied. They’re not coming ever…” Blaire spoke, making the realization immediately and slowly beginning to understand how the souls of the people here became so heavy.

“No, they’re not,” Travis repeated. “Marko said that is just something that she says to comfort herself.”

The two of them sat there for a long time before either of them spoke again.

“I need to get going,” Travis said, as he got to his feet. “You coming?”

“No, I just want to sit here a few more minutes.”

“Okay,” Travis said, starting across the lawn. Halfway to the building he turned back to study the small figure of Blaire against the churning sea, and he hesitated briefly but continued on.

Blaire was getting cold when she finally decided to go back to St. Sebastian. In a quick maneuver, she lifted herself and turned, but before she could help it, her foot slipped and twisted under her, leaving her leg dangling off the rocky cliff. Blaire cried out as she grabbed hold of the slippery rocks quickly pulling herself back up onto solid ground.

“Owww,” she cried as she bent down to feel her ankle shooting with pain and already swelling. Blaire began to limp across the backyard when she noticed a shadow in her bedroom window. She placed her hand on her brow to block out the drab sunlight in a futile move, but still she could make out no more than a shadow, much too small to be Travis. Blaire blinked after a sudden, blinding flash, then another and another. After blinking several times to adjust her eyes, Blaire refocused her vision on the window, but the intruder was gone.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

B
laire
s
a
t in h
e
r
c
l
a
ss
r
o
o
m s
cr
ibbling
not
e
s
a
nd pl
a
ns
f
or inst
r
u
c
tion. Shuffling in without a word, T
ra
vis plunked down in one
of
the
d
e
sks wh
e
r
e
he
f
lipp
e
d th
r
ough a
c
ouple
o
f
p
a
p
er
s in his h
a
nd, stu
d
y
i
n
g
th
e
m
c
ar
e
f
ul
l
y
.

“Ready?” he finally asked.

“Yes, how was your day?” Blaire responded.

“Pretty good. The children have improved tremendously, and I think that the added nutrition has a lot to do with it.”

“I was thinking the same
thi
—” Blaire stopped
mid
-syllable in reaching for a pen from the holder that was not there. She looked around and noticed that it had been moved to a far corner of her desk.

“What’s wrong?” Travis asked.

“Nothing,” Blaire answered distractedly as she lunged for her pen holder and placed it back by her computer.

“Let me be tactless and just ask. How are you rich since you just graduated from school, your parents, right?”

“Yes,” Blaire said, nodding in agreement.

“So you’re parents are rich, huh? Awesome!” Travis commented more to himself than to her.

A barely audible ding alerted Blaire to a new voicemail; she saw that the message was from Eddie Baker. Blaire quickly pressed a button hiding the message and returned her focus to Travis, who had completely ignored the interruption.

“My parents were rich. Now they’re dead and I’m rich,” she said with an inauthentic smile used only in a vain attempt to keep the mood light despite the grisly turn the conversation had taken.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s all right. It happened a long time ago. It’s funny…”

“What?”

“After my parents died, I could never remember the actual incident until I came here.”

“What do you mean?” Travis asked.

“Since I have been here in Borslav, I am having memories of the car accident that killed my parents.”

“You saw it?” Travis asked.

“I was in the car,” Blaire responded, as her reality dissolved into
honey
-colored sunrays that burned into the windows of her daddy’s car, lending everything in Blaire’s sight a romantic bronze shading. Blaire looked down at her dress, covered in shattered glass and streaks of blood. Smoke was burning her eyes, and her mother’s head had fallen to the side, lying limp on the passenger seat’s headrest.

A few moments earlier her mother’s scream pierced the harmony of the melodic voices that sang “Dream a Little Dream,” but Blaire was silent as the car spun wildly through the intersection. Her body jerking and swaying uncontrollably before the hard crash.

The fog in her mind thinned, she felt as if she were being lifted to the surface of murky water and suddenly there was pain everywhere. She was grateful for the pain, because even as a child, she knew that it meant that she was alive.

“Mommy!” Blaire heard the word come from her own burning throat, and it was as if someone else was crying out. She reached out to her mother, nudging her head with the tips of her fingers. Blaire wrestled with her seatbelt, but it wouldn’t let her go. As she yelled for her mother, Blaire continued to click the red button over and over, but the strap did not budge and, in fact, grew tighter around her like some medieval torture device. Once again, Blaire pressed the button as hard as she could while pulling at the strap with some alien strength. It clicked loudly, releasing her. The car moaned and gasped as if it too were hurt, and a familiar but unidentified, sweet aroma filled the car. Blaire looked toward her father, but his side of the vehicle was crumpled up to his chest, his airbag so far into his upper body that she could not see his face.

“Mommy!” Blaire called. Her mother whimpered, a sound of life.

“Mommy, wake up!” Blaire’s tone growing frantic as she watched flames rise up on the hood of the car.

“Get out,” her mother instructed groggily. Blood was dripping into her mother’s eye from a gruesome gash that trailed across the front of her forehead.

“Help me, Mommy.”

“Blaire, get out of the car,” her mother instructed. The injured woman, still dazed, pulled at her legs, but they wouldn’t move from under the dashboard that had folded on top of her lower body like a flimsy piece of paper.

“Billy,” the woman called out, grabbing at her husband. She cried when she saw that the driver’s side window was covered in his blood.

“I will help you,” Blaire shouted.

“Blaire, GET OUT!” Her mother screamed at her in a tone that Blaire had never heard before, a voice that cut her deeply. Blaire followed her mother’s instruction and crossed the back seat to the car door. She put one leg out, and the sun was warm on her skin. A collection of glass shards hit the ground as she stood, forcing her legs to work.

Blaire turned to see her mother still pulling weakly at her lifeless legs, struggling to fight the unconsciousness that threatened to overtake her. Blaire pulled at the passenger side door until it screeched open. One of her mother’s legs was almost free, but the other was immovable from under the wreckage. There was that strange smell again, and her mother smelled it now too. Her hopeless eyes met her daughter’s, and the water that gathered at the corners of them made Blaire tremble with fear.

“Go!” her mother yelled. “Go! Run! Get away!”

Blaire was dizzy with confusion, but she knew that she couldn’t leave her mother. Everything around her moved strangely, time and all within it slowed, including her mother’s voice that now sounded like a worn out, old record.

“Blaire, go!” The woman screamed at the child who refused to move.

Gathering all of the energy that was left in her, she pushed Blaire hard causing the girl to tumble back to the ground. Glass dug into the palms of her soft hands. For the first time, Blaire saw that her legs were covered in blood from the pieces of glass that were lodged into what seemed like every inch of her skin; terror swelled in her, making it hard to breath. The sweet fumes were so strong now that one could almost take a bit out of them.

The young Blaire stumbled to her feet again and bolted away. With crowds beginning to form, Blaire turned to watch. At the front of the crowd, Blaire stood next to a tall man in a blue shirt, who stopped another man starting toward the car.

“You smell that?,” the man asked a question that was clearly a warning.

No, please save my mother and father! What are you doing? Why are you all just standing here?
Blaire heard herself screaming. But no one moved to help; no one paid any attention. She grabbed and pulled at the people, begging them to do something. Her mind was frantic and screaming and running and grabbing, but she soon realized that her body was not moving at all. Blaire was immobile and silent. Blaire, like the others, was just standing there,
zombie
-like, watching the horrific scene.

The bystanders began taking several steps backward. The tall man pressed his forearm into Blaire’s chest forcing her to take more steps back, away from her mother and father.

“Help me,” her mother cried out, waking from another bout of unconsciousness. “Help me, please.”

No one helped. No one could ever truly help anyone else. One’s fate was always their own, and acceptance was mandatory.

Silently, they all just stood there like a band of
back
-country hillbillies, watching the grotesque but mesmerizing circus sideshow.

Come one, come all, see death!

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“B
laire
!
”
T
ra
vis
c
a
ll
e
d
f
o
r
the
thi
r
d tim
e
.

As her vision cleared
T
ra
vis
c
a
me
in
t
o vi
e
w, w
a
vi
n
g
his h
a
nd, gently guiding
h
er
b
ac
k into
the realm of the living
.

“I’m sorry, what?” Blaire asked, still inhaling the seductive aroma of gasoline.

“You were in the car?” he asked

“Uh, yes.” Blaire was regaining her composure slowly. “But I don’t really want to talk about it.”

All of her life Blaire fought for memories of that day, and they always eluded her, but now they were flowing back in dense, dangerous waves driving toward the pristine shore, threatening irreparable damage.

“I’m sorry,” Travis responded.

“It’s okay,” Blaire said, flipping open one of the files on her desk. “Let’s go with Ivan first.”

Travis shuffled through his papers. “Ivan is eight years old. It looks like he came to St. Sebastian a little over a year ago. I did a basic checkup, and he seems to be hitting all of the health marks for his age. Hearing and sight are fine, no obvious injuries. Of course, he was malnourished as were all of the other children, but I will continue to watch his weight. Other than that I think he is in fairly good shape. He seems spacey sometimes, distant, he tends to babble, but I’m not sure that’s anything more than normal
eight
-
year
-old behavior.”

“Babble?” Blaire questioned.

“Yes, it could be a benign effect of prolonged loneliness or symptomatic of a more complex psychological illness. I can’t tell just yet, but haven’t you noticed his behavior to be odd at times?”

“Now that you mention it, I suppose I have,” Blaire answered. “Academically, he is extremely intelligent, but socially he is stunted. It’s strange.”

“What?” Travis inquired.

“It’s obvious that he was being educated properly before he came here, because he has lots of skills that the other children simply do not have, and I doubt he learned them here. Just makes me wonder how he ended up in this place.”

“Never know, anything could have happened,” Travis chimed in. “Next, I saw Bodan. Bo appears to have a mild form of cerebral palsy, though I’m not trained to make an official diagnosis.”

“He’s mute,” Blaire added.

“I don’t think he’s mute. Being mute is the inability to speak due to some birth defect or defect of another nature, but I don’t think that’s the case here. Bo just doesn’t know how to speak,” Travis explained. “From what I can tell, his inability to speak did not originate from any specific defect that I can pinpoint. Children learn speech from their parents, and it develops in a particular part of their brain from birth until four years of age. After four years of age, that part of the brain is fully developed, and if a child has not been taught to speak by that age, they can never learn. Bo could have been severely neglected and never spoken to. He can understand what others say in a discombobulated sort of way, and he can express himself through hand gestures and sounds, but he will likely, never speak.”

“Like a…feral child?” Blaire asked.

“You could say that. Next, we have Natalka,” Travis said, moving on to his next folder.

“Natalka’s smart, very smart, but forgetful at times. She actually seems fairly on point academically, all things considered,” Blaire said reviewing her file.

“I’m a little frightened for her and Ivan, to be honest.”

“Why?” Blaire asked.

“They don’t seem as mentally or physically handicapped as the other children, if at all really. Prolonged exposure to this environment will cause them to begin exhibiting some of the same behaviors as the other children, diminishing their mental capabilities.”

“So what you’re saying is that this place could literally drive them crazy?” Blaire asked.

“In a way, yes.”

Blaire felt sick for a moment. “What’s the rocking about?”

Travis sighed before explaining, “That, no one really knows, but people think it’s just a rhythmic movement that gives comfort, possibly a physical manifestation of mental regression. It’s often seen in patients with mental illness or patients that have experienced long periods of institutionalization. It doesn’t mean anything in particular, but it’s not good.”

It was 3:00 a.m. the next morning when Blaire woke to the low squawk of her cell phone and grabbed at the device, managing to hit the snooze button through blurred vision. After the third snooze, she forcefully up righted herself in bed, and there was no comfort left at all once her bare feet hit the icy floor.

The second floor was quiet as she made her way to the door of each room, flashing her light into every window. In 2E she noticed one of the boys, Sergey, tossing relentlessly. Per Travis’ report, this boy appeared to have some sort of arthritis that caused him severe pain, mostly in his joints from time to time. Along with using basic pain killers, Travis had started a massage therapy treatment for the boy that he had demonstrated for all of the workers, which they could implement when necessary. Blaire entered the room and sat down next to the boy on his bed.

“Are you hurting?” she whispered.

He nodded woefully and said, “My knees.”

“Okay, let me help,” Blaire pulled the boy’s legs from beneath his thick new blanket. His feet were knotted and worn. Blaire began massaging the boy’s knees and legs lightly.

Rodent scampering drew Blaire’s gaze to one of the vents in the corner. Sergey’s expression melted into terror as his eyes attached themselves to the vent.

“It’s just rats,” Blaire assured him.

“It’s no rats.”

Blaire looked at the vent, and then back to Sergey. “Well, what is it?”

“I can’t say.” His voice was barely audible

Blaire felt a dense lump clog her throat, she didn’t know quite what to make of his response, but suddenly she wanted nothing more than to get out of that room. “You feel better?”

Sergey didn’t answer. Blaire tucked the boy back into his bed and headed for the door, stopping and turning back for one last look at the vent; it was silent. She then looked to Sergey, and all she could see were the large, round whites of eyes that were alert and waiting as she brought the door to a close. Blaire took the stairs two at a time then walked speedily to her room, where she flipped the lock on the door before crawling under her covers and willing herself not to see or hear another thing that night.

Long before sunrise, Blaire woke again to the noise of the rats. Tossing to a new position she closed her eyes and dozed before the incessant scratching began burrowing into her head, washing away any chance of sound sleep, especially with Travis’ snoring adding to the maddening cacophony. A few moments later, she noticed the scratching growing louder, as if it were in the room. She flung the blanket from her head and sat up.

Blaire jumped when she heard a scattering noise, like little feet dashing across a floor. She jumped out of bed and grabbed the flashlight from the windowsill. Blaire reached for the keys on the dresser where she usually left them, her heart dropped as she pulled back her empty hand. It felt as if someone opened her mouth and dropped a weight inside. The keys were gone. Blaire shot her flashlight beam up to the ceiling, where she heard the scampering once again.

Someone was on the roof.

Tiny beads of sweat were crowning her as she opened the bedroom door and peered down the hall. The door to the roof creaked open, and her keys were dangling from the lock.

“No!” she said with a gasp as she raced to the doorway and stood looking up the dark, steep flight of stairs that seemed to lead straight into the starry night sky. The door at the top of the steps flapped lightly in the night breeze. She stumbled back when a tiny figure galloped across the doorway. It was one of the children.

Blaire raced up the stairs, but slowed as she approached the top. Realizing how high she was after catching a glimpse of the tree tops, she froze.

“Who’s out here?” she asked, stepping onto the small deck. The roof suddenly came alive with the ripple of little feet.

Blaire went to the right end of the deck and called out, “Who’s out here?” She could not see beyond the chimney that was blocking her view.

Laughter taunted her. With little hesitation, Blaire climbed over the small wood railing that separated the deck from the rest of the roof. Beyond the deck the rooftop was slanted deeply, and Blaire had to focus to preserve her good footing. Keeping her feet pressed tightly to the roof, Blaire maneuvered around the large chimney. Sea winds blew her
sleep
-tangled hair into her face, and she pushed it back but still saw no one. Blaire reached out for the iron grating that lined the perimeter of the roof and shook it lightly to test its sturdiness. When she was sure that the grating would not give out, she grabbed it and leaned over the side of the building to be sure that no one had fallen.

Jump!
Lacey shouted in her ear, causing Blaire to throw herself back against the safety of the roof.

Never before had she considered herself afraid of heights, but being this high up with little protection inspired new fears. Blaire noticed a shadow beginning to cover her and gasped at the sight of Ivan standing over her where the slants of the roof came together and offered a small platform of about one foot wide across the top.

“Ivan! Get down from there,” Blaire yelled, extending her hand up to the boy who was several feet away. Ivan stared at her blankly, his silhouette cutting a distinct shape in the night sky.

“Ivan, please give me your hand. It’s not safe up here.”

Blaire stood on her toes to extend her hand further. Ivan began to lift his tiny pale hand out to touch hers, but he stopped just short as if he were about to speak, as if he had to tell her something before she could take his hand, before she could save him.

Blaire heard Ivan’s voice, a garbled phrase, but the words were not coming from his mouth. The words surrounded her, though she could hardly hear anything except the crashing of the waves which were deafening now.

“What?” she shouted.

Again, she heard his words, but his lips never moved. It was louder this time, but fought with the sound of the wind in the trees, the beat of her heart, the blink of her eyes, and the rustling of her hair over her head. Every sound and movement seemed to be amplified in the moments that she waited for his hand to connect with hers.

“There’s something in the basement!” Ivan’s voice finally came through clear and strong and seemed to enter directly into Blaire’s bloodstream rather than her ears.

“Give me your hand!” Blaire screamed. She lifted herself higher on her toes when she felt the roof shift under her. Blaire looked down and saw a piece of the paneling sliding under her bare foot, and hardly had time to do anything except listen to herself scream, as she slid along the side of the roof through one of the gaps in the iron grating.

The laughter of the Frightening Four poured into her, and she grasped frantically for anything to hold on to as her body sailed into the air.

An abrupt jolt made her gulp. Somehow she had clenched the bottom of one of the iron posts. Blaire dangled from the side of the massive building like a tiny wind chime. Her chest tensed painfully when she looked down and saw the hard ground welcoming her. The high grass in the unkempt lawn swayed, enthusiastically cheering for her decent. Her fingers tightened around the post, but she was quickly discouraged. She had only been hanging a couple of seconds, and she was weakening fast.

Jump, jump, jump
,
they taunted. Blaire tried to block their memory, but they were there, surrounding her, daring her. Anger filled her, but, as she looked down at the ground below her, she supposed that their hecklings were not so merciless. They dared her not only to jump, but to be free. For a moment, she considered letting go, allowing her fingers to relax their grip around the cold, iron post just like she had that day on Grammercy Bridge, but what about Ivan? What would happen to him?

Blaire pushed her free hand up, making a clumsy attempt to get a grip on one of the other posts. With breathy strain, she wiggled her fingertips toward their destination, but it was just out of reach, and her anchored hand was weakening. Ivan had slid down from the highest point on the roof and was standing over her now, his white nightshirt billowed under the influence of the breeze. Her hand was wet with perspiration, and it slipped further. Blaire hesitated to talk or scream, afraid to exert any of the energy that she needed to hold on.

Ivan looked down on her, the dark patches of skin under his eyes making him look inhuman.

“Ivan, get help.” she finally cried out, feeling all the strength draining from her limp body.

Ivan’s small hand stretched out over the bars, as she shot her free hand up once again, but it was just out of Ivan’s juvenile reach. He climbed onto the railing and reached down further, pressing his cool palm against hers and locking her tightly in a grip that seemed unfit for a fragile boy. He jerked her heartily, lifting her several inches, and her mouth gave a bemused gape at his abnormal strength.

“Put your foot on the window frame there,” he instructed. She looked down and saw that a window frame was now under her foot. A flickering relief set in once her foot found the solid resting place.

“Come on now,” Ivan said, refocusing Blaire. She reached for the boy’s hand once again, and when his palm was pressed firmly against hers, she felt a numbing sensation rush through her. She closed her eyes and the vision of ruby blood drops splashing across the rungs of a crib penetrated her.

Blaire snatched her hand back from the boy.