“So tell me about your first day at the hospital, anything to get my mind off the break-in. Any cute guys I should know about?”
Vivian swirled the wine in her Bordeaux glass as she lost herself in a string of fresh memories. This day alone had already carved a deep impression in her scarred canvas of life.
“You know I’m not usually one to fall for any guy, but I met someone at the hospital today—”
“Well, that’s an improvement over the bad boys you ogle at clubs.”
“Oh shut up. Anyway I wouldn’t call it a romantic introduction. His name is Milo and he was actually giving me a vaccine when my heart dropped into my stomach—probably a bit from both fear and attraction.” She laughed and plopped down on the carpet. “But you should’ve seen him. His face looks like it belongs on the cover of a magazine.”
“And we both know how much you adore the pretty boys. So he works in the blood lab? Does that make him a morbid soul like you?”
“No, he seems quite the opposite. He’s been living abroad in Europe for the past few years. Can you imagine traveling anywhere you wish? What a thrill it would be to wander from one corner of the world to the next with nothing to hold you down.”
Additionally, there was something else about Milo that she rarely glimpsed in another man.
“He looks like a sweet and innocent soul.”
“And you want to corrupt him?”
Vivian licked the Shiraz from her lips.
“If I can’t help it. Here’s a toast to the end of our innocence, starting today.”
“You’re way ahead of me on that. How about a toast to your first day at clinicals? And your budding romance with Milo…”
Vivian almost choked on her wine.
“What?”
“Oh sorry, I meant the corruption of Milo.”
“Yeah, I should be so lucky. Well, I’m off to bed now. Save a little wine for tomorrow, won’t you?”
The door wisped shut behind Vivian, and suddenly the merriment and laughter was subdued by silence. Camilla could never thank her enough. She was equally indebted to Vivian’s mother for her gracious hospitality. Maybe she could let her guard down and forget about the intrusion of her apartment.
She flipped off the lamp and doused the bedroom in darkness. Teddy bears sat on their ornate thrones in the corner, their beady eyes catching the reflections of street lights outside. A passing car’s headlights lanced through the room, dancing across a framed portrait of a much younger Vivian. She was only five years old in the photograph.
Set in the Prague Carnevale festivities, Vivian was beaming from ear to ear as costumed and masked performers paraded down the street. That smile, so jubilant and full of hope, conflicted with the sarcastic and often dominating attitude she wore today. Yet, no matter how she moaned about the world, she couldn’t hide the child-like rapture she guarded in her heart.
Camilla hoped no one ever shattered that innocence in her.
She glanced out the window to see the orange haze of streetlights shimmering through the glass. Black eyes outside her window also caught the same hellish lights.
Someone was staring down at her.
Camilla loosed a bloodcurdling scream.
She flung herself across the room but something coiled around her legs. The blankets held her fast as she landed hard on her stomach. She looked over her shoulder and met those insane eyes once more.
Those eyes knew her and cut through the secrets to her soul, dissecting the essence of her being. Somehow she knew it to be same entity who stalked through her apartment only hours ago.
She gawked at the shadowy face and its knowing smile.
Vivian burst into the bedroom.
“What’s going on?!” She took one look at Camilla sprawled on the floor and the dismay painted on her face. Her adrenaline roared as she reeled toward the window. Nothing sinister reflected beyond the glass besides the neighborhood caught in the spell of sleep. The stalker was nowhere to be found.
Camilla frantically crawled to her feet.
“There was someone lurking outside my window! I don’t know how long he was out there!”
Vivian surveyed the neighborhood. Her hairs stood on end at the sound of Camilla’s growling voice.
“It was him. The man who was in my apartment earlier, I know it.”
“You saw the face clearly? It was a man?”
Camilla kicked at the blankets still tangled around her feet. In truth, she couldn’t tell whether the lurker was a man or woman. “What did he look like?” Vivian pressed.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” How could she memorize those details when she was terrified for her life? She saw the implicit question on Vivian’s face and became defensive.
“It wasn’t a nightmare. I know what I saw. Someone was watching me while I was trying to fall asleep.”
“All right, give me a moment and I’ll call the police—”
“Don’t.” There was no mistaking the harshness, the conviction in that word. Camilla held Vivian in her imploring gaze. “All I’m asking for now is a peaceful night’s rest. I don’t want to endure any more questions from the police. We can report this tomorrow. Who knows, maybe it’s just a neighborhood creep and I’m connecting dots that don’t exist.” She chuckled lightly. “Maybe it was just a dream.”
“Let’s hope it was a dream for your sake.” Vivian retired to her bedroom with a bit of shooing from Camilla.
As Camilla tossed in bed hours, the lie tasted foul in her throat. Of course it wasn’t a nightmare. She knew someone had peered through the bedroom window and devised unspeakable horrors for her.
Worse, she knew beyond any doubt that it was the same being that trespassed on her apartment. But how did he follow her to Vivian’s house?
She didn’t know what kind of madness possessed her, but she soon crawled out of bed and stared at the glass that once framed a demonic face. She violently thrust open the window and expected to feel hands wrap around her neck. She looked down into the darkness. A photograph was affixed to the outside sill, fluttering in a gale of wind.
Her trembling fingers snatched it up and she slammed the window shut. Her head was spinning and her breath became increasingly absent.
The photo was much too dark but she could make out a few minute details. Candles were lit on a red satin sheet draped across an altar.
Muddied with shadows, the flames reflected off a serpentine silhouette resting on opulent satin. Little else explained what was transpiring in the haunting picture.
Discover your origins in the Black Atrium, read the handwriting on the photograph.
Camilla’s stomach clenched at the thought of what she might encounter—if she was foolish enough to answer this challenge.
FOUR
The abandoned mall before Camilla composed a surreal sight against the dwindling sun. The Black Atrium was a once shopping centre curled around a theater in the Vršovice district of Prague. Now it incubated in the decay like Vesely Manor. Unlike the estate of her ancestors, the Black Atrium’s fate wasn’t sealed in fire. Its ruin was mired in corporate embezzlement and a particularly grisly gang murder that occurred after hours. Who could blame the locals for eschewing the mall after a decapitated corpse surfaced in the stairwell?
Camilla remembered reporting that incident all too well. Her article couldn’t paint the scene as vividly as the forensics photos did, but it was enough to scare away the locales. Who would have thought her writing would also end up condemning a mall? Her stalker seemed well aware of her media campaign to end the Magdalene asylums.
Thus, it was only fitting that he summoned her to the Black Atrium, another unfortunate target of her writing. Camilla approached the entrance. Ravens were feasting on the scraps of something on the cobbled streets. They cackled and spiraled into the sky as her heels ground to a halt. The chains that once barred the entrance were chipped away, perhaps in preparation to welcome Camilla.
Discover your origins in the Black Atrium
, the message read. Camilla took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. What spurred her on to such devastation? It was surely a question floating on her brain as she weaseled her way through the doors.
Only a stone’s throw away, Vivian was searching for a bar on Kryskma Street, which catered to college students and hipsters. It couldn’t hold a candle to the ritzy Vinohrady, but Vršovice had its own unique charm in bohemian galleries and funky cafes.
After downing a few beers and browsing corsets at her favorite boutique, maybe Vivian would forget the tongue lashing Crenshaw gave her today. The streets seemed noticeably empty as she wound her way to the nearest drinking hole. Few locales were cruising the shops or ambling through the parks.
Vivian almost turned the street corner when she spotted a familiar face. To her bewilderment, she saw Camilla standing before the Black Atrium in silent reverence. One step at a time, she approached until the shadows took her.
“Well, that doesn’t look promising,” Vivian said. “I’m going to kick her ass if this is about the stalker and she didn’t invite me.” All thoughts of the pub were instantly wiped clean from her mind. She had to see what beckoned Camilla to the grave site of a once bustling mall—and possibly save her hide.
Those long-awaited beers would taste better with Camilla’s company, after all.
Inside the Black Atrium, the domed glass roof scintillated in rich crimson under the sunset, paving Camilla’s path in apocalyptic overtones. Even the air itself seemed rust-colored.
Much of the roof caved in years ago and the last flecks of the sunset sluggishly cleaved through the darkness. Camilla marveled at the vines inhabiting this palace of destruction. In the red light, they reminded her of pulsing entrails that drew life from the trapped memories. It was a sordid comparison but not one she could easily dismiss. For all impressions, the mall underwent a disturbing makeover in its final death throes.
Her feet tapped lightly against the tiles as she walked past her favorite bookstore, Once Upon A Time. Its fantasy section was her vice, as it always drew her in with fairytales that Uncle Sebastian told her before bed. She had a particular weakness for the writings of Anne Rice and Diana Gabaldon. There was something about fantasy that she always romanticized since a tender age.
After snagging a new book at Once Upon A Time, she would camp out on a bench and read until the sun vanished.
Her eyes widened as glass broke free from the atrium ceiling and splashed against the floor in a deadly display. A few steps more and she might have ended her search prematurely.
“Am I a fool for coming here?” she asked the darkness. The more she delved into the abandoned mall, the more she wondered if the answers she sought would kill her. Despite that chance, she believed her inner journalist answered the stalker’s message. She needed to know who, what, and why. Who was tormenting her? What would happen to her when she found her answers? Why was someone targeting her? That question gnawed at her most of all.
Camilla led a quiet life with no family, no boyfriends, and only a handful of connections. She was fortunate to have no enemies in her life—at least none she was aware of until now. She couldn’t remember chronicling any scandals in the newspaper that might land her on someone’s hit list.
Of course, this could be a crazed admirer’s sick game to isolate her and strike. She received her share of love letters from creeps who read her articles in Blaze.
However, she was convinced this wasn’t an infatuated stalker—this was more dangerous and directed. The message alluded to her secret origins. Camilla was a sucker for learning information not privy to her. She thrived on loosening secrets from tight lips and discovering who people truly were under the surface. But when it came to her origins, they proved to be the most succulent mystery of all.
She couldn’t resist. She would press onward, even if it meant marching to the sound of her elegy.
A brisk pace echoed in the darkness behind Camilla. Vivian followed in her footsteps, wondering what in the world brought her friend here.
“What do you know that you aren’t telling me?” she whispered, staring at Camilla’s back. “What are you doing in this place?”
Swift as a raven, a large silhouette emerged from one of the hole in the wall stores. Vivian’s heart flipped at the sight of the figure. It towered over seven feet tall and easily dwarfed any man.
At first glance, the man loping quietly behind Camilla appeared naked. Vivian wondered if he was indeed the stalker—or a vagrant who claimed this mall as his sacred domain. No matter, his lurking could only bode ill for Camilla. She would have to act fast to lure him away.
Vivian tailed the figure for a bit longer as she wracked her brain for ideas. If size was any indicator of strength, she didn’t want to pit her muscle against him. Of course, if push came to shove, she could more than compensate when a friend’s life hung by a thread. She squinted through the light and was startled by the stalker’s body. There was something askew about its sleek limbs and torso, as if human proportions didn’t apply.
Vivian lurched forward as the ceiling cracked above her. There was no time to contemplate the strange shape of the man before her now. She tripped and fell on her back as shards of glass were rained down to impale her. All she could do was marvel at the beautiful harbinger of her death. A chunk sunk into the floor between her armpit, inches away from her whimpering heart. Somehow she escaped the impact of the falling glass. She couldn’t believe all of her limbs were still attached.
On impulse, all of her contracted muscles relaxed and the pressure came out in unashamed laughter. Maybe the angels were watching over her after all. When she looked up, the only one watching over her was the stalker.
His sinister eyes glowed at the sight of her. It shuddered and slinked in her direction.
“Fuck!”
Vivian sprang up and shrank behind a trash bin as the man approached. He stopped short of the glass where Vivian once sprawled.
She couldn’t see his face, but his stringy limbs and muscular torso were evident. His fingers curled and outstretched in spasms as though he imagined picking the meat from her bones.
Meanwhile, Camilla scanned the vacant shops and boutiques nestled in the grime. She remained unaware of the fact that she was being followed. She could think of nothing besides the origins that haunted her since her birth. She was oblivious to everything else that existed, including the figure creeping up behind her.
Camilla almost jumped out of her skin when hands seized her wrists. Her eyes rounded at the shocking but comforting sight of Vivian.
“What the hell are you doing here?!”
Before Vivian could answer, she heard the slapping of bare feet behind her.
“No time to explain—we need to hide now!” Her head spun frantically in search of shelter.
“Over there!” Camilla nudged Vivian toward a store, where the security gate was precariously ajar. There was sparsely enough room for someone small to squeeze under the rusted iron. Vivian also noticed black light oozing through the grille. Something about the striking light proved both menacing and familiar, but she had never seen it before.
“What the—”
Camilla sank to her belly and wriggled under the gate. Dismissing her rising doubts, Vivian followed suit.
They immediately froze and listened. Feet padded outside of the store and the women tensed in silence. Those steps continued until they faded to mewling silence.
“We’re safe for now—whatever that thing was.”
Vivian returned her attention to the store where they had innocuously trapped themselves. Black light stretched across the chilling room. The walls were layered in strange pieces of art that didn’t seem to fit into any bygone age. Portraits of amputees, blurred faces, women in black veils, floating castles, and radically distorted angels numbed Camilla’s frail mind.
They were trapped in an art gallery cobbled together from the surreal and the demented. Perhaps they had walked into the dream sequence of a man who l
ived long enough to see his sanity dissolve in a mist of absinthe. Two corridors burrowed deeper into the bowels of the gallery.
The ceiling above was composed of glass bearing various occult geometric designs. Black light rained down from the shapes, transfixing Vivian and Camilla in symbols of life, death, and reincarnation. Also framed in the ceiling were the striking words Vesica Piscis.
Camilla spent her childhood years reading every book about the mystic, divine, and occult in Uncle Sebastian’s library. It was a subject that interested her since she first began to ask questions about the soul. If her memory served her well, she believed Vesica Piscis referenced a creational pattern of two linking circles. It was associated with everything from Christianity to the waxing and waning moon to the womb of the Divine Feminine. She wondered which definition inspired the artist on display.
A quick shove from Vivian jolted Camilla to her senses.
“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here. The last time I checked there was nothing worth reporting here—so I bet this has something to do with your stalker.”
No sooner had Camilla opened her mouth, the mall speakers groaned and spat out a strange, pulsing melody. Like funeral rites being pumped out of a sewer drain, it dribbled into her ears in languid tones.
“I didn’t want to involve anyone in this mess. That’s why I came alone. I don’t need anyone dying on my behalf.”
Camilla rose to her feet and began searching for a way out of the gallery. Vivian followed, irritated at how easily Camilla brushed her off.
“What has changed about you? You were always dragging me out to cafés and art galleries, but now you hardly come out of your apartment for air.”
“Well, think of this as a diversion. We’re at an art gallery now, aren’t we? Judging by the morbid tone, it’s right up your alley.”
“I’m being serious, Camilla. What’s become of the girl I once knew?”
Camilla stared a painting of an ethereal chapel dominating a wasteland. It echoed through the savage brushstrokes as though the artist had constructed a portal to a Lovecraftian world.
Arsenic for the Soul Page 4
