“If the only time she is around at home, there’s a cause of conflict,” Kyle explained to me, “that might just reinforce her delusion that she is being abused—and thus becomes a true delusion. ‘My dad is trying to kill me.’”
Still, Clara was smart enough to recognize when someone else was in need of proper psychiatric help and actually suffering from delusion. On her own time, she had studied mostly philosophy back in high school, and was not as introverted and antisocial as her writings indicated, giving more credence to a later theory that her journal writings were based more in Clara’s fantastical thinking than in her reality. It was back in high school that the OG bought Clara her horse, Cherokee. Clara enjoyed nothing more than tending to the animal and taking it for rides when she first got him. There were times, too, when she and friends went out to any number of the Civil War memorials around the state to study the history and engage in conversations about the war.
It wasn’t until Joan Schwartz began battling cancer, Clara’s paternal grandfather later said, that Clara drifted into heavy metal, dark clothes, and a brooding mood of melancholy. She took to a “fringe group” of “goth kids” she found at school.
“She was very, very close to her mother,” Clara’s grandfather told the Associated Press, “and I think it was a rather serious thing for her [Joan’s death]—and my son worked overtime trying to help her.”
Clara saw Kyle’s weaknesses as a window she could open and use against him. Clara had once written about a precedent within this psychological framework she’d established regarding recognizing mental handicaps in people and exploiting them for her own benefit. It was almost as if Clara prided herself on being able to find these types of people, study them, and then use them. She talked about how a boy from school had similar issues to Kyle and she had hung around the kid in order to learn about his condition in order to both understand and take advantage of him.
There was a part of Clara that believed the people around her were there “for her use,” Kyle observed. “This was later clear to me.”
If in choosing Kyle for a specific purpose she had in mind, by first realizing her boyfriend wasn’t going to do it, Clara could not have chosen a better candidate. Because as Kyle later explained: “A man who abused me, I remember killing him. I remember it as clearly as this conversation right now. I remember killing several different bad people, in fact, who were doing ... very bad things.”
Another aspect of Kyle’s character emerged within the psychiatric reports later made public. (It was something I spoke to Kyle about at length.) Kyle had always told me he had never used drugs, never bought drugs, and was never interested in drugs.
“Sure, I smoked some weed at a party, had a few drinks here and there, but I never pursued either at all.”
Yet, in a 2001 psych report I was able to obtain, Kyle told a psychiatrist that he had been abusing “shrooms” (hallucinogenic mushrooms) “since age eight.”
He has used and experimented with most drugs at some point in his life including experimentation with LSD, PCP, but has mostly focused on marijuana and “shrooms,” the report said.
This was in clear contrast with what Kyle later told me.
“I was in a total cannabis haze,” Kyle told one psychiatrist on July 23, 2001, “for about two weeks when a close friend of mine, a ‘blood brother,’ died of AIDS at twenty-three years old.” What Kyle meant was that his “blood brother” had gotten the immune deficiency disease from drinking someone’s blood.
“When did you last use drugs?” the doctor asked.
“March of this year.”
When one looked back at Kyle’s life, which had been documented in great detail, it appeared that the only evidence of him abusing or even using drugs was in his psych files. Clara, Mike, and Katie later said they never witnessed Kyle use drugs.
“Did you or did you not use shrooms or any type of drugs?” I asked Kyle after obtaining these reports, which totally contradicted his statements to me. I was concerned, of course, that he was lying to me about it. And if he lied about that, well, what else could I believe? “These reports claim you were using acid and shrooms since the age of eight. Let’s figure this out. Were you or were you not using drugs?”
“There’s nothing to figure out,” Kyle began. “You have to understand. I had an uncanny awareness of myself and the people around me. I noticed things as a child no one else noticed. I knew there was something wrong with the way I was seeing the world. To me, what I saw, what I heard, the visions I had, there was nothing wrong with it. They were part of my life. They were my reality. They were ... They were ... real. But the people I saw had a problem with it all, as they should have.”
While growing up, Kyle went on to add, he had learned about hallucinogens, acid, mushrooms, and the like. He understood that when you took those types of drugs, you would experience what he was experiencing without them. There was hardly a week that went by, Kyle added, when he wasn’t sitting in front of some doctor being questioned about his visions and fantasies. Doctors were fixated on the topics, he claimed. He got tired of answering their questions about it all and trying to explain that it was real to him.
“So I told them what they wanted to hear,” Kyle said.
He lied about doing drugs because in telling them that he was into hallucinogenic drugs, it answered their questions about the demons, cartoon characters, and other visions he was having.
CHAPTER 36
CLARA WAS CRYING. It had become a daily ritual, according to Kyle, as he and Clara became closer after that second weekend they spent together at JMU, along with Katie and Mike. Those “visions” of Kyle’s where he now saw Clara being yelled at by her father and abused, as if he were standing in the room, were happening more frequently, Kyle said. It was near the third week of November, several days before Thanksgiving. Kyle shared the visions with Clara.
Learning this, Clara had to realize it was more fuel for the fire she was fanning.
“Kyle?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m . . . I’m . . . ,” Clara tried saying that night over the phone, but the tears were too much.
“What is it?” Kyle asked. He had walked somewhere private within Brandy’s house. He didn’t want Brandy and her mother involved in any of this.
To start off a conversation, Clara and Kyle could talk about food, relationships, staffs, swords, and the Underworld, Kyle said, but it always—every single day—steered “back to her father and the things he was doing to her.”
“I’m scared of him, Kyle,” Clara said.
“It’ll be okay, CJ. I’ll protect you.”
“His fingers again, Kyle,” she said, insinuating sexual abuse by her father. Clara knew this one thing (the purported sexual abuse by her father) angered Kyle furiously more than anything else. Kyle couldn’t get the images out of his mind of her father sneaking into her room at night, reaching down and abusing her.
“Every day, she called me. Every day, she cried. Every day, she steered the conversation toward her father.”
They hung up, telling each other that they’d stay in touch.
By now, the medication Kyle had been taking most of his life was completely out of his system. He was running on his own self-diagnosis and pure Kyle Hulbert adrenaline. “Hypomanic” is how one doctor described Kyle, which might be an indication as to how he could stay up for days without the help of drugs. “Racing thoughts and pressured speech” was how Kyle was depicted in many of the psych reports written about him. There had been twenty-eight separate psychiatric hospitalizations for Kyle over the years. Twenty-eight! A remarkable number of admissions for a kid just eighteen. He had been on lithium, clonidine, risperidone, trazodone, Tegretol, Neurontin, Depakote, Wellbutrin, Ritalin, Adderall, Vistaril, Prozac, Paxil, Zyprexa, and Seroquel.
“Kyle?”
“Yeah, CJ, what is it?”
She was calling again—third time that day.
“I’m terrified. Can you come and stay here f
or Thanksgiving ?”
Kyle knew what she meant. Pitch his tent on her property, out of sight from the house. Clara said she needed to have Kyle there, by her side, her protector. Patrick was all but done, although Clara never said a word about this to Kyle.
“I’ll see if Mike can drive me,” Kyle said. He had wanted to spend the holiday with Brandy and her mom. Kyle fooled himself into thinking that this Thanksgiving would be like no other in that he would be sitting at a table with people who actually wanted him there. Cared about him. But now this dilemma: Clara or Brandy?
“Please come, Kyle. Please.”
“I can, CJ,” Kyle told Clara.
“Thank you. . . .”
There was something else. Kyle could tell Clara wanted to share a secret.
“What is it?” Kyle asked.
“I think he’s getting ready to poison me again,” Clara told Kyle.
CHAPTER 37
KYLE STOOD IN the living room of Brandy’s house. No one was around. He had gotten his wish and had spent the Thanksgiving holiday itself with Brandy and her mom. It had been a nice meal, Kyle later recalled. One he won’t ever forget. Sitting around friends, with a feeling of being wanted, was new to Kyle. He enjoyed it immensely.
His foot bounced nervously a million miles an hour as the phone number he had dialed buzzed in his ear.
Pick up. Pick up, damn it, Kyle said to himself.
He kept looking around the room anxiously, waiting for someone to come in and ask him what he was doing and who it was that he was calling. It felt this way for Kyle these days: as if he was constantly doing something wrong, always being watched.
“Hello?”
“Mike, what’s up? Listen. I need a ride out to Clara’s.”
Kyle expected to have to beg or promise Mike some gas money he didn’t have. But Mike said, “Sure . . . when?”
“Now.”
Kyle had his tent packed and ready to go. He’d told Brandy he was taking off. He’d be back in a few days.
As he waited outside for Mike to arrive, Kyle took one more look inside his bag. He didn’t want to forget the one thing he needed most, the one thing he kept with him all the time: his twenty-seven-inch ninja sword.
CHAPTER 38
THE BEAUTY, GRACE, and tranquility of the rolling hills and immaculate landscape of Loudoun County, Virginia, was not what Clara Schwartz kept focused on as she made her way through those dark November nights dealing with what she had described incessantly as an iron-fisted father, who, she had alleged, expected more out of her than she could ever deliver—that is, of course, in addition to abusing and trying to kill her. There just wasn’t any middle ground between father and daughter. If what Clara said is to be believed, no matter what she did, what she said, or how she approached life, the OG pooh-poohed it all, usually with a slap and some rather spiteful words of humiliation. Robert Schwartz wanted order the way he saw it. He had been raising three kids alone—two of whom were not part of the family unit at home any longer, but would stop by from time to time—since 1997, when Joan died of lung cancer. According to Clara, Robert resented the woman for leaving him with such a task. Moreover, Robert was dedicated to his work as a scientist and how far DNA had come in just a little over ten years. DNA was finally taken seriously within the law enforcement and scientific communities. One could even hazard a guess that at work there was pressure on Robert because of his signature status as such a renowned biochemist; simultaneously the position also inflated his ego a bit, since he was such a star in his field. So when he got home and had to deal with Clara and her attitude of “I hate the world and everything in it,” not to mention her personal problems—social, educational, and mental—there was friction, and perhaps even an air of bitterness and scorn. If we take the precedence set by Joan’s family, Clara and Robert did not live in an environment conducive to discussing problems and difficulties like a pair of healthy adults might. Heck, Robert was apparently a proud guy with no interest in seeing his daughter get any psychological help. There’s plenty of evidence to support that statement. He was the type to just as well deal with things himself, in private, inside his own home.
And so, in her own way, Clara dealt with the situation she found herself facing. She viewed her home life as a “lose-lose situation,” she commented. She felt “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” She couldn’t win. There was no pleasing this guy. Yet, at the same rate, within all that Clara Schwartz wrote and complained about during those days after Joan died and she fell in with this group of friends, including Mike, Katie, Patrick, and Kyle, there was always a constant regarding her life with the OG: “He never loved me” was her continual refrain. This meant the most to her. Though she never wrote about it categorically, the lack of love she felt from her father—the fact that he rarely, according to her, told her he was proud of her and celebrated her life—became utterly clear while reading her journals. This hurt Clara horribly. She felt the blow every time she looked at him.
In regard to the lack of intimacy between Clara and her father, with no mother around, Clara reacted heatedly. She reciprocated by writing that she HATED him ; I felt & feel no love, only hatred, pure white hatred and he deserves to die. . . .
“He deserves to die. . . .”
Clara’s words. No one else’s.
It became a theme in her life. She believed Robert had already tried to kill her in the past on several occasions, and that one of her siblings had also tried, never explaining exactly how. She called her home the “House of Hell,” where “emotional” and “physical” abuses were “rampant.”
Clara wrote that when her eulogy was written (because she believed her father was going to succeed in killing her one day, or she was going to succeed in killing herself), whoever wound up writing it, she was totally convinced, would undoubtedly say she was “not happy” (a prediction she made in her journal) or “did not find happiness.” She confirmed that this would be a true statement.
Within all of this, Clara said, there was one place where she had found peace and joy: In my art.
She meant painting, watercolors. She was pretty good and seemed to enjoy the serenity that painting offered her soul. However, she never took it seriously or brought it to the next level.
Although she knew better, Clara dreamed that her lineage and that of the OG’s would stem from different DNA: I am NOT of his Blood, because it is the most hypocritical Blood in this Planet. Although it seemed like an odd place to put it, she added here how she had hoped that when he did go to Hell, he would suffer.
Clara Schwartz hated her father fervently; there can be no disputing this fact. Her days were centered on loathing this man and everything about him. Not for one or two years, but just about her entire teen life. His dying would not have resulted in her feeling the least bit sorry or mournful. If this man were to vanish, or drop dead of a heart attack, Clara would sleep better. She’d rejoice. Hell, she’d probably throw a party. She made this point time and again in her diary, either implicitly or straight out.
She was also feeling pressure from her classes at school, and this short Thanksgiving break at home got her thinking about the upcoming, longer Christmas break. She just couldn’t do the work anymore. Clara was smart, so she was expected to produce. But the advanced classes she was in were beginning to create a backlash, because her mind was so consumed with hating the OG and the Underworld. The stress was overwhelming, she said again and again.
In one entry, written in the form of a suicide letter, Clara spoke of how she wished her friends would understand how bad it was for her at home and school; yet there was no way they could. Even her closest friends—and she named each one of six (she was not lonely and was not being excluded)—did not know the amount of suffering she was experiencing.
Goodbye to my friends, Clara concluded one diary entry. I wish I could work it out.
She ended by saying how it had been seven years of her trying to get past this darkness and the sheer madness inside her
home, but nothing worked. She ended the entry stating: Nothing goes to my family. Then she said she was off to try and commit “meinacide,” totally contradicting her own meaning of the word.
Like her aunt living in England had suspected all along, Clara Schwartz was a confused and messed-up child, experiencing violent thoughts against the man raising her. Her core values and her goals were askew. She felt the walls closing in on her. She felt her father was trying to kill her. She felt her siblings did not care about her or love her. She felt her friends didn’t understand her. It was either this or she was making it all up in some kind of elaborate narrative she was penning for the Underworld.
And yet, as total gloom seemed to be enveloping this young woman, here was her prince of darkness, thank goodness, about to come and rescue her. Clara Schwartz now had Kyle Hulbert on her side—and he was on his way to her house to spend what was left of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
CHAPTER 39
CLARA PLANNED ON spending most of the Thanksgiving weekend at home. The OG was going to be there, along with Clara’s brother and sister. During an instant-messaging chat with Katie on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, Clara said she believed Patrick was “ignoring” her.
Katie warned Clara not to jump to conclusions with Patrick. He’s “ignoring everyone,” Katie said.
But Clara’s tone during this instant message indicated she was done with Patrick. Finished. It was over between them. She’d found herself a new “boy” to complete the task Patrick obviously didn’t have the guts to do.
Katie didn’t want their relationship to end. She told Clara to relax and expect a call from Patrick to smooth things over. Katie, who had introduced Patrick to Clara, said she’d spoken to Patrick about everything and he was going to be talking to Clara soon, explaining himself. Katie claimed to know what Patrick’s core issue was, but she was not going to get in the middle of it and tell Clara what was truly bugging Patrick.
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