CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After breakfast Travis was in his office sweeping the floor when he heard a knock. Marko was standing in the doorway with his arms full of battered manila folders.
“Let me take those,” Travis said, rushing to find a place for the beat-up broom, and then lifting the stack of files from Marko effortlessly. Travis sat the massive pile on his desk.
He eyed the stack while running his hand along the folders, opening some for a quick glance. The information seemed sparse.
“Is this everything?” Travis asked still studying the papers.
“Everything that you need. I will give Ms. Baker the education files, but I keep the children’s personal files in my office,” Marko said. Travis’ eyes darted up to the man, and then swiftly back to the stack as he pulled out one manila folder, opened it and flipped through the pages thoughtfully.
“I probably won’t get to do too much with Natalka since she’s leaving soon,” Travis commented.
“Leaving?” Marko inquired. “Where is she going?”
“Isn’t her father supposed to be picking her up? Natalka told Blaire that there were plans for her father to take her home soon,” Travis explained.
Marko scoffed, “She says that every year.”
“What do you mean?” Travis was taken aback by his gullibility.
“Natalka was brought to St. Sebastian several summers ago. Her father blindfolded her for most of the trip and told her that he was taking her on a special adventure before dropping her here. There are no plans for her family to come and pick her up—ever.”
“But she told Blaire that he wrote to her, saying that he would be coming to pick her up.”
“I can assure you that she is not receiving any letters of the sort. She is not going anywhere.”
“That’s awful,” Travis said.
“Every year she pretends that it is the year that her family is coming to pick her up, to take her home, and every year comes and goes, and she is still here, but I think that she is getting used to the fact that she will be here, and that this is her home now.”
“Why exactly is she here?” Travis asked.
“Mild mental illness most likely, but there is no official diagnosis. She is a girl with a mental illness or learning disability, which added to her gender makes her even weaker, even less desirable to have around.”
“Why did he blindfold her?”
“So that she could never find her way home,” Marko said before he disappeared out the door, seeming to take all of the oxygen with him.
Sea breezes ruffled Blaire’s hair and cooled her face, and she felt alive. A white fisherman’s sweater swallowed her, and Blaire pulled the lengthy sleeves down to cover her hands. The mass of water was endless, it seemed. As Blaire sat on the rocks watching the waves, she tried to get lost in them.
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
Blaire sat in her classroom scribbling notes and plans for instruction. Shuffling in without a word, Travis plunked down in one of the desks where he flipped through a couple of papers in his hand, studying them carefully.
“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 d
issolved 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
“Blaire!” Travis called for the third time.
As her vision cleared Travis came into view, waving his hand, gently guiding her back 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 a
ge. 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.
The Unwanted (Black Water Tales Book 2) Page 10
