House of Bathory (28 page)

Chapter 83

P
OPRAD
T
ATRY
A
IRPORT
S
LOVAKIA
D
ECEMBER 28, 2010

M
aybe she missed the plane,” said Jo
hn
, watching the last of the passengers come down the stairs from the little prop plane. “Great—”

“That’s her!” said Betsy, gripping his arm. “In the black coat.”

Jo
hn
squinted, seeing a girl with her hair tucked up under a woolen cap. Wearing no makeup.

“She looks so—innocent,” he said. “Are you sure that’s her?”

“Absolutely,” said Betsy.

When she spotted them, Daisy’s lips stretched in a smile.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I know—I know I shouldn’t be here.”

Betsy pulled her close in an embrace. She rocked her patient in her arms, refusing to let go. “Thank God. You’re safe!”

Jo
hn
took Daisy’s rolling bag. Then he reached for her backpack.

“Wait, I’ve brought the papers I found. Let me get them out.”

“They can wait—”

“No, Jo
hn
,” said Betsy, touching him lightly on the shoulder. “I want to see them.”

Daisy knelt on the rough carpet and slid a red plastic folder from the zip pocket.

“I tried to protect it,” she said. “It looks really old.”

Betsy took the folder. The warped edges of the pages were brown as toast. “I remember my mother taking me to university libraries to see primary sources. Vellum like this was used several hundred years ago.”

“And this,” said Daisy, handing her the envelope. “It’s addressed to you. I didn’t open it, honest.”

“Thank you,” said Betsy. She studied it for a moment, then closed her eyes. “It’s my father’s handwriting,” she whispered.

Daisy thought about another letter she had seen once…lying on Morgan’s pillow…the cramped scrawl of her father’s handwriting.

Jo
hn
watched Daisy’s face turn rigid.

“Excuse me,” Daisy’s voice was suddenly harsh. “I’ve got to go to the ladies’ room.”

She hurried away.

“What’s with her?” said Jo
hn
.

“Maybe she’s airsick,” said Betsy. “It was a little plane. She probably got bounced around.”

Jo
hn
shrugged, unconvinced. He watched Betsy’s eyes drift, gazing up to the right, trying to recall something.

“What did I say before she bolted off for the restroom?” she asked.

“You were talking about the letter.”

“What did I say, exactly?”

“You said, ‘It’s my father’s handwriting.’ ”

Betsy bit her lip. “Stay here.”

She put the red plastic folder and envelope into Jo
hn
’s hands. She ran for the bathroom.

As she pushed open the swinging door, Betsy heard a retching sound and the terrifying rasp of a gag. Two Slovak women were knocking hard on the aluminum door of the stall.

“
Prosim,”
said Betsy, pushing past them. She pounded on the door.

“Daisy, let me in.”

“Go…away. It’s something…I ate.”

“No it isn’t,” said Betsy. “It’s something you are remembering.”

A strangled sound filled the restroom. Betsy dropped to her hands and knees and crawled under the stall door.

Daisy could not protest. Her face was blotched both red and white. Her hand was stretched over her throat, her eyes wide in terror. She was on her knees on the tile floor. Betsy knelt next to her, supporting her torso.

“A thread of air, just a thread. Slipping into your lungs. Follow it.”

“I…can’t—”

“Follow it. Only a thread. It could slide down anything. It has. It enters your lungs. Let it out. In…let it out.”

Daisy nodded.

“See it, Daisy. Visualize it. Slipping in, coming out. A blue thread, a soft blue. Follow it in, follow it out.”

Daisy closed her eyes, listening to the voice of her therapist.

Between gasps, she offered two words, her eyes pressed tight.

“My father.”

Jo
hn
rapped on the restroom door.

He stuck his head in.

“Betsy? Is she all right?”

“We’re getting there. I’ll be out in a few minutes. Just hold on.”

Ten minutes later, Betsy came out of the restroom. She stopped at the water fountain.

“What’s happened to her?” asked Jo
hn
, watching Betsy wipe the cold water off her chin.

“Repressed memories. Something bad about her father.”

“Jesus,” said Jo
hn
.

When Daisy came out twenty minutes later, her eyes were outlined in black kohl, her face plastered white in heavy makeup.

A little boy drinking at the water fountain stared up at her. He ran, grasping for his mother’s hand. The woman took him in her arms, comforting him.

“Daisy has on her war paint,” whispered Jo
hn
. “Watch out.”

Her dark stained lips pressed together, a hard slash across her face.

“I’m ready now,” she said. “Let’s go find that asshole.”

Daisy gave Jo
hn
and Betsy the tracking information from Morgan, leaning over the front seat, following Betsy’s highlighter on the map of Slovakia.

“Last thing she told me was that they were heading toward the Polish border. Take the D1, then we turn north in twenty kilometers toward the mountains.”

“OK.”

Betsy rubbed her forehead.
The rise in elevation must be giving me a headache
, she thought. But Aspen’s altitude was eight thousand feet; she shouldn’t have any problem.

Then she remembered the envelope Daisy had given her. She pulled it from her bag and opened it carefully, working not to tear her father’s writing.

Pulling out the pages inside, she recognized the format immediately. It was a psychological report on a patient.

Case Study Report: Count Vilm os Bathory.

Attending Physician: Ceslav Path

Count Vilmos Bathory was admitted to the asylum on March 15, 1972. He was 32 years of age at the time. His family insisted he be institutionalized because “he was a danger to the family and others,” harboring delusions of sadistic powers—including vampirism. He was arrested after biting a fourteen-year-old cousin on the neck, inflicting wounds that required hospitalization.

Count Bathory was an attractive, athletic man, standing 1.9 meters, and possessing a powerful yet slender physique. During the first few months, he had to be restrained in a vest to keep him from physically assaulting his attendants. As a precaution, he was restrained during psychiatric treatments as well.

The patient was at first unwilling to speak or eat. He would not maintain eye contact with his doctor or anyone on the hospital staff. He remained silent and withdrawn for approximately two weeks, while losing over 10 kilograms of weight.

On April 1, he finally did speak to an attendant. He agreed to eat only if he were given raw meat. After discussion amongst staff psychiatrists, the patient’s request was granted. The consensus was that nourishment in some form was imperative to the Count’s physical health.

Attending Physician observed the Count eating. He eschewed the knife and fork, instead gnawing like an animal at the raw beefsteak served to him. He later licked the blood from his hands, apparently relishing the taste.

After several meals of raw meat, the patient regained his original strength and vigor. He then demanded to be served the “juice” of pressed raw meat, claiming that another noble—the Princess Sissy of Austria—survived on such a diet for years.

Dr. Path negotiated a compromise with the patient. If the Count would participate in therapy and agree to take supplemental vitamins, he would be granted the special dietary request.

“Morgan’s last message said the transmitter hasn’t moved for over thirty minutes,” said Daisy.

Betsy raised her eyes from the report. She had another page to read.

“They may have stopped for food,” she said.

“No, I don’t think they would chance that, not with a kidnapped girl in the car. I bet they’ve reached their destination,” said Jo
hn
.

“It’s about…fifty miles from here,” said Daisy, reading her sister’s text. “And Morgan thinks they may have stopped for good.”

Betsy craned her neck, looking back at Daisy.

“Why is your sister suddenly helping you?” she asked. “I thought you hated each other.”

Daisy stared back at her.

“I never said that,” she answered, shaking her head,

Betsy remembered that Daisy knew nothing about Morgan’s visit to her Carbondale office. She turned back around in her seat, staring out the windshield at the craggy mountains rising before them.

Chapter 84

N
ORTHERN
S
LOVAKIA
D
ECEMBER 28, 2010

T
hey had been driving for two hours with little conversation. The radio played mostly American music, interrupted by energetic, incomprehensible blasts of Slovak.

Daisy pointed out the many castles built up on craggy promontories. “How did they build straight up from the rock like that?”

“Ottoman slaves captured in the wars,” answered Betsy. “At least that’s what my mother told me about one castle. I remember her telling me the story when I was a little girl.”

Betsy closed her eyes, her face crumpling. Jo
hn
took one hand off the steering wheel, and stroked her wet cheek.

Betsy bit her lip, taking a deep breath. “The Hungarians threw the slaves into a pit to die the moment they placed the last stone.”

Jo
hn
switched off the radio with a savage twist of his wrist. He didn’t understand a word and the music was mostly tunes from the nineties that made him nostalgic.

And unreasonably sad.

The snow fell wet on the windshield, fat goose feathers of white. Jo
hn
peered through the driving snow. Betsy reached over and massaged the back of his neck.

He sighed, relaxing at her touch.

“So you guys are lovers, right?” said Daisy.

Betsy dropped her hand. She twisted around in the front seat.

“Hardly. We are old friends. Not that it is any of your business, Daisy Hart.”

Daisy snorted, rocking back into the upholstered car seat.

“Ha! You are such a liar, Betsy. You two have been so totally carnal—”

“Daisy, that’s enough,” said Jo
hn
, his hands a death grip on the steering wheel.

Daisy stared out the window at the passing countryside, dusted white with snow.

“Why don’t you two live together?”

“Daisy,” said Betsy. Then she forced a laugh, dry and brittle. “We are diametrically different. We share no common ground.”

Jo
hn
said nothing. He rubbed the sore spot in his neck, the place Betsy had touched.

“So what’s wrong with that? Yin and Yang, right? As long as you have balance.”

“We aren’t…suited for each other,” said Betsy, looking out at the white countryside through the passenger window.

Jo
hn
threw her a glance.

“That’s not what Jo
hn
thinks,” said Daisy. “I see the way that vein in his neck throbs when he looks at you—”

“What vein?” said Jo
hn
, the flat of his hand reaching for his neck. “That’s nonsense.”

“Well, look at her, Jo
hn
. And Betsy, watch that vein start pulsing.”

Jo
hn
frowned, staring straight ahead through the windshield.

“I am not going to look at her. If you haven’t noticed, I am driving on some pretty slippery roads in bad weather.”

“We Goths are intuitive,” said Daisy, tapping Betsy on the shoulder and leaning forward to whisper in her ear. “He’s totally into you.”

Chapter 85

Č
ACHTICE
C
ASTLE
D
ECEMBER 28, 1610

T
he Countess Bathory sat on a wooden throne, her heavy gown billowing over her feet. A dark shawl was draped around her neck to protect her from the bitter cold. Snow whitened the courtyard, and the breath of the frightened women before her erupted in billows of vapor.

“Strip them!” commanded the Countess. “Let the games begin!”

Two handmaidens, girls lured by Ilona Joo from destitute hovels in the countryside to serve at the castle, crossed their arms against their breasts and begged for mercy. Brutal hands snatched at their garments, stripping the buttons and ripping the sashes, until they stood naked in front of the Countess, their skin scratched raw by clawing nails.

“What tedious sport,” complained the Countess, examining their white flesh, puckered with cold. “Can you not make them suffer for their sins?”

Ilona Joo pushed one girl headfirst into the snow. Hedvika made the other lie face up, staring blindly at the sky of the open courtyard, and then grabbed a bucket of icy water and threw it over both girls. One screamed. The other only mewed, her body racked with spasms, her forearms clutched tight around her naked breasts.

Frozen in the snow beyond them lay the white body of a girl who no longer struggled. The girls stared at her in terror.

Then a fourth young woman was brought to the courtyard. She stood tall, with a presence that unnerved even the most experienced servants of Countess Bathory. They backed away from her fiery glare.

As the guards loosened their grip on her arms, Countess Zichy of Ecsed stared in disdain despite her terror, displaying an aristocratic manner unlike any of the girls used before in the night games.

“I am a countess,” she shouted. “Keep your beastly hands away from me, or your families and their villages will be burned. There will be no safe haven from my father’s revenge!”

“Pay her no heed,” said Countess Bathory. “Go on. Strip her of her garments.”

“You know my family—and the King—will punish you for this,” said the young Countess. Her contemptuous scorn chased away Fizko’s hands. He fumbled in front of her, bowing.

“
I said strip her!”
screamed Bathory, shaking with rage at her servant’s hesitation.

Ilona Joo stepped forward, flanked by Hedvika. Together they tried to unbutton the garments, but the Countess Zichy scratched at their eyes.

“Seize her,” ordered Countess Bathory. “Tear the clothes from her back.”

The two servants stared in wonder at the sumptuous garments: brocaded silk and wool. The fineness of the cloth unnerved them.

The Countess Bathory made a growling sound, deep in her throat, and Hedvika reached out, grabbing the Countess Zichy’s gown at the cleavage with her big peasant hand and tugging hard.

A shriek of shredding cloth filled the courtyard, pearls pinging on the ice. The sound emboldened other hands that snatched now at the gown, ripping the fine garments from the girl’s body. Their peasant eyes bulged and mouths twisted in pleasure as they uncovered the naked flesh of the noblewoman.

She stood, a white statue, nude in the snow.

“Douse her with cold water,” said the Countess. “Make her suffer for refusing to obey me.”

A greasy-haired woman with a fiendish smile threw a bucket of ice-cold water on the shivering girl.

“NO!” the victim cried, her courage and pride dissolving. “What have I done to deserve this?”

A smile broke the stony countenance of Countess Bathory.

“Push her into the snow,” she commanded. “Roll her about until she chatters and her tongue is silent. Pack her mouth with snow, I say!”

Ilona Joo pressed wet snow into the young noblewoman’s mouth. The girl gagged, fighting the maid’s beefy fingers.

Hedvika pushed aside the two other girls, their lips blue and puckered, coated in ice. She roughly pushed the young countess to the ground and, together with Ilona Joo, rolled her over and over in the snow.

Countess Bathory threw her head back in ecstasy. Before her lay one dead servant girl and three naked women, all dying, their skin pale and tender as rose petals in the snow.