Arsenic for the Soul (6 page)

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 lived 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.

“
Ever since I learned about
the Magdalene asylums, I dreamed of shutting them down. I imagined
all the freed women and girls who would never have to fear abuse
again. Maybe I thought of it as a penance I must do on behalf of my
family. Now after three long years, not a single asylum remains in
operation. I achieved what I set out to do—restoring justice,
atoning for my family, whatever you want to call it. For the first
time since discovering what my family did to the innocent, I felt
liberated.”

The vial pendant became so heavy
around her neck that she almost sank to her knees.

“
But in that peace, I also
found emptiness. I fell ill to something new and profound. In my
confusion, I realized I had lost my purpose.”

She met the portraits of warped faces
adorning the gallery. They mocked her confession with leering eyes
and hungry smiles. Suddenly, she didn’t feel alone with Vivian. She
spun around and saw mannequins arranged as spectators in the
gallery. They clustered in the shadows in mock poses as if they
were capable of appreciating the art.