“I worked with a lot of schizophrenic patients. Joseph bore little resemblance to them. The only characteristic he shared with those suffering from schizophrenia was visions, but he didn’t see all types of things. Not at all. He saw only one thing, one man in particular.”
“A man?” Bette asked.
“The man in the blue tuxedo?”
Bette frowned.
“He saw the man everywhere,” Eliza continued. “He couldn’t use the bathroom without running out, screaming in terror. The man in the blue tuxedo was following him, stalking him, haunting him. He ranted and raved. He had to be kept in a private room and spent most of his final years in solitude because he agitated the other patients. He was also a risk to himself and others. More than once, he attacked other patients claiming they were the man in the blue tuxedo.”
Eliza put a hand to her head a second time.
“Joseph Claude is the reason I have seizures. One night, when I was administering his meds before bed, he grabbed hold of my shoulders and started to bash the back of my head into the wall. I have only a vague memory of it. I lost consciousness. I was lucky to have survived.”
Bette shivered. “That’s terrifying. I’m so sorry, Eliza.”
Eliza put on a brave smile that revealed all the lines around her mouth and eyes.
“Water under the bridge, as they say,” she said dismissively.
“Did Joseph Claude have a daughter?” Bette asked.
Eliza nodded, rubbing the nearly translucent skin on her knuckles.
“Arthritis,” she said. “Odd, I’ve noticed it flares up when I talk about the asylum. Isn’t that funny?” She shook her head. “Joseph Claude had two daughters. Twins, Greta and Maribelle.”
“Twins?” Bette asked, surprised. She hadn’t heard anything about a sister.
“Maribelle died when she was eight years old,” Eliza explained.
51
Then
Crystal lay in the fetal position on the mattress, legs curled close to her body as if she might somehow protect her unborn child from external dangers. But of course it wasn’t the external danger that would ultimately destroy her. Crystal’s own body would do that when malnourishment kicked in. When her organism realized there was not enough food and water to sustain both beings.
A baby cannot survive without the mother — period — so the baby would be the first to die. Life would cease, and she’d return to that place beyond the stars, that unfathomable realm Crystal sometimes dreamed of, where her mother floated in a gossamer web of light.
She laid her hand on the old, soft and gray wood floor, pressing the nail of her index finger down and embedding her number in the wood. She did it again and again, row after row of six, two, five, one, nine, nine, one. Six, two, five, one, nine, nine, one.
The number’s meaning had become known to her that morning as she woke feverish, the sounds of child laughter echoing through the old house. June the twenty-fifth, nineteen-ninety-one. It was a date. The day of her death.
How had she never recognized it?
Or, perhaps she’d known all along and closed her heart to the truth. She’d always known death would come early, but had she realized she held the exact date in her head?
How many days had she been in captivity? Ten, eleven?
As she pushed the grooves into the wood, leaving her mark on the space so filled with horror for the woman who now held her captive, Crystal felt little anger. Most of her pain stemmed from grief. Grief that her unborn child would never take their first shaky breath in a strange, and sometimes unbearable, world. Grief for Bette who would devote the rest of her days to searching for her sister. Grief for her father who would probably slip into his academia and perhaps never re-emerge, as a way to cope with his pain. And grief last of all for Weston, for the love that might have been.
Crystal also felt sorrow for the woman who would take her life. The woman shaped and molded by dark beliefs and even darker deeds.
Crystal woke weak and thirsty.
Greta stood in the doorway watching her. She said nothing, simply studied her, and the expression in her eyes chilled Crystal.
Greta had come to a conclusion of some sort, and Crystal knew what it was.
“I’m going to die today. Today is June twenty-fifth, isn’t it?” Crystal asked.
Greta remained silent. Her eyes drifted from Crystal’s face to her raw fingertips and then to the tiny grooves marring the walls and floor. Crystal had carved the date over and over. In the previous days, it had become a mantra, a focus to keep from ruminating on the thought of her baby dying inside her.
She tried not to imagine Bette, her father and, of course, Wes. It was impossible. They filled every space between the numbers, every breath, every moment of pause.
The pot in the corner had begun to stink, and flies buzzed above it and landed on the porcelain rim.
At first it had made her gag, the early pregnancy turning her susceptible to waves of nausea at even moderate smells. Bad smells left her stomach churning, her guts clenching as they tried to release their contents, but she hadn’t eaten in days. The only thing she’d managed to spit up was a stream of yellow, bitter-smelling bile. It was in a puddle next to her bed, as she’d grown too exhausted to even creep into the opposite corner to throw up.
“How quickly we become animals,” Greta said, eyes traveling the length of Crystal’s body. “What we truly are. Do you think he would love you if he saw you like this? If he saw the truth of you? What you are beneath the glossy red hair and the pretty clothes? When your sparkling personality has been replaced by fear and hunger and desperation?”
Crystal didn’t respond. She let her eyes drift closed.
Had she intended to fight? To try and overpower Greta and ensure the survival of her child?
She smiled, her lips cracking. It seemed absurd now. The most ridiculous idea she’d ever had — the belief that she could fight this woman off, this woman who’d been murdering people for years and getting away with it.
“Water,” Crystal begged, not bothering to open her eyes because she couldn’t.
The sand man must have come, her mother used to tell her and Bette on especially sleepy mornings.
“Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream,” Crystal murmured.
Greta leaned down and set something on the floor.
Slowly, Crystal opened her eyes and turned to stare at the glass of water. Her stomach cramped at the sight of it.
She clenched her eyes shut and pulled her legs in.
“Dehydration is an ugly death,” Greta taunted. “Your eyes are yellow. People beg to die when their body dehydrates.”
Greta lifted her foot, clad in a black flat. She pushed her toe against the side of the glass.
“No,” Crystal croaked, watching the water, forcing herself to roll sideways.
Greta pushed the glass of water over as Crystal flopped from the bed onto the floor. She crawled toward the wetness already disappearing into the floorboards.
As she lowered her face to press her tongue to the wood, she smelled the liquid and recoiled. It wasn’t water at all, but bleach.
She lifted her eyes, an effort that made her head swim and ache.
Greta stepped backwards into the hall, slamming the door behind her.
Crystal listened as the lock slid into place.
52
Now
“She died when she was eight?” Bette asked. “That’s heartbreaking.”