Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
EREZ
TW: Alice’s past begins to be revealed here. Childhood SA—not graphic depictions.
We never knew Alice’s age or her birthday. A few days after I brought her home, my mom and I took her to the Van Doren Estate to see their family doctor—Dr. Mark. My fathers stayed home because Alice was terrified of them.
In hindsight, I can understand it now. Dadaz is an undiagnosed psychopath, one who never attempted to fit into the world around him.
His eyes are cold and compassionless. His expression is still and unchanging.
There’s very little emotion in Dadaz during any conversation or interaction.
He’s covered in dark ink everywhere except his face, and his hair is long and untamed.
He is unsettling if you haven’t grown up with him.
Dadwa is covered in tattoos as well. He’s quiet, though that’s his personality more than anything else. Of all my parents, Dadwa is the most laid back. But to a scared child, that silent observation could be frightening.
Dadis can be loud, and while that octave is always happy, it can also be scary to someone like Alice. He has a large tattoo covering his shoulder and biceps and another on his opposite pectoral, so he doesn’t have the dark aura around him that tattoos can lend.
As we drove to the estate, I talked to Alice and told her all the reasons she could trust my dads. They were good people. They loved us and would protect us from all the scary things in the world. All the bad men.
Alice didn’t speak. That was okay.
When we arrived at the estate, Jalon was there to meet us. He’s got a different kind of larger-than-life presence than my dads, but he’s always kind. His smile is caring.
Alice was terrified.
So Jalon didn’t join us. He pointed us in the direction where we’d find Dr. Mark and let us go alone. Alice calmed down right up until we entered the room where Dr. Mark was, then she tried to run.
I’d met Dr. Mark many times. He’s the Van Doren family physician, and he’s probably the least intimidating individual ever. He’s super nice, always has a smile, and even dresses in a way that feels… welcoming? No, that’s weird. Maybe comforting. Kind of like the old ’90s show Mister Rogers.
It didn’t matter. Alice was petrified of him too. Even at six, I think I realized that it wasn’t just scary-looking people that Alice was afraid of. It was all grown men.
Alice had been hurt by adult men.
This I had known. After all, I’d witnessed her being beaten up by a grown man. But she was afraid of all adult men. Not women. Men. I guess when you don’t know which ones will hurt you, it’s better to be afraid of them all to protect yourself.
Dr. Mark left us in the room. Mom joined him in the hallway a few times. We were brought coloring books and crayons, so Alice and I sat at the small table in the room to color for a while. Eventually, a new doctor arrived, and this one was female.
Alice wouldn’t talk to her. She wouldn’t talk to anyone. But she always looked at me for confirmation, as if she needed to know I trusted this person and she was okay to talk to.
Even after several visits, Alice didn’t speak to the doctor or anyone. We didn’t know her birthday, and she shook her head, stating she didn’t know it either. She also didn’t know how old she was.
The doctor made an educated guess based on her… well, whatever it is doctors do. She stated Alice was probably three or four. When we brought Alice home again, we gave her a birthday.
That’s how Alice came to be. She could have been fifteen when she died, based on the guesses and assigned birthdate we gave her. She could have been younger or older because we didn’t know. Alice didn’t know.
I stand in the studio room, surrounded by Alice’s dark art. I haven’t even dug out everything from the eaves closet. There are more canvases in there. It’s easy to see that the farther back we go, the older the art is.
There are maybe two dozen paintings that are bright and sunny.
Mostly, they’re accumulated in Alice’s room where I’d set up a gallery to study them, but there are some throughout the house too.
It had always been a mystery as to where the dozens of canvases that we’d bring home for her went, as had been the black paint.
It was very clearly being used, but there was no black paint anywhere on the bright canvases.
If I took into account the ratio of dark to bright paintings and used that as a gauge of Alice’s mental state, she hid a lot of demons. There were far more demons than days of peace. My chest hurts, and my gut churns as this realization becomes clearer and clearer.
I turn toward the door when I hear someone coming down the hall. Lanzo steps into the room a moment later with a handful of Alice’s dark art.
“Clear those off the table,” he says.
Lanzo doesn’t have manners. No matter how much my parents tried to emphasize polite manners to him, they also contradicted that by stating he didn’t have to conform to society. As far as Lanzo is concerned, manners are societal norms and therefore dismissible.
However, when I don’t move at his words, he meets my eyes and adds, “Please,” so I’ll comply with his demand.
I pull the canvases off the table and stack them with the others leaning against the wall, and Lanzo lays out five that he gathered from outside this room. Then he pulls three more from around the room and lays them on the table as well.
“Look at them. What do you see?”
As much of a pain in the ass as Lanzo is and how frustrating he can be because he thinks differently than everyone else, that twisted brain also makes connections that we as neurotypical people normally wouldn’t.
I study them while also trying not to look too closely. The contents of the paintings are clear depictions of abuse. The fear and torment of a small child are manifested on these canvases. We’re seeing them from the victim’s eyes. We are the victims as we stare at the monsters abusing us.
It’s clear that most of these images depict an abstraction of physical and sexual abuse.
It’s based on the expressions of the grown men in the paintings.
The angles. The shapes carved into the shadows just out of view.
Veiled by a mind too young to understand, but painted by a growing child who was being educated and learning the truth of her past.
As much as I’ve been studying these paintings since I found them, I also try not to look too closely. It makes me sick. It hurts to know that Alice lived with this all alone for nearly her entire life. It was a demon she carried and was never freed of.
Logically, I know her death isn’t my fault. I know that. Still, seeing the evidence of what she went through and knowing that she carried those memories alone for eleven years makes me feel guilty. I should have done something. I should have known.
Along with the guilt is the growing fury that these men are still alive. They’re still in the world. They’re probably still hurting people—not just people but little girls.
Lanzo shoves me. I stumble a little and blink out of my thoughts. “Stop thinking. Focus on this. What do you see?”
I inhale deeply and try to compartmentalize my emotions so I can look for… something. The obvious connection between them is the black paint. A gross man abusing a child we can’t see but can assume is Alice.
A very young Alice.
My gut twists as I look between the faces of the men. That’s when I notice the similarities. They all have a… birthmark, maybe. Something right below their left eye. My focus widens slightly to take in the faces as a whole.
“They look like the same man,” I say.
“Yes,” Lanzo agrees. “That’s what I see too. These seven paintings are of the same man.”
“Does that mean he abused her multiple times or that it’s a particularly… awful memory?”
Lanzo’s finger traces in the air over the man’s collar. Most of the time, besides the scratchy face, the monster in the picture is lost in shadow just below the collar. At least four of these paintings are distinctly different collars.
“They’re different memories,” I comment. Biles rises inside me, battling with the anger that’s there too. What the fuck?
“Yes. Let’s bring them to the estate. We can see if this person can be identified.” Lanzo stacks canvases and takes half of them. I pick up the remaining few and follow Lanzo out of the house.
We live twenty minutes from the Van Doren Estate. From the highway, you wouldn’t know that the trees hide something incredible. Once you turn down the driveway and pass under the arch announcing the Van Doren Estate, you’re driving into a different world.
Lanzo pulls in from the front of the property, which means the trees give way to shrubbery on either side of the road. Flowerbeds. Stone sculptures. Sundials and other things that catch the light.
Eventually, we come upon a circular drive with a teardrop patch in the middle.
Sitting in the center of the teardrop is a four-tiered water fountain.
The drive continues to be surrounded by tall shrubbery that acts as a privacy wall, but looming over us, beyond the fountain, is the enormous, grand Van Doren mansion.
I always feel like I’m transported back in time when I look at it.
The giant pillars, the massive light fixture, the lead-and-stained-glass windows.
The carved details in the pillars and on the ornamental features.
It’s stunning. Like nothing I have ever seen before.
But that’s not where we’re going. There are hidden drives within the shrubbery that you don’t necessarily see unless you’re looking for them. Honestly, I think most people’s attention gets stuck on the mansion, and that’s why they don’t see the paths.
Beyond the shrubs and the mansion is a world occupied by Van Dorens. There are houses within the trees, fields of wildflowers, a hotel, a working farm and gardens, a huge lake, and of course, the tall office building that is the Van Doren Technologies headquarters.
Nearly four entire generations of Van Dorens live here, beginning with Jalon and his brothers. Jalon’s seven children, twenty-three grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and now great-grandchildren are arriving. They all live right here on the estate.
What’s more, hidden by more trees is a wildlife refuge behind the estate that the Van Dorens own, and that’s also where Jalon built Van Doren Preparatory School—a private school for his family and hand-selected students.
I’ve heard stories that there’s even a city underground, though I’ve never seen it.
Lanzo drives to the office building and parks out front. Together, we carry the canvases inside. His tag gives us access, and he brings us into the office he shares with Orev Van Doren on the sixth floor.
Orev looks up from his computer when we step inside, though neither speaks to each other. There are days when I think they get along and then days when I think they’re strangers. Today is the latter, I suppose.
Lanzo begins lining up the canvases on a table against the wall, then stands back.
I’m not sure if it’s because we’re in a different environment, but suddenly, it’s obvious that the subject is the same man.
For just a moment, I’m in awe that my little sister—a child who painted for fun and maybe as a form of therapy—was able to paint with such skill that she easily depicted the same recognizable beast over and over again.
That kind of talent should be celebrated.
Orev joins us and looks at what we’ve laid out. “Are you decorating?” he asks.
“Look at them,” Lanzo says. “What do you see?”
It takes Orev far less time to see the pattern than it did me. “They’re the same person. Raping someone?” He tilts his head as if to study them from a different angle.
His words have me looking away as the contents of my stomach threaten to come up. Of course, he said it out loud. Orev is just like Lanzo—a diagnosed psychopath.
“Yes,” Lanzo agrees. “Think they’re detailed enough to run through recognition software?”
Orev doesn’t answer as he stares.
I don’t look at the paintings again. I can’t. I wanted to pretend that wasn’t the action I was seeing. Instead, I call Zephyr. He also works in the building, one floor up in the Private Investigation wing.
“Hey,” he answers.
It takes me a minute to swallow past the sour taste in my mouth. “You in your office?”
“Yep. What’s wrong? What did you find?”
“Can you come down to Lan’s office?”
Zephyr doesn’t answer. As I knew would happen, he hasn’t forgiven Lanzo for overstepping last winter when Zeph asked Lan and me for help.
Lanzo took it upon himself to take over the operation, and it put someone Zeph loved at risk.
Lanzo, being Lanzo, still doesn’t understand what the problem was.
His one and only goal in life is to protect his siblings, so he did what he needed to do to ensure that would happen.
Lanzo’s circle is stupidly small.
“Please,” I add.
He huffs. “Fine.”
The call ends, and I stuff my phone into my pocket. A moment later, Zephyr is here, joining us in looking at the art.
“Do you see—” Orev begins, but Lanzo cuts him off.
“No, don’t lead him in. What do you see, Zeph?”
Lanzo is trying to make sure we all see the same thing he does. He wants to know if what he sees makes sense. If everyone sees the same things, then it’s really there. It’s not just a twisted pattern that his strangely wired mind created.
Zephyr stares for a long time. He shivers just before he answers. “That’s one man, right?”
The three of us agree.
“Is it detailed enough to run through the recognition software?” Lanzo asks. “I’ve only ever seen photographs or video stills being used. Do you think paintings will work?”
Zephyr frowns, his eyes bouncing from one painting to the next.
“Maybe if we can compile them together. Take the same features from each and line them up so there’s a consistent facial structure and identifying features.
We can try, but I don’t think…” He looks at me.
“Don’t get your hopes up. These are paintings. Memories from a child’s mind.”
“They’re more vivid than most adults could recall,” Orev says. “Look at this.” He follows the lines at the side of the man’s face. One solid line that carries over into all of them. “A scar that follows the contours of his face and changes in shape as the expression changes.”
“That’s a stupid amount of talent,” Zephyr notes. “Let’s see what we can do. We need to bring them to the lab in the back to scan.”
I don’t know if I’m looking forward to answers or not. Maybe I remain indifferent so I can’t be disappointed.