The Tulip Eaters. Antoinette van Heugten

drew back to shift her mom’s body onto the carpet. Anneke’s head lolled to one side. Nora screamed. The bullet had blasted a large hole through the back of her head. Nora felt faint. Gray brain matter mixed with blood hung out of Anneke’s skull. Nora tried to push the gray lumps back into her mother’s skull. They felt like buttery worms and smelled like spoiled eggs.

      “Mom! Oh, Mom!” Gasping, she saw nothing but the hideous remains of her mother’s head and the slippery blood and brain matter on her own hands. The monstrous sight gripped her. She struggled up onto all fours and heaved waves of green bile onto the white carpet. Then she knelt, taking huge breaths, trying not to pass out. The silence felt endless. She heard only the ticking of the grandfather clock across the room, a relentless metronome to the macabre scene before her.

      She roused herself. Her next thought was an iron spike into her brain. “Rose!” she cried. “Where are you?” Adrenaline shot through her as she jumped up and ran to the bassinet. No Rose! She raced into the nursery. The room was dark, the crib empty. “No!” Panic surged within her.

      She rushed back into the living room and ran past her mother, desperate to search the other rooms. Running toward her bedroom, her heel caught on the rug and she fell. Pain seared through her right ankle.

      Sobbing, she rolled over and found herself face-to-face with a total stranger. A man lay on his stomach, his right arm outstretched. His head was twisted toward her, right cheek pressed into the carpet. She screamed and tried to move away, but her ankle felt on fire. His face was so close that she could have felt his breath on hers—if he were alive. His black eyes looked as dead and cold as her mother’s. Then she saw the gun, dark and sinister, inches away from his outstretched arm and gloved fingers. Nora gasped, her heart in her throat. Who was he? And where, oh God, where was Rose?

      She got to her feet, wincing at the pain in her ankle, and rushed into each of the other rooms. “Rose!” she cried. “Rose!” She limped back and knelt by her mother, sobbing. “Where is Rose, Mom? Where is the baby?” She appealed to Anneke as if she could still give Nora an answer. Anneke’s blank, unholy stare never moved from the ceiling. What in God’s name had happened? She rose unsteadily, favoring her ankle. Her body still shook. Who was the dead man? Why had he killed her mother? And Rose? Why would anyone kidnap her baby?

      Ignoring the pain in her ankle, she ran to the front door and flung it open. She saw no one in the street, no one in the neatly groomed front yards. “Rose!” she screamed, as if her darling could answer her. She slammed the door and went back inside. Something on the carpet now caught her eye. As she knelt down and picked it up, she moaned. It was Rose’s tiny yellow hair band. Its cheerful flower had been ripped off and lay a few feet away. Then she knew. Rose was really gone. She clutched the flower to her breast and sobbed. One thought now pierced her mind.

      Was Rose still alive?

      2

      Nora limped into the kitchen. As she dialed the operator, her sobs strangled her. Ring. Ring. Ring. “Come on!” she shouted. “Answer the goddamned phone!”

      “Operator, may I help you?”

      “Yes—please! There’s been a murder, my baby is—”

      “I’m putting you through to the police,” said a nasal female voice. “Please stay on the line.”

      Nora felt as if an eternity passed before she heard a slow Texas drawl finally come through. “HPD—Brody.”

      “Officer—my mother, my baby!” she cried.

      “Hang on,” he said soothingly. “What’s the problem?”

      “My mother—she’s been murdered!” Terror scrambled her words. “Dead man...on floor...my baby...kidnapped!”

      “Slow down now,” he said quietly. “Is the perpetrator still in the house?”

      Nora wished she could reach through the line and throttle him. “No!”

      “Name?”

      “Nora—Nora de Jong.”

      “Address?”

      “Four eleven Tangley. Get someone here—now! Rose could be anywhere—someone could have killed her....”

      “Yes, ma’am,” he said quickly. “I’ll send an officer right over. You sit tight. Don’t touch anything, don’t do anything. You understand?”

      Nora sobbed. “Yes, yes! Just please hurry!” She slammed down the receiver. God, what should she do? Call Marijke. Her Dutch girlfriend visiting from Amsterdam was giving a speech at Rice University on European economics. She would help! Nora scrabbled through the notepad on the kitchen counter, finally locating the number Marijke had written down that morning. Her hands trembled so she could barely punch the buttons. With every ring, Nora grew more frantic.

      “Professor Sanford’s office,” said a bland female voice. “Miss Mitchell speaking.”

      Nora took a deep breath. “I need to speak to Marijke van den Maas immediately.”

      There was a pause and then she heard a rustling of paper. “Dr. van den Maas is giving a lecture now. I can’t interrupt her. Are you a student?”

      “No, I’m not a student!” Nora could hear her own hysteria. “I’m a friend of Dr. van den Maas’s. This is an emergency!”

      “Name?” The woman’s unruffled tone sounded as if students called with emergencies all the time. Stupid, asinine woman!

      “Nora de Jong!” Another sob escaped her. “You have to find her and have her call me immediately. My—my mother has been murdered—”

      “Oh, my God!” The wooden voice came to life. “Give me your number.”

      “She has it,” Nora sobbed. “Hurry, please!”

      “Don’t worry, she’s just across the quad. I’ll run over there right now.”

      Nora now heard the hollow dial tone. She sat on the kitchen stool, stunned. She could not face going back into the living room. The silence was eerie, malevolent. As if she were in purgatory, suspended in agony. All she could think about was Rose. Rose.

      She wrung her hands and struggled to breathe, trying to focus. If the dead man killed Anneke, then who took Rose? There had to have been someone with him. How would the police even begin to find him? Her thoughts darted to horrible scenarios. Rose clutched in the arms of a killer or madman racing down I-10—out of Houston, out of the U.S.—never to be seen again; Rose held for ransom and tortured to scream through the phone; Rose thrown into a Dumpster where she would be eaten by rats; Rose screaming and shaking, her tiny face turning blue while large hands strangled her.

      “No!” she told herself fiercely. “Stop it! You don’t know anything. She’s fine, she has to be. They just want money. That’s it, that’s got to be it!” But her words sounded hollow. She shut her eyes to keep away the horrible visions.

      After what felt like hours, the phone rang. Nora picked it up on the first ring. “Marijke?”

      “What happened?” Nora heard the astonishment in Marijke’s voice. “Your mother—she’s dead?”

      “Marijke,” she cried. “Please come home—now! It’s too terrible. My mother’s been murdered—” Then a strangled sob. “Someone took Rose! She’s gone—I can’t find her anywhere!”

      Marijke’s voice came through clear and firm, a voice Nora had always trusted. “Listen to me. You have to calm down. Did you call the police?”

      “Yes, but they’re not here yet.” She burst into tears.

      “Okay, I’m going to talk to you until they get there and then I’ll come right away.”

      Nora began sobbing so that her wailing was the only sound she heard.

      “Nora?”