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missingverse · 6 years

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Missing Chapter Four

The train took its sweet time bringing Arnold back to Hillwood, he paced up and down the carriage all the way. Once he left the station he pedaled his bike home as fast as he could, lungs burning and muscles aching but no worse than the rising panic that he was going to get to his house to find Helga was not there.

She would manifest back in the house. She had done that before, he knew. He had a feeling she was there, waiting for him to get back.

But what if she wasn't?

…..

Helga's parents appeared on TV just once, a month into her disappearance. They went through the motions of asking for help bringing their daughter home, but it was hard to feel sympathy for them. Miriam looked even more out of it than usual, yellow in the face, slurring her words, staring vacantly into the camera. Probably sedated with more than liquor.

Bob, though...

Bob didn't look like a grieving father. He looked angry, not distraught. He gritted his teeth and let his wife do the talking, clenching his fists in full view of the camera. When a journalist asked if there was any chance Helga had tried to get in contact, he huffed through his teeth and looked away. That moment was when roughly half of America decided Bob Pataki was a murderer.

They got a hard time in the aftermath. Cranks from online crime communities regularly turned up on their doorstep demanding that Bob confess. Helga's sister dropped out of her senior year of college because people kept asking her about her father. Miriam stopped going outside, and the amount of glass bottles found in the trash doubled.

Nobody shopped at the beeper store (which was by now a general electrical goods store where most kids got their first phone, but not anymore) and gradually Bob stopped going to work. The store remained locked up, until it was broken into, thousands of dollars of merchandise stolen and the outside coated with red paint. Someone had crudely scrawled the words WHERE IS SHE across the placard.

They stuck it out for a long time; Bob had insurance, he had the store cleaned up but he didn't reopen. They got their groceries delivered and put up with the stares and whispers when they did venture outside. But after a while it got too much for them. When Bob's car was stolen and found burned out outside the store, they packed up and left Hillwood. Nobody bothered to find out where they had gone, and although online sleuths tried to puzzle it out the remaining Patakis were largely forgotten.

…..

He tossed his bike carelessly under the stoop, ran up the stairs with a cursory greeting to his Grandpa and threw open his door, half-convinced Helga wouldn't be there...

...she was. Looking no worse for wear, just a little sulky.

“I don't know what happened....” she began. “I...”

She was abruptly cut off when Arnold crossed the few feet separating them and pulled her into his arms. He held onto her tight, just to make sure she was still there. She felt solid enough, but he squeezed her hard, just in case.

In elementary school she had been taller than him. Now her head fit neatly in the spot under his chin where his neck met his head. There was something reassuring about that.

She stood there and let him hold her for who knows how long, before gently prying his arms off of her and stepping back.

“You should sit down,” she told him, and sure enough his legs did feel like they were buckling under him. “Did you bike all the way back?”

“No,” he told her breathlessly. “I just hurried back....we're not doing that again.”

“Okay,” she agreed. She was looking at him like he had gone slightly mad, and maybe he had.

After catching his breath, he went downstairs for dinner. He renewed his promise to his Grandpa to check the pipes (he didn't need to, pipes were fine, Helga just liked tapping on the walls). As he chewed a hard lump of lukewarm meatloaf he puzzled out what to do next.

She reacted to the trees. The hills.

There was a stream in those hills. Wasn't a big one, but it swelled when the weather was bad. And there had been early summer storms the week Helga went missing.

It wasn't a new clue, exactly. He had seen it mooted before on sleuth blogs, along with a topography map of the general area. The stream could have carried Helga's shoe into the drainage ditch if there was enough rainfall. But the stream had been dredged for other clues and nothing else had been found. It was nowhere near big enough for her to have fallen in and drowned, that theory had been thoroughly debunked by professionals and amateurs.

What else is there?

Then a thought struck him; Helga's 'boyfriend.'

…..

Patrick Castle was thirteen, and for the girls who gossiped that was exciting. It was a triumph for any girl to have an older boyfriend, glamorous even. The fact that they weren't actually dating didn't seem to matter. Anyone who asked Helga about it got a derisive snort and a roll of her eyes.

It was curious; when they were nine they were so eager to date, and crushes seemed all important. Arnold's own crushes had lost much of their lustre when he turned ten and realized that dating at that age was kind of ridiculous. Not to mention Ruth was known for dating much older boys, and Lila moved away when her father remarried. She wrote once, he wrote back, and that was it.

Rhonda wanted to date older boys, she talked about it a lot back when she actually talked to people. She seemed angry that Helga had managed to get something she wanted without even trying, and at the same time strangely proud that her 'friend' had this elusive status.

Patrick had been interviewed after Helga went missing, and he denied that they had ever dated. He'd spent time with her because she was on the baseball team, he saw her as a little sister. And in any case he had an alibi for that weekend; he was in Washington State with his family.

…..

“...Castle?” Helga wondered, scratching at a spot above her right eye.

“Ring any bells?” Arnold pushed.

“Sort of,” Helga answered. “We dated?”

“Everyone else thought so. You wouldn't give anyone a straight answer. And he denied it when you went missing.”

“Then we probably didn't,” Helga said, tracing circles on the carpet with her shoeless foot. “Who dates an eleven-year-old anyway? Even I know that's creepy.”

“That's what the peanut gallery says too,” Arnold told her, flicking through a bunch of comments on a blog post about Castle. “That's why he wasn't ruled out as a suspect. Do you have any memories of him?”

“Sort of, they're blurry,” she answered. “I think he walked me home a few times after practice. I can't recall much else.”

“I found his Facebook,” Arnold told her, switching tabs. “He's on a college break, he's working as an assistant coach for the Little League.”

“You're going to talk to him?”

“Worth a shot.”

The Little League practice field was closer than the industrial farm, so he felt less cagey about letting Helga tag along. She hopped into the basket without complaint. They found Patrick Castle in seconds, helping a very small bespectacled girl with her swing.

He was good-looking, Arnold had to admit. Sandy-haired, classically American square-jaw-and-straight -nose-and perfect grin with perfect teeth. Arnold had never seen him at thirteen, but if she was anything like he was at nineteen no wonder the girls had lost their minds.

He looked over at Helga; she was staring at Patrick, frowning slightly and rubbing that spot on her head again. Dimly Arnold wondered if ghosts could get headaches.

“Can I help you?”

Patrick had crossed the field to the bleachers without Arnold noticing, and he jumped. Of course Patrick would notice, he was the only other near-adult watching practice.

“Uh, yeah...” Arnold stammered, caught off guard. “....you're Patrick Castle, right?”

“I am,” Patrick answered amiably. “What can I do for you?”

“It's about Helga Pataki....”

At the mention of her name, Patrick's face clouded over and he turned his back.

“I'm not in the mood for this today,” he called over his shoulder, a hard note to his voice. “Get your kicks some other place.”

“What? No,” Arnold said as he stumbled down the bleachers after him. “I just wanted to ask some questions.”

“They all want to ask questions,” Patrick growled. “Not today. There's kids here. I told the police everything I knew and that info is online. Get it there.”

“Look, I'm not from the web, okay?” said Arnold. “I was a friend of Helga's. I just wanted to know....”

“What?” Patrick turned to face him, fury marring his all-American good looks. “What could you possibly want to know?”

Arnold could see Helga out of the corner of his eye. Why were they there?

“I wanted to know what she was like with you,” Arnold shrugged, helplessly. “Like, was she okay? Was she in trouble? I figured you'd know.”

Patrick's expression softened, and he glanced around at the kids on the field who were watching them now with morbid childish interest.

“Over here,” he said, beckoning Arnold (and by extension, Helga) into the nearby dugout.

When the kids had stopped paying attention and went back to playing baseball, Patrick started talking.

“We never dated,” he began. “I told the police that, and it's true. I wanted to, but she wasn't interested. Said she was too young for me. She was right.”

“Why did you want to date her?” Arnold asked.

Patrick shrugged and smiled.

“She wasn't like any other girl I knew,” he said. “She was different. Special. Real smart, didn't take any bullshit....how could you not fall for a girl like that?”

He might have expected Helga to look pleased with this praise, but she didn't. She just looked sad.

“Hell, I wasn't the only one,” Patrick continued with a rueful laugh. “I was just the one she put up with. We did some stuff together besides baseball. We went to the movies, ice-cream after big games, that kind of thing. I brought her home for dinner a few times. My mom loved her.”

“Sounds like you were dating to me,” Arnold said.

“That's what the police said,” Patrick laughed. “But it wasn't like that. She just seemed like she needed it.”

“Needed it?”

Patrick broke off, looked over the field at the kids pitching and swinging as hard as their half-grown limbs could manage.

“I've been in the Little League since I was ten,” he said. “Junior coach when I was too old to play. This is a good crop of kids this year, but there's always one. See that one?”

He pointed at a little boy wearing a catcher's mitt, skinny and short with a head of unkempt curly hair.

“That's the one that comes to baseball because he's got nowhere else to go,” Patrick said. “There's always one. Helga was that one.”

Arnold blinked, and looked at the boy a little closer until he could see what Patrick was seeing. Mismatched socks and a hole in the collar of his shirt. A head shorter than everyone else. Eyes that were sunken in from lack of sleep.

“Officially we're not supposed to interfere unless we notice something we can report to CPS,” Patrick continued. “We do what we can here, keep an eye on them. 'Course I wasn't old enough to do anything for Helga...but how could I not? I mean, she had friends and all, but she had no-one that treated her like she was special. And she was special.”

Helga was rubbing the spot on her head with increasing irritation.

“All I did was take her out a few times, treat her to things, walked her home after practice. She deserved that much, right?”

“Yes, she did,” Arnold agreed, swallowing down the lump in his throat.

Even Patrick looked like he wanted to cry. But the head coach finally took notice that his junior was shirking, and called him over.

“I suppose, though, it's only the special ones that disappear like that, right?” he finished before walking away.

#hey arnold #hey arnold fanfiction #tw:crime

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thefeedpost · 5 years

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EXCLUSIVE: Corporal punishment claims rock Paarl Boys High School

Being hit against the head for not greeting. The “five-star treatment” on your back when your homework isn’t done. Spanking with a cricket bat – all in the name of “discipline”.

These are some of the claims levelled at well-known Paarl Boys’ High School – and in particular the deputy headmaster and head of discipline, Richard Visagie – by six sources, including a current parent and former pupils.

School management has strongly denied that corporal punishment, which was outlawed in South Africa 23 years ago, is still prevalent at the rugby powerhouse nicknamed “Boishaai” in the Boland.

A parent of a young boy, speaking on condition of anonymity, told News24 how their son was “hit on the head” for not greeting.

“You get whacked arbitrarily in passages for things – if you don’t greet with the right attitude, if you are being ‘clever’… The culture of the school is one of violence,” said the parent.

READ: Mom arrested for ‘assaulting’ son’s teacher with umbrella to ‘teach a lesson’

According to the parent, punishment ranges from the “five-star treatment” – a hard slap on the back, which leaves the marks of the fingers and thumb; “jungle justice”, which is meted out between peers, and being hit with a plank or cricket bat in Visagie’s office.

The parents would not report it to the school for fear of their already distraught son being “frozen out”, nor to the police because it would require a statement by the child whose identity would then be known.

Another pupil, who recently left the school, told News24: “Boishaai has become this sort of bastion of masculinity. This whole thing of ‘If you’re not going to get hit, you’re not like one of the guys.’ [There’s] this constant rhetoric of being a guy, a guy’s guy, back to ‘How it used to be.'”

Also speaking on condition of anonymity, he alleged that his parents were told during his entrance interview for a highly sought-after place at the pristine government school, that corporal punishment was practised.

READ #SansSouci: Mom lays charge after teacher slaps child, teacher lays charge of her own

His parents were asked if they were “okay” with it and, since it had been a part of schooling from their era, they did not object.

Paarl Boys’ High School deputy headmaster and head of discipline, Richard Visagie. (Jenni Evans, News24)

‘You have to thank him afterward’

Corporal punishment at school was outlawed by the SA Schools Act in 1996. An application by Christian Education South Africa to be exempt on religious grounds, and allow pupils to be punished this way in terms of religious beliefs, was dismissed by the Constitutional Court in 2000.

READ: Pupil captured on video as he hurls abuse at teacher

The former pupil’s first hiding was after being sent out of class in Grade 8 for not doing his homework. He was called into Visagie’s office and allegedly beaten with a plank. “You must also thank him afterward,” he said.

The boys would draw stripes on the back of their school ties every time they were beaten. That become “like a badge” to compare who had been hit most.

The source said he had decided that it was better to get beaten with the plank as punishment and “get it over with”, than go to detention.

“I would think, do I really want to spend two and a half hours of my Friday afternoon with the principal in detention? Your teenage boy brain thinks, ‘No that’s a terrible idea.'”

He said that there were teachers who specifically did not send pupils out of the class, in order to avoid them being subjected to corporal punishment. They gave out writing lines or writing out pages from books instead as punishment.

“I’m not sad that I went there. I got a good education, but I just think that it has a few faults,” the source said. “I would just ask them to change how they look at things.

School culture and norms

Another old Boys’ High pupil, who matriculated in the early 2000s, said it wasn’t only Visagie who still practised corporal punishment, but at least two or three other teachers.

“I grew up in a house where corporal punishment was the norm. The school was a natural extension of home.”

Asked why they accepted illegal punishment from teachers, the man said they were told that “things had to be controlled in a way” at a boys’ school. He acknowledged that there were other ways to discipline boys, “but there weren’t any more cost-effective ways”.

Corporal punishment was understood to be an integral part of the school’s culture and discipline.

The man recalls being punished in Visagie’s store room, jokingly referred to as “the dungeon”. However, he also remembers Visagie as a “brilliant English teacher and rugby coach; not someone you can easily put in a box”.

Another ex-scholar, who matriculated in the late 1990s, said he accepted that corporal punishment was part of the school’s culture.

“If you see something that has been working for over 100 years, then you think to yourself, the system probably knows better.”

Paarl Boys’ High School. (Jenni Evans, News24)

‘Done in the name of discipline’

Another source told News24 how a group of more than 10 Grade 8 boys recently received the “five-star treatment” after failing to fix a button to their ties and blazers to “mark” them as Grade 8s.

“All the Grade 8 boys were gathered in the hall and Mr Visagie asked those without buttons on their ties to leave the hall and stand in a queue. All the boys had to watch as he gave each of them the five-star treatment. Some of the boys started to cry and had blue marks on their backs the next day.”

Another ex-Paarl Boys’ High pupil, who requested to remain anonymous, said it was a well-known fact in the Paarl community that corporal punishment continued to be practised long after the introduction of the Constitution in 1996.

“Visagie was the first rugby team coach and untouchable. Everyone knew he was hitting us, but the community condoned it because it was done in the name of ‘discipline’.”

The man said Visagie’s “five-star treatment” was a common occurrence when boys neglected or forgot to do their homework.

“He would stand behind you and hit you very hard between the shoulder blades. His red hand marks were visible on our backs. Repeat offenders were given a screwdriver to unscrew the wooden plank at the back of their school benches, which Visagie then used to give them a hiding with. Afterward, they had to screw the plank back onto the bench.”

‘Absolutely not. It’s illegal’

When interviewed by News24 about the multiple allegations of a culture of ongoing corporal punishment, school governing body (SGB) chairperson Ritzema de la Bat and principal Derek Swart denied that it was happening.

“Absolutely not. It’s illegal, and all staff members are aware of it,” said De la Bat.

Asked if parents had signed a document giving permission for corporal punishment, he said: “In terms of legality, such a document, if it had ever existed, would not be worth the paper it’s printed on anyway.”

He said they had only had one complaint before and it was handled by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED).

De la Bat said, besides being illegal, corporal punishment was also against the school culture of raising young men who would “have compassion, emotional strength and the ability to make a positive difference”.

He said that, when he was at school before corporal punishment was outlawed, being caned seemed a quick way to be punished, instead of being called “dumb” for days.

He said, with corporal punishment outlawed, teachers had to find new ways of punishing pupils, and sometimes found it difficult because parents were leaving it to the school to deal with ill-discipline.

Nonetheless, De la Bat said corporal punishment was “unacceptable in any way”.

Paarl Boys’ High School. (Jenni Evans, News24)

‘It’s not our policy’

Swart told News24: “It’s not our policy. There is no corporal punishment.”

After a mini-tour of the school on Tuesday, where Swart told boys to pull up their socks and tuck their shirts in, he said the school was strict about the boys’ appearance and insisted that they were polite in their interactions with others.

But he said parents would not strive to get their children into the school if it had a culture of violence.

He said the only way to deal with the allegations of corporal punishment was for parents to come forward for an investigation.

“If something is reported, we will act on it immediately,” said Swart. “The whole purpose of the school is to produce young men who can make a positive contribution in a negative world.”

He was not aware of the outcome of a complaint to WCED that the SGB referred to and suggested that WCED itself was asked. He said Visagie was a respected teacher for around 40 years and had received accolades for his work.

He added that there was CCTV at the school and, if a child was being hit, it would be detected.

Hennie Warnich, chairperson of Paarl Boys’ High School Old Boys’ Union, said he was “disturbed” by the claims.

“Everybody understands that corporal punishment is illegal. The headmaster himself addressed the staff on more than one occasion on this.

“If any incident should ever be reported, the teacher in question would immediately be subjected to a proper investigation, and if allegations are found to be true, the appropriate disciplinary process [would follow].”

The school would not allow News24 to interview Visagie without permission from the WCED, according to policy regarding teachers speaking to the media.

‘District’s has received several complaints’

However, the provincial education department revealed that there had in indeed been at least one official misconduct allegation against Visagie.

“Our Labour Relations Department has confirmed that the alleged educator was charged with misconduct last year for reportedly hitting a learner. He received a final written warning and a fine on 15th October 2018,” said Jessica Shelver, spokesperson for Education MEC Debbie Schäfer.

“New complaints were received on the 23rd January 2019 from a doctor who was reportedly treating a learner that was assaulted.

“The parents of the alleged learner have reportedly again been reluctant to give consent for consultations. The matter is still under investigation.”

Shelver said in earlier correspondence said that the department had received several complaints about corporal punishment at the school, but that nobody was prepared to let their children give evidence and testify.

“The district has reportedly received several complaints, yet they are not able to take action as parents reportedly do not allow their children to testify in this regard.”

The complaints were referred to the department’s labour relations unit for investigation.

She said the department had zero tolerance for corporal punishment and was investigating the allegations against Visagie raised in News24’s queries on the subject.

Do you have a similar story? Please email any tips to [email protected]

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