Rag Doll Bones: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “Well, no wonder he’s crying if you’re bouncing him like a basketball,” Max told him dryly.

  “Ha-ha,” Jake retorted rubbing his bloodshot eyes. “Good grief, I want to go back to work. Is that terrible? Eleanor’s like the walking dead, and I’m not far behind her. If Mom weren’t coming over to help, I think we would have given the baby up for adoption.”

  Max laughed and patted Jake on the back.

  “You heard what Mom said. The first few weeks are the worst. In a month, you’ll be on easy street.”

  Jake offered him a bleary-eyed look of astonishment. “I hope you have twins someday, Max.”

  “Me too, pretty ones with big boobs.”

  Jake sputtered a laugh and slapped his thigh. When he leaned his head back on his chair, he closed his eyes.

  “I could sleep for ten solid hours right now.”

  “You do that. But answer my question first. What’s the deal with the Ripley family? Kids at school implied the kid’s stepdad is a brute. I talked to Goldie, and she seemed pretty defensive about him.”

  Jake opened his eyes and gave Max a weary glance.

  “Darwin Ripley. He’s a little rough around the edges, but brute seems like a strong word. He’s a mechanic over at Joe’s Auto Body. He’s insured his truck with us for the last five years, and usually comes in with Goldie, though I haven’t seen her in months.”

  “Because her kid is missing.”

  “Yeah, you said that. And it is strange that Darwin never mentioned anything, but we don’t exactly sit around and have tea when he comes in. Goldie’s real sweet, a little hardened. I don’t think she’s had the easiest life. She bakes us cookies every Christmas. I can’t tell you much more than that, Max.”

  “Ever see the kid, Vern?”

  Jake shook his head, rubbing his neck.

  “Ouch! oh, man, got a kink right there.” He shoved a thumb into the base of his skull and rubbed. “I’ve aged ten years in three days. No. The boy never came in with them. Sometimes Goldie brought their daughter in, a tiny little thing like her mama, not a day over five, I’d guess.”

  “Did you ever notice bruises? Anything like that on the mom or daughter?”

  Jake huffed and cast Max a frustrated glance.

  “You better not ask anybody else that question. I don’t know Darwin well, but if he got wind of the implications, he might stop by your house with a steel pipe.”

  “I’m not asking anyone but you and maybe Dad. I’m just trying to rule out the possibility that he had a hand in his stepson’s disappearance.”

  “You’re trying to rule it out? Now you sound like a cop.” Jake sat up and looked squarely at his brother. “Max, I’d leave this to the real cops. You’re getting in over your head.”

  “Yeah, well, kids are missing and nobody’s doing shit about it. How would you feel, Jake? Now that you’re a dad. If your kid went missing? Wouldn’t you hope people were looking? Asking questions?”

  Jake’s face fell.

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “I guess I would.”

  When Max pushed through his front door, the first thing he noticed was the book laying on the carpet in his living room.

  He paused, the door left ajar, and gazed at the book.

  Finally, he walked in, picked it up, not needing to glance at the cover to know it was Heart of Darkness, before he tucked it snuggly back into the shelf.

  Then he went to his garage and retrieved his power drill and eight screws. He screwed the bookcase into the wall.

  23

  They returned to Ashley’s house.

  Shane opened cardboard boxes in the garage, pulling out a flathead screwdriver and a pair of gardening shears.

  Ashley went inside to retrieve her metal baseball bat. “Sid grab that tennis racket,” she said when she returned to the garage.

  He picked it and frowned. “Half the netting is missing,” he complained.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “You just need something you can swing if we get attacked.”

  The day grew muggier as they hurried back to the woods. Sid dragged the tennis racket on the ground, and it thumped and scraped over the pavement until Ashley finally snapped at him to lift the damn thing up. He slouched as if he were a flower wilting beneath a boiling sun, and Ashley shot him impatient, hurry up glances that he ignored.

  She knew he was tired, but she also knew most of his slothful behavior could be attributed to Shane. Sid didn’t like him and wanted to make sure Ashley knew it.

  The ceiling of branches and dense leaves broke the heat and all three sighed as they moved through the sun streaked forest. They stopped often, listening for the sounds of movement, breath, or something foreign against the backdrop of birdsong.

  When they reached the house, Shane didn’t pause, but instead barreled up the steps, shoving through the front door with a splintered crash.

  Sid grabbed Ashley’s hand. “You said we weren’t going inside,” he griped.

  Ashley stared at the dark opening of the house and her mind swerved to Mr. Wolf and the story he’d shared days earlier.

  Shane poked his head out. “You guys coming?” he called.

  Ashley pulled her hand from Sid’s. “It’s okay. We’re safer in a group, but if you really don’t want to go in, you can wait out here.”

  His eyes bulged, but she didn’t wait for him to argue.

  She walked up the stairs and stepped into The Crawford House.

  Shane had already started into the lower floor.

  Ashley and Sid followed.

  Shane walked ahead of them into the room filled with old coffins.

  “Look,” Ashley whispered, pointing at a pile of discarded clothes in the corner of the room.

  Shane picked something up and Sid gasped, backing into wall of cobwebs.

  “Get em off, get em off,” he muttered, swiping at the back of his neck where he felt their sticky softness tickling his heck.

  “Shh…” Ashley demanded. “Hold still.” She pulled the cobwebs from Sid’s hair.

  Shane held up a small plastic bracelet, ripped jaggedly from whoever had worn it.

  “The Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane,” he read out loud followed by an address in Traverse City.

  “So, it’s just some nutter,” Sid babbled, gesturing toward the door. “Let’s get out of here. The guy might be crazy.”

  “These are kids’ clothes,” Shane said.

  He lifted the pants from the pile of clothes. He was right. They looked to be around their size maybe a little shorter than the same pants Shane wore.

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Sid argued. “Maybe the guy stole some clothes, realized they didn’t fit, and then left them here.”

  Shane lifted up a coffin lid and leapt back, sending the lid crashing back down. Both Ashley and Sid jumped, Sid letting out a little squeal of terror.

  “What is it?” Ashley asked.

  Shane glanced at them, shuddered, and then pushed the coffin open, holding his arm out long as if he didn’t want to get too close.

  Ashley walked closer, but Sid backed toward the wall holding up his tennis racket.

  In the center of the mildewed silk lining lay an ugly rag doll.

  She leaned close and realized the doll was not merely cloth, but appeared to have human hair and bones. She saw two yellowing bones jutting from the blue fabric wrapped over the doll’s lumpy body. Its face was a crude ball and its eyes were two blue buttons.

  “Those are bones,” Shane murmured. “And teeth.”

  Ashley stared awestruck at the two teeth poking from the red gash in the doll’s face.

  “What?” Sid squeaked, standing on tiptoe, but not walking closer. “Like a dead person’s bones?”

  “It’s a doll,” Ashley told him waving him over.

  He walked toward them slowly, not lowering the racket.

  He recoiled when he saw the doll and quickly spun toward the door, but they were alone.

  “It’s his,” S
id whispered.

  “It’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Shane muttered.

  Only Ashley didn’t speak. She swallowed the lump in her throat and reached a shaky hand toward the doll.

  “Don’t touch it,” Sid hissed, grabbing her shoulder, but Ashley shrugged him off.

  She picked the doll up and turned it around, studying it.

  “This looks like Vern Ripley’s hair,” she started. “I don’t know him very well, but…”

  “Whoa, yeah. His hair does look like that,” Shane said, peering closer at the doll.

  The doll’s hair was a distinctive shade of red-brown.

  “The shirt too,” Sid said, though his voice was barely a whisper.

  “Huh?” Ashley asked.

  “I saw Vern in it once. I remember because I thought my brother would like it. Zack likes to fish.”

  The blue fabric was covered in little orange fish with black eyes and sharp white teeth.

  She lifted the doll up and inspected it.

  “I don’t think you should touch it, Ash,” Sid whispered.

  Above them, the door banged open.

  “What was that?” Sid squeaked.

  Shane stared at the ceiling. “Just the wind, I think.”

  Ashley tucked the doll into her backpack.

  “What are you doing?” Sid asked, shaking his head.

  “I’m taking it. I want to get a closer look at it, but I think we should get out of here.”

  Voices sounded overhead. “Spray that window,” a familiar voice commanded. Travis Barron’s voice.

  “Crap,” Shane muttered.

  “We’re trapped,” Sid croaked.

  They crept to the foot of the stairs and listened. Travis and whatever bumbling imbecile he’d brought with him worked their way through the rooms. They heard the sound of aerosol cans as the boy’s spray painted the walls above them.

  “What total ass bags,” Ashley muttered.

  She wasn’t a fan of The Crawford House, but it seemed awfully disrespectful to walk through and spray paint the walls and furniture that had once belonged to a family.

  They heard the clomp of footsteps on the stairs.

  “They’re going to the second floor,” Shane said. “Let’s make a run for it.”

  They sprinted up the stairs, Sid bringing up the rear.

  Above them, they heard Travis let out a high-pitched scream. “There’s something in here,” he shrieked.

  Shane looked back, laughter erupting from his lips. They burst through the front door, running for the woods.

  Ashley glanced back in time to See Travis running from the house, his face a white mask of fear. When he spotted Ash, Shane, and Sid, he stopped, his goon friend smacking into his back. Travis turned and shoved the friend away.

  Ashley didn’t wait to see what he’d do. She ran for the shelter of the trees. They zigzagged through the forest, sprinting until Sid panted that he needed a break.

  When they stopped, they all grew completely silent, save Sid’s overloud inhales and exhales, as they listened for the crunch of branches.

  “I don’t think he came after us,” Shane said, a smile spreading over his lips. “But seriously, that was priceless. Did you hear him scream?”

  “He… he,” Sid paused, drawing in a gulping breath. “He sounded like a little girl.”

  “And his friend ran right into him,” Ashley added, her own laughter coming in unison with Shane’s and Sid’s.

  Soon they were laughing so hard all three had collapsed to the forest floor. Sid was stamping his feet on the ground as he simultaneously laughed and struggled for breath.

  When the fit ended, Ashley sat up, her jaw and belly aching from her guffaws.

  Travis’s angry face popped into her mind, and her laughter ebbed away.

  He’d be gunning for them now, no two ways about it.

  “Man, I wish I could have tape recorded that,” Shane said, pulling himself up. “What a perfect prank on the last day of eighth grade. To play Travis pissing himself in The Crawford House.”

  “Yeah,” Sid agreed.

  The two boys high-fived. Ashley took off her backpacked and opened the zipper. She peered at the doll inside.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Shane asked, stepping closer to look as well.

  Sid did not move closer to the bag. His grin faded as if the realization of why they’d been in The Crawford House had just come back to him.

  24

  Max parked his motorcycle on the curb in front of the ramshackle apartment building. Long strips of pale yellow paint peeled from the facade. The owner had likely considered it cheery, but in its state of demise, the yellow reminded him of curdled milk rolling down the side of the building.

  Four tarnished black mailboxes hung by the door, one dangling sideways where it had fallen, or from the look of it, been ripped from the wall.

  Across the street, Max noticed the Skeleton Crew Bar, a squat windowless brick structure. He could imagine the dark, smoky interior, country music blaring from the jukebox on most nights, a room of regulars slamming beers and dragging each other into the street for fistfights.

  The neighborhood left something to be desired, that was for sure.

  He tried to envision a kid growing up in one of those apartments. Where did he play? In the brown weeds that grew along the gravel parking lot?

  Beyond the bar and apartment building, a series of warehouses and industrial businesses stood. He noticed a storage lot, a salvage yard, and further down a liquor store that boasted beer and lotto.

  He found the front door to the apartment building unlocked and likely broken since the knob didn’t turn at all when he pulled on the door. He started up the stairway, narrow, dark, and smelling of vomit.

  At the top of the stairs, he found two doors, but only one was labeled.

  According to his notes, Nicholas Watts lived in Apartment B.

  Max knocked on the scratched door, and noticed a splintered indent in the lower right corner, as if someone had kicked it.

  From across the hall he heard rhythmic thumping, and moments later, the undeniable sounds of moans and grunts as someone neared their climax.

  He knocked a second time, leaned close to the door, and listened.

  He heard a man’s voice low.

  “Don’t fucking touch it,” the man growled, and Max took an automatic step back, his blood chilling in an instant.

  The door didn’t open, and Max forced himself close a second time, pressing his ear to the flimsy plywood.

  From inside, he heard a whimper and the soft whoosh of “Please,” spoken by a woman. The word was cut off so quickly, Max knew the man had either clamped a hand over her mouth or tightened his hold on her throat.

  “Fuck all,” Max whispered.

  He slipped down the steps, light on his feet, and hurried to his saddlebags, all too aware that whoever was occupying the second floor apartment was likely watching him through the window above. He rifled through his bag and made like he was pulling out documents while quickly sliding his tonfa into his pants.

  His tonfa were two narrow, but strong, wooden sticks with small handles jutting from the sides.

  He didn’t have other weapons, and he usually didn’t carry the tonfa, but he’d been practicing with them at the martial arts studio the night before and had forgotten them in his saddlebag.

  The handles of the sticks poked him painfully in the stomach when he moved, but he tried to appear official as he organized the papers and walked determinedly back into the building.

  When he reached the second floor, the moans across the hall had subsided.

  He pounded on the door.

  “I’m here about your missing son,” he called.

  To his surprise, the door jerked open and a thin woman with red-rimmed eyes gazed out at him. A red welt showed on her cheek in the distinct shape of an open hand.

  “Mrs. Watts?”

  The woman blinked at him, her
hand lifting toward her face, and then quickly dropping back to her side. Her hair had been pulled into a bun, but looked as if someone had grabbed the side of her head and yanked fiercely, wrenching half of her hair loose.

  “Can you come out and speak with me for a minute?” he asked.

  “No!”

  It wasn’t the woman who answered, but a man who stepped from behind the door. He stood as tall as Max’s own six-feet-three inches, but outweighed him by a hundred pounds. Thick arms and a muscular chest hovered over a round belly. In his younger days, the man could have been a bodybuilder, but he’d gone soft and Max smelled why. The man reeked of beer.

  On the table behind them, Max spotted twenty or more beer cans scattered across the cheap plastic surface. More empties littered the counter.

  “It’s okay, Denny,” the woman said, reaching out a trembling hand and patting one of the man’s meaty forearms. “This man is here about Nicholas.”

  “That little shit for brains?” Denny snapped.

  The woman jumped and her eyes darted to Denny’s large hands.

  “Are you Nicholas’s father?” Max asked, feeling his blood pressure rise at the man’s insensitive comment.

  Max didn’t want to talk about Nicholas. He wanted to pull out his sticks and beat the man bloody. Denny outweighed the woman by two hundred pounds. He was the worst kind of bully.

  “Wish I wasn’t.” Denny made a grotesque sound as he cleared his throat and walked to the counter, hocking a ball of spit and snot into the sink with a metallic thud. “Run off is what he did and took my five bucks with him.”

  “Will you come in?” The woman cast hopeful, almost desperate eyes on Max, and he knew he’d never get her outside. Denny would slam the door in his face before he let her leave the apartment.

  “Sure, yeah.” He walked stiffly, the sticks jabbing his belly.

  “Can I get ya something?” she asked, pushing several beer cans aside. “We have beer or orange juice? Or tap water?”