Dead Stream Curse
A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel
J.R. Erickson
Contents
Find Me Online
Author’s Note
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Epilogue
Read More by J.R. Erickson
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2019 J.R. Erickson
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Author’s Note
Thanks so much for picking up a Northern Michigan Asylum Novel. I want to offer a disclaimer before you dive into the story. This is an entirely fictional novel. Although there was once a real place known as The Northern Michigan Asylum - which inspired me to write these books - it is in no way depicted within them. Although my story takes place there, the characters in this story are not based on any real people who worked at this asylum or were patients; any resemblance to individuals, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Likewise, the events which take place in the novel are not based on real events, and any resemblance to real events is also coincidental.
In truth, nearly every book I have read about the asylum, later known as the Traverse City State Hospital, was positive. This holds true for the stories of many of the staff who worked there as well. I live in the Traverse City area and regularly visit the grounds of the former asylum. It’s now known as The Village at Grand Traverse Commons. It was purchased in 2000 by Ray Minervini and the Minervini Group who have been restoring it since that time. Today, it’s a mixed-use space of boutiques, restaurants and condominiums. If you ever visit the area, I encourage you to visit The Village at Grand Traverse Commons. You can experience first-hand the asylums - both old and new - and walk the sprawling grounds.
Dedication
For my dad, Jack, the man who inspired me to read.
Prologue
October 31, 1945
Liv
Liv tripped down the stairs, her satin gown tangled in her mother’s shoes. At the last step, plunging toward the open door and the lawn beyond, she kicked the shoes off, her breath pluming in the cold night air like little explosions. At the tree line, she fell, landing hard on her outstretched hands. She glanced down. In the moonlight she saw the dark flecks splattered across her chest. It was too dark to see their color, and yet she knew: deep crimson, blood.
She hiccupped and let the sob curdling in her belly rush into the night. It was swallowed by the heavy foliage. The wet, matted leaves took her cries and extinguished them as quickly as her halo of breaths.
She stood and looked at the soaring peaks of the Victorian house deep in the woods.
Candlelight still flickered from the windows. People moved inside, laughing, drinking, and oblivious to the horrors committed only two floors above them.
A curtain shuttered in the third-story window and for a moment, Liv saw a shape there. The silhouette of a young man in a horned goat mask. The rounded spirals of his horns ended in points as sharp as knives.
Liv closed her eyes against the memory of blood splashing across the polished golden floor.
Her stomach turned and she retched in the grass, vomiting the champagne she’d drank that evening.
When she found the strength to move, she walked numbly into the forest.
Chapter 1
July 1945
Liv
“I’m hot,” Arlene complained, tugging on Liv’s hand.
The girl wore a yellow smock. Two yellow bows captured her light brown hair in pigtails. Liv never understood why their mother insisted on making Arlene presentable when the seven-year-old dirtied her dress within five minutes of putting it on.
“Me too,” Liv grumbled. “But we’re almost there, peanut,” she assured her little sister as they trudged down the dusty road.
The fast, cool water of the Dead Stream was not far away.
The summer had started early and furiously hot, with temperatures reaching seventy degrees in May. Now in July, ninety-degree days were common.
“This way,” Liv urged Arlene, who dawdled, her feet dragging as they plunged through tall grass into the woods.
Beneath the canopy of trees, the temperature was five degrees cooler.
Arlene plopped on the ground, stretching her legs out on a bed of pine needles.
“I’m tired.”
Liv leaned against a tree.
“Okay, we’ll take a little break, then.”
Liv looked into the high pine above her. Sharp green branches fanned out, offering respite from the stifling heat.
Liv pulled a jar from her leather bag and scooped pine pitch from the tree.
“Pine sap?” Arlene asked wrinkling her nose. “It’s so sticky.”
“It’s also great for burns and sores. We can put some on those blisters of yours.” Liv pointed at an angry red blister on Arlene’s little toe.
Their mother had been given a pair of hand-me-down dance shoes for her youngest daughter, and Arlene had worn them for a week even though they pinched her toes.
“They don’t hurt anymore,” Arlene said pushing a finger into one of the blisters.
“But they’re also not healed. “We’ll put some pitch on when we get home.” Liv tucked the jar into her bag. “Ready?” Liv extended a hand to her little sister.
Arlene nodded and took Liv’s hand. Thick foliage shaded the last quarter-mile of their journey.
When they broke through the trees to the steep bank of the river, Arlene clapped her hands and laughed.
“Wait for me,” Liv told her.
Liv stripped out of her shorts and t-shirt and spotted a good branch to drape them on. She slung them over the branch and turned back just as Arlene stepped from the sand into the water.
“Livvy, watch,” she called, bending to scoop a handful of water.
Her green eyes opened wide in surprise as her feet slipped from beneath her and the river swallowed her.
Liv let out a shocked scream and jumped over the embankment. As she raced into the water, she saw Arlene’s small, tanned arm reach up. Her head popped up and then the undertow pulled her beneath the surface.
The icy water took Liv’s breath away, and the current’s strong hands clutched and pulled her down
.
George had taught her years ago how to handle fast-moving currents, but she ignored his advice to float on her back, legs in front of her. She’d never get to Arlene that way. She let the current take her, paddling only to keep her head above the water while searching for her sister.
Liv dunked under, rose up for a breath, and spotted a flash of movement at the water’s edge.
Had Arlene made it out?
Liv watched a young man plunging into the water just as Arlene’s head bobbed up and disappeared again.
The boy splashed into the river, his hands reaching for Arlene.
Liv knew her sister was panicking. She’d be thrashing her arms and legs, pushing herself beneath the water, unable to surrender to the flow.
That’s how people drowned, but it was too late to tell her that now.
The man dove forward, arms outstretched as Arlene’s hand shot above the water. Liv saw the man reach out and clasp the little girl.
Liv slipped beneath the water, struggling back up as the man hauled her sister against his chest. He reached for a branch that stuck out from a dead tree at the river’s edge.
He caught it, and Liv cried out in triumph, allowing a flood of water to fill her mouth. She hacked and spit the water out, choking, but relieved as she saw the man pulling Arlene toward the shore.
Liv tried to direct herself to the same tree, but the current surged as she neared them, and it pushed her by.
Beneath her, a tangle of branches caught Liv’s foot, and she felt herself jerked to a stop and thrust underwater. The stream rushed around her, but the branch held firm to her shoe. She tried to bend and release her foot, kicking her leg in the thick, rapidly moving stream.
She couldn’t reach back. The water shoved and pushed and forced her away from her ensnared foot. Her shoe seemed suctioned to her foot and Liv could not wriggle out of it.
Her lungs burned as she struggled upward, but she couldn’t get her head above the water.
Seconds ticked by. The cold stole her breath.
She gazed into the green, murky bottom, trying to continue her fight, but her limbs felt heavy and limp.
Soon she’d have to open her mouth and allow the water in.
She tilted her face to where the sun slanted through the green water. It was so close, and yet she couldn’t lift up, couldn’t catch even a breath.
Her head would burst if she didn’t open her mouth. She released her clenched teeth and let the water pour in, filling her, but no relief came. The bright rays of the sun seemed to shift and darken. The river receded and blinked out.
* * *
It was morning and Liv’s mother was shaking her awake.
“I’m up,” Liv grumbled. “I’m up.” But as she spoke, a terrible burning seized her throat.
She coughed and a spurt of water shot from her mouth and splattered the face of the young man gazing down at her. He smiled, not bothering to wipe the water dripping from his chin.
“Livvy, Livvy,” her little sister cried, wrapping her in a wet hug and plastering her soaking braids against Liv’s cheek.
As Liv breathed, the heavenly intake of air both painful and exhilarating, she remembered Arlene washing down the Dead Stream, and then her own foot caught in the branches.
“You saved us,” Liv breathed, wincing at the pain in her throat.
Her eyes welled with tears as she patted her little sister’s slick back.
The boy gazed at her, his eyes as pale and sparkly as the quartz rock she sometimes found in the quarry behind the Kenworths’ farm.
He nodded, let loose a shaky laugh as if he too had been holding his breath for a very long time, and ran a hand through his black hair. Little rivulets of water ran down his forehead. He sat back on his heels and patted Arlene on the head.
“Yeah, that was…” He shook his head, as if he hadn’t figured out what it was yet. “That was alive.”
“Alive?” Liv asked, puzzled. She gently pushed Arlene away and rolled to her side before sitting up.
Arlene hiccupped, her face red and splotchy. Liv tugged one of her pigtails.
“Come here, peanut,” she told her, letting Arlene crawl into her lap. At seven, the girl was too big to be held, and yet Liv wanted nothing more than to cradle her sister and thank the gods for the man they’d seen fit to plant at the river, at the moment death arrived to take them.
“Yeah, alive,” he repeated.
“Thank you,” Liv murmured, resting her chin on her sister’s head and smoothing away the goosebumps coating her folded legs.
“Thank you,” Arlene squeaked.
The man smiled and looked toward the river, a mystified expression on his handsome face.
“Now that I owe you a mortal debt, I should introduce myself,” Liv told him. “I’m Liv. This is my little sister, Arlene.”
“A mortal debt,” he murmured, as if that too baffled him. “I’m Stephen Kaiser. Pleased to meet you.”
Liv closed her eyes and breathed in Arlene’s scent.
Her thoughts were jumbled, and each time she looked at the river, she saw their deaths laid out and waiting for them, but they had not died that day. Stephen Kaiser had saved them.
Eventually, Liv felt ready to put some distance between herself and the river. Stephen helped Liv to her feet and they headed back the way they’d come.
The three walked through the woods, stopping frequently for Liv to lean against a tree and catch her breath. Her lungs ached and her limbs felt heavy and sodden, as if the water had seeped through her skin and caused her blood to thicken and freeze.
Arlene, in true child form, had bounced back quickly from the near-drowning. She hummed songs as they walked, stopping to point out flowers and pluck caterpillars off trees.
“Are you okay?” Stephen asked after they’d stopped for the third time.
Liv nodded.
“I think so. I keep wondering if there were signs, and I missed them.”
“Signs?” Stephen asked. “About the current?”
Liv shook her head.
“Signs that we were walking toward our death. Signs to ward us off.”
Stephen looked at her sidelong, and Liv saw the curious expression on his face.
She laughed and reached back for a handful of her long blonde hair, wringing it out. It was thick and tangled, wavy hair that didn’t seem to know if it wanted to be curly or straight.
“I didn’t have a dream. I had no idea.” Liv searched the previous night’s dreams but found nothing out of the ordinary, no foreboding of what lay ahead.
“A dream?” he asked, offering another curious glance. “You’re a strange girl.”
Liv blushed and wished he’d shift his pale blue eyes away from her face.
When he did, she tried to think of normal things to talk about. She didn’t have many friends and had spent so much of her life with George; she’d forgotten that ordinary people did not speak of prophetic dreams.
“I’ve never seen you in school,” Liv blurted, because she hadn’t, and school was something normal people talked about.
“Do you go to Gaylord High?” he asked.
“Yeah. I moved here with my mom and stepdad last year.” She didn’t mention that they’d moved into the shacks on the south side of town, where civilization melted into the forest. The shacks were rundown and as likely to be filled with vagabonds as poor families such as Liv’s.
“I go to a private school. Or I did,” he amended. “I graduated in the spring. I’m moving to Ann Arbor in the fall to go to the University of Michigan.”
“Wow,” Liv breathed.
She’d never met anyone who went attended a private school. The only college-educated man she could think of was the town’s doctor, who looked at Liv and her family like lice-infested rats that had scurried through the back door.
She touched her snarled hair self-consciously and wished she hadn’t worn her summer clothes, which consisted of a ragged t-shirt and shorts not worth mending, since the
y’d just get torn again anyhow. “I have another year of high school left. I hate it,” she added.
Arlene stopped by a tall prickly plant.
“Nettles.” She pointed to Liv.
Liv nodded and silently willed her sister not to say more.
“Don’t we want to pick them?”
“I don’t have my bag,” Liv told her, grabbing Arlene’s hand and pulling her along.
“Why would you pick nettles?” Stephen asked, giving the sharp-looking plant a wide berth.
“Livvy uses them to heal mama’s hands,” Arlene announced proudly.
Liv felt the flush creeping back up her neck and turned to point at the big oak tree with the strange round protrusion in its trunk.
“Better go touch the boob tree for luck,” she told Arlene, realizing her comment sounded as strange as the nettles remark.
Arlene skipped to the tree and pressed both palms on the knobby growth.
Stephen followed her, putting his hands on the place where Arlene’s had been.
He looked back at Liv and smiled.
“We can all use a little luck.”
Chapter 2
Dead Stream Curse: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel Page 1