David shrugged.
“Join the senior league and bowl at 9 a.m. They’ll take pity on you when they hear your troubles.”
* * *
The Stoneroot Forest lay forty miles south of Grayling. Mack’s cabin was off a grassy two-track deep in the woods.
Misty reared up excitedly, putting both paws on the passenger window as the cabin slid into view.
“Calm down, girl,” he told her, scratching her red-brown head. Misty was a mixed breed with fox lineage. Some days she looked more fox than dog.
She followed him out the driver’s door, bounding into the trees with her tail wagging her entire backside. She raced around the cabin twice, nipping at Mack’s bag as he hauled it into the little two-story log cabin. He deposited his bag on the table and headed back out.
A few of the trees had shifted from green to gold. Twigs crunched underfoot as Mack and Misty lumbered through the forest.
The cabin roused nostalgic memories of hunting with his Uncle Byron, and less fond memories of watching his dad slam beers and shoot the cans off tree stumps.
Mack had honeymooned with Diane for a week at the cabin after their wedding. They slow-danced by the bonfire. ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ by the Flamingos played on the record player next to the sitting-room window. They ate dinner by candlelight and took long walks in the woods, watching Misty run after squirrels and birds.
Those were the best days; Mack had realized later. The year before the wedding and the year after. Those were the best days.
But then life took its inevitable toll. Mack’s drinking shifted from casual to constant. Diane’s stubbornness grew cement legs. The hardship of finances, the endless work of the big farmhouse, losing two babies before Diane ever had a belly. Things they would have turned their noses up at in those first two years. A love like that doesn’t falter, doesn’t die beneath the weight of ordinary things. But oh, it does, it’s the ordinary things that kill us all.
Misty barked and pivoted, running south. Mack followed without complaint. He’d left his fishing pole in the truck. He didn’t much feel like fishing, preferring to walk and think and forget about the stillness of fishing, not to mention the backache of sitting on the little lopsided dock. With his luck, the damn thing would swallow the hook and he wouldn’t even get the satisfaction of throwing it back alive.
“Maybe we can find some worms, Misty Girl.”
He hadn’t bothered to stop at the bait shop. There were enough rubber worms in his tackle box if he really felt like fishing, and he didn’t - simple as that.
He kicked over logs and dug into the moist dirt, finding a centipede and popping it into the little metal cannister in the pack on his back.
Misty disappeared into a pile of brush and burst out a moment later, hackles raised, barking wildly.
“Just wait a minute,” he called, trotting over to her.
The last thing he needed was Misty stuck with a face full of porcupine quills.
He grabbed hold of her collar and held her back as she barked and lunged at the pile of brush.
Holding her steady, Mack walked closer, squinting through sticks and dried leaves where a bit of fabric appeared, nestled deep in the overgrowth.
He frowned and squatted low, tugging the fabric, but it was stuck good. Looked like it had been red before the weather bleached it a pale pink.
As he tugged, Misty snarled and jumped back and forth at the thing. When Mack looked at her, he saw a terror in her eyes that made him drop the fabric and stand back up.
He looked across the expanse of woods, thick boughs of golden leaves and the red-brown that had already fallen.
The skin on the back of his neck crawled, and he felt as if someone watched them.
Misty paused too, head cocked, ears perked, and then she lowered on her haunches and bared her teeth at whatever lay beneath the brush.
Mack found a long, sturdy stick. He whacked at the brush and kicked with his heavy boots. The shirt was half-buried. He reached down and brushed away wet leaves before sinking both hands into the dirt around the fabric. His finger struck something hard. As he dug deeper, throwing handfuls of dirt behind him, the shirt came into view, and a trickle of ice slid down Mack’s spine.
He peered at the skull of a human being, the bones of the spine disappearing into the pink fabric.
“Sweet mother of Jesus,” he muttered, standing and taking two long strides away from the body, hauling Misty with him.
Now that he’d exposed the thing, the corpse, Misty appeared reluctant to go near it.
The sensation of being watched returned, and Mack shuddered, trying to still his agitated dog. He squinted further into the forest, even tilted his head to look up into the trees, half expecting to see a madman perched there like a man-sized hawk. But the branches stood empty save for a few crows.
“Damn,” he muttered.
The cabin didn’t have a phone. He’d have to drive to the police department. A ten-mile trek into Kalkaska.
“Stay back, girl,” Mack ordered Misty as he returned to the body. He gazed into the shallow grave, hunching for a closer look. A small leather pouch rested in the dirt near the body.
Mack picked it up, but as he drew it away, it caught on the skeleton’s neck.
Without thinking, Mack took out his pocketknife and sliced the leather strap.
Misty crept closer, emitting her low growl.
“Shh… just taking a look here,” he told her, prising open the little bag. A series of flat white stones lay within the pouch.
Behind Mack, a twig cracked and he jumped, whirling around as two squirrels chased each other between the trees. Misty took off after them.
“Misty, no,” he shouted, running to catch up with her.
She followed them a few more yards, but they darted up an oak and out of sight.
He caught up to his dog and grabbed her collar.
“Best if we get to a cop shop,” he said, leading her back toward the cabin.
He was halfway back when he realized he still held the satchel in his hands. He paused, considered returning to drop it in the grave, and decided against it. He could just hand it over to the police - easier that way.
Chapter 4
September 1965
Liv
It was strange how time shifted. One morning, Liv gazed at a bright-eyed eighteen-year-old in the mirror, and the next a woman of nearly forty stared back at her. Through her eyes, not much had changed. The same brown eyes watched her from beneath unruly blonde hair that she’d never so much as trimmed.
She might have left George that fall in 1945, left everything, as it were; but she’d held onto his stories, and his magic.
Most people thought her young. She’d never married or had children, the things she now attributed to aging a woman. All those years carrying babies and then bearing them into the world. Cleaning, scrubbing, ironing, fretting, fearing for their safety.
Though it was more than that, she thought. The magic that had made George look young years beyond his prime flowed in her blood.
She’d never borne children, and yet they’d become the center her life. She was fast approaching seventeen years at Helping Hands Orphanage. Several years before, they’d offered her the position of Head Mother. She’d turned it down. The Head Mother did not hold the children or chase them in the play-yard. She didn’t nurse the sick ones and soothe the fearful. Liv’s purpose was to heal. George had told her as much when she was but a tiny girl, helping him collect wild rose for tea.
She took the bus as she did every morning to the stop on Tenth Street. From there, she ducked into the bakery and bought a bun and a box of cookies for the little ones.
When she arrived at the orphanage, the children ran from the breakfast room to greet her. They swarmed her legs, tugging on her skirt to tell her of their dreams and to beg for cookies.
“Miss Livvy, I dreamed last night I rode on a giant pink balloon,” a little girl with white-blonde hair squealed.
>
Tanner, a swarthy boy with thick auburn curls, called out that he’d dreamed of a cockroach as big as a bus.
Lucas, her favorite of the children — though she’d never tell them that — stood in the back of the pack, his cheeks sunken in his angular face. Large, watery blue eyes stared up at her from beneath a sheaf of coal black hair.
“And what did you dream, Lucas?”
The seven-year-old dreamed every night. Sometimes they were nightmares of the train car he’d lived in before Helping Hands found him. Except it was not Helping Hands that found him, but Liv.
Liv knew where the wayward children dwelled. She sensed them from miles away. On her days off, she walked the city for hours, visiting the abandoned children and trying to draw them to the warmth and safety of her orphanage.
“I dreamed of George,” he murmured, eyes cast toward the floor.
Liv’s head shot up at the name.
She nudged the other children aside and squatted in front of Lucas.
“What did you say?”
Lucas looked up at her, his little mouth turned down.
“The man with the stones. Like yours.”
Lucas pointed at the single hag stone that hung on a length of leather around Liv’s neck.
Her fingers trembled as she brushed the dark hair from his eyes.
“What was George doing in the dream?” she asked. Her head had grown light, and she shifted from squatting to sitting on her knees.
“He was trying to get out of the hole in the ground.”
Liv blinked at the little boy.
“Here, honey.” She pressed a shortbread cookie into his hand and stood shakily.
Rather than pass the cookies out as she usually did, she handed the tin to Paulette, the oldest girl in the orphanage at fifteen, and allowed her to give each child a treat.
Liv retreated to the hall closet and hung her coat. As she stood at the rack, she put a hand to the stone at her chest.
She searched for George. She rarely reached out for him.
Energy is instant, George used to say. He knew when she thought of him, longed for him, dreamed of him. He taught her to attune to those sensations as well, but like everything else, she’d shut it off when she fled Michigan all those years ago. She’d rarely sought George in the intervening years, believing it better not to reignite that connection. She didn’t want to give him access to her, for fear of what he’d see.
As she stood in the black, cramped closet, a void met her searching heart.
She could not feel him in the world.
* * *
Liv reached into the crib and lifted the wailing baby out.
His diaper was wet. Sad brown eyes gazed up at her from his round, red face.
“Shh… hush now, little sweet. I’ve got you.”
She walked him to the changing table and unclasped the safety pin on his diaper. Lifting his legs to pull the damp cloth away, she blew on his face. He paused for a moment in his crying to gaze at the stone dangling from her neck.
Liv reached for the baby powder.
Barney grabbed hold of her necklace. Ferociously, he jerked her toward the table. Liv’s head smacked the rail as the leather on the necklace snapped.
“Ouch,” she cried, jumping back and putting a hand to her brow.
She stared at the baby. His eyes had gone black and empty. He held the stone clutched in his pudgy hand, the broken leather dangling below it.
As quickly as the change had come, the darkness fled from him. He was Barney once more. Big brown eyes, tiny pink lips blowing a bubble. He waved the stone around before dropping it to clutch his toes, which he stretched up and stuck in his mouth.
Liv took a tentative step back to the changing table, reaching out to retrieve the necklace. She tucked it into the pocket of her skirt and returned Barney to his crib.
* * *
It was near dark when Liv left the orphanage to catch the bus home. As she stepped onto the front walkway, she paused, her heart skipping a beat.
Hundreds of flowers lay scattered in the grass.
Liv’s eyes flicked to the graveyard that butted the property of the orphanage. The headstones were empty of their flowers. They had all blown onto the grounds of the orphanage, and yet Liv did not remember ever hearing a wind that day as she cared for the children. Just the opposite, in fact; it had been an abnormally quiet day. Even the children seemed subdued.
As Liv walked, a flower crunched beneath her. She looked down to see a dark purple dahlia flattened beneath her shoe.
That night she dreamed for the first time in nearly twenty years.
Liv walked through a familiar forest. Maple trees glittered gold in autumn. Beech, birch, oaks. She whispered the names as she walked.
George had taught her the names. They had foraged together, sipped nettle tea, ate the greens of dandelions, dug for wild onions in spring.
But this day, she was not in the Stoneroot Forest with George.
Instead, she walked near the Dead Stream toward the big house filled with beautiful, untouchable things.
The house loomed before her. A curtain in an upstairs window billowed out, but there was no breeze. Behind the sheer curtain, Liv could see a figure, a dark shape. She stopped, heart racing, her body awash in goosebumps. The figure watched her. She felt its eyes boring into her, beckoning her forward.
“No,” Liv whispered.
But suddenly she was there, at the base of the grand staircase. Candles glittered, just as they had that Halloween night. Six-foot-high candelabras stood positioned on either side of the staircase. Red wax dripped and pooled on the gleaming wood floor.
The purple dahlias were thick, and their floral aroma concealed a smell of decay.
At the top of the stairs, the figure stood in the shadows.
Liv tried to back away, but the figure rushed toward her. A black blur streaked down the stairs.
Liv woke, sticky and heaving for breath. She fought the blankets from her waist and sat up in bed. Her hands shook as she turned on the little bedside lamp.
A yellow glow cast away the darkness, but not the dream. The dream remained, sharp and solid. It did not waver and slip away.
The second dream besieged her seconds after she closed her eyes.
She stood at the train station in Gaylord, Michigan, her single brown suitcase clutched in her hand. A man stopped beside her, and when she turned, she saw George.
Elation swept over her, swallowed by guilt. She burst into tears.
“There now, Volva.” He patted her back and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “It’s time to come home.”
* * *
She woke for the second time in her little bed and gazed at the ceiling, feeling the warmth of her father’s hand on her back.
She did not say goodbye to the children in the orphanage. Their clinging hands and cheeks shiny with tears would have crippled her.
For too long, she had run from her mistakes, and it was time to make amends.
She took the bus to the train station at midnight and boarded a train for Michigan.
Chapter 5
September 1965
Jesse
Jesse hitched a ride into Gaylord on a rainy afternoon in early September.
The heat of the day radiated up from the pavement, and Jesse felt it through the soles of his worn shoes.
The man in the truck had dropped him at an intersection, and Jesse gazed for a long time down the road that the man said led to town. He’d been travelling for two days. His eyes were red-rimmed, he stank of his own filth, and something deep inside him was rumbling for a fierce howl.
He needed to be alone.
He turned away from town and plunged into the trees. The bit of light from the gray sky disappeared.
When he’d walked a half-mile, he dropped to his knees and buried his face in the wet grass and bellowed. The sound erupted from his body like a mighty roar. Tears poured from his tired eyes into the mossy earth beneath his face.
After a while, he slumped forward and slept.
* * *
He woke to a crow pecking at his coat pocket.
“Scat,” he shouted, rolling away from the bird.
He sat up, his back damp with sweat.
The bird did not fly away, but stood a few paces back, watching him.
“I don’t have anything for you. See?” he shouted.
He turned out the pockets of his coat. A box of matches fell out, but nothing else.
Still the bird remained.
When Jesse stood, the bird flew into a tree just over his head. He huffed, considered which way to turn. When the bird flew deeper into the forest, Jesse followed it.
He was a stranger in a strange wood. The bird’s direction was as good as any other.
Jesse had been walking for a long time when he spotted the house.
In the darkness, the moon only a whisper between drifting clouds, he gazed at the silhouette. Pitched roofs and tall black windows reminded him of an enormous slumbering creature rather than a deserted house. Thick overgrowth from bushes and trees crawled onto eaves and trickled across the long, wide porch that encircled the lower level.
No light burned in the house, and as he walked closer, Jesse smelled the air of abandonment. Everything had a scent — the air when a storm was brewing, a woman preparing for her first date, a place left and forgotten. He’d come to rely on his smell to know a bit about a man. Violent men smelled like fire, the sharp soot of the match striking flint. A kind man gave off an odor of freshly tilled soil.
Jesse put his hand on the bannister, sturdy wood with paint flaking away, and crept slowly up the steps. He perked his ears and waited, counting the seconds, and then minutes.
Dead Stream Curse: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel Page 3