Her brother once described Diane as a saint with the common sense of a turkey who’ll drown in the damn rain trying to get a drink of water when there’s a perfectly good stream behind her.
Mack had laughed and forever after called Diane his little turkey, which some days she found endearing and other days ignited a rage that sent her flying out the door, spitting at him like an alley cat.
But for all their ups and downs, Mack had never wanted to lose Diane. He wanted to be a better man for her. He tried too, but the drink had been his home since childhood.
He remembered his first taste of beer, a taste his old man had forced on him. Any desire for booze should have died that day as Mack’s father clutched his eight-year-old son’s arm in a vice grip until he swallowed the entire can of beer. Mack had stumbled behind the shed and thrown up.
His dad laughed, called him a girlie-boy, and continued pounding beers until he fell over drunk next to his lawn chair. Mack’s mother sometimes threw a blanket over him and left him to sleep it off in the yard, but she never said a word against him, partially because she still had a fresh bruise from the last time she spoke up. Though she didn’t have to say a word to get the back of her husband’s hand. A look would suffice.
Mack rubbed his jaw and drained his coffee. As he refilled it, he looked for Misty outside. She no longer pranced around the yard, but stood obediently at the door.
Mack walked out, grabbed an armful of wood, and piled it next to the wood-burning stove. The temperatures would rise throughout the day, but the chill of night lingered, and he wanted wood for the coming cold.
In an hour, the sun would thaw the cold ground. Mack could take Misty for a walk and maybe take his fishing pole to the lake.
He yawned and glanced at the coffee table where the leather satchel lay. He’d never handed it over to the police. He’d forgotten all about it until the evening before, when he spotted it while frying up a couple of hot dogs for him and Misty.
He sat on the couch and picked the pouch up. Misty looked up from her water bowl and let out a low growl.
“Don’t like this thing, do ya?” he asked.
He poured the stones into his hand. The stones were mostly white, rubbed smooth, and each contained a hole in its center. The holes were not large, too small for Mack to slide a pinkie through. He cupped the rocks, examining each one before returning them to the satchel.
Misty continued to growl and glare at the bag.
Mack looked at her thoughtfully.
“Okay, you win,” he said. He took the bag to the kitchen and closed it in a drawer. “Better?” he asked her.
She gazed at him, shifted her eyes to the drawer, and then back to him. Apparently satisfied, she padded to the wood burner and lay on the rug, resting her head on her paws and watching him.
Mack cooked sausage and eggs, sharing with Misty, who never begged, but waited patiently at his feet for her portion.
Afterward, they walked the woods in the opposite direction of the corpse. They wandered the forest, Mack knocking over dead trees while Misty chased squirrels and birds.
As he walked, he mulled over how best to end things with Tina. He didn’t want the tears or the mean words. A note seemed like the easiest choice. The coward’s way out, Diane would have told him.
When the sun was high, a rumble started in Mack’s belly.
“Lunch time,” he said aloud.
Misty stood at the base of a birch tree, barking up at a squirrel who’d outsmarted her.
She dutifully followed Mack as he turned back toward the cabin.
They walked a good mile, and Mack had yet to spot the gnarled beech tree that lay at the edge of his property. When he gazed at the forest around him, he couldn’t place their location.
“Did we get turned around?” he asked Misty.
She barked and licked his hand.
He glanced at the sun, confirming what he already knew. “We’re heading west,” he insisted.
They walked for ten minutes and still no beech tree.
Dark clouds accumulated, blotting the sun. A light rain began to fall, pattering the leaves.
After several minutes, Mack’s heavy coat and pants grew sodden. A wet sheen covered Misty, and she seemed to realize they were lost as she ran ahead and circled back, only to head off in a different direction and repeat the process.
Mack stopped searching for the sun and followed his dog. He’d lost his bearings completely.
As the rain fell, a fog formed low to the ground, and they walked in obscurity. The trees reached stark and skeleton-like out of the white mist.
Mack shivered, his teeth chattering.
Don’t say it, he thought. If you don’t say it, it’s not true, but whether he voiced it or not, the thought reverberated in his head: We’re lost.
The Stoneroot Forest was not a good place to get lost. Miles of woods, and the cold could kill you in a night, especially when you added the rain. In September, the temperature shouldn’t drop below forty, but only a moron staked his life on it.
Mack had never been lost in the Stoneroot Forest in his life. He’d grown up there, after all, spending weeks at the cabin with his Uncle Byron, hunting and fishing and escaping the rough hands of his father. He’d learned the woods as thoroughly as his own bedroom. He’d never gotten lost in them, not once in his life.
He dug through his pack but knew he wouldn’t find a compass. He never carried one. He’d never needed one.
Misty barked and ran off again, vanishing into the fog.
“Misty,” he yelled, but she didn’t return.
Far off, he heard a bark, as if in a matter of seconds, she’d covered a mile of woods.
He tried to follow the sound, but already it had faded.
“Misty,” he yelled again, uneasy at the panic edging his voice.
He took a deep breath and opened his pack, digging for the dried beef he’d dropped in that morning. He dug until his fingers hit something.
He frowned as he drew the object out.
He held the leather satchel full of stones.
“What the hell?” he grumbled. He stuffed it into another pouch, trying to shake off the quiver tugging at his spine. “I thought I grabbed the jerky, is all,” he told no one.
But then his hand hit the small plastic bag that held the jerky. He refused to think about it. He opened the bag, popped a hunk of dried meat in his mouth, and trudged on, calling out for Misty.
As he walked, a branch snapped behind him. He spun, expecting to see his dog.
Instead, far in the distance, obscured by the fog, a tall man stood in the forest. He was a black silhouette in a forest of equally dark trees, but the shape of the man was clear.
Mack waved, started to walk toward him, and then paused. Something about the man felt wrong.
Mack’s mind flashed to the figure he’d imagined the night before. But of course, there’d been no man, merely a trick of his troubled mind.
He watched the man, waited to see if he waved back.
When he didn’t, Mack turned and continued the way he’d been going. He walked for several minutes, listening, growing desperate in his search for a familiar tree.
Mack twisted around. The man had gained on him.
His heart gave a little skip.
He turned and picked up his pace. He ran a few yards before looking back.
Again, the man stood closer, tall, dark, and faceless in the fog.
“Just punch the son of a bitch,” Mack chastised himself. “Ask him what he wants.” But as he started forward, a crippling fear washed over him, as if someone had poured a cup of ice water over his head. He faltered, and looked up to see the man closer still.
Mack turned and bolted into the trees. His breath hitched and his legs burned, but he didn’t stop.
Suddenly the thing was on him, leaves and twigs snapping, and Mack tried to run harder, but it was gaining on him. He felt the man touch his back.
He remembered the knife in the ske
leton’s ribs and waited for the hot slash across his exposed neck.
He cried out and flinched away, but then Misty’s growl filled the quiet.
Mack dove to the ground and rolled, ready to face the man who pursued him, but the forest stood empty save for his dog, who jumped on him and licked his face wildly.
Mack lay, elbows propped beneath him, staring into the receding mist.
The man had vanished.
When Mack stood, he spotted the beech tree and dropped to his knees.
“Thank you, thank you,” he murmured, imagining not a God guiding him home, but his mother somewhere up in the gray sky watching over him.
Misty nudged him as if she preferred they keep moving, and he agreed. He scrambled back to his feet, and he and Misty trotted back to the cabin.
Chapter 9
September 1965
Liv
“Stephen.” When he looked up at her, his eyes revealed only confusion. But Liv’s heart gave a little jump. He looked older, sure. But the same pale blue eyes gazed from his handsome face. He’d lost the smoothness of his youth. The bones of his face created depth to his jaw and brow-line.
“Liv?” He sounded curious, not excited or disappointed. He turned to a woman in a white smock. “Go ahead without me. I’ll be in shortly.”
The woman nodded and hurried away.
Liv took a step closer. Conflicting emotions raged within her. She’d missed Stephen, missed the closest friend she’d ever known, longed for him during some of those lonely years when she went home from the orphanage night after night, read a few pages of a book, and drifted off to sleep.
But she’d loathed him too. Hated how she’d followed his strange obsessions, hated that she’d committed the ultimate sin on his behalf.
He didn’t hug her, but when she stopped before him, he took her hand and squeezed.
“How are you, Liv? It’s been…”
“Twenty years,” she whispered.
Twenty years to the day, soon. Twenty years since that fateful All Hallows’ Eve, the costume party… Liv could still smell the purple dahlias, and the blood.
She shook her head and cleared the memory.
“Your mother said you moved west…” he started, studying her face.
So, he had asked about her.
Sometimes she’d wondered in those intervening years if he’d simply walked the other way from which she ran.
“I did, for a few years. And then I ended up in Boston. I’ve been there for almost seventeen years.”
“Are you married? Children?”
Liv shook her head.
“There are children in my life. But none are my own.” Because I’m barren, she thought. I paid for our treachery with the lives of the children I’ll never have.
She didn’t know where such thoughts came from. How could she possibly know? But then she thought of George and all the things he’d told her about wisdom rooted deep in the belly. How a person could access all the secrets of the universe if they merely traveled into themselves and grew very still and silent.
‘The womb of the world lives inside of you, Volva, inside of us all. Ask her and she will tell you.’ Liv could see George as he said the words, daring her to look deep enough to know it all.
“Do you have children, Stephen?” she asked, breaking from his gaze.
He recoiled as if the suggestion disgusted him. He shook his head.
“No. I’m married to my work.” He gestured to the asylum.
“You’re a doctor? You followed your dream.”
He nodded.
“It wasn’t easy, but yes. It’s been very fulfilling.” His voice shifted on the word fulfilling, and Liv took a step back. She wondered what sorts of things he did as a psychiatrist, how long his reach had become.
As she studied the soaring asylum, her breath grew shallow. Gazing at the high spires rising from the brick buildings made her unsteady on her feet, and she looked to the ground to escape the dizziness.
“Magnificent, isn’t it? I can’t give you a tour. It’s a sanitarium, after all. But if you’d like, I can show you the offices.”
Liv sighed.
“Not today. There are things we need to talk about. Meet me later?”
A crinkle of worry creased his brow, but he nodded.
“Yes. It would be lovely to catch up.”
“I think somewhere private is best,” she went on.
“Come to my house.” He pulled a small notebook and pen from the pocket of his white coat. He wrote an address and directions from the asylum. “I leave here at six o’clock. Come by around seven?”
“Yes. Thank you,” she told him stiffly.
She took the paper and walked away.
The familiarity of their youthful friendship had died. Had she expected anything else? And yet, she could not deny the shred of hope that had carried her to the train and kept her feet moving as she stepped off in Traverse City, Michigan.
‘Once fractured, a bone will never be the same,’ George had told her one morning while setting the wing of a crow they had found injured in the woods. ‘He may fly again, but the crack will remain. All of life is that way, Volva. We are broken, torn down, sometimes ruined in this long walk to the grave, and every wound, every bruise and heartbreak changes us. Remember that. What once was will never be again.’
Liv watched Stephen walk away. His gait had changed, his hair showed bits of gray at his temples, but something more had shifted in Stephen Kaiser. A blankness surrounded him. He stole light from the sky and gave off only darkness.
* * *
“Thank you. This is fine,” Liv told the man who’d offered her a ride from town.
She stepped from his car and walked down the long driveway to Stephen’s home. A black wrought-iron fence protected the sprawling property.
As the house slid into view, Liv stopped abruptly.
It was a large Victorian house, eerily similar to the house Stephen had grown up in. The rounded second floor room made her breath catch as she remembered the dark figure from her dream.
Stephen opened the door before she knocked.
“Liv.” He beamed. “Come in,” he told her, backing into the dim hallway and opening his arms in a wide, welcoming gesture that only added to Liv’s unease.
Antique sconces held dim yellow bulbs. Oil paintings much like his childhood home covered the walls, but these were not drab family photos. Instead, Stephen decorated his walls with death and depravity. Images of humans chasing animals with spears hung in gilded frames. She saw a picture of a man, his neck broken, dangling from a hangman’s noose. Another painting depicted a pile of bodies heaped in a barren field.
Liv blinked and almost commented on the paintings, but dread blanketed her in a kind of speech paralysis. Numbly, she followed him to a sitting room.
“I’m surprised you don’t live at the asylum,” she commented after he’d handed her a glass of sherry.
He shook his head and sat in a black velvet chair, stretching his long legs in front of him.
He’d changed from his doctor’s coat and wore blue slacks with a black sweater. His pale face looked bloodless against the dark fabric.
“I lived at the hospital in the beginning, in a modest little apartment that I rather liked. But after a few years, I realized I longed for the creaks of an old house. Funny, isn’t it? I hated that house on Spellway Road, and now here I am.” He waved at the room. “Of course, this one is mine and mine alone.”
“It certainly is large,” Liv told him, unable to fake a compliment. The house was ugly, and it was… unpleasant. She felt on edge just sitting within its walls.
“Tell me about you, Liv. You just disappeared. I wondered if you followed George’s wishes and went to Norway.”
Liv offered a sad smile and shook her head.
“I haven’t seen George since I left. I fled, Stephen. I was terrified.”
Stephen studied her.
“And you chose Boston?”
&n
bsp; She shifted uncomfortably on the satin sofa.
“California, and then Boston, yes.”
She recalled her final night in Gaylord, walking dazed into her bedroom. She had packed a bag and slipped into the night. She knew how to hop a train, but that night she couldn’t. She had no courage left. She remembered wishing she’d eaten the boar’s heart. Such a foolish thought, and yet she wondered if it might have changed everything. Instead, she bought a bus ticket, with money she stole from her mother’s can behind the potatoes, to California.
The memories of her first days in California were like peering through a fogged window. She had walked catatonic for three days around San Francisco. She slept in sips during the day, in a woman’s powder room or at the picture show.
When she had met an old man tilling a garden outside his little house, he invited her in for lemonade. She lived with him for two years. When he died, she bought another train ticket and travelled back across the country.
Again, she wandered the streets, but this time she had a bit of money. She stayed at the YMCA. There she met a young pregnant mother soon to give up her child. Liv accompanied the woman, Meredith, to the hospital, where she gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
When Frannie, the head mother from the orphanage, arrived to take the child, Liv promised Meredith she would see the baby settled. After a day of sitting vigil with the baby girl, Liv never left Helping Hands.
The children loved her. They flocked to her in droves. They ran to her with their colored pictures, their stubbed toes, their favorite toys.
In Liv, they found the parent they’d never had. Here was a person who saw them, who not only looked but truly saw them. And in the children, Liv found purpose in an existence that for several years had been empty and unbearable.
Liv occupied the moment before her and no other. She had learned the practice of presence from George many years before, but after her final night with Stephen, it had saved her life.
In the moment, she never had to visit the past. She could almost believe it never happened at all.
“I work at an orphanage in Boston. The children are my home now. Or they were.”
Dead Stream Curse: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel Page 6