Calling Back the Dead: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “Will Slater?”

  Sarah nodded, hoping she was not breaching a confidence that Will and Delila shared.

  “An absolute tragedy what happened to his family. Although tragedy implies something accidental, and it surely was not.”

  “Why were you committed, Delila? What happened in Kerry Manor?”

  At the mention of the name, Delila clutched the lace tablecloth beneath her fingers and closed her eyes.

  “I used to believe that old adage sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me, and then I met Ethel.”

  “The Ethel who burned her family?”

  “Yes. She was long gone when I encountered her, but her presence, her spirit perhaps, remained.”

  “She haunted the house?”

  “After the day I got rid of her, I blocked everything out. For two years I pretended it never happened, and then one night, Christie’s little girl started singing Ethel’s nursery rhyme. I near died in my chair. After that, I knew I had to unearth… something. I’m still not sure what, but I couldn’t live with this horrible, terrifying mystery. What if I woke one morning, and she again stood behind me in the mirror?”

  Sarah saw a drop of Delila’s cranberry juice slip down the outside of her mug, staining the white lace. The red fanned out in a tiny flower.

  “I became very interested in the occult. Christie hated it. She believed in not speaking about the things that scared or hurt us. Today, they‘d call it denial. Christie was on the outside looking in. She glimpsed the supernatural for an instant. It’s different when it moves in and takes up shop in your little life. There’s not enough room. I don’t understand what Ethel wanted, but I learned things about her. I learned that she too was in the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane. Her parents sent her there, just one year before she killed them. I learned of a brotherhood of doctors who experimented on patients who were touched by the supernatural.”

  “Can you tell me the story, Delila? Of Kerry Manor?”

  “I will, yes, I will. But first, I need to know what’s at stake here. Why have you come, young lady?”

  Sarah pictured Sammy and tears pricked her eyes. She pulled in a heavy breath and let it out slow.

  “My brother was murdered at Kerry Manor on Halloween.”

  Delila’s eyes opened wide, and her mouth fell open. She touched a gold cross suspended around her neck.

  “They have not found his murderer?”

  Sarah shook her head. “But it’s so much more complicated than that. His wife has been acting strangely since it happened. Sometimes she sings… an old song, and she sounds like a little girl. She has lapses in memory. She has no memory of the night my brother died.”

  Delila looked grave.

  “My heart goes out to you, Sarah. Another life stolen by Kerry Manor.” She shook her head, disgusted. “In August 1961, I visited Kerry Manor with my future husband. It was an abandoned house, a place kids explored, but for me…” She paused, searching for words. “It had an energy, an attraction I guess. I returned to the house late that night with my niece, Christie. She was my niece, but I was only two years her senior - we were more like sisters. Christie walked around outside, but I insisted on going in the house. I always had an adventurous spirit, often to my detriment, I fear. I walked into the house, and the moment I stepped across the threshold, I sensed a presence. I should have turned and left instantly. I heard the voice of a little girl. She was singing a nursery rhyme.”

  “What was it?” Sarah whispered.

  “One for sorrow, two for mirth-”

  “Three for a funeral, and four for a birth,” Sarah finished, grinding her teeth and wondering when she would wake up from this horrible nightmare.

  “The girl attacked me, the spirit. She wasn’t physical, but she had power. I started to scream and she clawed my face, though later I tried to convince myself that I clawed my own face, got spooked, panicked. Except the next morning she was there. Everywhere I went, she hovered in the shadows. Her laughter and songs invaded my dreams, my every thought. But she was not merely a nuisance. She hurt me. Somehow, she gathered energy and hurt me. I was terrified she would hurt Christie. After a few days, Christie’s husband had me committed.”

  “Her husband?”

  Delila smiled and shook her head sadly.

  “I didn’t blame him. Well, maybe I did at the time, but to them I appeared insane. I had lost my marbles. They didn’t know what to do, and just down the road was this magnificent place filled with doctors who could save me.”

  “The asylum.”

  “Yes. And later I realized they had saved me, for if I had not gone into the asylum and met the people who could rid me of this spirit, she would have driven me to my death.”

  Delila took a sip of juice, but her hand shook, and she returned the cup with a clank to the table.

  “Don’t let my age fool you,” she told Sarah. “I’m as steady as a boulder. This,” she held her shaking hands in front of her face “is fear.”

  “How did you get rid of her?” Sarah asked, sliding to the edge of her seat.

  “There’s an odd little place on the grounds of the old asylum. Kids these days call it the hippie tree. Are you aware of it?”

  Sarah nodded.

  She had heard of it. Kids liked to go there to graffiti and smoke pot. One of her clients claimed people called it a portal to hell.

  “All urban legends begin with a kernel of truth,” Delila said. “I believe that. And in the case of the hippie tree, I know it to be true. We trapped her there - Ethel, or whatever dark thing Ethel had become.”

  “How did you know what to do?”

  “There was a woman at the asylum, Sophia. She could see spirits. Today they’d call her a medium. She was the first person who saw Ethel, who finally proved to me I was not insane. She told me about another patient at the asylum. He was an alcoholic who’d gone in and out of the hospital several times. He too had been directed to the asylum because a spirit haunted him. This man told me where to go and how to rid myself of Ethel.”

  “And it worked?” Sarah asked

  Delila nodded, but her eyes clouded and her mouth turned down.

  “And yet… terrible things still surrounded Kerry Manor. I returned to that basin of trees at the asylum, years later, and I searched for the child’s dress Christie and I had nailed into the tree. It was gone.”

  “A dress?”

  Delila nodded.

  “Christie went to Kerry Manor and retrieved an item of Ethel’s, a green dress. We did a ritual in that basin of trees. I fear the act only detached Ethel from me, and it was only a matter of time before someone would come along and release her. I must tell you, Sarah, I learned many things after that summer. I spent years visiting a therapist who did exorcisms.”

  “Exorcisms?”

  Delila nodded.

  “Until you’re touched by the unseen world, all these words are just hocus-pocus, scary bedtime stories. But he told me tales of unimaginable things. He reckoned Ethel wanted to possess me. She was waiting for me to break down enough to become available to her. Your brother’s wife sounds as if Ethel has possessed her.”

  Sarah bit her lip and studied the woman before her. Delila’s eyes bored into her own. The woman believed every word she spoke.

  “What do I do if she is possessed?”

  “My friend is dead now some twenty years,” Delila admitted, “but I’m still in contact with his daughter. Let me reach out to her. The people who work in this field must do so in obscurity. Our society is far too scientific to allow their stories into the light, but they exist, my dear. I will say this: I wonder if the key is not the asylum.”

  “The asylum?”

  Delila nodded.

  “Ethel went there herself, you see. It all started there, and life is a circle. Fear not, Sarah. Fate has brought us together. You might suppose you did this on your own, but if you pay attention, you will notice tiny nudges from the unseen world.”r />
  CHAPTER 21

  Then

  Corrie

  “M aybe you should cancel the party.”

  I paused in the hallway at the sound of Sarah’s voice. I must have been asleep for more than a few minutes if Sarah had arrived and I wasn’t even aware of it.

  “That seems a little drastic,” Sammy told her.

  I heard him pacing around the room.

  “What’s drastic is insisting on throwing a giant party with a hundred people in this house when Corrie’s…” Sarah trailed off, and I strained forward wondering what she was about to say.

  “She’s just off,” Sammy continued. “I think it’s this novel. She’s blocked, and I’m sure it’s bringing up stuff from her past about her mom and dad. Things she’s never dealt with as an adult.”

  “I know her mom died of alcoholism, but what happened to her dad?”

  “He left when the girls were little. Just took off one day and never came back.”

  “That’s terrible, did she ever try to find him?”

  “She looked him up on the Internet but didn’t get a hit. I’m not sure she really wanted to find him.”

  “I wouldn’t discount all this, Sam,” Sarah said. “I know your Halloween party is your precious little pet, but the stuff you’re telling me about Corrie is not good. You’re finding her wandering around the house at night and she has no memory of it the next day. She was holding one of Isis’s dolls in the lake like she was trying to drown it? That’s the stuff of horror movies, brother.”

  I frowned, shaking my head, and almost stepped into the room to refute the insane comments.

  “Don’t you dare mention that to her,” Sammy said.

  I heard him moving closer to the hallway and considered revealing myself, but suddenly I felt ashamed. Had I done those things?

  “I won’t mention it to her, but you sure as hell should. My advice? Say you want to get into some therapy and move back home. This place is disturbing. It’s obviously bringing up weird stuff for Corrie, and it’s your job as her husband to do the right thing. She’d never suggest it because she knows you love this house, but come on, Sammy. Since you guys came here, Corrie’s not been well.”

  I listened to Sammy’s sigh and could imagine him resting his head against the fireplace mantel, biting his lower lip as he battled his desire to stay in Kerry Manor with his larger desire to save me, his wife, from an apparent mental breakdown. But I wasn’t having a breakdown, so why…

  “Corrie?”

  I looked up, startled, to see Sarah standing in the hallway.

  “Oh, hi,” I said trying to appear sleepy. I rubbed my eyes. “I thought I heard you guys talking down here. Did I sleep for long?”

  I walked into the living room, where Sammy looked rattled. He replaced the expression with his usual grin and snaked an arm around my waist.

  “How did you sleep, my love?”

  I nodded and yawned. “Good. Was I out for a while?”

  “Two hours, about,” Sammy said.

  “Isis is napping?”

  “Yep, both of my princesses were catching their beauty sleep. Sarah wondered if we wanted to go get lunch after Isis wakes up?”

  I nodded, willing Sammy to open up and tell me the truth. Instead, he looked away, offering a thumbs-up to Sarah.

  “I’m dying for some chicken wings,” he announced.

  I LAID on the rug watching Isis line up a row of little plastic people near the dollhouse.

  “Hey, baby.” Sammy came into the room and squatted beside me, leaning over to kiss my temple.

  “Mmm, hi,” I told him, growing drowsy as the fire seeped out, wrapped me in a coil of heat.

  “Listen,” he said. He sat on the floor next to me and rolled me to face him. “The party is not important, Corrie. I know I make a big deal out of it, but I’m not against canceling the whole thing. I’m not against moving home, either.”

  I sat up, agitated by his question.

  “Sammy, we’ve sublet our house out until May. We can’t move home.”

  “Then we could move in with my mom, or even Sarah, until the lease runs out. Or rent a different place, whatever.”

  “Where is this coming from?” I asked, thinking back to the conversation I’d overhead between Sammy and Sarah several days earlier.

  He tilted my chin up and studied my eyes. I saw the familiar love always present in Sammy’s face, and something else - worry.

  “I’ve noticed a change in you, honey. It’s not bad,” he added. “But I get the feeling this place doesn’t agree with you. Maybe it’s taking a break from your practice, or writing your book, but I’m afraid all this change has been too much. I wonder if we shouldn’t backpedal a bit. We’re so far up the Peninsula. I go into town every day, but sometimes you’re here with Isis for days at a time. This is a lonely place, it’s big, and to use everyone else’s words, ‘creepy.’”

  I blinked around the room and considered his statement. Had I changed? It was a huge leap taking the break from my practice, and the book - frankly, the book was resting in purgatory with only a few hundred words added weekly. But surely, we couldn’t blame the house.

  “No,” I shook my head. “We have to stay. This is where we’re meant to be right now. I’m sure of it.”

  He took my face in his hands and kissed me. For a moment I melted into him. He nuzzled my cheek.

  “Maybe we should take Isis to my mom’s tonight? We could make dinner, spend a few hours warming up the bed.” He kissed my chin and eyelids.

  “Daddy, look,” Isis announced, pointing to her house.

  All her figures were laid on their backs in the study. Only one figure remained upright. A little girl with blonde hair, which she’d placed in an upstairs bedroom.

  “Where’s all the furniture, honey?” Sammy asked, leaning toward Isis and peering into the house.

  “It’s gone, Daddy. The fire burned it up.”

  Sammy frowned and touched one of the little figures.

  “Are they taking a nap?” he asked.

  But Isis didn’t answer him. She walked the little girl figure back and forth in the bedroom and finally tucked her into a tiny wooden cabinet and left her.

  “Snack?” Isis shifted her eyes from the house and gazed at me.

  “Sure, boo-bear. Apple? Or smoothie bites?”

  “Moothie bites,” she announced, jumping up and running to the kitchen.

  “Your mom and Sarah are going to dinner tonight,” I reminded Sammy. “And then to watch that new movie with Scarlet Johansen.”

  “Oh dang, that’s right,” Sammy said, still staring into the dollhouse. He touched one of the prone figures a second time. “Sarah and Scarlett, how tragic unrequited love is.”

  I stood and laughed, fluffing his hair. His sister had a serious crush on Scarlett Johansen. She never missed one of her new releases. The previous Christmas, Sammy had a t-shirt made for Sarah with a picture of Scarlett superimposed holding Sarah’s hand as they stood in front of Niagara Falls.

  I found Isis in the kitchen tugging on the refrigerator door from her footstool.

  “Isis, when you block the door, it won’t open,” I told her, moving her and her footstool out of the way.

  I pulled open the door, and the lights flickered.

  “Mommy, lights,” Isis announced, pointing at the ceiling.

  “I saw, boo-bear,” I told her, filing through the freezer for the plastic bag of smoothie bites. I grabbed them just as the lights flickered and then went black.

  “Damn. Oops, naughty word. Isis?” I reached down expecting to feel her soft blonde head, but my hand waved through the air.

  “Isis?” I said louder, walking my hands down the refrigerator and then reaching into the darkness. She didn’t respond, and my pulse began to race.

  “Sammy?” I called, moving cautiously along the counter toward the doorway. The great room had a fire. We could sit there and wait for the power to come back on. I glanced toward the dark win
dow expecting to see lightning, but only more blackness greeted me.

  I paused, listening. If Isis were hiding, she’d eventually give in and giggle. Unlike most two-year-olds, Isis was not afraid of the dark. Sometimes she and Sammy would climb into the furthest reaches of the closets to crouch in total blackness when we played hide-n-seek. I heard a shuffle near the kitchen island and blindly moved toward it.

  “Got you,” I said as my hands found her. I touched the top of her head, but as my hand drifted down, I realized her hair was too long - very long, and tangled. She was too tall. This child stood above my waist, and Isis barely reached my thighs. My hands shook as they roamed from hair to face. Cold, waxy skin drifted beneath my fingers.

  In the darkness, I stared down shaking, my mouth opening and closing like a fish plucked from the water and laid on the beach.

  A terrible scream exploded from my chest, and almost instantly the lights flashed, on illuminating the kitchen. My hands were poised in front of me, but no child stood beneath them.

  Sammy raced into the room, Isis propped on his hip.

  “What? What’s happened?”

  Sammy’s eyes darted around the kitchen.

  Isis watched me with round, frightened eyes.

  “I… the power went out. You have Isis?”

  I tried to take her from Sammy, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on, burying her face in his shoulder.

  “The power went out?” Sammy asked, puzzled.

  “Yes, didn’t it go out in the whole house?” I searched the kitchen with my eyes. Where had she gone?

  “And that’s why you screamed? Good God, I thought you’d seen a knife-wielding lunatic peeking in the window.”

  I shook my head, started to mention the child, and then I registered Sammy’s face, the lines of worry etched there, the fading shock.

  “I couldn’t find Isis. I panicked.”

  “She wandered in a few minutes ago. I figure you were bringing her snack to the great room.”

  “Snack?” I asked, staring at the floor where I was sure the small outlines of two feet had stood, their remnants already vanishing. I squatted down and touch the place. It did not feel warm, but I did feel something.