The last nail pulled free, and now when she turned the knob, the door swung open. Flames devoured the room; the opposite wall was a mass of burning and writhing. Sammy’s monster figures had melted into pools of colored plastic on the mantel. Sarah tried to push the door in further, but something blocked it. She leaned down, struggling to see through the smoke, reaching with her hands. Her fingers found warm flesh and soft curly hair.
“Corrie,” she moaned, grabbing Corrie’s legs and awkwardly shoving her deeper into the room. She pushed in, grabbed Corrie beneath the arms and pulled her out. She dragged her down the hallway, pausing near the kitchen when the haunted sound of a girl’s voice found her.
“One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a funeral, four for a birth…”
Her strength faltered, and Corrie slipped down.
“No,” she mumbled, and then she shouted. “No, you fucking devil. No!”
She lifted Corrie into her arms and ran. The front door was locked, but even when Sarah undid the latch, the door refused to move.
“You bastard, you goddamn fucking bastard,” she screamed, kicking the door and losing her hold on Corrie a second time.
Sarah laid her down and checked her pulse, finding an almost imperceptible throb.
Upstairs she heard footsteps running along the hall, a child’s footsteps.
“This isn’t real, this can’t be real,” she whispered.
Candles flickered from every surface in the great room, and a fire spit orange embers.
She dragged Corrie into the great room and stopped, staring at the pentagram chalked on the floor, Sammy’s clothes lying in the center as if he’d simply lain down to take a nap. Dark blobs of what looked like mud lay in clumps around the floor. Sarah had a momentary image of Sammy clawing his way through coffin and earth. Tracking across the wet cemetery, bound for Kerry Manor.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs and Sarah clenched her jaw, waiting for the monster to appear.
Instead, Corrie came to. Her eyes flashed open and locked on Sarah’s.
“Oh, thank God,” but the words died on her lips as she saw the black rage in Corrie’s pupils.
Corrie reached up and locked her hands around Sarah’s throat.
Sarah grabbed Corrie’s hands, usually delicate, but now strong and stiff as they squeezed the tender flesh of Sarah’s neck.
In the distance, sirens broke through, but closer she heard voices shouting. Suddenly there was pounding on the door, and a moment later it burst open.
Will and Brook stumbled in.
Sarah tried to call out but managed only a groan.
“Sarah,” Brook yelled.
Will was there, prying Corrie’s hands away.
Corrie’s lips pulled back from her teeth, she snarled, and then as quickly as she’d awoken, she went limp, flopping to the ground, her head snapping back and smacking the wood floor.
Will and Brook stared at her with wide, shocked eyes.
“We have to get out,” Sarah croaked, relief draining the last of her energy. She looked at Corrie, hesitating before lifting her body and struggling towards the door.
Will stopped her, pushing his arms beneath Corrie.
“I’ve got her. It’s okay,” he told Sarah.
Her arms dropped slack at her sides, and Brook put an arm around her waist, helping her outside.
“What’s in there?” Brook asked, eyes huge as she glanced back at the house.
“It’s on fire,” Sarah shouted. “The whole place is about to…” But she stopped suddenly. The smell of burning had vanished, the billowing black smoke no longer marred the sky. “The study…”
Sarah walked around the house, dismayed, unable to believe her own eyes. No fire, no smoke. The house stood untouched in the rainy day, the study windows reflected the gray sky and nothing else.
CHAPTER 38
Now
Sarah
“The drapes caught fire,” Sarah explained, holding up a pile of singed drapes. “I panicked.”
The fire engine stood in the circular driveway, several men hanging off and watching as Sarah attempted to explain.
“You said the house was on fire.” The fire chief looked disgusted.
“It looked really bad,” Brook cut in. “The phone service isn’t good. We tried to call back and say we’d put it out, but it was too late,” she lied.
“What happened to your neck?” the chief asked, eyes narrowed on the red flesh encircling Sarah’s throat.
“I ran into a clothesline.” It was a terrible lie and the chief’s face told her as much but the words tumbled out.
Brook shot her a sidelong glance, but nodded at the chief.
The fireman looked at the house, and then glared back at the two women.
Sarah glanced at her car where they had laid Corrie in the back seat. Will had slipped into the woods to wait until the men cleared out.
Beyond them Kerry Manor stood dark and foreboding against the gray sky.
CORRIE
* * *
I SAT at Sarah’s table, sipping an espresso and listening to Sarah explain what she saw at Kerry Manor. Brook and Will stared, breath bated, until she finished, and then all three turned to me.
I looked at the red welt surrounding her neck and tried not to cry.
“Did you see a fire, Corrie?” Sarah asked.
I nodded, replaying in my mind the moments leading up to the fire. I couldn’t possibly tell them the truth.
Will studied my face and I glanced down, unable to look him in the eyes.
“Before you tell us,” he said. “I have something to show you.” He went into Sarah’s living room and returned with a folder stuffed with papers. “Read it.”
Sarah nodded.
“Go up to my study, Corrie. Take your time.”
I took the folder and lumbered up the stairs, exhausted, sad, embarrassed, but most of all confused. I thought back to Sammy’s final days, the overheard conversations between him and Sarah. Something was terribly wrong with me.
“DON’T WORRY,” Sarah told me as I crept into the kitchen, the folder clutched to my chest. “Everyone’s gone to bed.”
My eyes hurt from crying. I’d read for nearly three hours beginning with the stories of Kerry Manor, then Sarah’s documentation of my behavior according to her own observations, and those relayed through Sammy. Will typed the final page verbatim from the story in the Enchiridion. It revealed a terrible experiment in a chamber behind the Northern Michigan Asylum; a night when a little girl was sacrificed to a horrific evil that would haunt the Leelanau Peninsula for a century.
“It’s all true?” I asked, taking the tissue Sarah handed me and wiping my eyes. “Sammy wanted to leave. He was planning to move us out of Kerry Manor. I didn’t want to. I’m responsible.”
“Not you,” Sarah said, taking the folder from my hand. “The spirit that took possession of Ethel in 1901. It wasn’t Ethel who burned her family. The Brotherhood chose her because she was easy prey for the spirit. Those doctors deserve to burn for what they did.”
I sat heavily in a chair, glancing at the refrigerator where photos and papers were tucked beneath magnets. I saw an image of Sammy and Sarah as children. Sammy pulled Sarah in a wagon across a muddy yard. Their faces and t-shirts were splattered with mud, their grins identical.
“Corrie.” Sarah squatted in front of my chair, taking my hands. “We believe whatever possessed Ethel Kerry one-hundred years ago is moving into you. It’s only a matter of time before something terrible happens.”
I swallowed and looked away.
“Something more terrible, you mean?”
She nodded.
Sarah
* * *
SARAH LOOKED up when a man cleared his throat.
Glen Blackburn stood in front of her desk. He wore a red and green Christmas sweater and looked the part of the grandfather.
Sarah shifted her hands to her lap, sitting back in her chair.
“Mr. Blackburn, how can I help
you?”
He smiled, studying her with bright blue eyes that looked far younger than his seventy-odd years.
“I believe you have something that belongs to me,” he said, sitting in the chair opposite her desk.
“Do I?” she asked, imagining the key tucked in her purse.
He nodded and folded his hands in his lap, waiting.
“Let’s say I did. Why shouldn’t I take it to the police? And that sick book along with it.”
Glen cast his eyes down. He reached into his pocket and Sarah tensed, ready to throw herself sideways if he pulled out a gun. Instead, he slipped a small metal box out and opened it, tilting the contents toward her.
“Butterscotch?” he asked, taking one out and popping it in his mouth.
“No, thank you.”
“I understand your concerns, Miss Flynn.”
“Call me Sarah.”
“Sarah, then. That key offers access to a terrible place, and that book contains terrible secrets.”
“That you were a part of.”
The old man nodded, his eyes sad.
“I came to psychiatry late in my life. I was over forty when I finished my Ph.D. and was offered a position at the Traverse City State Hospital. I was naïve, desperate to prove myself. But I promise you, I entered the world of medicine with the best of intentions. When Dr. Knight approached me about the Brotherhood, it was tantalizing. A secret society of doctors who studied the paranormal. He gave me an initiation of sorts, a battery of questions. They checked my background, even interviewed my family, I found out later, though they used a cover. Said it was a census or some such nonsense. To feel chosen, what an odd gift.”
Sarah thought of the stories in the Enchiridion and stared hard at the man before her. Whatever he looked like today, not so long ago he’d been a part of the torture and even murder of his own patients.
“I didn’t know it then, but they carefully chose which meetings I attended. The cases were intriguing, and the displays mysterious, but not harmful. They gave the patients standard medicines. I watched a man who could tell you your ailments by merely staring at your body. I believe they’re called medical intuitives today. I saw an old woman turn water to ice. They did not hurt the patients, they were not distressed. Some of them basked in the special attention.”
Sarah snorted.
“These sound like excuses for your conscience.”
“They may be that, but they are also true. It was carefully orchestrated, I understood later. The Brotherhood was dying, fewer members each year, a shift away from institutionalized care. They didn’t want to risk the loss of a member, so I was not invited to the cruel and barbaric showings in the beginning.
“By the time I witnessed one, I was so entangled, I could not escape. The Brotherhood had very wealthy, influential members. In my first year, they sent me on an all-expense-paid trip to Barbados - myself and my entire family. They told me to interview a medicine man during my visit and report on my findings.”
“How fascinating,” Sarah said dryly.
“A month after I returned from the trip, I saw a patient die in the chamber. She couldn’t perform, and her doctor was angry and embarrassed. He gave her some concoction until pink foam flowed from her lips.” He closed his eyes and frowned. “I can still see her face. I left the chamber and vomited. The doctor who brought me in was cold and angry when I confronted him later. He said I had signed a blood oath, and I would pay with the lives of my family if I left the Brotherhood.
“I suffered in silence. It was wrong. I will take that guilt to my grave and atone for my sins with my God. After the asylum closed, the Brotherhood continued meetings for a period, but the key holder - Dr. Knight, my original mentor - grew ill. He had cancer. I visited him on his deathbed and demanded the key. I told him it was his final opportunity before leaving this life to end the evil he had taken part in for so long. I would protect the chamber and its secrets. In return, he would claim to have thrown the key in the ocean at the bequest of an angelic visit as he neared death.”
“And he agreed?”
“He was feverish in his final days, and terrified. I told him I was being divinely guided in my requests. He obliged me.”
“Why didn’t you just throw the key into the ocean?”
Blackburn paused.
“A part of me feared the evil that lived in the chamber would find a way. That key would have been plucked from the sand by some wayward traveler. It would make its way into the hands of the Brotherhood once again. If I kept it, I could ensure that no one ever opened it.”
“The Brotherhood didn’t search for it?”
“Oh, they did. They unearthed Knight’s coffin months after his death; they desecrated his grave. They attacked his eldest son one night while he was leaving his job in the city. The Brotherhood wanted the key, but they never found it.”
“And yet a doctor in the Brotherhood pointed us to you.”
Glen nodded.
“Which concerns me, yes. I am fortunate, perhaps, that it was Kemper who put it all together. You see, Kemper, or Dr. Frederic, believes that everything must arise on the waves of energy. He cannot seek it himself, because it must be delivered to him by forces greater than our own. If he were to steal it, he would fear the action was cursed and he would surely lose it, or perhaps fall ill. However, if he were sought out, by you for instance, and you delivered him the key-”
“Which we did,” Sarah admitted grumpily.
“So, he has it then?”
Sarah shook her head.
“He had it, and honestly he might have kept it, but he decided to offer us as some kind of sick sacrifice. I smacked him on the head with his gun.”
“And you now have the key?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not safe as long as you have it. I ask that you return it to me.”
“Under one condition.”
Blackburn cocked an eyebrow.
“I need you to get us in one last time.” Sarah paused before her next words. But who could understand what they were facing more than this man? “My sister is possessed. I want to perform an exorcism within the chamber. That’s where this evil spirit originated, and I think that’s our only hope of releasing it.”
Blackburn blinked at Sarah, his blue eyes watery.
“I swore I would never step foot inside again.”
“Then don’t go in. Take us to the door, open it. After the exorcism, I’ll give you the key. Although I’m not sure you’ll be safe from Kemper.”
“I will. The police have arrested Dr. Frederic for first degree murder.”
“What? Who did he murder?”
Glen looked at a little 3-D model of a house on Sarah’s desk, his eyes troubled.
“He murdered a nurse at the asylum twenty years ago, when she threatened to expose him. During one of our meetings in the chamber, a patient saw the spirit of the dead nurse revealing how Frederic murdered her. She described where he hid the body and the murder weapon.”
“And you waited twenty years to tell anyone?”
“I had a family, Sarah. We could never bring the things that occurred in that chamber into the light. I believed that for a long time. Now it’s time to make amends. I know I’ll pay for my silence, and for my sins.”
Sarah shook her head, disgusted with the man but understanding if it ever came down to protecting those she loved or outing a murderer, she’d protect first.
“What about the rest of the Brotherhood? Won‘t they come after you?”
“In less than a month, I am moving with my family. We are leaving the country, and the chamber will be closed forever.”
“Where are you going?”
He smiled and shook his head.
“That, I cannot disclose.”
“Are you leaving out of fear?”
Blackburn shrugged.
“I’ve been having prophetic dreams. I feel it is time to relocate. My daughter is recently widowed. She would like to raise her son in an
other world.”
Sarah thought of Corrie, also newly widowed and left with a child to raise alone. The exorcism would rid her of the evil spirit, but it wouldn’t bring Sammy back. There would still be a long road ahead.
“Sarah, exorcisms are not to be handled lightly. The realms of spirit are as real as you and me, and if you release an energy, it seeks to go somewhere. I have seen it with my own eyes.”
“I’ve found someone who can do it. I just have to convince him. I read the accounts in the Enchiridion. You guys wanted the spirits channeled into other patients. You did it on purpose.”
He frowned and sighed.
“It was done. But I did not do it - and I promise you, if those doctors knew how vulnerable they were, they never would have attempted it.”
“Vulnerable how?”
“No one controls the spirit when it’s released. It finds the path of least resistance. That means a person who is compromised in some way - whether that be mental illness, grief, or a child. I’m sure you read about Ethel, the first such official experiment in the chamber.”
“Yes.” Sarah shook her head, fury ballooning in her chest.
“Take only those who are strong into the chamber, Sarah. Otherwise the evil will accompany you out.”
CHAPTER 39
Now
Corrie
“G orey…” His voice whispered my name and like a thousand other waking moments, I returned to my body as if it were the most natural sound in the world.
It’s unbelievable how sleep erases our worst fears, our worst realities. In sleep, Sammy was not dead. But every time I woke and faced the empty room, I confronted that truth as well.
Except…
“Gorey, wake up.”
My eyes fluttered. I stared at the ceiling in Sarah’s guest bedroom, but when my eyes shifted down, I found his face, his soft brown eyes searching mine, and I struggled to breathe.
He touched my cheek, his hands familiar as they cupped my jaw.
I tried to say his name but choked on a guttural sob that stuck in my throat. I cried, clutching him, my hands wrapped in the fabric of his t-shirt, pushing into the hardness and softness of his body.
Calling Back the Dead: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel Page 22