Calling Back the Dead: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel
Page 25
“He practically confesses in there,” Sarah continued, nodding at the notebook.
“Practically isn’t a confession.”
“Yeah,” Sarah sighed.
In the weeks since Will had vanished, Sarah had thought of little else. Despite her hours of contemplation, she didn’t know what she wanted to become of Will Slater.
“I printed all the documents he compiled about Kerry Manor.” She handed the detective the sheaf of papers. “He wasn’t wrong, you know.” Sarah said. “Something dark was in that house.”
“Was?” Collins cocked an eyebrow.
“Yeah. Was.”
Sarah stood and cast a parting glanced at Will’s name on the manila folder. She wondered if she’d ever see him again - gaze at him sitting at a defendant’s table, fighting for his life.
A part of her hoped not.
EPILOGUE
Six Months Later
Corrie
I still miss Sammy most days, every day. It’s a deep missing, in my bones, my tendons and joints. Something that ignites with strange weather - a storm is coming and then the missing rises up, an achy specter crawling inside my body, impossible to dislodge.
But I’m better, too. Better is an interesting word. It’s a transitional word, a word without end, and it can reveal all manner of possibilities without promising too much.
“Mommy, look at me!” Isis waved from the beach where she’d assembled a mound of sand and stuck a plastic Frankenstein on the top. Her blonde curls had grown longer, almost to her shoulders.
I saw Sammy in her enormous smile, her twinkling brown eyes. She bit her lip and concentrated on digging a moat around the pile of sand.
“Beer for the lovely Sarah, an espresso for Corrie, and a gin and tonic for the mysterious Brook,” Fletcher announced, setting all of their drinks on the glass table.
I took my espresso and sipped it, watching the ocean yawning beyond the little white fence at the edge of beach. Seagulls swooped down, calling out their angry, guttural cries, ready to fight for any food scrap they spied.
Fletcher had rented the beach house for a week and invited us down to Florida. It had been over six months since I first met him, but he’d flown to Michigan on numerous occasions for book signings. He’d helped Sarah and I do repairs on my house.
“I read your book,” Brook told Fletcher, reaching into her bag to haul out a hardcover copy. “Now I need a signature.”
She pushed the book to Fletcher, who smiled.
“With pleasure, though I must warn you, my signature has been compared to a toddler’s. It’s hardly impressive.”
Brook grinned.
“It can’t be any worse than my own. Plus, I’m secretly gifting these to Sarah for her birthday. Guess the jig’s up.”
Sarah leaned over and kissed Brook’s cheek.
“Thanks, Joplin. Your bookshelves are looking rather sparse in my living room.”
“Joplin?” Fletcher asked.
“Janis Joplin. Brook has that same scratchy, sexy voice. I told her she needs to sing more. The lead singer of her band is way too vanilla. She’d be better off as a pop star. I prefer Brook’s grittiness.”
“You’ve officially moved in?” I asked Brook. “I remember Sarah once claiming she would never share her bathroom. How’s that working out?” I winked at Sarah.
Brook tugged on one of Sarah’s blond strands of hair.
“Pretty good, actually,” Sarah answered. “She buys homemade, Amish goat milk soap or some craziness, and makes her own lotion. Here, feel my hands.” Sarah brushed her hand along my cheek.
“Silky smooth,” I laughed.
I SET my glass in the sink and watched Sarah plop down next to Isis. Isis piled sand on Sarah’s bare legs. Bright umbrellas and girls clad in bikinis dotted the shoreline. A couple ran into the surf, laughing and splashing each other with water.
I felt the familiar constriction in my chest at the sight of the lovers. For a moment I couldn’t breathe, and I clutched the counter counting back from ten.
“Hey.” Fletcher’s voice startled me, and I jumped.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, touching my elbow.
I looked at his hand, and he abruptly took it away.
“It gets easier, Corrie,” he said, gazing into my face and offering me a smile. “I know it’s hard to imagine but I promise, it gets easier.”
I nodded.
I wanted to believe him, and at the same time, I wanted it to never get better. When that happened, I might no longer remember Sammy’s scent, or the way his voice rose several octaves when talking to Isis in his Penny the Doll voice. I couldn’t bear to lose even a trace of him.
“Do you remember Lauren? I mean, really remember her?”
Fletcher leaned against the counter and looked out the window.
“My memories are different. Some of them, I think I’ve created. They’re imaginings, but they keep me company.”
I nodded.
“Thank you for inviting us, Fletcher. I had no idea how wonderful it would be to see Isis playing in the sand, not a care in the world.”
“I’m grateful you came,” he said, pulling two more beers from the fridge. “I’ve been alone for a long time. You guys are starting to feel like family.”
“For me too,” I murmured.
“Any luck finding Will?” Fletcher asked.
I’d told him everything days after the exorcism. Unlike most of the people in my life, I could be honest with Fletcher.
“No. The detective called me a couple weeks ago. There’d been a sighting in Utah, but who knows.” I shrugged, still angry at the thought of Will. He had taken the man I’d loved most in the world. But even if he was convicted, it wouldn’t bring Sammy back.
“I’m sorry, Corrie. I hope they catch him.”
“I look forward to the day when I don’t think about him anymore.”
“How about something a little stronger than coffee?” Fletcher asked, lifting a bottle of wine.
“Sure.” I took a wine glass from the cupboard and watched him pour.
“Let’s go make new memories today. Yeah?” he asked. “The old will be there when the sun sets. Let your nights be for Sammy and your days for you.”
I watched the red swirl in my glass, the rich, pungent aroma filling the space between us. For a second the wine looked red, bright and oozing. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them it was only wine once more.
“Yes,” I said, clinking my glass against his bottle of beer. “To new memories.”
“FLETCHER?”
He sat on the porch swing, his arm draped along the back. I swore I’d heard him talking to someone, but not only him. I’d heard a woman’s voice too.
“Is someone else out here?”
He looked at me in the dark, a shaft of moonlight illuminating his startled face.
“Come and talk,” he murmured at last.
When I started toward the swing, he shook his head.
“Over there.”
He pointed to a chair, and I gazed for a moment longer at the empty space beside him on the swing.
“She was here,” I whispered, pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around my legs. “How?”
“You know how,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“Sammy came back, but…” I thought back to the night in the chamber, the sensation of my body being ripped in two. “After the exorcism, he was gone.”
Fletcher scooted to the edge of the swing.
“Lauren came back that first night. Her spirit. I saw her, felt her. I didn’t see her again for months. I still don’t understand it, and that’s why I warned you away, Corrie. When you open this doorway, portal, whatever it is, you close the door on a new life, a new love. I didn’t understand it at the time. I’ve never been able to get close to anyone. At any moment, Lauren might appear. I wouldn’t risk her finding me in bed with someone else.”
I squeezed my hands into my shi
ns, thinking of the night Sammy had appeared at Sarah’s house.
“It’s not enough,” Fletcher whispered. He rested his hand in the emptiness beside him. “And yet it’s more than I ever hoped for. I’ll never have a wife, children, a family of my own. I gave all that up the night I called her back.”
“Is she here now?”
He shook his head.
“She was, just before you came out.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” I fluttered my hand in the air.
“It’s okay. I can reach out for her now and she comes - not always, but most of the time. We sit and talk, mostly reminisce. I live in the past, in a tiny block of two years when we had each other and our whole lives ahead of us.”
“Does she talk about death? About what comes after?”
He shook his head.
“There’s no carry-over between our world and theirs. I asked once, and she said human words don’t exist to explain it. I’ve accepted that in life, I’ll never know.”
I nodded and looked toward the dark beach, the silhouette of palm trees, the sparkling of the dark water lapping the shore.
“I don’t want you to live the rest of your life waiting for him, Corrie.”
Tears slipped over my cheeks, and I tried to agree but couldn’t seem to get the words out.
“Come, sit with me now,” Fletcher said, patting the space beside him. “It’s nice to have a friend.”
* * *
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.R. Erickson, also known as Jacki Riegle, is an indie author who writes stories that weave together the threads of fantasy and reality. She is the author of the Northern Michigan Asylum Series as well the urban fantasy series: Born of Shadows. The Northern Michigan Asylum Series is inspired by the real Northern Michigan Asylum, a sprawling mental institution in Traverse City, Michigan that closed in 1989. Though the setting for her novel is real, the characters and story are very much fiction.
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Jacki was born and raised near Mason, Michigan, but she wandered to the north in her mid-twenties, and she has never looked back. These days, Jacki passes the time in the Traverse City area with her excavator husband, her wild little boy, and her three kitties: Floki, Beast and Mamoo.
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To find out more about J.R. Erickson, visit her website at www.jrericksonauthor.com.
Read the Other Books in the Northern Michigan Asylum Series
Some Can See
Ashes Beneath Her
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