Ashes Beneath Her: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “Rosemary,“ he announced. “My mom took it from her garden. What is it, honey?” he asked at the worried look on Hazel’s face.

  “Orla never came home last night.”

  He pulled open the refrigerator door, rummaging for a snack.

  “It’s Orla. She probably crashed with someone.”

  Everyone took the same nonchalant tone, but Hazel didn’t think so. Orla was free-spirited, but she always told the other girls where she was going. And they had a perfectly good telephone. Why wouldn’t she call and let them know?

  Orla had recently started part-time work at Zander’s Cafe, an organic restaurant in town. All the girls posted their work schedules on a big calendar next to the kitchen table. Orla was supposed to work the following morning, Monday, at nine a.m.

  “Did you call her parents?” Calvin asked, selecting a block of cheese.

  “That’s the last place she’d crash,” Hazel mumbled.

  “Not if her mom was sick, or it was her dad’s birthday. I think you’re worrying over nothing.”

  Hazel didn’t nod her head. Instead, she walked to the counter and frowned at Orla’s empty coffee mug and the devil card beneath it. She couldn’t bring herself to put the mug away and remove the card.

  * * *

  Hazel’s concern intensified the following morning.

  The phone rang at 9:15 a.m.

  “Hi, this is Stan at Zander’s. Is Orla there?”

  Hazel’s chest tightened, and she put a hand to her heart.

  “No. She didn’t show up for work?”

  “Not yet. We expected her fifteen minutes ago. I was hoping you would say she was on her way. We’ll be swamped today.”

  “I’ll tell her to call as soon as I hear from her.”

  When Orla hadn’t come home again the night before, Hazel almost called her parents. However, Orla had confided in Hazel about her mother’s fragile and worrisome personality. Hazel didn’t want to scare them, and she didn’t want to anger Orla if she’d merely stayed with a guy, or at a friend’s.

  Orla had moved into the house to escape from the judgmental gaze of her parents. Hazel feared it would be a betrayal of trust to tell Orla’s parents she’d missed work, not come home, and was acting irresponsibly.

  “But it’s not Orla,” Hazel whispered. She sat at the table, tapped her fingers, and watched the clock.

  * * *

  Orla’s father worked for Clark Construction, and her mother owned a little seamstress shop on Union Street.

  Hazel recognized Mr. Sullivan immediately. He was tall and dark like his daughter, with piercing blue eyes and a no-nonsense expression. He sat on the back of his pickup truck, eating lunch from a metal box.

  “Hi, Mr. Sullivan?” Hazel was aware of the construction men’s eyes on her. Not because she was beautiful, per se. She wasn’t. Pretty, according to some, but Hazel considered herself average. Her clothes, on the other hand, were not. They were bright and flowery and almost always eye-catching.

  He gave her a mystified stare, and then nodded.

  “You’re Orla’s roommate,” he said, wagging his finger. “I remember. You lived in China or something.”

  Hazel shook her head. “Our roommate, Jayne, used to live in Thailand. I’m Hazel. I’m sorry to bother you on your lunch. I’m wondering if you’ve seen Orla.”

  He put his sandwich back in the box and shook his head.

  “About two weeks ago, I guess. She stopped at the store to get thread.”

  Hazel bit her lip, tempted to turn and leave. She didn’t have to say anything more but knew if something had happened to Orla, she’d regret her silence for the rest of her life.

  “Orla hasn’t come home for two nights. She missed work today, and I’m worried.”

  Mr. Sullivan unscrewed the cap on his thermos and took a drink, swishing it in his mouth, and then spitting the water off to the side of the truck.

  “Sorry. Fiona uses this mustard that leaves a funny taste in my mouth.” He replaced the cap. “Orla hasn’t been home.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement. “And you find that unusual?”

  Hazel nodded, despite the skeptical look on his face.

  “I know Orla is spontaneous. But I’ve lived with her for almost two years,” Hazel explained. “She’s never done anything like this before.”

  “Stayed with someone else for a couple of days?”

  “Left without telling anyone. We’re like a family. We keep tabs on each other. I wasn’t very worried the first night, but then when she didn’t show again last night and also missed work… It’s not like her. And she’s supposed to make dinner tonight. We rotate. It’s just… it’s not right.”

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  “You call any of her other friends?”

  “Of course,” Hazel said. Before she’d driven to the construction site, Hazel called everyone she could think of. No one had spoken with Orla. “She left Sunday morning to return a library book. That’s the last time anyone has seen her.”

  Mr. Sullivan put his lunch things away and picked up his hard hat, but Hazel saw the troubled look in his eyes.

  “I’m off in three hours. If Orla doesn’t show up to make dinner, call me. I’ll call the police.”

  At the mention of the police, Hazel drew in a sharp breath. She didn’t quite know why. Maybe because the police felt like strange heroes considering they were living in a time of near-constant strife between the free-spirited folks like Hazel and the men who claimed to uphold the law. Twice, she’d been arrested for protesting the war in Vietnam. She hadn’t even thought about calling the police.

  Their mere mention cast Orla’s disappearance into a darker and more frightening light.

  9

  The Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane

  Orla

  Orla swam in darkness. Beneath her eyelids, a black navy reigned supreme. When she opened her eyes, more darkness greeted her. It was not altogether unpleasant, rather like the one time she tried magic mushrooms.

  She’d been at a party when a boy thrust the gnarled-looking fungus into her hand.

  “Most amazing ride of your life,” he’d said, popping one of the dried gray mushrooms into his mouth.

  The fungus had tasted earthy, dank. She choked it down and followed it with a gulp of Coke. Afterwards, she drifted on a river of color and sounds, which collided, merged, and wove a beautiful tapestry of light tendrils connecting everything. It had been tranquil until she drifted back toward reality. She grew exhausted, but when she tried to sleep, the river continued to sweep her down and down.

  This moment felt similar. Except it didn’t seem like a moment at all, but a million moments, an ocean of time lapping, rolling, returning to a giant darkness, ever moving with no end.

  A coldness enveloped her - the only sensation of discomfort. The chill penetrated her flesh, moved through her blood into her organs. Strange thoughts slipped by. She wondered if her spleen was cold, or was that her pancreas? She had paid little attention in anatomy class. If faced with identifying the location of an organ, she’d likely pick the wrong side of the body.

  Now and then, she attempted to move. Wiggle a finger, lift her head, but her sense of her body was as boundless as time. She couldn’t seem to isolate a limb to move it, and the effort so exhausted her that she’d slip back into the abyss, only to emerge a short time later, flutter her eyelids, part her lips, and then recede again.

  When Orla finally woke, the drug’s effects had faded. Her conscious mind no longer held any trace of the peaceful tranquility of her drugged sleep.

  Her eyes flew open - not to darkness, but the drab gray of medical walls, a brick ceiling, a bit of light snaking beneath a doorway.

  Heavy fabric bound her arms against her sides. Straps wrapped across her shins and over her thighs, pinning her to the bed. An additional bind cut into her forehead, pressing her skull against the hard surface beneath her.

  She wanted a sip of water and to cry out, but some
thing had been stuffed in her mouth and strapped in place. It cut into the tender flesh of her cheeks and the creases of her lips.

  Her final memory appeared vague and dream-like. The woman in Spencer’s driveway sinking a needle into her neck. Where had the woman taken her, and why?

  She wondered at the tooth in the driveway, the vision of the blonde girl gazing in horror at her own blood.

  Adrenaline pumped through Orla’s blood, creating an infuriating sensation of wanting to rip from her binds and sprint from the room, but she could do nothing.

  She lay gagged and bound and terrified at what lay ahead.

  10

  Liz

  “Fiona Sullivan?”

  Fiona looked up from the sweater laid out on her table. She’d been fussing the seam for over ten minutes, unable to concentrate on the tiny thread.

  A woman stood inside the shop’s entrance. She looked about Fiona’s age, with short blonde curls and a grim, sad smile. Wearing a wrinkled gray blouse and too-tight jeans, she appeared mildly disheveled. She had the air of a woman on the edge, a feeling Fiona was all too familiar with.

  Fiona smiled, set the sweater aside and stood, frowning at the ache in her lower back.

  “Yes. I’m Fiona Sullivan. How can I help you?”

  The woman stepped forward, glanced around the shop at the piles of neatly stacked clothing pinned with the names of their owners waiting for pickup.

  “My name is Liz Miner. I heard about your daughter.”

  “Orla?” Fiona asked, though of course it could be no one except Orla. She had only one child.

  The woman nodded. She clutched her handbag as if it held her together. If she dropped it, the woman herself might collapse as well.

  “My daughter was Susan Miner, Susie. Have you heard of her?”

  Fiona frowned, trying to recall the name.

  “Is she a friend of Orla’s? I can’t remember all her friends. She rarely brought them home, such a secretive girl.”

  Liz shook her head. She drew a folded piece of paper from her purse and strode across the room, handing it to Fiona.

  Fiona studied the page. She took a moment to realize it was a missing person’s poster.

  Missing: Susan (Susie) Lynn Miner

  D.O.B.: April 7th, 1953

  Last Seen: Sunday, August 27th, 1972

  In Petoskey, Michigan

  Wearing: A yellow Rolling Stones t-shirt with red lips and tongue. Blue or black shorts. White tennis shoes.

  Fiona stared at the pretty blonde girl in the photo. Her wide-set eyes looked light, probably blue. Her nose was little, dotted with freckles over a wide smile with two rows of straight teeth. Hoop earrings poked through her long blonde hair.

  “She’s still missing?”

  “It will have been three years on August 27th.”

  It was July 13th. Little more than a month from the anniversary.

  “I’m so sorry,” Fiona said, her guts twisting as she considered her own daughter, missing now for five days. But Orla was different, bohemian, reckless in some ways. Surely, she had just hitched a ride with friends. She’d be back any day.

  “I’m not sure how I can help, Mrs. Miner.”

  “Please, call me Liz.”

  Fiona offered her a polite smile and handed the poster back.

  “There have been other missing girls, Fiona. Five I’m aware of. Six, if I include Orla.”

  Fiona frowned and shook her head.

  “Orla’s not missing. She just…” Fiona twiddled her fingers. “Left town for a week. She’s a wanderer. My husband’s mother was an Irish traveler - a Minkier. That’s where she gets it.”

  Liz frowned and tucked the paper back into her purse, but stood firm.

  “I don’t think so,” Liz disagreed.

  “How do you know about Orla?”

  “A friend who’s investigating the cases told me.”

  Fiona held her up her hand, her voice rising.

  “Orla is fine. She-”

  “Three years,” Liz interrupted. She swallowed and shook her head, as if tasting something horrible. “Three years without my Susie. I’d give anything to get her back. I’d die if she could come back. But she’s dead. I know it. In my heart, I sensed it that very night when she didn’t come home. Fiona-”

  “Orla is fine!” Fiona snapped, her voice shrill.

  The bells on the door tinkled as they swung in. It was Patrick.

  “Pat,” she sobbed, running across the room and clutching him. She buried her face in his chest and cried.

  He patted his wife’s back.

  “What is it, Fiona? Hmm?” He spoke in a gentle voice, low and husky, as if his wife were a child rather than a grown woman.

  Liz stepped forward.

  “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I didn’t mean to upset her.”

  “Who are you?” Patrick asked, taking his wife’s shoulders in his hands and gently steering her back to the sewing table.

  She sat in her chair heavily, staring at her hands clasped in her lap.

  “My name is Liz Miner. My daughter disappeared three years ago. I came here because-”

  “Orla? Do you know where she’s at?” His face shifted, concern softening his otherwise hard features.

  Liz shook her head.

  “No, but there have been others.”

  “She just took a little trip,” Fiona interrupted, again the shrill edge, her eyes taking on a wild sheen.

  Patrick rested a hand on his wife’s shoulder and shook his head.

  “No, Fiona. I don’t think so. I reported her missing two days ago.”

  “You what?” Fiona stood up, her lips pulling away from her teeth, her hands reaching toward him with claw-like hands.

  “Honey.“ He took her hands, folded them against his chest. “I didn’t want to scare you. Okay? But I made a few calls. No one has seen Orla since early last Sunday morning. It’s going on a week.”

  “Women have been going missing for four years,” Liz said, taking a second bunch of papers from her purse. She stepped to the table. “May I?”

  Patrick looked at Liz, and then at his wife.

  “Head home, Fiona. I’ll lock up the shop. Have a bath. I’ll be home in an hour.”

  To Liz’s surprise, Fiona didn’t argue. She hung her head, her eyes red-rimmed. She took her purse from the floor near her chair, slung it over her shoulder, and shuffled from the store, the bells tinkling behind her.

  “I’m sorry,” Patrick said, sighing. “Fiona is a very sensitive woman. She’s afraid for Orla. So afraid that she’s pretending everything is fine.”

  Liz bit her lip, tempted to tell him that was the worst thing Orla’s mother could do, but she withheld her judgement. After all, she too had desperately tried to dismiss Susan’s disappearance as a spontaneous adventure. In her gut, she knew better, but oh, how she wanted the alternative to be true.

  Liz spread the papers on the desk. Five sheets, each featuring a different young woman beneath the word Missing.

  He frowned and bent over, studying their faces.

  “All these girls have disappeared?”

  “Yes.” Liz tapped the first face. “Sherry went missing in the summer of 1971 in Gaylord. My daughter was next, Susie in August 1972. There were two in 1973 - Darlene in Traverse City and Rita in Beulah. This spring another girl went missing, Laura in Cadillac. And now your daughter, Orla.”

  “What makes you think they’re connected?”

  “A few things. One, all of them are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. They’re all young, pretty, disappearing in the summer and without a trace. No purse left behind, no note. As if they were plucked from thin air and didn’t leave even a stick of gum behind. No bodies have ever been found. All within a two-hundred-mile radius. That’s an awfully small space.”

  “Have the police connected them?”

  “They won’t confirm it. But I’ve been working with a journalist who’s convinced they’re connected. Detective
Hansen in Petoskey is also investigating a connection, though not publicly. They’re all in different jurisdictions, and-”

  “Orla doesn’t look like these other girls,” Patrick said, frowning. “These girls are all blonde. And reading about their appearances, they all seem rather small. Orla stood almost five-feet-nine inches tall, long black hair. It would take a strong man to abduct her.”

  “Or a man with a weapon. I agree, she’s an anomaly. But I still think she’s connected. In my heart, I feel it. I’ve developed something from studying these cases, Mr. Sullivan. A sixth sense, if you will.”

  Patrick gave her an odd little smile.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Just the sixth sense thing. Orla had something like that. I sometimes called it her bullshit detector, but it was more than that.”

  “More how?”

  He laughed, his face growing pink, and scratched at his short dark hair.

  “Sometimes when she touched things, she got ideas about ‘em. Like one time she picked up a pipe in my desk and said, ‘This belonged to Pap and he liked potatoes.’ Crazy thing was that the pipe had belonged to my grandfather - a man who died long before Orla was born. He was a potato farmer in Ireland.”

  “Was his name Pap?”

  Patrick grinned and shook his head.

  “Seamus. But our family called him Pap.”

  Liz glanced toward the window, sun streaming through, and considered his story.

  “Your daughter never came home?” Patrick asked, looking suddenly older than his forty-three years.

  “No. But I intend to change that. I’ve let go of finding her alive. I’m not naïve. But I want a proper burial for my child. I want to lay her to rest next to my mother. I want to plant flowers and clean her headstone and have a space to be near her again.”

  Patrick rubbed his slightly bristly jaw.

  “Fiona would…” he trailed off. “It would kill her if Orla never came home.”