Ashes Beneath Her: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  Liz saw the same confused expression on Abe’s face.

  Patrick shrugged.

  “Guess you have to be Irish. Our mam cooked bacon and cabbage every day she could get her hands on some good meat. They go together - so to speak.”

  “Does Liam have any theories about Orla?” Abe asked.

  Patrick shook his head.

  “I’ve talked with Effie, my sister, a few times. She said Liam’s as mystified as the rest of us. He’s been itchin’ to come north, but he’s got a pregnant wife and a big job. Can’t exactly take off.”

  “He’d be open to talking with me?” Abe asked.

  “Sure, yeah.”

  “Can you give me his full name, phone number, and address?”

  Patrick rattled off Liam’s contact information.

  “How do you feel about this one?” Abe asked, pushing Orla’s senior picture to the center of the table.

  “It was taken two years ago,” Patrick said.

  “I know, but it’s a clear headshot, which is helpful. I’d like to use this one in the article.”

  “What article?”

  Patrick and Abe both looked at Liz.

  “Abe’s writing an article about the disappearances - all of them,” Liz told him. “He and his editor have been working on it for months. Orla’s the… the last straw, I guess.”

  “If the police won’t link them,” Abe said, “we will. The public deserves to know about this and make their own conclusions.”

  “But you said she didn’t fit,” Patrick said to Liz almost accusingly.

  “I also said it was the same man,” she responded, eyes hard.

  “This may be your only chance, Patrick. Don’t turn away from this. Go home and prepare Fiona.”

  “There’s likely to be a media response,” Abe said. “And hopefully a police response. It’s time to get their attention.”

  “When will the article appear?”

  “Five days. It’s coming out in Sunday’s paper. I have a few more interviews to do. I’d like to talk with Liam, and chat with Orla’s co-worker, but it’s getting close.”

  * * *

  Hazel

  “Hazel!” Miranda rose from one of several card tables where people, mostly women, sat with spreads of tarot cards scattered before them. “I hoped you’d come today.”

  Miranda took Hazel in her large, soft arms and pressed her into a hug. The woman smelled of a heady blend of lemon and peppermint oils. Her thick, dark hair was piled and clipped on her head.

  “I read about Orla in the paper. Any news?”

  “No.” Hazel shook her head. “That’s why I’m here, actually. I thought maybe we could do a collective reading. See what everyone gets.”

  “Yes!” Miranda’s head bobbed up and down, orange teardrop earrings bouncing. She maneuvered her round body through the tables and clapped her hands.

  “Lovelies, can I have your attention, please?” There were eight people in the room, two per table. They were all readers, but they practiced on each other. Six women and two men gazed at their unlikely leader. “Our dear friend Hazel has come to us for help.”

  Several people shifted to Hazel, offering little waves and nods.

  Hazel smiled at them. She had met with many of them for years. She knew their stories, both from readings and the small talk that inevitably followed the group’s sessions.

  “We’re doing a reading for Orla Sullivan. Orla has been missing for more than a week. Got a picture, sweets?” Miranda shifted to Hazel.

  Hazel drew several photos from her purse, and Miranda quickly dispersed them amongst the tables.

  * * *

  Hazel sat alone with Miranda after the group had disbanded and the others had trickled out.

  The tarot consensus had been clear - Orla had come into contact with someone devious. The Devil cards had shown up a startling number of times, accompanied by the Tower, and the ten of swords.

  Miranda shuffled her own stack, closed her eyes, and flicked the cards onto the table.

  She flipped over the top card.

  The knight of swords stared back at them.

  “A young man, quick-thinking and fast-acting. Driven by intellect, strategy. This is your helper.” Miranda tapped the card. “Be watchful for this person.”

  “He’s already arrived,” Hazel said, thinking of Abe.

  “Yes, good.” Miranda flipped another card. “The Magician.” She studied the card. “You have everything you need, but you must call upon all of your faculties - beyond the intellect, you must use your intuition, your compassion. I believe you will help to balance this individual.” Miranda touched the knight card again. “This problem cannot be solved by mind alone. There are forces beyond us. Remain open to receive their messages.”

  17

  Abe

  Abe spotted Liam easily. He stood over six feet tall, with coppery red hair and a full beard to match. He looked older than twenty, big and lumberjack-like as he growled at a man sitting on some scaffolding, smoking a cigarette.

  “That’s your third smoke break in an hour, Pete. Get back to work,” he snapped.

  The man shook his head, but as Abe watched, he caught the eye of another construction worker and winked. The man grinned at the young foreman.

  “Liam Byrne?” Abe called, stepping around a pile of bricks and hopping over a length of steel.

  “Sure am,” Liam said. “You lookin’ for a job?” Liam eyed him up and down.

  Abe was almost as tall as Liam, but the Irish man likely outweighed him by a hundred pounds. Abe had a writer’s body - thin and pale with soft hands.

  “No, I’d puke if I had to climb up there.” He gestured at the high building. “I’m a reporter from northern Michigan.”

  Liam blinked at him.

  “You’re here about Orla? Have you found her?” Liam asked, a hopeful tinge in his voice.

  The concern in his face transformed the strapping man he’d witnessed seconds earlier.

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m here to ask you some questions about her. Sometimes little details, can open up new avenues for investigation.”

  Liam’s mouth turned down.

  “You came all the way down here to ask me questions. Why didn’t you just call?”

  “Because that’s not how I operate. Do you have lunch soon? Maybe we could meet somewhere?”

  Liam gave him a wry look.

  “I don’t take lunch. Gotta be on these guys like foam on a pint.” He bent over and grabbed a plank from the ground, plunking it on top of two saw horses. “Our very own park bench,” he announced, dropping onto the board. It groaned beneath him, but held.

  “That works,” Abe told him, sitting next to Liam and pulling out his notebook and pencil. “This seems like a big job for someone so young.”

  Liam laughed. “I’ve got a fourteen-month-old and another one on the way. Gotta feed ‘em somehow.”

  Abe shook his head, incredulous.

  “Sounds like a lot of pressure.”

  “Nah.” Liam braced his hands on the board and stretched his legs out. “I always wanted a big family. Erin, my wife, did too. Our little girl, Aileen, wasn’t an accident. People like to think she was because we were so young, but when you know what you want, why wait?”

  “Well said. I’d like to have kids someday, but…” Abe shrugged.

  “But what? No woman?”

  Abe laughed. “For starters, yeah, no woman. I work a lot too. I’m not sure I’m ideal husband and father material.”

  Liam slapped him on the back.

  “You’re wrong. Don’t ask me how I know, but I do.”

  Abe grinned and wrote Liam’s name in his notebook.

  “Do you have theories about Orla? About what might have happened?”

  Liam’s face fell. He leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees.

  “Whatever it was, she didn’t run off. I can tell you that right now. Orla and I have been like this,” he held up his hand, the index
and middle fingers crossed, “since diapers. She’s not the type to go bananas. If she wanted to leave, she’d leave, but first she’d say goodbye to her parents and her roommates. She’d call me and fill me in on the big plan.”

  “Has she ever done that before? Taken off, or talked about it?”

  “Nope. She travelled around Michigan, came down here a few times a year. She’s not a California girl. My ma said a rumor is floatin’ around up there. Orla is proud of this place. She loves Michigan, up north especially. She’s been haggling me to bring Erin and Aileen to visit since Aileen was born. We would’ve gone too, but then Erin got pregnant again and…” He held up his hands.

  “When’s the last time you spoke with her?”

  “The Friday before she disappeared.”

  “Can you tell me what you talked about?”

  “Sure, nothing major. She told me she’s been reading a lot. Talked about costumes she made for a play. I told her Erin was finally over the morning sickness and now eating everything in the house. Aileen got on the phone and baby-talked with her. Aileen only has a handful of words - Orla is one of them.”

  “So, you’re still close? Despite the distance?”

  Liam gave him a sidelong glance.

  “Distance doesn’t matter. Not when you’re connected. Orla and I are connected. I’ve got four siblings, and not a one of them share what Orla and I have.”

  “How often do you talk?”

  “At least once a week, sometimes more. She talks with Erin a lot too.”

  “Does she know Erin?”

  “Course she does. I introduced Erin to Orla before she met my parents. They were fast friends.”

  “Erin was never jealous of your relationship with Orla?”

  Liam laughed.

  “No. Erin calls Orla a bonus. She can pick her brain about me, and she can vent to her. Orla knows me better than anyone. Erin loves that. She got a husband and a great friend, too.”

  “And Orla mentioned nothing to you or Erin about going anywhere that Sunday? Even just around town? Or having met someone?”

  “Nope, and if she’d have met someone, we’d have heard about it. She’s dated a few chumps. Erin and Orla loved to laugh about these nightmare dates she had. She went out once with a guy who brought his cat in a duffel bag. The damn thing jumped out while they were eating dinner and almost scratched Orla’s eyes out.”

  Abe laughed.

  “That sounds like the date from hell.”

  “Yeah, and he was one of the better ones.”

  “So, she’s had trouble with men? With finding someone?”

  Liam scratched his chin.

  “Orla’s never been into finding someone, not like a lot of girls. When we were younger, she complained how all her friends talked nothing but boys. She had other things on her mind, big dreams. She never found anyone who trumped those.”

  “Has she ever dated bad guys?”

  Liam grinned.

  “Depends on your definition of bad. They weren’t Pat and Fiona approved. In our family, your ideal mate is an Irish Catholic with eight siblings, and parents who fly back to the motherland every year to celebrate the St. Patrick’s Festival - not Orla’s type.”

  “What was her type?”

  Liam scrunched his brow.

  “Guys with an axe to grind. That’s the one trait I remember from the few I met. They hated the man, or the pigs, or their parents. They walked with a kind of righteous indignation. Problem was, they seemed to get stoned more than do anything about it.”

  “Does Orla use marijuana?”

  “God, you sound like a cop.”

  Abe smiled.

  “Sorry, when I get rolling, I’m all professional.”

  Liam shook his head.

  “Once in a while. We smoked grass a handful of times.”

  “Has she ever used other drugs?”

  Liam shrugged.

  “Here and there. She wouldn’t say no if the mood was right.”

  Abe watched the men on the scaffolding. They walked with ease, as if there wasn’t a forty-foot drop beside them.

  “I wish I could help more, man. I do. It’s been killin’ me not being there, looking for her. My ma’s been on the phone with Fiona every night. Pat’s fit to be tied. I’m stuck here. Never felt that way before, but with Orla missin’, that’s just how I feel. Trapped.”

  “Is there anything else? Anything that might have gotten Orla into trouble.”

  Liam set his jaw and his eyes darted away. There was something. Abe recognized the look, the holding back. He waited, not wanting to push him the other way.

  “Maybe,” he said finally. “Orla wouldn’t like me tellin’ ya.”

  “I won’t write about it,” Abe told him. “This is off the record. I’m a reporter, but I’m on this story for different reasons. I have no interest in making things hard for Orla. I want to find her while there’s still a chance-”

  “That she’s alive?”

  Abe nodded.

  “Blimey,” Liam muttered, kicking at a rock with his huge boot. “Orla sensed things if she touched them.”

  Abe frowned, made a note.

  “How so?”

  “She, ummm…,” Liam reached out and cupped his fingers, “got feelings when she touched objects. If she touched my car keys, she could tell me the last place I drove, or maybe the song I was singing in the car. It was weird, but cool. We experimented with it a lot as kids, and she was dead-on every time. It scared the stuffing out of her ma. But my mom, Effie, said God had blessed Orla. Tomayto- tomahto, you know?”

  Abe scratched words onto his notebook, puzzling at the ink letters.

  “So, if she touched this pen, what? She could say I wrote the word ‘blessed’?”

  Liam nodded.

  “And she could probably say you were talking to me, and add something quirky like how you felt when you wrote it.”

  “A psychic ability?”

  “Sure, yeah. It’s not like we ever had a name for it. She started wearing gloves as we got older, because it bothered her. She knew things she shouldn’t. Sometimes she learned things that upset her. She was dating a guy in high school, and she touched his locker one morning and saw him standing there making out with somebody else.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, and I’m sure that was the least of it. She probably sensed some pretty terrible stuff. After we were about fifteen, she rarely took the gloves off.”

  * * *

  Abe drove home and mulled over his conversation with Liam.

  His eyes flicked between Orla’s picture and the road.

  He wondered if she’d kept one of the kittens, named it something quirky like Gatsby. According to Hazel, Orla loved both the novel and the movie that had come out the year before. Abe too had loved The Great Gatsby, required reading in twelfth grade English, but found Daisy to be a frustrating object of affection for the much more complex Gatsby. He had read the book several times over, and often imagined Daisy had a secret internal world of depth and mystery that Gatsby instinctively sensed, even if the author never managed to portray it.

  Abe considered Orla’s strange ability to sense things. It troubled him.

  The sun cast a harsh glare in Abe’s eyes and he reached up, pulling his visor down. A piece of paper fluttered out, and he caught it before it drifted into the backseat.

  He read the series of letters and numbers, trying to place it. Then he remembered the gold car sitting in the parking lot at Birch Park. He had meant to call his friend at the police station and ask him to run the plate. He made a mental note to call it in the following day.

  18

  The Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane

  Orla

  Dr. Crow watched Ben wrap gauze around Orla’s head, covering her hair and face, even her eyes. He left only her mouth and nose exposed.

  “Orla,” Crow said, his voice close, as if he’d stepped right to the bed. “We’re taking you down the hall for a shower.
You are to remain silent. If you ignore my orders, I will punish you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Orla mumbled, though she had no intention of remaining silent.

  Crow didn’t want anyone to recognize her.

  He’d sedated her hours earlier and the drug still held her, made her head heavy, eyelids droop, but she fought to hold onto a shred of consciousness.

  She listened as the wheels on the gurney slid over the floor, the rhythmic pat, pat, pat as they spun. Bright lights, brighter than she’d seen in days, pierced the flimsy gauze. They had strapped her arms down, but her legs were free. She waited until she heard voices, and then she screamed.

  “Help me!” she shrieked, thrusting her head up on the bed, turning her head from side to side, where she could see the silhouettes of other people. “Please, they have taken me against my will. My name’s O-”

  But someone had thrust a wet towel over her head, covering her face from her nose down to her chest. It didn’t merely lay there, but pressed hard, flattening her nose into her face. Orla couldn’t breathe. She choked against the towel and tried to cry out, kicking her legs and thrashing. She threw her lower body sideways. It slipped off the gurney, and the towel pulled free.

  “Orla,” she howled, but the towel was already back. The gauze had slid down, and for a split second she’d glimpsed a man wearing blue jeans and a green sweater, his eyes wide.

  Her head jerked back as Crow snapped the towel down hard. Rough hands shoved her legs back on the gurney and secured them with straps.

  She could hear Crow’s breath, unsteady. The young man too, Ben, huffed and let out a little moan, as if he’d strained a muscle. But she couldn’t concentrate, because again the towel - heavy, thick, immovable - suffocated her. She bit at it with her teeth, tried to turn her head from side to side, panic building. The lights dimmed, and she felt a soft prick in her arm. Orla slipped into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  She woke with a searing headache and burning eyes.