Ashes Beneath Her: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “You know the cop outside?” Hazel asked.

  Abe nodded.

  “Deputy Waller. He worked with my dad for a lot of years. I consider him a friend, and he’s offered me guidance on several stories.”

  “Was your dad a cop?”

  “No, a prosecutor.”

  “Deputy Waller believes the girls are connected?”

  Abe nodded.

  “He hasn’t put it in those words, but he’s encouraged the direction of my investigations.”

  “Well, I’m done at the market for the day. How can I help?”

  Abe shuffled some papers aside.

  “Liz is visiting the gas stations along 210, the road to Birch Park. Want to cover the territory along M-22 leading up to Cherry Bend? Take a flier, ask if anyone’s seen her, find out who was working the day she disappeared. Ask about any suspicious people or vehicles. Ask if anyone saw Orla’s bike.”

  “Sure. I’m on it.”

  “One more thing,” Abe said. “I advertised a five-hundred-dollar reward in the article. Patrick offered that, but the higher the better. The family of Laura, the girl from Cadillac, got creative to fund her reward. They did a garage sale, held a pancake breakfast. See if you can’t think up some options to raise money for Orla’s reward.”

  Hazel nodded, relieved. Organizing a fundraiser was something she could do.

  25

  The Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane

  Dr. Crow

  “This way,” Crow told Dr. Knight, leading him into the restricted wing of the hospital. They ducked beneath heavy canvas sheets meant to stop the spread of any leftover disease after a flu outbreak the previous spring killed ten patients.

  “Very wise choice,” Knight told Crow. “Though how can you be sure the cleaners won’t come through here?”

  “They’re scheduled for August 20th. Believe me, they’re as terrified of the flu as a black plague. They won’t step foot into this hallway until the last possible second.”

  Crow opened the door into Orla’s room. It was a large, square room, used for operations, with a drain in the center of the floor, no windows, and a long metal table and sink along one wall.

  Orla lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

  “Benjamin, fetch my bag,” Crow told the man who hovered in the corner.

  Benjamin nodded and scurried from the room.

  “How do I get one of those?” Knight asked. “If I ask Nurse Polly to hand me a tissue, she near melts me with an angry stare.”

  Crow ignored the question, stepping beside Orla and placing a hand on her pulse. Her heart was racing - good.

  “I’ve brought someone who’s interested in your gift, Orla. This is Dr. Knight.”

  Orla’s gaze remained transfixed.

  “Maybe she belongs here, after all,” Knight joked, moving closer to the bed and staring into Orla’s face. He touched a strand of her long black hair.

  Ben returned to the room carrying a black leather medical bag.

  Crow took it and shooed him away, before pulling out a white doctor’s coat.

  “Is that Kai-”

  “Shh…” Crow snapped. “Watch.”

  Orla curled her fingers, but Crow forced them open.

  “Remember what we discussed, Orla. You don’t want to upset me.”

  She allowed him to shove the coat into her hand.

  * * *

  Orla

  She wanted to resist, but Crow’s words rang in her mind.

  “The grave is already dug,” he’d told her an hour earlier. A grave meant for her. If she disobeyed, if she refused to reveal her secrets, he had no use for her. She would die, be buried. Her parents would never know her fate.

  The stiff white cotton touched her palm, and the images poured forth.

  “Doctor,” she muttered. “Stephen Kaiser. Murderer, matricide, but now I’m a doctor, Mother. Don’t you see? The girl who speaks with ghosts. The ghosts are everywhere, eating me, they’re eating me,” she screamed and clenched her eyes shut.

  The second doctor, Knight, had backed away as she spit the words out. He watched her with curious dread.

  Crow pulled the coat away and folded it over his arm.

  “You see?”

  Knight looked at the coat, and then at Orla.

  “But how?” he stuttered.

  “Good God, Knight. How many patients have you observed in the chamber? You still approach the supernatural with such reverence and naivete. It’s alarming.”

  Knight touched the white coat tentatively, as if he feared the same images would arise in his mind.

  “It’s just a coat,” he murmured, and then he shot a skeptical eye at Crow. “Did you prepare her?”

  Crow nodded.

  “I told her if she didn’t share the vision, I would kill her.”

  “That’s it? You told her nothing of Stephen Kaiser?”

  “Not so much as a name. But don’t take my word for it,” Crow added. He pointed at Knight’s watch.

  Knight looked at it and shook his head.

  “My wife-”

  “Shut up,” Crow snapped.

  Orla closed her eyes. She wanted them to leave. Alone, in the silence, she could continue to plot her escape.

  Reluctantly, Knight removed his watch.

  “Put it in her hand.”

  Knight placed the watch in Orla’s hand.

  “Sears, Roebuck and Company, a gift from your wife for Christmas, she bought a matching one for her father. You dropped it in the bath last week, feared you broke it. Your dog’s name is Critter.”

  Orla gazed into Knight’s astonished eyes.

  In truth, she was astonished too. She’d never spent so much time tuning into her ability. Each vision seemed to grow stronger and more pronounced. They flooded her brain, tricked her emotions so that for those minutes of seeing, she lost Orla and took on the life of the object in her hand.

  “Interesting, she would pick up the name of your dog. Was she correct?” Crow asked.

  “Yes,” Knight breathed. He lifted the watch and returned it to his wrist. “Critter licks my watch when I sit with her on the floor.”

  “There you have it,” Crow said, clapping his hands.

  Orla watched, dismayed, as Crow took a needle from his coat and slid it into her arm. He drugged her every day before he left the hospital. If she awoke at all during the night, she was disoriented and barely able to open her eyes.

  “The others must see this,” Knight added.

  “In time,” Crow said.

  * * *

  Dr. Crow

  Crow invited only five other doctors of the brotherhood to the chamber. They did not record their findings in the Enchiridion. It was unorthodox. No, it was forbidden, but he couldn’t risk putting Orla on display for the entire Umbra Brotherhood. What if one of them considered the experimentation too risky?

  The publicity surrounding her disappearance put all the men on edge. They were used to working with the forgotten, the abandoned, the lost.

  Crow glanced at Orla, bound to a heavy wooden chair. She glared at the other doctors. During his observations, he noticed that the clarity of her impressions improved when she was upright. He wondered if increased blood pressure amplified her perceptions.

  She watched the men with hooded, angry eyes. Her temper never waned, and she was surprisingly strong. The first time he took her to the chamber, she nearly broke free. Had he not sedated her, she might have escaped.

  Crow bribed her to ease their transition to the chamber. In the beginning, threats of death were enough, but then she started to challenge him.

  “Go, then,” she’d growl. “Get it over with.”

  The bribes were more to his liking. That day he’d given her a set of clean clothes and a cup of coffee. If she obeyed him during the session, a pear would be her reward.

  “I’d like to consider an injection of-” Dr. Knight started.

  “No drugs,” Orla snapped. “I’m sick of your
fucking drugs. I swear, I’ll never speak another word if you stick that in my arm.”

  Her eyes paused on the syringe resting on the little metal table.

  “Fair enough. For today,” Crow told her.

  He picked up a cup and placed it in her palm. Her arms were bound with her palms face-up so they could put objects in her hands.

  “Margaret, waitress, she’s fifty - no, sixty, chipped a nail this morning. Black coffee, bitter. Customer’s always right. None of her business if the man wants to burn a hole in his stomach.”

  Crow beamed, his head bobbing up and down.

  “Very good.”

  The other men surveyed their notes. They’d each brought an item, prepped each other beforehand on what they knew. Crow laughed at Margaret’s displeasure in his choice in black coffee. He didn’t care, but it was intriguing. Private thoughts on display through the touch of a coffee cup.

  Crow took the mug away.

  Dr. Hues stood, a blue winter scarf clutched in his hand. He’d been at the previous two sessions, brought menial things. In the first, a pen from his banker, the second was his dog’s leash. Today his hand trembled as he rested the scarf on Orla’s palm.

  “Kenneth. His mother bought this for him at Bergdorf’s. He hates it but loves his mother. A woman brushed her face against the fabric. It tickled, and she laughed, put the scarf over their heads, and kissed him.”

  “The woman’s name?” the doctor demanded, color flushing his neck.

  Orla blinked at him, narrowed her eyes.

  “Are you sure?” She glanced at the other men. Crow understood the unsaid things.

  Dr. Hues did not need to hear the name spoken out loud, his wife’s name, and yet he nodded.

  “Beverly,” Orla told him.

  Dr. Hues face fell. He stood and ripped the scarf from her hand, shoving it into his suit coat.

  Crow did not know Dr. Hues’ wife. The man worked as a psychiatrist in Pontiac. The men of the brotherhood did not socialize, but over the years, they learned things about one another. Dr. Hues’ wife worked as a secretary for a dentist. Crow wondered if the dentist’s name was Kenneth.

  Orla offered Hues an expression of sympathy, which hardened when the next man, Dr. Frederic, stood. He smiled cruelly at Orla and pressed a small, sharp knife into her hand.

  She bucked in her chair and gasped before emitting a loud, piercing scream.

  * * *

  Orla

  Orla closed her eyes. When she opened them, the men waited with matching expressions of curiosity. The doctor who killed the rabbit wore perverse pleasure on his sharp features.

  The same pleasure aroused him when he sliced the rabbit open, killing it not swiftly, humanely, but slowly. He had watched the light drain from its small, terrified eyes as blood seeped from its open belly.

  “What did you see?” Crow asked.

  She clamped her mouth closed and turned her head away from the men. Fire burned in the wall sconces, and the damp, acrid smell of the chamber conjured the memory of the rabbit’s blood, threatening to overwhelm her with nausea.

  Dr. Frederic stood to retrieve the knife, but Orla closed her fingers around it. The blade cut into the flesh of her fingers. As the blood trickled from her hand, she glared at the doctor, wishing for the strength to wrench her arm free and plunge the knife into his throat.

  Frederic grabbed the handle that protruded from her fist.

  “I can pull it out,” he whispered, leaning close so she smelled his hot, sour breath. “Imagine the sensation as it tears through your tender palm.”

  She released her fingers, and the knife fell to the floor. Her hand throbbed, and the warmth of her blood dripped into her palm.

  “Tell us what you saw,” Crow hissed. He could be mean, cruel. If she upset him, he might leave her strapped to the bed and drugged for days with no food, no shower, no human contact whatsoever.

  “You butchered a rabbit,” she spit at the man who’d picked up the bloody knife. “And you liked it.”

  The doctor chuckled and took a seat.

  “I liked the rabbit pie my wife made. But let’s not get carried away.”

  They left Orla in the chair, and huddled near a huge, leather-bound book propped on a pedestal.

  “We’re wasting time,” Frederic said. “I vote you reveal her to the brotherhood at the next full moon meeting.”

  “That’s less than a week away,” Crow argued.

  “She‘s ready,” Frederic insisted.

  “The others will be angry we’ve been meeting in secret,” Knight cautioned.

  Orla didn’t look directly at the men. She didn’t want them to know she was listening.

  “Not when they witness what she can do,” Crow said. “I’ll write the others tonight.”

  26

  Hazel

  The first time Hazel saw the girl, she thought nothing of it. Orla had only been missing for hours, maybe she wasn’t technically even missing yet. But Hazel had been a little drunk on sangria, leaning her head against Calvin’s shoulder as they left Leone’s after a late dinner. It was pouring rain, but the warm rain of summer. Calvin had grabbed her hand and twirled her away from him, pulling her back in for a long kiss. As she stepped away, the rain a shock after the warmth of his mouth, she glimpsed the girl across the street. She stood along the metal fence that ridged the parking lot, and she seemed to watch them.

  Through the mist, Hazel made out blonde hair and what looked like a yellow shirt, though the darkness and the storm blurred the details. Had it not been for the streetlight, the girl would have been in a pocket of darkness, and Hazel would never have noticed her at all.

  Calvin had picked Hazel up, and she shrieked in delight as he ran across the parking lot to his car. He dropped her into the passenger seat, and Hazel forgot the woman.

  Hazel had not given her another thought until more than a week later, when she saw her for the second time.

  Hazel sat in Milly’s Bakery on Front Street, facing the river that ran behind the little shop. Docks ran the length of the river, huge wooden beams disappearing into the calm, dark water below. Two men sat side-by-side, fishing poles dipped in the water, ball caps blocking the sun’s glare.

  Hazel drank coffee and ate a lemon muffin. They had been her mother’s favorite. As the anniversary of her death drew near, Hazel indulged more and more in the things her mother had loved. Later, she would go to the Cherry Bowl Drive-In to take in ‘Aloha Bobby and Rose.’ Her mother took Hazel to the drive-in nearly every weekend in the summer. They lay on the hood of her mother’s blue Plymouth Satellite, radio turned loud to hear the show, watching the larger-than-life actors fall in love, escape from spies, and battle evil.

  When her mother died, Hazel inherited the house. Her father had died when she was four. Though she was only seventeen when her mother passed, Hazel had already taken over the finances a year before, when her mother fell ill. She understood how to balance the checkbook, send in the mortgage payment, tend to the lawn and garden. Within a year of her mother’s death, she’d filled three of the home’s rooms with roommates. She’d moved into the master bedroom, her mother’s room, and tried to imagine a life without her mom.

  July was her mother’s month. It was the month of her birth and the month of her death.

  “And now it’s the month Orla disappeared,” Hazel murmured, picking at her muffin.

  She returned her gaze to the window.

  A girl stood on the dock now. She was a ways off from the fisherman, turned half-facing the river. A sheaf of blonde hair covered her face. Beneath her hair, Hazel studied her yellow t-shirt depicting bright red lips and a lolling tongue. As the girl shifted, facing the bakery full-on, Hazel gasped and stood. Her chair clattered to the floor.

  Milly, the shop owner, looked up startled from the register.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked, hurrying around the counter to right Hazel’s chair.

  Hazel stared, transfixed, until Milly brushed against he
r.

  “Yes, I’m sorry.” Hazel stammered.

  As Milly swept back to the counter, Hazel gazed at the dock, but the girl had vanished.

  * * *

  Abe

  Abe scanned the tips his editor had dropped off. There’d been reported sightings of Orla on the day she went missing. A man driving on Road 210 who saw her riding her yellow bicycle. A family in a van called in - they too saw a young woman with long, dark hair riding on Road 210. But not a single sighting after noon. It appeared she had been riding to the park they’d already searched. But no one observed her riding back.

  As Abe studied the other disappearances and tried to find a connection, his gaze drifted back to Stuart’s comment. The asylum was only a few miles away. He could put the issue to rest in under an hour. He gazed at his scattered papers, sighing as he shuffled them into a pile and stuffed them in his briefcase.

  “Done for the day?” Mona asked, mopping up spilled soup on the booth behind his.

  “No, I need to check something out. I’ll see you later.”

  Abe had never been inside the asylum walls. The structures were huge, overwhelming, yet beautiful. He felt small and inconsequential. Gazing up at the stately buildings, he tried to imagine the madness within. He could imagine how someone might disappear within their rooms and hallways.

  A small woman, with large spectacles propped on her pointed nose, sat at a reception desk within the yawning entrance.

  “Hi. My name is Abe Levett. I’m a reporter for Up North News.”

  She gazed up at him, unmoved.

  He took out a picture of Orla. “I received a call that someone may have admitted this woman. She’s a local girl and has been missing for more than a week.”

  The receptionist looked at the picture.

  “I know who she is,” she said. “A darn shame, but if you ask me, she probably jumped in a car and headed out west. She’s sunning on a beach in California by now.”