Dead Stream Curse: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  He knocked on the heavy wooden door. The sound rang hollow, muted by the dense summer foliage. It was an odd place for such a grand house, tucked deep in the woods. Made stranger by the foreboding silence that blanketed it.

  He tried the knob and found it locked. Of course it was locked. It might be empty, but it was a big house, a wealthy man’s house.

  Jesse was not a thief nor a criminal, but he hadn’t slept beneath a roof in half a month. Rain was on its way, and he didn’t want to greet the morning with his pants soaked through.

  Walking the perimeter, he found a window low enough to reach if he stood on the cellar doors. He clambered up the diagonal red-brown doors and attempted to raise the window.

  It stuck.

  Climbing back down, he surveyed the house, sure that he should walk away. If the owners appeared in the night, they’d call the police. He’d be carted off to jail. Though jail offered a cot and a tray of food at sunrise.

  “Nobody lives here,” he told the night.

  In its silence, the house seemed to confirm his statement.

  Jesse considered breaking the glass, but dismissed it when he realized no lock and chain snaked through the cellar doors.

  He reached down and pulled, surprised when the door opened on its rusted hinge. The screech made his flesh crawl, and his apprehension deepened when he gazed into the yawning black hole of the cellar.

  Ignoring his knee-jerk desire to avoid dark, unknown places, he plunged down the stairs, leaving the doors wide behind him to let a dribble of moonlight through.

  Once in the cellar, the blackness grew impenetrable.

  Jesse blinked, shuffling his feet and holding his arms out in front of him. By sheer dumb luck, his shin smacked into a hard wood lip.

  The stairs.

  He leaned forward, finding the stairs with his hands and monkey-walking up the dark staircase. The stairs were not hard and splintery, but softened by a layer of filth that revealed the house had been abandoned for a long time, indeed.

  On the first level, a shimmer of moonlight through half-open curtains lit his way to a large sitting room thick with furniture.

  Exhausted, he lay on the floor and drifted into sleep.

  * * *

  A thud startled Jesse from his dreams, and he jumped from lying on his back to standing crouched in the dark parlor.

  A creak of a floorboard, and another.

  Someone was upstairs.

  Jesse considered his options. If he ran from the house, he’d be back in the night wandering through unfamiliar woods.

  He waited, tensed, but the sound did not come again. After several minutes, he slid his hands over the furniture until he found a candlestick. He reached into the inner pocket of his coat, hoping the matches he carried were not wet.

  They weren’t. He lit a match and held the flame to the wick of a long black candle.

  As he lifted the candle before him, he studied the room.

  Heavily carved furniture upholstered in burgundy and dark fabrics crowded the space. It was not the style of the times, but a decor that Jesse imagined belonged to women in long puffy dresses and men who wore white powdered wigs.

  He moved into the hallway, placing his feet gingerly and pausing at every step.

  When he reached the staircase, an uncontrollable shiver rolled down his spine and left a trail of goosebumps in its wake.

  He was not afraid of encountering a man in the house. Perhaps another person like himself, down on his luck, who’d sought refuge.

  No, fear lived in the dark corners and shadowy back rooms. Fear’s power came from the unknown things.

  Jesse’s father had laughed at fear. If Jesse woke in the night scared, his father would burst through the room like a madman waving a lantern, gleeful as he flung open the closet door and peered beneath the bed. There had been no mother in Jesse’s life. She’d died giving birth to her only son. Jesse’s father was a good man, kind and funny, better than many of the fathers Jesse had met along his journeys. But the man supported a son during a time when poverty and war were rampant. It was not an easy time to raise a child, and Jesse spent more than a few months in orphanages in Michigan, Minnesota, and even a spell on the east coast - Boston, New York, and the like.

  He hadn’t minded the orphanages until he got older. His father always retrieved him after a few weeks or months. Except the last time.

  Jesse flinched when another creak sounded above him. He crept down the long hall and peeled back the curtain, expecting — no, hoping — to see wind bending the trees. The night appeared calm and still.

  He’d seen large rats on a few trains, but found it unlikely they’d be wandering the old house. At least not the type large enough to make so much noise. But a house in a forest likely invited all sorts of vermin to seek refuge. A raccoon could make the noise. Especially when they were hunting for food or building a nest.

  As he ascended to the third floor, he stared into the pocket of light cast by the candle. The faces on the walls gazed at him. A layer of gray dust coated the ornate frames, and the absurdity of such a house teeming with treasure, left abandoned in a northern Michigan forest, struck him anew.

  Another creak sounded, but now it was on the floor beneath him - the second floor.

  Nervous, Jesse blew out the candle and listened. He was now sure someone else shared the house. Whether they’d been there since he arrived, he couldn’t say.

  He crept back down the stairs.

  A shaft of moonlight filtered through a door he thought had been closed when he passed the hall only moments before. He padded along the hall carpet; grateful that the rug muffled his movements.

  As he peered through the half-open door, he saw a chaise lounge in front of a large window.

  The curtains hung partially open, the moon splashing light across the room.

  On the chaise, Jesse saw a woman’s long, slender legs.

  He stared at the legs, which ended in small, delicate feet.

  Rubbing his eyes, he took a step away, not sure what to do.

  Would a woman have come into the house alone?

  Unlikely.

  Her large, unforgiving husband was probably lurking somewhere close by.

  The hairs on the back of Jesse’s neck prickled.

  He spun, ready to slash out with the candle, though it would do little against his attacker.

  Behind him, the hall stood empty.

  His heart thumped hard and fast.

  He realized he’d been ready to fight.

  His desire to survive came as a surprise. He’d greeted each day of the previous year with an expectation, even a hope, that death would come for him that day. Maybe an angry stowaway on a train he hopped on would sink a blade into his heart as he slept, to steal the worn shoes that had carried him so many miles. Perhaps he’d miss one of those trains, fall on the tracks, and be crushed by the merciless rail wheels.

  Never happened. Men with more to live for died by the thousands, but Jesse Kaminski traveled on.

  He turned back to the chaise, but the woman’s legs had disappeared.

  She’d heard him.

  “Hello?” he called, his voice hollow and tinny in the quiet. The house seemed to swallow the sound.

  He poked his foot forward and pushed the door in. It swung open and bumped gently against the wall.

  He searched for her among the furnishings. Had she ducked behind the bed? Slipped into the closet?

  “I won’t hurt you. My name’s Jesse. I just needed a place to sleep. I thought the house was empty,” he explained, stepping into the room.

  “I don’t have a weapon. Just say the word, and I’ll leave,” he continued.

  He walked toward the bed, surprised to find the woman had not ducked behind it.

  Unsure how to proceed, Jesse continued to talk as he walked around the room.

  “I’m harmless. I swear it.” He moved to the window and peered behind the shimmery pale fabric.

  After he checked behind ev
ery piece of furniture and in the closet, he returned to the center of the room. Beneath the bed was the only place he hadn’t checked. As he considered laying on his belly to peek beneath the ruffled bed skirt, the flicker of disquiet in his mind grew louder.

  He could hear the laughter of his father: balk-balk, he would cry out, imitating a chicken and ruffling Jesse’s hair affectionately. He wouldn’t have hesitated to drop onto his belly and look under the bed. Had Gabriel lived, Jesse would have done something similar for his own son.

  He sank to his knees, and then his stomach. Inching toward the bed, he reached out a hand, dismayed to see his trembling fingers.

  Lifting the dust ruffle, he stared into the black cavity beneath the frame.

  As his eyes adjusted, he realized a masked face stared back at him. Dark eyes peered out from the cat-like mask.

  Jesse sputtered and pushed away from the bed, dropping his candle, which extinguished.

  He bounded to his feet, tensed and ready for the person to follow him, but she didn’t. The room remained eerily quiet.

  Jesse left the room and walked down the stairs. He opened the front door, and the damp of the night swirled around him

  He could go. Slip into those woods and never look back.

  A cool mist seeped from the forest grass. Fireflies lit the night, blinking in and out from the darkness of the trees.

  After several breaths, Jesse stepped back into the house, gazing at the staircase.

  Reluctantly, he lit another candle and returned to the bedroom.

  This time when he lifted the bed skirt, he saw the mask resting on a heap of dark fabric. He reached beneath the bed and pulled out an evening gown with a frilly satin skirt. The black mask had sat atop it, merely an illusion in the dark.

  And yet, he’d seen dark eyes peering out from the holes in the mask, hadn’t he? And where had the woman gone?

  He suspected he would not sleep that night, but when he lay down on the rug in the parlor, his breath grew long and deep and he slipped away.

  Chapter 6

  July 1945

  Liv

  “What are you doing?”

  Stephen looked appalled as Liv shrugged off her trousers and blouse. She flung them onto a low tree branch.

  “What?” she asked, following the line of his gaze to her undergarments. Her bra was a bit worn and her britches frayed at the edges, but it wasn’t as if she’d stripped naked.

  Stephen’s face had gone red.

  Liv stuck a hand on her hip.

  “Don’t blow your wig, Stephen. It’s only underwear.”

  He continued to gaze at her with a stupid expression, so she rolled her eyes and ran to the water, flinging herself off the little dock jutting into the pond.

  The cool water swallowed her in its sumptuous, clammy mouth and she dove deep, trailing her fingers over seaweed before bursting back to the surface.

  Stephen had finally closed his mouth and set about removing his own clothing, folding them neatly on a flattened patch of grass. His underwear looked white and crisp, and Liv noticed for the first time the shape of him. He stood long and lean, with hard patches of muscle rippling beneath his chest and arms.

  She kicked her legs and felt a little tremor of curiosity. She’d seen half-naked men before. Her own brothers had spent most of their summers in tattered shorts, bare-chested and not the least modest. But as she watched Stephen, she noticed his body in a way her brothers’ had been invisible to her. She’d never had a boyfriend, never really wanted one, though at times the girls in school wearing their boyfriends’ letter jackets and showing off their promise rings had triggered something deep in her gut. She called it loathing, but envy might have been closer to the truth.

  Stephen did not jump in, but walked out on the little dock and sat on the edge, dipping his feet in the water.

  “Come on! It’s like jumping in an icebox,” she called before diving under again.

  When she popped above the pond, he hadn’t moved.

  “How deep is it?” he asked.

  She swam closer and splashed him.

  He recoiled at the spray of water, and Liv noticed that his hands clutched the edge of the dock as if he were a cat getting shoved in.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he snapped. “I just don’t feel like it, is all.”

  Liv paddled her legs and watched him. She didn’t believe for a minute he didn’t feel like it. The sun bore down, angry and sweltering.

  Through the haze, Liv watched Stephen take a deep breath, as if gathering his strength before slipping off the dock and into the water. He stayed close to the dock treading water and slowly paddled away, moving closer to where she dove in and out of the cool lake.

  After they toweled off, Liv regarded Stephen, who sat on the dock, his legs pulled to his chest.

  “You jumped in and saved us. You can’t be scared of the water,” she murmured.

  He turned and glared at her.

  “I wasn’t scared,” he snapped.

  She closed her mouth.

  Stephen didn’t speak again until they were walking in the woods.

  “I taught myself how to swim,” he told her, gazing steadily at the ground as they walked. “My mother forbade me from swimming. Her baby brother drowned when she was a teenager. She insisted if I never swam, I’d never be tempted to go near the water. My father tried to teach me once, and she caught him.”

  Liv listened, glancing at his profile, but his face remained unreadable.

  “What did she do?” Liv asked.

  Stephen’s cheek twitched.

  “He never tried again,” Stephen said. “But when I was thirteen, some guys at my boarding school started going out to this lake and jumping off the cliffs into the water. They talked about it all the time. The exhilaration of the fall, and then the sensation of disappearing into the cold, black water. They invited me a few times, and I made up excuses. I wanted to go so bad. I started to follow them. I checked out books on swimming from the library.”

  He laughed, though the sound echoed hollow and empty in the forest.

  “One night, I jumped in. I climbed up to the highest cliff and stared at the moonlit water and just jumped.”

  Liv stopped, gazing at Stephen.

  “You didn’t know how to swim, but you jumped off a cliff?”

  He put his hand to his chest, as if recalling the sensation.

  “Yeah. Those seconds as I was falling…” He shook his head and turned to her with wide, almost bewildered eyes. “Were the most alive I’ve ever felt.”

  “And then what?” Liv breathed, imagining Stephen vanishing into the dark lake, the surface only a spread of ripples where he’d gone in.

  “And then I swam. Or flailed might better describe it. I swallowed a gallon or so of water. It took me ten minutes to reach an outcropping of rocks, but when I pulled myself up on those rocks, I was a different person. I realized I could do anything I wanted. Anything.”

  * * *

  “This is your house?” Liv gaped at the enormous house flanked with high, unruly bushes. “It’s huge.”

  Stephen squared off against the house, hands planted on his hips as if he stared down a ferocious adversary rather than his own home.

  “And you live here alone with your mom?”

  “Yeah, come on.” Stephen led her up the wide wooden steps and pushed in the heavy oak door. The door creaked and swung in, revealing a long, dusky hallway. Paintings with gilded frames lined the walls. Liv glanced up at the sallow, unsmiling faces, their dark eyes seeming to watch her mistrustfully as she followed Stephen down the hall.

  “Is your mother here?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “You couldn’t come over if she was. No one is allowed in the house.”

  “Why?” Liv asked, following Stephen up a polished wooden staircase. Long, fringed rugs lay along the hallway. They walked another hallway thick with paintings, and then up another set of stairs.
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br />   “How many levels are there?” she whispered as they ascended.

  “Four, including the attic. My room’s on the third floor.” He stopped at a black door and pulled out a skeleton key.

  “You lock it?”

  Stephen nodded and slid the key into the brass keyhole. He wiggled it until it popped open, and they slipped inside.

  A claw-footed bed, sheathed in a dark satin coverlet, stood in the center of the room.

  A polished bookshelf held rows of books. Liv leaned down and smelled them, running her hand over the leather bindings. Gold-embossed titles read The Ingoldsby Legends, Worship of the Serpent and Lives of Necromancers. The titles reminded her of George’s books, though George’s were worn, with pages ripped and stained. Stephen’s books looked untouched.

  “I’ve never brought anyone here before,” Stephen admitted, sitting on a velvet bench at the foot of his bed.

  Liv looked up, surprised.

  “Why not?”

  “Have you read any of those?” Stephen changed the subject.

  “I don’t think so. I’ve read a lot of Nancy Drew.”

  Stephen grimaced.

  “Nancy Drew?”

  “I like to escape when I read,” she admitted. “I get enough textbooks in school.”

  Liv stood and flicked a tasseled lamp near the window. The little black strands shimmered in the yellow light.

  “It’s a beautiful day. Why don’t we open the curtains?”

  Liv started to pull back the heavy blue drapes, and Stephen jumped from his seat.

  “No,” he shouted, quickly wrenching them closed.

  Liv backed away.

  “Why not?”

  “Because my mom might come home.”

  “She really doesn’t let you have friends over?”

  Stephen stood at the curtains, peeking between them for another moment.

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “You’re eighteen. You’re a man-” Liv started, but Stephen cut her off.

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” he muttered. “Okay?”

  “Sure, fine.”

  “Let’s go back into the woods.”