Dead Stream Curse: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  September 1965

  Liv

  Small windows, near the attic floor, sat on opposite ends of the long room. Liv had to lie on her belly to gaze at the property below.

  She watched orderlies, nurses, and doctors, all dressed in white, ushering patients between the buildings. Sometimes the patients walked freely.

  She saw a young boy and longed for the children of the orphanage she’d left behind.

  If she called out, would they come?

  She thought so, but it would not be to release her. No, they would hand her over to Stephen Kaiser, and he would silence her.

  For now, he kept her, his little pet in the attic of his new world, the place where he had absolute power.

  She rolled onto her back and gazed at the crow perched on the rafters. Somehow, he moved in and out of the building. She’d searched for the hole that morning after dawn but had yet to find out how.

  “The door is open,” she murmured, trying to make sense of George’s words in her dream.

  He’d set things into motion. Of that she was sure, but how? Had his death allowed him to see what she’d done all those years ago? Or had he always known, and his death acted as the catalyst to draw her home?

  Liv heard a clank of metal near the door.

  She jumped to her feet, expecting the door to swing in. Instead, she saw a pair of hands slipping through a hole in the door’s bottom. A metal grate slid back into place.

  A bowl of stew and a small loaf of bread sat on a little metal tray. He’d also added a fresh pitcher of water.

  Liv walked to the door but did not speak. She could see Stephen’s shadow beyond the grate.

  “Why didn’t you just kill me last night, Stephen? Why have you brought me here?”

  He didn’t speak, but Liv listened to his breath.

  “You know what scares me, Liv?” Stephen told her after several minutes of silence. “I’m scared that if you die, I’ll lose it.”

  “Your mind?” she asked, sitting and pulling the tray across the floor with a dull scrape. She leaned close to the stew and smelled. No bitter aroma hovered beneath the spicy scent of onions and pepper.

  He laughed.

  “Oh, no, not my mind; not that at all. My sense of knowing things. Before I accepted the position at the Northern Michigan Asylum, I knew this place was special. I came here on a tour during my undergraduate work. I felt… the power hidden in this place. You feel it too, don’t you, Liv? It breathes as we breathe. It sleeps and hungers. It reaches out into the world and draws us in. Do you know how many patients arrive at this hospital who can do special things? They can speak to the dead or discern your darkest secrets. There are asylums all over the world, but this place is unique. Extraordinary people are drawn here. There’s a magnetism, Liv.”

  Liv nibbled the plain bread and wondered if she could prise the grate open. Even if she could, she’d never fit through the small hole.

  “I’m working with a woman right now who sees the dead. She speaks to them,” he continued, his voice rising excitedly.

  “And what do the dead tell her, Stephen? Do they seek vengeance for your crimes?”

  He was silent for a long moment.

  “Pretend you’re innocent, Liv. Deny your culpability, but that summer we were guided, driven. I was not alone in that room.”

  The bread stuck in the back of Liv’s throat, and she struggled to swallow it. She remembered retching into the woods that Halloween night, the smell of her bile mixed with the dahlias and the blood, always the blood.

  Liv hunched forward, bracing her elbows on her crossed legs. Tears slid from the sides of her eyes and into her hair.

  “You’re sick, Stephen. All those years ago it wasn’t your fault, but now…”

  His voice came again, closer, as if he’d pressed his mouth to the grate.

  “You don’t have to pretend with me, Liv. I’m the only person you could ever be real with. Not even George, because he needed you to be pure and good. You longed for that dark magic. It is inside of you. Liv, you’re the only woman, the only person, I could ever have joined with. Think for a moment of the influence we’d have in the world if we gave ourselves over to this power? Let it act through us.”

  Liv sat up, understanding now why he’d kept her. Their heinous crime had not dashed his delusions from that summer, it had strengthened them.

  Chapter 20

  September 1965

  Jesse

  Jesse woke with a start, blinking into the dark parlor. He rolled to his side and fumbled for his matches and the candle he’d placed on the floor earlier that evening.

  A long, terrified scream split the house, and Jesse froze, the match between his thumb and forefinger.

  Footsteps pounded down the stairs.

  Jesse didn’t light the match, but jumped up, ready to face whatever hurtled from the darkness.

  In the shaft of moonlight that illuminated the front hall, he saw a wisp of a woman as she raced down the stairs. Her eyes were large and terrified, and her dark curls were glossy in the opaque moon glow. Her slender neck disappeared into a pale purple dress, but her body seemed to grow more ethereal the lower his gaze moved.

  And then she was gone.

  The front door didn’t open, and her footsteps didn’t continue onto the porch.

  Jesse swallowed, clutching the match and candle, and tiptoed to the hall.

  It was empty.

  The woman had vanished.

  Jesse struck the match and lit the candle.

  He turned to the darkened stairway, knowing the girl had not run back up them. She had not run at all.

  He ascended the steps numbly.

  When he glanced in a mirror in the second-floor hallway, Jesse jumped at his own reflection. His face looked sunken in the glass, his eyes black and hollow.

  Beyond him in the reflection, he saw the slender fingers of a woman’s hand clasping the frame to the bedroom door.

  Frozen, he watched the fingers disappear into the dark doorway.

  The door slammed behind him, and Jesse spun to face it.

  His mind ran with possibilities, but he knew no explanation existed in the world of science.

  He recalled the harsh words of Sister Anne, one of the crueler nuns at an orphanage he lived in for several months: ‘As for the person who turns to mediums and to spiritists, to play the harlot after them, I will also set My face against that person and will cut him off from among his people,’ she had hissed, quoting scripture from the bible. ‘They’re in purgatory, Jesse, those spirits you court at night. Keep conversing and God will turn away from you. He will forsake you!’

  He’d woken to find her at his bedside, her hands curled around his thin wrists. He’d been having a nightmare and must have been talking in his sleep.

  The nuns’ opinions of ghosts and spirits had been clear. They were lost souls, punished by God to purgatory for their sins.

  Jesse had found the words empty, but he’d not slept that night, and for many nights after, he woke afraid he’d open his eyes and find the nun’s leering face above him.

  Gritting his teeth, he walked to the bedroom and shoved the door open, thrusting the candle before him.

  The room was empty, but he caught sight of the closet door clicking shut.

  He had to look in the closet. His only other choice was to walk out the front door and never look back.

  He had to look.

  He paused at the closed closet door, steadying his hand on the knob before pulling it open.

  A rack of coats blocked the interior. Holding the candle back from the fabric, he shoved the coats aside.

  The space was empty. As he studied the white plaster walls and the wood floor, he gazed at a large discoloration on the floorboards.

  He hunched down and held the flame closer. The stain was long ago hardened. Little bubbles had formed in the brown-red mass.

  He touched a finger to the hardened spatter.

  Standing, Jesse tried to make
sense of the stain. He glanced at the ceiling, and then held the candle high. A matching stain, darker in color, marred the white plaster.

  Something had seeped through the floor from the room above. The boy’s room.

  Jesse didn’t think. He took the stairs quickly and pushed into Stephen Kaiser’s room before his daring left him.

  He opened the closet, casting aside the hangers filled with the young man’s jackets and shirts.

  On the floor, at the back of the space, stood a large trunk with a padlock. A dark stain spread out from the chest, besmirching the polished floor surrounding it.

  The stain matched the one from below. A red-brown color that was likely sticky at one time, but had grown hard. When Jesse leaned close, he saw tiny bugs trapped in the hardened ooze.

  He searched for the padlock key on the bookshelf and the bedside table not expecting to find it, but still disappointed when it didn’t easily reveal itself.

  He sat on the bed and gazed at the trunk for several minutes.

  The mystery of the trunk perplexed him, and he’d forgotten about the girl running down the stairs. But a movement in the corner of his eye startled him and brought the vision back.

  He stood, waving his candle to the darkened corner of the room where he’d sensed movement. Nothing stood there, and yet he felt eyes watching him from the emptiness.

  With a rush of breath, he left the room, briefly entertaining the thought of returning to the parlor to sleep.

  He dismissed it the moment his feet hit the first floor. He bypassed the parlor and went to the washroom. He’d noticed a wooden box of tools in the room earlier that day. He grabbed a hammer from the box.

  As he returned to the third floor, the air grew thick and stale. A bead of sweat rolled from Jesse’s hair toward his eye, and he swiped it away.

  He set the candle on the floor next to the chest and hammered the padlock. The sound rang loud and metallic in the silent room. The brass trim on the chest gleamed in the flame, and Jesse watched it as he slammed the hammer again and again into the lock.

  By the time the lock snapped and fell away, Jesse’s shirt clung to his body. His breath came out in fast, steady gulps.

  He laid the hammer on the floor and sat on his butt, his legs bent to keep his feet from touching the stain.

  Eyes fixed on the trunk, he mopped his face with his damp shirt.

  He didn’t want to look inside until his heart had slowed and he had control of his body once more.

  When he reached for the chest, his hand shook.

  He flung the lid open.

  Dark fabric was bunched in the top of the trunk.

  Jesse grabbed a corner and pulled it away. It clung to something inside.

  As he jerked it free, Jesse saw with horror a mass of dark hair clinging to the blanket. Beneath it, more hair partially concealed a human skull.

  Jesse staggered back, dropping the blanket and knocking his candle sideways.

  Before the flame could light the fabric on fire, Jesse fell on it, slapping the flame out and casting the room into darkness.

  Chapter 21

  August 1945

  Liv

  “Eternity of Darkness,” Stephen announced after he’d spent an hour buried in George’s book, reading every curse it contained.

  Liv arranged a circle of stones on a patch of hard sand.

  “We can’t do that one,” she told him. “That’s a death curse. We’re not going to kill her, Stephen.”

  “I thought we were going to kill her,” Stephen mused, the cunning twinkle back in his eye.

  Liv looked up and frowned, unable to read if he was serious or not.

  “I liked the sulphurous odor curse,” Liv offered, completing the circle.

  “You want to make her stink?” Stephen rolled his eyes.

  Liv stood and walked to where Stephen sat on a stump.

  She flipped the pages toward the front of the book.

  “Or this one sounds interesting.”

  She pointed to a curse titled Night Haunts.

  He read it, though Liv knew he’d already read all the curses, likely more than once.

  “Mildly intriguing,” he admitted.

  “Then it’s decided.” She leaned over the book. “I’ll get the bat poop; valerian has to be collected on the full moon. You can join me if you’d like. The curse bag needs to be made from a personal item that belongs to the recipient. You’ll have to get something of Veronica’s.”

  Stephen sat up, nodding as she talked.

  “I’ve seen her around town. She always wears that ridiculous yellow scarf.”

  Liv shook her head.

  “She’ll recognize it. We have to make it from something personal she won’t immediately recognize. Or we can dye the scarf with blueberries. Okay, yeah, get the scarf.”

  “Yes!” Stephen stood from the stump and paced away. “If this works, Liv. We could try other spells, we could…”

  “Stephen, we’ve got to copy this spell down so I can get the book back to George. He may already know it’s gone. He-”

  “Let me take it home,” Stephen insisted, picking up the book and holding it against his chest. “Please? I swear I’ll bring it back tomorrow. I’ll copy the spell tonight.”

  Liv looked at Stephen’s pleading eyes, pale and sparkling. She bit her lip, knew she should say no, and nodded instead.

  “Okay. But you have to bring it tomorrow. Don’t forget.”

  “Cross my heart,” he told her, slipping the book into his bag. “Now let’s get on with this invoking Freya business.

  * * *

  Stephen

  They worked in silence for an hour. Liv had told Stephen how to erect the pyre and where to place the herbs. She drew the symbols from memory, strange circles and arrows that he wished he understood.

  “What?” Stephen had looked up to find Liv watching him across the clearing.

  She smiled curiously and shook her head.

  “I’ve never done anything like this with anyone other than George. And here you are in your tweed coat and polished loafers, building a pyre with me so we can invoke Freya.” She laughed.

  “I’m bored with the ordinary world,” he told her.

  Stephen had courted the extraordinary his whole life. It started with a book given to him by his grandfather, his mother’s father. The man tucked the book into Stephen’s hands, the one and only time they met.

  It was the day of his father’s funeral. They had laid Stephen’s father out in the parlor. Family and friends Stephen had never met arrived to pay their respects. His mother’s parents, he was surprised to see, were modest people with drab clothes and lined faces. His grandfather had tired but soft, inviting eyes. He spoke in a slow, soothing voice, and when Stephen went to shake his hand, the man squatted down and pulled the boy into a hug. Stephen had seen the look of distaste on his mother’s face across the room.

  The book his grandfather gave him, The Magus by Francis Barrett, had fractured Stephen’s world. He realized that another force existed in the world embedded in the stones, the water, and the bones of man. The book had ignited in Stephen an obsession with the supernatural, and he’d searched for it ever since.

  “Tell me about your prophetic dreams,” Liv prodded.

  Stephen shuddered, imagining the gnarled bone-fish spine he’d placed beneath his pillow and the carved coal beside it.

  He knelt by the circle of rocks Liv had arranged, adding the jumble of sticks she’d tied together with twine.

  The dreams disturbed him, and though he wanted to confide them to Liv, he feared she would see deeper into their meanings and know things about him he’d rather not reveal.

  “I dreamed of a black cat with yellow eyes and a trunk floating down a river,” he confessed, leaving out the sense in the dream that a black veil was falling over the world. The dreams had been vivid and unsettling.

  On the third night, he’d woken crying and wet the bed. Rather than an eighteen-year-old man, he’d
woken feeling like a five-year-old child, disoriented and terrified of the darkness in his room.

  He’d ripped off his sheets and ran into the dewy early morning forest to bury them. Later, it had seemed foolish. He should have washed them, but he couldn’t bring himself to see the yellow stain on the cream fabric.

  He was a man. He hadn’t wet the bed in years.

  Though in the months after his father died, there’d been an accident or two. Stephen’s mother made sure he never forgot those.

  He felt Liv’s eyes on him.

  “I threw the dream stave away. The spine and the coal. My mom almost found it, so I threw it away.”

  Liv didn’t respond, but returned to her digging, and Stephen wished he’d never mentioned dreams. Why had he wanted prophetic dreams? It wasn’t as if they revealed anything useful.

  How could a black cat and a trunk possibly foretell his future?

  * * *

  Liv

  “Who was Freya again?” Stephen asked when they’d completed the pyre.

  “Freya was the Norse Goddess of love and fertility, beauty, sexuality, and even war. When I was a child, George prayed to Odin, and I prayed to Freya. He told me she was the true embodiment of the Volva, and I was made in her image.” Liv blushed as Stephen watched her. The sun had set, and a violet sky gazed upon them. “I used to see her in this sky,” Liv murmured, gesturing above. “Pink and violet. I imagined her riding in the heavens on her chariot pulled by her two Skogkatts.”

  “What are Skogkatts?” he asked.

  Liv grinned.

  “They’re cats.”

  “Cats! What an awful choice. Didn’t the Norse men who wrote the history books think they should give the Goddess of Love a better beast than a cat?”

  “Where’s your faith, Stephen Kaiser? Freya was a Volva. She could have instilled a butterfly with the power to pull her chariot.”

  He shrugged.

  “I still think a tiger would have sounded better.”