Across the room, a man swept a broom over the same spot. Every few minutes he leaned down, brushed his finger along the area, grimaced with disgust, and returned to his sweeping.
At the end of the hall, a door opened and Dr. Kaiser, accompanied by two other doctors, stepped out.
Mack watched them; their heads bowed close together. He had the sense they did not speak of ordinary treatments and patients.
They carried a secret. Their eyes were guarded and their faces pinched when they talked.
Across the room, Frank the Foamer was standing at the wall, tracing circles with his fingers.
Mack had a sudden idea. An immediate pang of guilt rose at the thought, but if it worked…
Frank the Foamer, as other men on the ward called him, was a paranoid schizophrenic. He’d undergone so much electro-shock therapy that he regularly drooled, hence his nickname. He lived in perpetual terror that giant cockroaches were sneaking through the steam pipes into the asylum.
Mack stood and hurried across the room. He paused behind Frank and gently flicked his ear.
“Frank, there’s a huge cockroach on your neck,” he murmured.
On cue, Frank screamed a blood-curdling cry and spun away from the wall, slapping at his neck, spittle flying from his mouth. As he hyperventilated, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed to the floor.
The three doctors looked irritated at the disruption, but hurried to the man’s aid.
As Frank lay on the ground sputtering and kicking his legs, one doctor leaned down and tried to still him.
“Hold his legs, man,” the doctor shouted at Kaiser, who reluctantly dropped to one knee and grabbed one of Frank’s legs as Mack held the other.
Mack waited until he felt the pressure building in Frank’s calf, and then he let go. The man’s leg flung up and kicked Kaiser in the chin.
The doctor cried out, his head jerking back as he fell over backwards.
Mack leaned over him, offering one hand while deftly slipping the other into the man’s pocket and closing his fingers on what lay inside.
The doctor was dazed as he stood, tenderly touching the space on his jaw where he’d been struck. He shot a venomous look at the convulsing patient, jerked his hand from Mack’s, and stalked down the hallway.
Several orderlies arrived and the other doctors stood, following Kaiser.
Mack shoved the item in his pocket and hurried for the bathroom.
He peeked under stalls but found the bathroom empty.
Closing himself in one of the toilets, Mack pulled out the item he’d stolen from Kaiser’s jacket.
He gazed at an antique ring with layers of gold swirls and curves. A small, dark ruby rested in the high center like an eye. Mack tilted the ring, and then pried gently at a small ridge. The top opened to reveal a tiny chamber coated with a fine white powder.
“A poison ring,” he whispered.
He knew of poison rings, because his mother used to love medieval history and showed him pictures of poison rings used by people in earlier times. The poison might have been intended for their enemies, or perhaps themselves.
Either way, Mack remembered grimacing at his mother’s explanation and shouting ‘gross,’ before running outside to shoot squirrels with his slingshot.
He didn’t understand the ring’s purpose in banishing Corey’s ghost and rescuing his daughter, but he knew it was the object Corey wanted him to find.
Now he had to find George’s daughter.
* * *
Mack ate his burger in two bites, and then slipped away from the canteen.
When the orderlies were out of sight, he broke into a run. He ran into the woods, circling back around and gazing at the women’s cottage from the trees.
When the lawn was clear, he raced across and plastered himself against the brick exterior.
The door to the cottage swung out, and a nurse hurried through it, tucking her gray hair beneath a white cap.
Mack slipped quickly to the door, sticking his foot in the crack before it closed.
The nurse paused, and Mack caught his breath, searching for the lie that would explain his sneaking into the women’s cottage. She bent down, fixed her nylon, and then continued out of sight.
Mack edged through the door and quickly ducked into a dark stairwell. He ran up the stairs, trying to stay light on his feet, a challenge since his feet were huge and his body was anything but light.
The stairs ended at a heavy white door with a grate at the top and bottom.
He peered through the metal screen, but the attic space was filled with walls and angles, making it hard to see what lay deeper in the space.
“I’m looking for George Corey’s daughter,” he whispered.
No one responded.
As he started to back away, two brown eyes slid before him.
He recoiled, his heart skipping a beat.
“Who are you?” the woman asked.
“Are you George Corey’s daughter?” he said.
She didn’t answer, so he went on.
“Your father sent me.”
Her eyes widened.
“He’s alive? George is alive?”
Mack grimaced, wishing he’d not spoken the words.
“No. He’s dead. I found his body.”
A sharp intake of breath sounded behind the door and her face disappeared from the grate. Mack heard the woman slide down the door and land on the wood with a dull thump.
“I’m sorry,” Mack said.
She didn’t speak, so he went on.
“George told me to come here. To give you this.”
Mack got on his hands and knees and shoved the folded parchment from the wood box beneath the door. He set the ring he’d stolen from Kaiser next to it and slid that in second. For a moment, he heard nothing.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She said nothing, and then: “Liv.”
“Liv, I’m Mack. I think you helped save my life a long time ago. I’m here to repay the favor.”
She let out a sound like a laugh merging into a sob.
“George wanted me to tell you it wasn’t your fault. He said, it’s time to make things right.”
Something thudded softly against the door, likely her head.
“It’s too late to make things right,” she muttered.
Mack shook his head.
“It’s not, Liv. Okay? Trust me.”
“Okay,” she said finally. “Thank you.”
“Do you know what to do with those things?” Mack asked. “The ring and the stuff in the paper?”
“Yes.”
Mack stood, put a hand to the door and wished he could say something more to ease her apparent grief.
“Goodbye, Liv,” he whispered, and slipped back down the stairs.
Chapter 30
September 1965
Liv
Liv lay curled on her side. She’d dreamed vividly the night before. Not prophetic dreams, but the textured dreams of childhood memory.
In her dreams, she and Stephen ran barefoot through the woods, laughter ringing out as they escaped from Murphy’s orchard with armloads of apples. Liv had never stolen food. Despite her family’s poverty, she understood the farmers needed every apple they grew.
But Ben Murphy was a mean man who threw the fruit and vegetables he grew away when the families he sold them to were short of money, or if he perceived one of them to be acting out of line. The month before, he’d taken a basket of apples meant for the Holtz’s, a family with six kids who lived in a shack not far from Liv’s, and dumped it in the river when their oldest boy mentioned he didn’t want to go off to war.
Liv and Stephen had stolen enough apples to share with the Holtz kids, and a few for themselves too.
When Liv woke to the drab light of early morning, she could still smell the ripe apples she and Stephen had carried in their arms.
Across the room, the metal grate slid open.
Liv watched Stephen’
s slender hands push a tray of food into the attic.
“How are you sleeping, Liv? The bats aren’t giving you trouble, are they?”
She could not tell if he meant the comment cruelly, but what difference did it make?
She stood and shuffled to the food, her back aching from the thin cot.
“Tell me how it works, Liv,” Stephen continued.
He pushed something against the grate, and she saw the hag stone she wore around her neck. He must have taken it the night he abducted her.
He swung it back and forth like a pendulum.
Liv took a bite of soggy cereal, watching the white stone sway from side to side.
“I keep trying to see,” he continued. “But there’s nothing there. I mean, nothing extraordinary. Do you remember the first time I looked through the stone, Liv? The world shifted. I saw energy pouring out of everything, light and dark and a thousand colors I didn’t know existed. Now, there’s nothing. Not so much as a speck of dust drifting in the sun.”
Liv did remember that day. Those memories felt like impostors. They appeared to portray a friendship, a growing love, when really, they were merely a foundation upon which to build a house of horror.
“You’ll never be able to see, Stephen. You’re weak. You’ve always been weak,” she fumed, biting back tears.
Stephen said nothing, but the hag stone disappeared from the grate.
“Maybe I should just drop it on the floor and crush it beneath my shoe,” he told her, tapping the stone against the cement floor.
Liv looked away. She didn’t fear his threat. Stephen coveted magical items more than anything else in the world. He was a slave to his desire for such things.
“Go ahead,” she muttered. “If I look through it, I only see darkness.”
“You’re lying to me, Liv. Lying is my pet peeve. You should know I’m not below making you talk. And these days — well, let’s just say I have new instruments at my disposal.”
“You’re sick, Stephen. All those years ago it wasn’t your fault, but now…” she trailed off.
His voice came again, closer, as if he’d pressed his mouth to the grate.
“You know what I think, Liv? I think you’re angry that I did it. I became what George envisioned for you. I am the master of my universe. I have access to power you can’t even dream of.”
Liv sat up. She took the folded parchment Mack had slipped beneath the door. It contained a silty black powder.
“The nightmare has gone on long enough, Stephen. It’s time to wake up,” she said, and she poured the powder into her hand. Leaning down, she blew it through the grate.
She heard the sharp intake of his breath, and then his cough.
He scrambled away from the door and the cough continued.
He swore, and she imagined him brushing at the powder clinging to his eyelashes and coating the fine hairs in his nose.
“What was that? What did you do?” he hissed between coughs, but she didn’t reply and after another minute, she heard the clap of his footfalls as he receded down the stairs.
* * *
Stephen
Stephen washed his face, leaning into the mirror and searching for the remaining particles of black dust.
His nose and throat burned from the silty powder. He’d breathed it deeply and knew he could not remove it from his bloodstream. It had traveled into his nose. But he’d stripped Liv before putting her in the straitjacket that first night. He’d emptied her pockets and taken the hag stone necklace.
She didn’t have the powder, so where had it come from? Something she’d concocted in the attic. A mixture of dust and bat droppings, meant to unnerve him?
He glanced at his watch and swore under his breath.
He had to meet Dr. Strickland in twenty minutes.
The door swung open into the bathroom.
“Occupied,” he snarled, but when he glanced behind him, no one stood in the doorway. The door was firmly closed.
Dabbing his face with a towel, he cast a final glance in the mirror and froze.
George Corey stood behind him in the bathroom. Bones poked through his yellowing flesh. His eyes blazed black and furious. The man snatched the knife embedded in his chest, reached back, and flung it at Stephen.
Stephen yelped and dove sideways, crashing into the little wooden table stacked with washcloths and soaps. He landed hard on his side, twisting around to face the man and holding up his hands to block the knife attack.
He wheezed; his breath painful beneath what were surely bruised ribs.
No knife fell upon him.
George Corey did not occupy the space at all.
Stephen held his aching side and climbed slowly to his feet.
* * *
Liv
The crow landed next to Liv, perching on the brass of her bed frame. She held out a sliver of bread, and he nipped it from her fingers.
Beside her on the white sheet sat the poison ring Mack had retrieved. She slid her pinkie into the ring and lifted it up, tilting it to and fro in the light that filtered through the small windows near the floor of the attic.
The musty room grew thick and warm as she sat, but when she tried to walk to the window, her legs wobbled beneath her. She sagged onto the bed, and the crow took flight, soaring around the shadowy ceiling before landing on a wood beam above.
She lifted her hand and watched it weave and bob, blurring and refocusing.
“He drugged me,” she croaked, looking toward the bowl of applesauce. She had not intended to eat it, but her stomach’s rumblings had gotten the best of her.
The room grew fuzzy and indistinct.
The poison ring fell from her pinkie and clattered to the floor. She watched the dark ruby fade into darkness.
* * *
Stephen
Stephen sat impatiently in an overly soft chair in Dr. Strickland’s sitting room.
The man watched him through clouded, yellow eyes.
“I’m hardly a young man anymore,” Strickland wheezed, drawing an oxygen mask to his face and taking several raspy puffs of air. “But the other doctors in the brotherhood find you difficult to speak with, Stephen. You’re bitter and cruel. They fear your retaliation if they speak up.”
Stephen regarded Dr. Strickland.
The man who’d once towered over patients and doctors alike had shrunken. His scalp was a map of age spots, mottled with sparse gray hair.
He’d brought Stephen into the brotherhood, but his power had drained years earlier. He no longer attended meetings, but wasted the remaining years of his life being fawned over by his overbearing wife and grown children, all scrabbling for the inheritance he would leave in his wake.
“Have you ever watched ants, Dr. Kaiser?” Strickland hunched forward and seized a plastic box with his arthritic hands.
Stephen saw ants milling through the tiny channels encased in plastic.
“They kill their ill counterparts. They must, you see, in order to preserve the colony. If a diseased ant is allowed to spread his sickness, they all will die.” Strickland shook the plastic frame before returning it to his table.
He reached a shaky hand to a half-cigar resting in a gold flecked ash tray. He lit the cigar and blew a plume of foul-smelling smoke in Stephen’s direction.
Disgusted, Stephen waved the smoke away. The effort of breathing pained him, and he tried to hide his discomfort from the old man.
“Pity me, do you?” Strickland barked a laugh that betrayed his diseased lungs. “It is I who pities you, Stephen Kaiser. I’ve seen your secrets, after all.”
Strickland cackled and took another pull on his cigar before blotting it out in a crystal ashtray shaped like a feather.
Stephen glared at the doctor, refusing to speak. The man had no control over him anymore.
“You’ve got a woman locked in the attic of the women’s cottage,” Strickland huffed, leaning his head back against his reclining chair. “Get her out, and soon, or the brotherhood will dispose
of her for you. And Stephen, do not doubt their swift justice. If they sense weakness in the colony, they will root it out and destroy it.”
* * *
Stephen brooded over the doctor’s words as he drove back to the asylum.
He parked and walked to the women’s cottage, nodding at nurses and orderlies, but grimly ignoring anyone who spoke to him.
His nurse, Alice, waited by the door, the medical supplies he’d requested clutched in her bony hands.
“Dr. Kaiser,” she said, tilting her head toward him.
“Alice,” he responded, gesturing to her as he took the stairs to the attic.
She struggled to keep up as he ascended. Alice was a large-boned woman with a penchant for sweets and a hard, almost hateful opinion of the patients at the Northern Michigan Asylum. She believed wholly in Dr. Kaiser’s work and never questioned his authority. She was the kind of nurse who took her doctor’s secrets to the grave.
Kaiser also suspected that Alice was in love with him, whatever strange series of emotions love included for a woman who spent her days filling her belly with chocolate and delighting in administering cold baths and electro-shock therapy to her patients.
Stephen peered through the grate to ensure that Liv slept before turning the key and pushing open the door.
* * *
Liv
Liv woke to find Stephen had bound her to the bed. Leather straps cut into the skin on her forearms and shins.
She dug her fingernails into the mattress and strained upward. The leather straps did not budge.
“You’ve really come into yourself, Liv. I keep marveling at how grown up you are,” Stephen said as he moved around her bed, smiling as if he’d popped in to visit an old friend.
“Stephen. What happened to George?”
The words tumbled out.
The night before, the question had rolled in her head like a marble caught in a sieve. And she didn’t need to ask the question. She knew. She’d known before she left Boston. She’d known the moment the little boy said the man in the hole. George had called her home because he was dead. The curse had come full circle. A life for a life.
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