Calling Back the Dead: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  In the kitchen, she took a pile of rags and dipped each in kerosene, returning to the door and shoving them beneath. Had they smelled the kerosene she’d poured onto the curtains? Unlikely.

  The match lit with a tiny scrape, and the flame engulfed the rag. She threw the match away and watched the fire consume the rags snaking beneath the door.

  “What in God’s name?” her father suddenly bellowed.

  Ethel backed away, her hands balled into fists.

  Her mother called out, and then her sister. Her brother began to cry.

  Ethel went to the great room and retrieved her father’s pistol. She walked trance-like back to the door and lifted the heavy gun, pointing the barrel. Her hand shook, dipped and rose as her scrawny arms wielded the weighted revolver.

  The fire raged, consuming the door and beginning to blacken the surrounding walls. Smoke poured fourth and Ethel’s eyes watered so she could barely see.

  After the screams died, Ethel walked upstairs. She stood for a long time in her parents’ bedroom, and then climbed into the dumbwaiter and pressed her hands over her ears. The screams had ended, and yet they echoed on in her mind. She closed her eyes and waited.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Morning after Halloween, 2001

  Now

  Corrie

  M y head ached and my mouth tasted metallic, like pennies. I sat up, noticing the first trickle of early pre-sunrise light creeping in from the windows.

  When had I moved to the couch? I patted the velvet sofa and tried to remember. Halloween night flitted by in fragments, images of the party, people laughing. I may have had a few too many Grave Digger cocktails.

  Kerry Manor loomed around me, dark and soaring. The carved wooden face over the fireplace held me in its frozen gaze.

  My last memory was Sammy draping his arm across my shoulder and handing me a shot of something sweet and vodka-laden.

  “It’s All Hallows Eve, my dawling,” he’d whispered, sucking my earlobe. “Have another shot.”

  I stood, and the room rolled. Hunched over, I braced my hands on the armrest of the couch and noticed my white Bride of Frankenstein dress was streaked and damp with red. I touched the lace. It was still wet. Had I spilled a drink on myself or gotten sprayed by someone’s fake blood during the night?

  I sniffed the air and wrinkled my nose at the dank, metallic smell of blood. I pulled the fabric close to my nose. There was no mistaking the scent.

  “Sammy?” I called my husband’s name, my voice wavering. A tiny seed of panic took root in my stomach.

  I left the room, glancing in the empty kitchen. At the sink, I saw a pile of bloody rags heaped on the counter. My feet dragged along the wood floor, my dress heavy. The stink of blood grew heady in the kitchen, the fragrance making me dizzy. I braced a hand against the counter’s edge and looked out the window, somehow already knowing what I would see there.

  Beneath the oak tree that flanked the water’s edge lay Sammy.

  I shrieked and pushed away from the counter, nearly tripping on my long dress as I burst through the back door and plummeted down the stairs.

  I didn’t have to touch him to know he was dead.

  His eyes stared, unseeing, red veins snaking through white. His mouth hung open and a dark, gelatinous mass pooled inside and dripped onto his chin. I clutched his head and pulled him into my lap, screaming, howling. His body was stiff, cool to the touch, and less like a body than a mannequin. He looked like one of his lifelike wax figures, his realness merely an illusion, a talented artist’s creation.

  “No, no, no, please, no.”

  Hours passed, or maybe only minutes. Did I fall asleep beneath his body?

  “You’re not dead, Sammy,” I murmured. I pinched his firm face and slapped his cheek hard. It would be just like Sammy to pull a prank on Halloween night. “It’s not real,” I told him, wiping the thick blood from his chin, smearing it across his cheek and my palm.

  He had grown heavier, stiffer, and when I rolled him off me, I nearly threw up. The previous night’s spirits swam in my head, churned in my belly. I crawled toward the water’s edge, the sharp stones of the beach hard beneath my knees and cutting into my palms.

  I waded into the lake, my dress a lead weight pulling me down. If I pushed out far enough, the water would swallow me whole.

  I could join my husband. He couldn’t have gone far.

  “CORRIE!” The sound found me, a woman screaming, a sad confirmation that I was not dead. Slick hands took hold of my shoulders and forced me into shallow water.

  I blinked and found Sarah, Sammy’s twin sister, staring down at me, her face melted in grief and fear. She had thought I was dead, floating out there in the lake. I wanted to be.

  “Sammy’s-” she sputtered and stopped, glancing toward the tree where he laid.

  She lifted me, soaked dress and all, and struggled up the rocky beach into the yard. She fumbled the glass door open and heaved me into Kerry Manor, depositing me near the fire that burned in the hearth, though I didn’t remember seeing it when I woke earlier in the room.

  “Here, let’s get this off.” Sarah undressed me as if I were a child. I stood, shivering, icy and hard. My legs trembled so violently that the moment the sodden dress pooled at my feet, I sank to the floor and pressed my face to my knees. I cried loud, gurgling wails, wishing I could reach deep enough to pluck out the despair and set it free.

  CHAPTER 2

  Two Months Earlier

  Then

  Corrie

  “This place is outta sight!” Sammy exclaimed.

  I nodded, staring through the windshield at Kerry Manor, the Gothic monstrosity we’d be living in for the next eight months.

  “Our Halloween Party will be awe-some,” he continued, jumping from the car and pulling me after him. He spun me around and then left me teetering as he jogged to the porch.

  I gazed at the steep gabled roof that ended in elaborately carved trim. Two brick chimneys sprouted from the roof, and a pointed iron railing ran the length of one of several rooftops.

  I had to admit, it was a neat place to write a book.

  “This guy’s a genius,” Sammy announced, producing a skeleton key from the small black box by the door. “He’s restored this house to near-original condition. Can you imagine this place in its prime?”

  I looked at the long black key and then at the tall, windowless door before us.

  I couldn’t believe that only a few years earlier the house stood condemned, a burned shell waiting for the forest and the lake to reclaim it. I knew little of Kerry Manor, though Sam had filled me in on the basics. A century before a fire claimed the lives of the entire Kerry Family. A handful of urban myths surrounded the creepy mansion - but having grown up in Cadillac, more than an hour drive from here, I knew few of the stories.

  “Forget about the next great American novel, Corrie. This house is for writing horror. Mua-ah-ah,” he cackled, jumping onto the porch rail with his teeth bared and hands raised like claws.

  I laughed and shuddered at the same time. I did not share Sammy’s fascination with the darker side of life. A therapist once told me that children of addicts tended to the extremes, and I veered toward the warm and fuzzy. I liked Disney movies and romance novels. Sammy often laughed at my insatiable appetite for happy endings, which he found unrealistic and downright boring. My love for Sammy had me endlessly dabbling in horror, but I would happily never watch Jason staking young blondes in his hockey mask, ever again.

  “I thought it would be more… homey,” I admitted.

  “Homely?” he called, pushing open the door. “It is kind of homely, right? A house only a mother could love.”

  “A house only a monster could love,” I grumbled. “And I said homey.”

  The foyer yawned. I strained upward to see the shadowy ceiling. A sharp, medieval chandelier hung above us, illuminating the dark interior, but only barely.

  A broad wooden staircase curved toward a landing with a tall st
ained glass window. Oil paintings hung along the stairwell. Images of families, their faces grim, stared out from drab maroon and brown backdrops.

  “Are we looking at the Kerry family?” I asked, gesturing at the paintings.

  “No.” Sammy shook his head. “Dane bought most of the paintings in Paris. He considered recreating images of the family, but thought that might be macabre.”

  “Because they all died here?”

  “Mmm-hmmm.” Sammy wandered away, and I paused to look at a black wall sconce with spear-like arms pointing in several directions.

  “Looks like a toddler death trap,” I mumbled, making sure Sammy did not hear me.

  I didn’t want to ruin Sammy’s excitement over our winter rental, and in all honesty, I felt it too. What a wild experience to spend a winter in a restored Gothic mansion. And yet… I rubbed my arms and smoothed over goosebumps beneath my fingers.

  “Look at this fireplace, Gorey,” Sammy called, using his preferred pet name for me.

  I walked into the great room to more soaring ceilings and dark wood-paneled walls.

  The fireplace mantel stood as tall as me, thick and ornate. In its center a pagan figurehead stared out, its face a whorl of groves, a sadistic smile stretched on its voluptuous lips.

  I grimaced and touched my fingers to its partially open mouth.

  “Is this in line with the original house?”

  Sammy shrugged.

  “Who knows? Though I’d imagine not. I’m guessing the Kerry family was Protestant. That was the prevailing religion of the time in these parts. A heathen mantel would not have pleased visitors.”

  “Are you a heathen?” I asked the wooden face.

  “I’m not sure about him, but I’m experiencing some heathen tendencies right about now.” Sammy picked me up and growled in my ear. “Let’s go christen our room.”

  I laughed and shook my head, kissing his mouth and struggling out of his arms.

  “After the tour.”

  High arched doorways and floor-length windows made each room appear impossibly tall.

  A long, rectangular dining room was lit by a chandelier illuminating richly textured black wallpaper.

  “Are those actual candles?” I asked, standing on tiptoe to peer into the fixture.

  “No, but they sure look the part.” Sammy ran his hands over the gleaming wood table. “Imagine all the laundry we can pile on this thing.”

  I laughed and slipped through another doorway, into an alcove with inset shelves filled with antique dishes.

  “Does the owner realize we have a two-year-old?” I asked Sammy, admiring the silver-flecked china and wondering how I would keep Isis from turning the room into a pile of porcelain rubble.

  We explored the study, home to another cavernous fireplace. Sammy pulled open the drapes and let light filter into the room, washing the gleaming wood floor and garish furniture in gold.

  Leather-bound classics lined the shelves, black iron lions butting the books together.

  “I may have to claim this room,” Sammy announced, settling into a high-backed chair, surely hand-carved, with intricate whorls and spirals. He rested his hands on the desk, palms down. “In this room, you shall call me Lord Samuel of Kerry Manor.”

  I half-smiled, distracted by a mural of mossy trees and lush foliage that covered one wall. The image looked too real; as if I could step through and feel the spongy earth beneath me, smell the dank plants, overripe and sagging.

  “Excuse me,” Sammy cleared his voice loudly. “Lord Samuel of Kerry Manor is displeased with your lack of ardor.”

  I looked at him and grinned.

  “Lord Samuel will have to take his complaints to the Queen. Oh, wait, that’s me. Complaints are dismissed.”

  I laughed and danced from the room.

  Down another hallway, I found a bathroom with a black claw-footed tub set in a deep arch. Above the black sink, a long medieval-looking gold and black mirror reflected my face. I stared at the woman in the mirror: freckled nose, creamy brown curls brushing the turned-up collar of my white coat.

  I remembered a game one of my girlfriends insisted we play as children.

  Stare into the glass and say Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, and then turn off the lights and wait.

  According to my friend, the ghost of a woman who wandered the streets searching for her dead child would appear behind me.

  I tried it one time when I was ten years old. When the lights went out, panic seized me as if a monster had slithered from the bathtub drain and caught me around the throat.

  I shuddered at the memory, glimpsing Sammy slipping into the bathroom behind me.

  “Don’t even think about scaring me,” I told him, turning around.

  “What, babe?” Sammy called from somewhere deeper in the house, maybe even walking up the stairs.

  I blinked into the room. There were no windows, so it could not have been a trick of the light. I pulled the door back - nothing. I turned back to the mirror and stared into it a second time, entertaining a brief fantasy of a magic portal. What existed within the mirror was separate from my world. On the opposite side of the mirror, the Corrie of another dimension stood.

  I studied the dark wallpaper, the bureau stacked with colorful bottles of perfumes and cologne - even those reminiscent of a time long passed.

  Nothing moved in the mirror.

  I ENDED my tour on the back porch and surveyed the endless gray water of Lake Michigan. The house stood at the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula in an isolated stretch of forest and stony beach. Our closest neighbors were a half-mile away. The Upper Peninsula lay across the watery divide, Beaver Island nestled somewhere between. You’d drown long before you ever caught a glimpse of either.

  “What do you think?” Sammy asked, stepping behind me and snaking his strong arms beneath my own. He pressed his forearms into my ribs and rested his chin on top of my head.

  I reached a hand up and brushed it through his shaggy auburn hair.

  “I’m wondering if this is crazy? Subleasing our house, uprooting our lives to spend a winter out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Crazy? No.” He kissed the hollow beneath my ear. “Adventurous, exciting? Yes. And our life comes with us. Our home in Traverse City will be there in May when we’re ready to go back but for now, for today, we can be Mr. and Mrs. Flynn of Kerry Manor,” he said in a high English accent. “Really, though, what do you think of the house?”

  “It’s beautiful,” I murmured. “And isolated.”

  “And…”

  “A little eerie.”

  “And…?” he asked, eager but sincere.

  He wanted me to say I loved it, I could write here, I could live here for the winter.

  “And I like it,” I offered.

  “Yes! I knew you would. Wait until Isis sees it.”

  I imagined our little girl with her red cheeks and dreamy brown eyes trying to capture the house in a single glimpse. What would her memories of the house be when she grew older? The year we lived in the spooky Kerry Manor, or would she remember the house as a fairy-tale castle of sorts?

  I thought of my childhood home, a small ranch ever in disrepair sitting on the outskirts of Cadillac. A rusted car stood on cement blocks in the backyard, left by a prior tenant. My mother worked various odd jobs cleaning houses and waiting tables. After my sister Amy turned sixteen and got a job, followed by me two years later, our mother stopped working. We paid the rent, the utilities, and used the bridge card to get groceries each week. My mother stayed home, drank gin and played sad music. I still hated Bonnie Raitt’s I Can’t Make You Love Me.

  Like most parents, I wanted a better life for my daughter. Sometimes I lay in bed terrified that I was failing her. We watched too much TV, Sammy and I worked too much; she ate white bread when it should have been whole grain. When I aired my fears to Sammy, he would laugh and remind me that we had both grown up on sugar cereal and Wiley the Coyote and lived to tell the tale. Most days I
agreed with him; others I merely powered through, hoping the rigid sense of doing it all wrong would soften at nightfall and I’d wake the next day renewed. I often did.

  But in that moment, with Kerry Manor looming behind us, a flutter of apprehension, of foreboding even, stole into my thoughts. I wondered if we were making a terrible mistake.

  CHAPTER 3

  Now

  Corrie

  “M rs. Flynn? Mrs. Flynn?” I heard the detective talking and realized he spoke to me. Of course, he spoke to me. We were alone in the room.

  “Hmm,” I asked, barely able to peek an eye up from where my head rested on my hands. My face felt huge, like one of those bloated fish in saltwater aquariums. I tried to focus on his face, but everything had the blur that arose after hours of tears.

  “Was there anyone at the party you didn’t invite? Any strangers?”

  I looked at him, and a burst of hysterical laughter poured forth. I closed my mouth and my eyes.

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled. “Sammy had friends from the comic book business. I had friends that brought friends. Sarah’s friends brought friends. It was a big party.”

  I smiled, remembering the look on Sammy’s face halfway through the night when people packed the house and lawn - monsters and ghouls and skimpy angels everywhere. Paper ghosts hung in doorways, skeletons danced near strings of orange lights, laughter and little periodic screams of fright echoed in the night. Our friends gushed about the towering old mansion, some shared stories they’d heard of Kerry Manor, a few insisted it was haunted.

  “I understand this is hard, Mrs. Flynn, but…”

  “Do you?” I asked, dragging my head away from my hands and fixing him with red, blurry eyes. “Really? Or is that just something you say?”

  He blinked at me and set his large hands on the table. He wore a wedding ring, and Sammy’s ring flashed in my mind, a smear of blood on the glimmering gold.

  “Without sharing too much personal detail, yes, I do. I entered law enforcement because I lost a loved one to violence. For many years I was angry and wanted vengeance. Later, I found a way to make those feelings more productive. Here I am.”