Calling Back the Dead: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “Let’s go out to dinner,” Sammy announced, swinging Isis high. “We’ll drive down to Glen Arbor to Art’s bar. You want tater tots, Isis?”

  “Taters,” Isis shrieked, kicking her legs and smiling.

  “Sure,” I mumbled miserably.

  Sammy pulled me into a hug, crushing Isis between us. She laughed and wrapped an arm around my head.

  I smiled and tried not to see the question in Sammy’s eyes.

  “IT’S AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW?” I heard Sammy’s voice and paused.

  I had woken again from a long nap that left me groggy and disoriented. It had taken several minutes of staring into the canopy of our bed before I remembered where I was.

  “Dada, look, gween,” Isis announced.

  “Yes, it is green. Good observation, Isis.”

  “Gween gass,” she announced.

  “We’d be looking to move in early November. No, we left our furniture at our own house in Traverse City. We’re sub-leasing it for the winter. Okay. Sounds good. I’ll come in next week to fill out the application.”

  My head pulsed, and I experienced a strange sense of rage. For an instant I wanted to run into the room, snatch Sammy’s phone from his hand and throw it in the fire. I touched my temple and felt the steady thrum of my pulse, almost hot to the touch. I hoped I wasn’t coming down with something.

  We were only two weeks from the Halloween party, and I didn’t want to be recovering from a cold or the flu.

  I stepped into the doorway. Sammy held his cell phone clutched in his hand. Isis sat on the floor, coloring a flattened paper bag.

  “Who were you talking to?” I asked.

  He held up his phone, where Sarah’s face appeared on the screen.

  “Hi Corrie,” she waved.

  “Hi.” I waved back as Sammy ducked from the room, pecking me quick on the cheek. I watched him slip down the hallway and wondered who he’d been talking to before Sarah.

  CHAPTER 22

  Now

  Sarah

  Sarah kissed her mom on the cheek and handed her a wriggling Isis.

  “How’s my sweet girl?” Helen asked, bouncing her granddaughter up and down.

  “Gizmo,” Isis announced, proudly holding up her stuffed toy.

  “Oh my, that Gizmo is a special critter, isn’t he?”

  “Cookies!” Isis shouted, pointing at Helen’s counter stacked with plates of cookies.

  Sarah grabbed her one and settled Isis in front of an episode of Sesame Street before returning to the kitchen. She plopped on a barstool.

  “How’s Corrie?” Helen asked, returning to the counter.

  “Okay,” Sarah lied. “She said she got a new book and planned to spend the day reading.”

  Helen stood at the kitchen island, kneading and pounding dough as if she wanted to bake her grief into a cookie and feed it to someone else.

  “What do you think happened, Sarah?” her mother asked,

  Sarah leaned against the counter and shook her head.

  “I don’t know, Mom. I keep replaying the night in my head. Was there a psychopath there and none of us knew it? Did Sammy get in a fight with someone? He had a lot to drink.” She bit back any mention of Corrie, still not able to consider any real possibility that her brother’s wife was also his murderer.

  “Not Sammy,” Helen said, taking the dough she’d flattened and pushing it back into a ball to start over. She sprinkled flour on the top and shoved her hands deep into the creamy softness. “He never fought. He wasn’t a confrontational man.”

  “Well, he didn’t fight back, that’s for sure. But someone might have attacked him. Maybe he made a snide comment, or…”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Helen snapped, and her voice wavered. She closed her eyes.

  “Oh, Mom. I know that.” Sarah stood and wrapped her arms around her mother’s soft body. She leaned on her mother’s shoulder, wishing she could ease her pain. Unfortunately, she couldn’t even ease her own pain.

  “I’m so worried for Corrie. What if he comes back? What if he murders Corrie and Isis? What if we lose them all?” Her voice rose, a hysterical edge slipping in.

  “Shh,“ Sarah whispered, glancing toward the living room where Elmo sang about brushing his teeth. “Mom, here.” She pulled out a chair. “Sit for a minute.” Sarah sat across from her and took her hands. “That will not happen. I’ve been going out to the house almost every day. I think it was just a horrible, crazy thing that happened. Some lunatic showed up at the party, drank too much, and who knows - maybe he confused Sammy for someone else. I don’t think anyone had it in for Sammy, and I don’t think anyone will hurt Corrie and Isis. Okay? I believe that.”

  Helen’s gray eyes searched Sarah’s. Sarah wondered if she did believe it. She wanted to.

  “I keep baking,” Helen murmured. “It’s like after your daddy died. I couldn’t seem to sit still. I woke up at two a.m. this morning and started baking. Yesterday, I went downtown and dropped off platters of cookies at shops, the hospital, even a gas station on one-thirty-one.”

  She laughed a dry, humorless croak and rubbed her face.

  “I’m so tired, Sarah. I’m tired and I’m scared half to death. I’m scared for you, for my other half of Sammy and Sarah.”

  “I’m okay, Mom. I am. My heart is broken, and none of us will ever be the same. But we will make it through this.”

  “I didn’t like that house,” Helen muttered. “The first time I stepped through the door, I had a terrible feeling.”

  “You did?” Sarah asked.

  Sarah recalled her first morning visiting Kerry Manor. She pictured Sammy in the kitchen, his hair rumpled. ‘I had a death dream last night,’ he had announced.

  Had Sammy dreamed of his own murder?

  “I didn’t tell Sammy,” Helen continued. “I should have. I will live with that regret for the rest of my life.”

  “Sammy wouldn’t have listened, Mom. He was so excited to rent the house for the winter. He would have said you were being paranoid.”

  Helen stood back up and shuffled to the kitchen island, grabbing a handful of chocolate chips and dropping them in her mixing bowl.

  “You’re probably right.” She stirred in the chocolate chips as the timer on the oven sounded behind her.

  “Here, let me,” Sarah said, jumping up, but Helen shook her head.

  “No, please. The busier the better for me right now.”

  Helen put on a pink oven mitt decorated with dancing pigs and pulled out two cookie sheets covered in peanut butter cookies.

  “Something came in the mail yesterday for Sammy,” she said, sliding the pans onto hot pads.

  “Really?” Sarah walked to the table in the front hall where Helen stacked the mail.

  A brown paper package addressed to Sammy sat on the bureau. The return address included the name Mystic Moon and a location in California.

  Sarah carried the package back to the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” Helen asked as Sarah ripped open the package.

  “I’m opening it.”

  “Shouldn’t we give it to Corrie?”

  Sarah didn’t stop.

  “Corrie has enough to deal with. We can handle errant mail that comes to your house.”

  “Yes, I wondered why he had it sent here.”

  Sarah folded back the paper and stared at a book.

  True Cases of Possession by C.M. Riley.

  She glanced at her mother, still hammering the dough, and tried to keep her face impassive.

  “What is it?” Helen asked not looking up.

  “Just a book. I’ll take it to Corrie this afternoon.”

  “Tell her I’ll keep Isis tonight. I’d like some company.”

  CORRIE

  * * *

  “HOW LONG HAVE you been out here?” Sarah asked when she found me sitting along the hardened shoreline.

  I had put on one of Sammy’s huge and hideous Christmas sweaters over a pair of flannel pajama pants.
My hair was knotted, and I knew my face was haggard from crying and the cold.

  Once upon a time, I would have cared. I remembered considering how well I handled grief. After my mother’s death, I missed only three days of work, and I never once broke down at the office. I showed up every day with my slacks ironed and my stupid happy face because God forbid I made anyone uncomfortable.

  “Isis stayed with my mom,” Sarah told me, although I hadn’t asked.

  Later, I would lie in bed and cry for Sammy and hate myself for how I was failing our daughter, but right now, with the frigid wind blowing in from the lake, and the words from The Summoning rolling through my mind like a hurricane, nothing mattered,

  I’d been sitting on the beach for two hours. My backside was numb, and the horizon had taken on a dreamy quality I quite liked. Out here life seemed less sharp, less real.

  Sarah sat next to me and picked up a flat stone. She threw it at an angle toward the water. It didn’t skip, but plopped with a little splash.

  “Sammy was the stone skipper,” she said. “We counted six skips one time.”

  “He wanted to teach Isis. He tried a few times when we first moved in here, but every time he threw a rock, she cried and demanded he retrieve it. I remember him wading in, water to his crotch, trying to get one of those stupid rocks.”

  Sarah laughed and threw a second stone. It dropped with a loud plunk.

  “He was a great dad.”

  “Yeah,” I murmured, unable to accept the word ‘was,’ as if he‘d never be a great dad again.

  “I want to help, Corrie. I feel like Sammy’s up there watching us right now, saying ‘Come on Sarah, take care of my wife, help her through this,’ and I’m down here twiddling my thumbs and rocking back and forth on my heels. I don’t know what to do.”

  I looked at her sideways and shook my head.

  “No one can help me, Sarah. Not even me.”

  “That’s not true. I refuse to believe that. You’ve got everything to live for, Corrie. Isis is just a baby, you have her whole life ahead of you. The only way she can know Sammy, truly know him the way you did, is through you.”

  I listened and nodded and understood that Sarah, and likely everyone else, feared I would kill myself.

  “I’m not planning to commit suicide,” I told her.

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “But it’s what you’re thinking, right? I’m a mess and that means I’m a danger to myself. Who knows what I’ll do?”

  “Is that how you feel?”

  I laughed, but it sounded dry and humorless.

  “Sure, sometimes. But I would never do that to Isis. My mom didn’t kill herself in the traditional sense, but she did it just the same. I would never leave Isis without either of her parents.”

  Sarah scooted close and wrapped an arm around my back. I felt her heartbeat against my side. I had forgotten the sensation of being held. Sammy always held me. He was a man who loved to hug, spoon, cuddle. Until Sarah pressed close, I didn’t realize how empty my world had become since Sammy left it.

  I rested my cheek against her hair and gazed at the stones.

  CHAPTER 23

  Now

  Corrie

  “M ommy, phone,” Isis announced, shaking my knee.

  I had been gazing into the fire, lost in another reverie. “I hear it, baby.” I scooped her up and hurried into the kitchen, grabbing the phone.

  She pulled it out of my hand before I could talk.

  “Dada?” she asked.

  I let out a little strangled gasp and jerked the phone away. I watched her face crumple, her brown eyes filling with tears. “Oh no, sweetie, I’m sorry. Don’t cry.” I kissed her tears.

  “Gorey?” I heard his voice, Sammy’s voice, from the dangling receiver. I stared, transfixed, moving the phone slowly to my ear.

  “Corrie, are you there?” Sammy’s voice did not come through the phone. Instead it was a man’s voice I didn’t recognize.

  I closed my eyes, leaned my head against Isis’s warm, wet cheek.

  “Yes, this is Corrie.”

  “Corrie, hi. Gosh, I’m sorry about that. I heard Isis. I hope I didn’t upset her.”

  Isis wiggled in my arms and I set her on the floor.

  “No, it’s okay. She’s… she’s fine. I’m sorry. Who am I speaking with?”

  Laughter on the phone.

  “Guess I should have started with that. It’s Gunner from the Halloween party. You met my wife, Micah. We have a boy the same age as Isis.”

  “Yes, Gunner. I remember you. How are you?”

  “I’m okay. I’m calling, actually, to ask about you. I wanted to right after, but figured you’d need time.”

  “Sure, thanks. I’m fine. That’s a lie, of course, but we’re getting there - one day at a time.”

  “Yeah, good, I’m happy to hear that, Corrie. Sammy was an inspiration and a friend, and our whole community, the comic artists up here, have been devastated by the news. We’re creating a comic book in his honor. All of us donating a strip. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ll send you a copy as soon as it’s finished.”

  “Thank you, Gunner. Sammy would have loved that.” He would have; in fact, it was just the sort of thing Sammy would have organized for someone else.

  “I have another reason for calling,” Gunner continued. “Micah’s taking Jared to the Children’s Museum today. She’d love to take Isis.”

  Isis had run back into the kitchen. She waved her pink sippy cup in my face.

  “Juicy?”

  I took the cup and unscrewed the lid.

  “Isis, would you like to go to the Children’s Museum today? With a little boy your age named Jared?”

  Isis hopped up and down.

  “For play?”

  “Yes, to play. Does that sound fun?”

  She nodded her head.

  “Sure, Gunner. I think Isis would really enjoy that. I’d take her myself, but…” I imagined a string of excuses but let them all die on my lips.

  “Jared will be over the moon,” Gunner said. “I’ll let Micah know. She’ll probably be to Kerry Manor around two. Is that good for you?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Great. And Corrie, if we can do anything, please let us know.”

  He hung up the phone, and I stayed on the line listening to the staticky silence, willing Sammy’s voice to drift across the veil and whisper my name.

  Sarah

  * * *

  SARAH PUSHED through the door into the arcade’s back room.

  Will sat at the cheap folding table, his black hair shaggy across his face, a pencil propped on his lip.

  “I need your help,” Sarah told him, holding out a bag of chips and a bottle of Mountain Dew.

  He wrinkled his nose. “And this is what? A bribe?”

  “Isn’t this what your kind eats?”

  He rolled his eyes, snatching the chips from her hand. “Not that stuff,” he nodded at the soda, “tastes like battery acid.”

  He tore open the chips and paused, studying Sarah.

  “I don’t play well with others. You’d be better off teaming up with a cop. Isn’t that how it works in the crime shows?”

  “I’m pretty sure if I took my concerns to the cops, they’d lock me up and throw away the key. Plus, the police are too…”

  “Stupid?”

  “No.” She imagined Detective Collins’ suspicious gaze. “They’re too closed-minded - not open to consider other possibilities. Not that I blame them.”

  “Explain,” he said.

  “Before my brother died, he said his wife Corrie was acting strangely. He found her sleepwalking several times. Once she was holding a doll in the lake. I’ve noticed things too. She…” Sarah paused, but Will did not look skeptical. “She changes, gets this dazed look on her face and sings like a little girl.”

  Will stuffed a handful of chips in his mouth and crunched loudly, wiping the orange dust on his dark jeans. He
stood and wandered away from her, pausing at a large picture of Pac Man dressed as a super hero.

  “Too risky? Or time for a new adventure?” she heard him mumble.

  “Are you talking to yourself?” she asked.

  He turned and grinned. “Of course, I’m talking to myself. Sometimes I need expert advice.”

  Will reminded Sarah of her twin. A more brooding version of Sammy, but similar nevertheless. She wondered if she desired to draw him closer for that reason alone.

  She glanced at the table where he’d been sitting and saw a newspaper lying open. A picture of Kerry Manor perched above a caption that read: How Much Tragedy Is Too Much Tragedy?

  He saw her looking.

  “They’re starting to take notice.” Will tapped the paper. “There’s an op-ed in there from a guy demanding Kerry Manor be demolished.”

  “Do you believe the destruction of Kerry Manor will… end it, kill it?” She struggled to find a phrase that didn’t sound insane.

  He stared off, and then shook his head.

  “No, but it’s a start.”

  “Maybe, helping me is a start, too?”

  “I’m intrigued,” he admitted. “But Sarah, this isn’t a joke. That house harbors something evil, and I’m not sure if it can be stopped.”

  “I spoke with Delila,” Sarah said.

  Will perched on the edge of the table.

  “And now that you’ve had adult confirmation, you believe me?”

  “No. I already believed you, as much as my rational brain allowed, anyway. I was curious about her story. It reminds me of what’s happening with Corrie. And Delila got rid of Ethel.”

  “She trapped her.”

  “At the asylum.”

  Will nodded.

  “Do you know the place? The Hippie Tree?” Sarah asked.

  “I’ve been there a time or two. I don’t like it. Lots of kids hang out there, get stoned, spray-paint the trees. Dancing with the devil, if you ask me.”

  “How can we find out more?”

  “I have some connections. Give me twenty-four hours, and I’ll take you to meet someone.”