Calling Back the Dead: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “Sometimes they do,” he admitted.

  Sarah stared through the window at the gray day beyond. Heavy clouds and a spattering of rain pulled the color from the city. The trees, rather than gold and vibrant, looked heavy and forlorn.

  “What do they have? I mean, evidence-wise?”

  The lawyer took out a legal pad and flipped several pages.

  “No murder weapon, no DNA other than Sammy and Corrie’s. A handful of hairs and fibers that may or may not be linked to the killer. One helpful bit is that the murderer seemed to be right-handed.”

  “And Corrie’s a leftie.”

  “Yep. The attack also appeared to come from above, which would imply-”

  “Someone taller than Sammy. And he was over six feet.”

  “Maybe,” the lawyer paused. “They think he was kneeling. There was no blood spatter from the knees down, and his pants were grass-stained.”

  “Kneeling?”

  The lawyer shrugged.

  “Possibly, which implies he was being threatened. Someone told him to get on his knees - that kind of thing. Though I tend to picture a gun in that scenario, not a knife.”

  “And Sammy would fight,” Sarah said. “He wouldn’t just get on his knees.”

  “Which is also troubling,” the lawyer said. “He had zero defensive wounds. None. Almost as if he let it happen.”

  “That’s crazy. He’d never-”

  “I know, and I agree, but the forensics don’t lie. Maybe he was so intoxicated he couldn’t fight back. His blood alcohol was high.”

  “I’m sure it was.” Sarah remembered her last moment with Sammy. He’d kissed her goodbye as she left the party, his mouth sloppy and his eyes glazed. He’d reeked of alcohol. “What about the bloody rags by the sink? Was there DNA or whatever?”

  The lawyer smiled.

  “Corn syrup, fake blood. Sammy’s fingerprints were on the rags. Maybe he spilled some and cleaned it up.”

  “Sammy and his fucking fake blood,” Sarah muttered, grimacing at the memory of the buckets of overturned fake blood near the back porch dripping a line of red onto crumpled white sheets below.

  “I would like to ask you if you have any intuition about this, Sarah, about who murdered Sammy and why.”

  Sarah drew her mouth into a grim line and shook her head.

  “I don’t know, Doug, I don’t. But it wasn’t Corrie. I would bet my life on it.”

  “As would I,” the lawyer said, following Sarah’s gaze to the window. “Whoever did this is out there. That’s a terrifying thought.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Now

  Sarah

  “M ama?” Isis called, dropping her stuffed Gizmo and running into the living room at Helen’s house.

  “She’s not here, Icy,” Sarah told her, petting her soft blonde head.

  “Come here, baby girl,” Helen said, leaning down and lifting Isis into her arms. “Grandma made banana muffins. Want one?”

  “Muffnins!” Isis repeated. “Nana made muffnins.”

  Sarah followed her mother and niece into the kitchen. Like her last visit, baked goods coated every surface - this time muffins instead of cookies.

  “I can call Corrie’s sister, Mom,” Sarah started, but Helen shushed her.

  “No. I want Isis here with me. She gives me a purpose. Plus, I feel like I’ve got a little piece of Sammy when she’s here. Is Corrie okay?”

  “Yeah, they released her after questioning. I took her home and met Micah in Northport to pick up Isis.”

  “Do they know-”

  “That she was arrested? No, and technically she wasn’t. I guess that’s one thing we can be grateful for about Kerry Manor. There’s no prying eyes.”

  Helen nodded but her lower lip trembled.

  Isis sat in a kitchen chair, legs dangling far above the floor, as muffin crumbs dropped around her.

  “Why?” Helen asked but Sarah shook her head.

  “We’ll talk about it later. I have to run, but if you need help, call me, okay? I mean it. I told Corrie you’d hold on to Isis for a few days. It’s better that way.”

  SARAH FOLLOWED WILL DOWN a steep hill into a park. Most of the leaves had fallen, and they created a wet sheath of slippery madness. Sarah wiped out and slid the rest of the way down, cringing as her coat pulled up and soggy leaves sponged across her back.

  “Graceful as a gazelle,” Will chided, offering her a hand.

  “I might take you down with me,” she muttered, scrambling back to her feet and pulling the sodden leaves off her skin. “Another white t-shirt ruined.”

  “Have you considered switching to black?” he asked, grinning.

  “We couldn’t meet this guy in a coffee shop?” she grumbled, pulling her coat around her body as she followed him.

  Will looked back with a smirk.

  “Not likely.”

  He walked a paved path to a bridge that hung over the Boardman River. As they drew closer, Sarah heard voices and slowed. She saw no one, and yet the voices drifted down as if…

  “Is he up there?” She pointed at the dark underbelly of the bridge, where long shadows hid the alcoves beneath.

  “Home sweet home,” Will murmured. He stopped beneath the bridge and called up. “Maurice Paul? He here tonight?”

  “I’ll Maurice your Paul,” a woman called, followed by a shrill cackle and another man’s hoot of laughter.

  “Stuff it, Spider Lady,” a male voice snapped.

  Sarah watched a shape disembark from the darkness. A man layered in sweaters and a grimy pair of corduroy pants shimmied down the concrete embankment. His hair was a long gray tangle over his shoulders. Sarah tried not to twitch her nose at the smell of whiskey and something pungent.

  “What kin I do ya fer, Will the Potato Handler?”

  “We need a good, long chat,” Will told the man. “Buy ya a pack of smokes?”

  “And a sandwich?” Maurice asked. “And a duce of Bud?” The man cast soft gray eyes from Will to Sarah, who he understood would pay for his requests.

  He had kind eyes. Nothing sinister about him, other than his smell. Sarah wondered if her instincts were true or if she, like many others, simply couldn’t sense bad from good.

  “Sure, yeah.” Sarah nodded.

  “Why are you a potato handler?” Sarah asked as they trudged up the hill.

  “I met Maurice when I was juggling potatoes,” Will admitted.

  Sarah lifted an eyebrow.

  “I was working as a prep cook on Union Street, juggling potatoes by the dumpster.”

  “And Will the magnificent, juggling potato man gifted me this lifetime’s most scrum-diddly-umptious pasty. Sixty-seventy some odd years now, but who’s keeping count,” Maurice said, breathing heavily as he struggled to keep up.

  “You sit in the back,” Sarah whispered through the side of her mouth when they approached her car.

  She might not have a dark sense of the guy, but she didn’t want him sitting behind her if he had a switchblade tucked in his back pocket.

  Will winked and nodded. They stopped at a convenience store, where Will and Maurice ran in to fulfill the man’s request.

  “What cat crawled up your bum, you dragged me out of my abode on this cold, windy night?” Maurice asked after he closed the car door. He lit a cigarette that Sarah wanted to extinguish and throw out the window. The smell of cigarette smoke reminded her of her ex-girlfriend, Heather. Heather with the long blonde eyelashes and the silky laugh.

  “We have questions about the asylum,” Will told him, shuffling in a paper bag for the man’s sandwich and beer. He handed Sarah a Coke and kept a water for himself.

  The man leaned his head back and took a long drag, sighing.

  “Man, that’s good.” He turned to Sarah and held up his cigarette. “I only smoke Lucky Strikes on special occasions. Takes me straight back to the Vietnam War. Now a’days I roll my own, but once, maybe twice a year, I pick up a pack of these, and it’s like a little time mach
ine for my lungs.”

  “Interesting,” Sarah murmured with a glance at Will, who shrugged back at her.

  “Maurice, I want to know about the rumors surrounding the hippie tree. No, I take that back, I want the truth. The real story,” Will said, leaning forward between the seats.

  The man snorted and finished his cigarette, flicking the butt out the window.

  Sarah considered scolding him for littering but realized it would be a wasted effort. The man was well into his seventies and lived on the streets. He couldn’t care less for her middle-class judgments.

  “The Wicked Willow,” the man said in a sing-songy voice, unwrapping his sandwich and taking a huge bite. He chewed thoughtfully, and then returned to his song. “We lay my love and I, beneath the weeping willow, but now alone I lie, beneath the weeping willow.” His voice had taken on a low, haunted quality, and he stared out the window.

  Sarah glanced at Will in the rearview mirror, but he held a finger to his lips.

  “Singing oh willow waly by the tree that weeps with me.” When he finished, he picked up his beer and cracked the top.

  Again, Sarah opened her mouth and closed it, grinding her teeth together to keep from mentioning it was illegal to have alcohol open in a moving vehicle.

  “Know that song? The Kingston Trio - mighty fine, mighty fine musicians.” He drank in loud gulps, and then wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

  “The Hippie Tree is not at fault. She was a beauty in her prime, a magnificent willow nestled there in the magical asylum forest. But you see, she was a beacon for a secret chamber hidden in the trees.”

  He turned his gaze on Sarah, but she stared forward, ignoring the intensity of his gaze.

  “The lightning took her - BAM!” He clapped his hands together. Both Sarah and Will jumped.

  “Shit, man. You made me spill my water,” Will grumbled.

  Maurice grinned and twisted in his seat.

  “A story like this will make you spill your bladder.” He turned back and took another bite of his sandwich. “I went there once. Few patients did, but you see, I was special. They called me Time Traveler. I could tell them what had been and what would be. My doctor wasn’t in the brotherhood, the secret-keepers, the brain drainers. So, they waited until my doc took a holiday, and then they snatched me in the dead of night. Through the forest we wound, up the hills and down. I might never have known the place but for that willow, rising high into a moon-shone sky. Vines this thick buried the door.” He held his hands apart. “Down a long, slick tunnel into a cold stone room. Torches on every wall, and benches, old wood benches, like you‘d see in Greece at the Coliseum. I always wanted to go there, stand in the pits, watch the gladiators face off against the beasts sent in to destroy them.”

  “What was the brotherhood?” Sarah asked, turning down a road that led beneath towering oak trees.

  “A secret society,” Maurice said conspiratorially, quivering as he drew another cigarette from the pack.

  “Of doctors?” Will asked.

  Maurice nodded.

  “I liked livin’ there,” Maurice murmured, rubbing his hand back and forth across his bearded face. “Nice bed, and a piano, and the canteen had a burger for a quarter. Real nice folks, except the bad ones, course.” He snorted.

  “Who was in the brotherhood?” Will asked.

  Maurice frowned and cocked his head. After several seconds, he held up his empty palms.

  “Don’t know. There were so many of ‘em, white faces starin’ out from the dark, watching me. They were like a room full of lions, and I was their prey, strapped to a table, waiting to get eaten.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Now

  Sarah

  Sarah glanced at Will, who didn’t look remotely suspicious of the man’s story.

  “But the takers get taken,” he whispered, licking his lips. “One of them doctors went nutty as an acorn. He still haunts that place, like he’s waitin’ for his old life to be restored, to return to his post as Doctor Evil.”

  “He’s still alive?” Sarah asked. “A doctor in the secret society?”

  “Oh sure, lots of ‘em prolly are. I am.” Maurice tapped on his forehead.

  “How do we find him?” Will asked.

  Maurice picked up a chapstick from Sarah’s cup holder and popped off the top. She snatched it out of his hand. He widened his eyes and leaned his head back with a sigh.

  “Lips’re mighty wind-burnt this time of year.”

  “Give him the chapstick,” Will said exasperated, as if he were mediating a fight between two children.

  She handed it back, rolling her eyes.

  “Lookin’ fer your brains in there?” Maurice asked with a grin before slathering the chapstick on his scaly lips. He replaced the cap and dangled it above the cup holder.

  “It’s yours,” Sarah mumbled.

  He stuffed it into his pocket.

  “I can set a meeting. ’Course, I’ll need a few bucks. Bus fare, a sandwich, pack of slims.”

  “Done,” Will said.

  Sarah glanced at him, and he glared back at her as if daring her to disagree.

  It wasn’t the cost so much as the concern that Maurice would take the money and vanish into the cracks.

  “The Doc’s real particular, and a strange one too. I’ll send word with a time and place.”

  Sarah pulled twenty dollars from her purse, and Maurice snatched it from her hand, opened the door, and hopped out.

  “Wait,” Sarah called, but he’d already vanished into the shadows beyond the streetlights.

  Will opened the back door and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “A secret society of doctors,” he murmured, gazing into the darkness where Maurice had disappeared.

  “Do you believe him?” Sarah asked, dubious.

  “Sure, why would he lie?”

  “To get twenty bucks.”

  “Nah. Maurice is good people. He’s never steered me wrong.”

  “You’ve gotten information from him before?”

  “Yep, he told me about the restoration of Kerry Manor. He knew the history of the house, heard about it during his asylum days. He knew of Delila; that’s how I found her. I cross-checked his stories with newspapers when the house originally burned, and it was spot-on. He’s an odd one, but not a liar.”

  “Do you think he knows an exorcist?”

  Will gazed at her. She expected him to laugh. He didn’t.

  “If not, I can find someone who does. One thing at a time, though. Let’s meet Doctor Evil.”

  CORRIE

  * * *

  “CORRIE, I’M SO SORRY.”

  Jillian grabbed me and pulled me close. I smelled perfume mixed with almond lotion. Her heavy black hair pressed into my cheek and reminded me of an animal pelt, a black bear perhaps.

  I had not spoken with Jillian since I took a leave of absence from my therapy practice. We shared an office space, but rarely socialized outside of occasional encounters between clients.

  “Thank you,” I said, echoing the words I’d become so accustomed to offering.

  “Are you coming back?” Jillian gestured at the two doors that opened from our little waiting room.

  She meant was I coming back to practice.

  I nodded.

  “Do you have a few minutes?”

  Jillian wrinkled her brow, and then understood.

  “Oh my, yes. I’m not seeing another patient for two hours. I’d love for you – not love. I’d be honored. Yes.”

  She opened the door, and I followed her into her office.

  Like our waiting room, which she’d decorated, a small, bubbling fountain stood on a table near her desk. Two soft club chairs, patterned in black suede, faced her desk. She sat in an ergonomic rolling chair decorated with a brightly colored afghan.

  On the floor next to her desk, I saw a dog bed and a small basket of chew toys for her Welsh corgi, Sigmund, who we called Siggy. He often joined her on therapy days, but today his b
ed lay empty.

  “No Siggy?” I asked, wishing he’d been there. It would have been nice to run my hands over Siggy’s amber fur to avoid fiddling with them as I talked.

  “Jackson and Cherie are taking him to the groomer,” she explained. Jackson was Jillian’s husband and Cherie their eight-year-old daughter. Sammy used to jokingly ask me ‘when are Jillian and Jackson starting their stand-up comedy routine?’ Jackson was, in fact, a dry, humorless man who talked about nothing but politics and the trouble with youth today. The one time we’d all gone to dinner together, Sammy had feigned an allergic reaction to his dessert to end the meal early. I smiled, remembering him scratching his face and saying, ‘Huh, there must be nuts in the pecan pie.’

  Under normal circumstances I would seek a therapist who didn’t know me, but the events of the day propelled me to the first person who came to mind.

  Jillian sat back in her chair and waited.

  “I, umm, I’d just like your thoughts, I guess.” I smiled awkwardly. “I didn’t realize how hard it was to sit in the other chair.”

  She smiled and nodded.

  “Forget that we know each other, Corrie. I’m just a mirror to reflect back answers already within you.”

  I swallowed and looked at my lap, frowning and trying to find the right words.

  “Since Sammy died, I’ve been… lost. I always knew we were connected. I mean really connected, soul-level connected. I’m sure that sounds ridiculous.”

  “Not at all.”

  “It’s almost like his death has proved it. I feel him everywhere, I see him, I hear his voice, and it’s not just in my head. Sometimes it is.” I laughed and pulled a string loose from my sweater, wrapping it around my index finger. “I’m trying to be strong for Isis, but…” My lip quivered, and the flood of tears would soon follow. If I focused on this tiny red string wrapped around my finger, I wouldn’t cry.

  “It’s okay to let it out, Corrie. It’s more than okay. Grief is energy stuck in your body. You have to release it somehow. Grief is a wave of energy. Let it roll through you, so you can rest in the space between the waves. Don’t hold it in.”