I took a long, shuddering breath and allowed my tears to rush over my cheeks. They snaked along my chin and beneath the collar of my sweater.
Jillian handed me a box of tissue.
“Other things are happening,” I continued, returning to the string, winding it so tight the flesh of my finger bulged between the tiny strand. “I keep… blacking out or something.”
I glanced up at Jillian, who watched me impassively.
“Describe blacking out.”
I bit my lip.
“I’m not sure I can. I’ll fall asleep in my bed and wake up in the great room or the study. I have no recollection of moving and time has passed, sometimes hours, when I feel like I’ve only just laid down.”
Jillian nodded.
“Is anyone around? Has anyone seen you sleepwalking?”
I shook my head, thinking of the conversation I’d overheard between Sammy and Sarah. I didn’t want to share it.
“No, only me. The other night I put furniture in front of my bedroom door and hung a bell from the doorknob. I figured I would at least wake up if I tried to get out.”
“And?”
“And I woke up in the study. When I went upstairs, the bell was gone. I haven’t found it, and the furniture was all put back in place.”
“You’re still living in the house? Kerry Manor?”
I nodded.
“Have you considered the trauma of what happened to Sammy is causing these spells? The house is a stranger to you. Maybe you’re trying to get out of the house and away from the place where you lost him.”
“Then shouldn’t I be waking up in my car with the engine running?”
Jillian smiled.
“The subconscious mind is mysterious. It has its own ideas about where freedom lies. Have you considered leaving the house, Corrie?”
I stared at her hard. It wasn’t the first time someone had asked, and the familiar flicker of rage arose within me at her words.
“No.”
“Can I ask why not?”
“Because we belong there. Because it’s my home now, and…”
Jillian held up her hand.
“But it’s not your home, Corrie. You and Sammy rented it for the winter. You’re moving out in May.”
I shook my head and wound the string tighter. The irrational anger bubbled like a steam kettle, ready to blow.
“Corrie,” Jillian’s voice dropped and she leaned toward me. “Are you hurting yourself?”
I followed her gaze to my exposed hand, where blood showed through the white gauze.
“I have to go,” I said, jumping to my feet. “Thanks, Jillian.”
I hurried from the office and let the door swing shut a little too hard behind me.
CHAPTER 28
Now
Sarah
“Wait, where are you going?”
Sarah looked up at the sound of her receptionist Lorna’s voice.
“Out,” she said, turning away.
“You’re meeting with Paul Hudson in twenty minutes. The New York developer.”
“Fuck.” Sarah looked at her watch. How did she forget? She’d set the meeting months ago.
“At Top of the Park?”
“Yep, so he can check out the gorgeous views of Traverse City,” Lorna reminded her, grinning.
“I’ll be there. I’m going to run a quick errand, and then I’ll be there.”
Lorna frowned but didn’t say more. Sarah got it. Her receptionist couldn’t understand why Sarah wasn’t going early to survey the room, drink a vodka on the rocks, and settle in before the man arrived. It was a ritual Sarah did before meeting any big client, and Paul was by the far the biggest she’d ever had.
She skipped the elevator and ran down the stairs three at a time, jumping four to reach the landing before running full speed to her car.
“Come on, come on,” she grumbled, sitting behind a woman in a Buick who struggled to slide her credit card into the payment slot. Sarah bit her lip and tried not to jump out and do it for her. Once on the street, she squealed down back roads, pulling to a stop in front of the arcade and barreling through the doors, nearly knocking over an acne-covered teenager playing Area 51.
“Sorry,” she called, bursting into the sticky back room that Will often called home.
The room was empty.
“No,” she muttered, scanning the room and then jogging back to find an unfamiliar face at the desk. “Where’s Will?” she asked the tall, skinny boy-man who sported a thin line of splotchy red hair on his upper lip.
He looked up and shrank away, as if she might reach under the window and throttle him.
“I don’t know, lady. He comes and goes.”
Sarah sighed and kicked the cement wall, which sent a vibrating beam into her hip.
In the parking lot, she pulled out her phone and called the number of his friend, Melanie for Emergencies Only. It went to voicemail. Will didn’t own a cell phone, and she chastised herself for not forcing one on him.
She was supposed to meet Maurice at two-fifteen, with directions to Doctor Evil for a three o’clock meeting. Her meeting with Paul was at two p.m. sharp.
When Paul Hudson arrived at the cocktail lounge, Sarah was downing her vodka and tapping her foot furiously beneath the table. She had intended to change before the meeting, but instead wore her usual jeans and white shirt. At least she’d opted for a white button-down shirt that morning.
A tall, broad-shouldered man in an expensive navy suit walked into the little restaurant. His hair was streaked in silver, and his face was tanned, as if he lived in California rather than New York.
“Sarah Flynn?” he asked, gazing at her. She noticed his eyes flick over her casual attire and fought the urge to apologize for her outfit.
“Paul Hudson,” Sarah said, standing and extending her hand. She shook his hand hard and led him back to her table.
“I didn’t expect you to be so lovely, Sarah,” he said, sitting across from her. “A woman of your accomplishments should be homely, I’m sure.”
She offered the customary laugh and searched within herself for the cool Sarah who met with men such as this all the time. Instead, she found a niggling sense of dread. It was five minutes after two. Time was running out.
“I see you’ve started without me,” he said with a wink. He ordered a scotch on the rocks and leaned back in his chair, surveying her.
Sarah tried to sit up taller, but her legs had taken on a life of their own and bounced rhythmically beneath the table.
Paul leaned over the side and looked down.
“I think you’re jiggling the whole building.” He smirked.
Sarah took a deep breath, reached into her folder, and pulled out a stack of prints.
“Paul, I’m sorry to do this, but an emergency came up right before I walked in this door. As you can see,” she gestured at her clothes and shaking legs. “I’m not prepared for our meeting. I’m going to have to reschedule.”
He frowned and tilted his head to the side.
“You have something more important than this meeting?” he asked.
“Yep.” She stood and handed him the file, wondering if she’d be leaving behind a dream when she walked from the building. “This is an overview of what I hoped to speak with you about. If you’re not too insulted to see me again, give my secretary a call. It’s been a pleasure.”
She turned before he could speak and ran from the room. The lounge was on the tenth floor, and she had no choice but to the take the elevator. The seconds dragged like hours, and when she reached the first floor, she dashed out, narrowly missed two old ladies clutching their purses and staring at her in alarm.
CORRIE
* * *
I WATCHED the man leave the little table stacked with books. He meandered through shelves to the coffee bar at the back of the bookstore. After they handed him his paper cup decorated with dancing coffee beans, I hurried out from between the shelves.
He looked up, start
led, but smiled. I rarely made men uneasy. On the contrary, they liked me on sight, for which I could thank my looks entirely.
“I read your book,” I blurted.
“The Owl Tree?” he asked. “It was a fun one to write. Would you like me to sign your copy?” He looked at my empty hands and back at my face.
“Not The Owl Tree. Your other book, The Summoning.”
His face darkened, but he masked it with a larger smile.
“Well, now I can thank you and my mother for the two copies I sold. Wherever did you find it?”
“In a used bookstore. I think it found me.”
Before I could go on, a young woman with bright red spectacles perched on her freckled nose bustled over to us.
“You’re on in fifteen minutes, Mr. Wolfe.” The girl glanced at me before turning back the way she’d come. I had the distinct impression she was sizing up her competition.
“Speaking of summoning, I’m being summoned right now. It was a brief pleasure, Mrs.…?”
“Flynn,” I told him, but caught his sleeve before he turned away.
“I’d like to speak with you about the book. Please?” I had a momentary terror that if he said no, I’d collapse screaming to the floor.
Perhaps he saw something similar in my eyes. He sighed and nodded.
“After my reading, I intend to visit Seven Monks. It’s a taproom here in town. I fancy myself something of a beer connoisseur, though I can seldom tell an ale from a lager.”
I forced a smile and nodded.
“I know the place. I’ll get us a booth.”
“MRS. FLYNN, you realize The Summoning was a work of fiction, right? I see a certain look in your eye, one I’ve unfortunately encountered before, and I want to get that part over straightaway. I made the book up.”
“Call me Corrie,” I told him, sipping the hard cider the waitress had delivered. It tasted good, but the sweetness made my stomach churn. “I know it’s labeled fiction, but…”
“But nothing,” he said. He took a drink and nodded. “I love a good sour. Care to try?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t believe you, Mr. Wolfe.”
“Please call me Fletcher. If you’re going to insult me, you should at least use my first name.”
“I’m not insulting you. I understand you might have stretched the truth, changed names, but I feel the truth in that book. I know it, Fletcher. I know it.”
He took another drink and stared away from me, his eyes flitting over pictures on the wall, patrons sitting at the bar, landing everywhere except my face.
“Let’s have a hypothetical conversation, shall we?” he asked. “Let’s say, hypothetically, when I was a young man, I became interested in the occult. While immersed in such things, I experienced a great tragedy.”
“The death of your girlfriend,” I murmured.
“Yes, in the book her name was Ann. Ann,” he did air quotes as he spoke her name, “drowned one summer while we were boating with friends. My fictional self became obsessed with the notion I could bring her back from the dead.”
“And you did,” I finished, remembering the final pages of the book when he awoke in the night to see Ann crossing his yard in the rain, moving toward his front door.
“In the book, yes, I summoned Ann back. In real life, no. She stayed buried. Because that is the truth of life, Corrie.”
“I don’t believe you,” I told him, studying the way his eyes avoided mine.
He smiled.
“Of course, you don’t. But that’s not because I’m lying. It’s because you want to believe the alternative. But where is she, Corrie? Where is my beloved Ann? Search my life. You will find no trace of her after July 7th, 1991, when she drowned in Moosehead Lake.”
CHAPTER 29
Now
Corrie
“I know it’s real, Fletcher. I can feel it in here,” I touched my chest, “in my blood, in the marrow of my bones. Maybe not everyone qualifies, but Sammy-”
“Who’s Sammy?” Fletcher interrupted.
“My husband,” I whispered, feeling the tears rising. Strange how they seemed to start deep in the stomach, the far-off rumble of a storm, then passed into your lungs, contracting up to your throat, and finally hovered at the back of your eyes with the same energy of an oncoming squall.
“And he died?” Fletcher dropped his voice and offered me the sympathetic smile I saw everywhere I turned.
“He was murdered.”
Fletcher opened his eyes wide and gave me a pained expression.
“I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Corrie. I truly am. I get it, not your exact feelings, but my own horrid version of them. I wish I could offer words to help, but we both know words are useless in cases such as these.”
“But words are magic too,” I murmured, quoting his book - a particular section when he wrote of the summoning spells spoken when drawing someone back from the other side.
He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Corrie…”
“I’ll do anything, Fletcher.”
“So much for a relaxing drink with a beautiful woman,” he complained, draining his beer. He signaled for a second.
I waited, holding my breath, knowing in the stretch of his silence something had shifted, a sliver of consideration.
“My book tour ends this weekend. I can’t dredge all this up while I’m working. It’s too distracting. When it’s over, I’ll tell you a story.”
“Does your tour end in Michigan?”
He nodded.
“Petoskey tomorrow, then Harbor Springs, with the grand finale of a lecture in…” he trailed off, pulling a little notebook from his leather bag. “A signing in Marquette. Then, voila, another six months travel-free. I’ll come back here to Traverse City on Sunday, and we can have a proper conversation about this.”
“After that you’ll return to Maine?”
“The one and only.”
I stared at him another moment, searching his eyes for any clue he was lying. What if he finished his tour and hopped a plane back home? What if he would say anything in this moment to get rid of me?
He cocked his head to the side and smiled.
“You wear your every thought, Corrie. You must be a terrible poker player. I won’t ditch you. You have my word. May I ask what happened to your hands?”
I looked down. I’d forgotten to keep my sweater pulled over my hands, and the bandages showed.
“An accident in the kitchen,” I murmured, the crow’s black eye rising in my memory.
He stared at my hands for another moment and nodded.
“A dangerous place, the kitchen.”
Sarah
* * *
SARAH TURNED DOWN THE LONG, empty road that led to the Northern Michigan Asylum, once a hub of activity, now a sprawling reminder of the withering effects of time. The asylum occupied more than one hundred acres of lawn and forest.
Sarah had never explored the asylum. Growing up south of Traverse City, in a rural town with a population of less than five hundred, meant that instead of vandalizing the asylum as teenagers, she and Sammy threw rocks at old barns. When their parents relocated to Traverse City, Sammy and Sarah had passed the age of sneaking into the abandoned asylum with a can of spray paint and a bottle of Boone’s Farm strawberry wine.
The asylum carved a foreboding chunk out of the blue sky. It was an architectural marvel in the Kirkbride style, which Sarah had studied briefly during her graduate program. She preferred modern - straight clean lines, minimal embellishments - but Kirkbride asylums took an opposing view. Beauty is therapy, they said. Pointed spires rose sharply from the highest and most elaborate building.
As she turned down a small side road, she pushed deeper into the old hospital grounds, buildings rising up decayed and crumbling, eerie in their grandeur. She parked along a dirt drive facing several smaller buildings, still large, the size of huge old plantation houses complete with balconied porches shadowed by
rusted metal screens.
Sarah stepped from her car, unable to draw her eyes from the crumbing edifice, where brown vines and overgrown bushes clawed up the side of the brick face.
“Hey.”
The voice startled Sarah, and she dropped her keys.
“Jesus, Will.” She braced a hand on the hood of her car. “You scared the crap out of me. Where have you been? I looked everywhere this morning.”
“I told you I’d meet you here.”
“I know, but I had a meeting I’d forgotten about, and…”
He watched her, eyebrows raised.
“Forget it,” she murmured, looking beyond him to the soaring limestone buildings, their paint yellowed and grimy.
“Welcome to the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane,” Will said as he followed her gaze.
“Are they doing construction here?” In the distance, Sarah heard the sounds of an active construction site with heavy equipment and the voices of men.
Will nodded.
“The city sold the institution to a restoration company. In a few years, you’ll be sitting here sipping a latte.”
Sarah grimaced.
“Unlikely.”
“They’re working on Building Fifty,” Will said, pointing toward the spires she’d passed. “The cottage we want is this way.”
“These look awfully large for cottages.”
“They called them that, probably to make them seem quaint and homey when obviously they were anything but.”
“Where‘s Maurice?” Sarah asked, looking at her watch.
“Come and gone about ten minutes before you arrived.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry, he pulled through. Dr. Evil, who Maurice said we should call Dr. K, is waiting for us.”
“Why Dr. K?”
Will shrugged. “Maybe his name starts with K. Then again, maybe Maurice pulled it out of thin air.”
Sarah stuffed her hands in her pockets and gazed at the buildings left so long in abandon, they‘d taken on a mythical, spooky quality.
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