Ashes Beneath Her: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  21

  The Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane

  Orla

  The familiar bottle of sodium thiopental, or truth serum as Crow called it, stood on the metal table near the bed.

  Crow sat in a wooden chair, watching Orla.

  “What time is it?” Orla asked.

  “The time is not relevant.”

  Orla screwed her eyes shut and tried not to scream. They’d been sitting in the room for a long time. Crow rarely spoke to her until the medicine had plenty of time to enter her system.

  “Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

  He glanced at his watch.

  “I’m a doctor.”

  Orla scoffed and turned her head away, preferring to stare at the wall rather than Crow’s cold eyes.

  “When did you first experience impressions with your hands?”

  Orla pressed her lips together, tried not to hear him. For several seconds it worked, and she didn’t speak.

  He snapped his fingers and without intention, the words poured out.

  “I was four.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “No.”

  Again, she pressed her lips together.

  He stood and marched to the table, took her chin in his hand and jerked it toward him.

  “You have no idea what I could do to you in here, Orla. Do you understand? As far as the world knows, you’re gone. You belong to me.”

  Rage bubbled in her stomach. It rose hot and acrid into her diaphragm. She clenched her hands into fists and imagined wrenching them up, grabbing his head in her hands and tearing the eyes from his head.

  He seemed to recognize the anger in her face, and a small smile spread across his mouth.

  He slipped an object into her bare hand.

  Before she could drop it, an image of her father emerged in her mind. He held flyers in his hand, his heart heavy, his hands shaking as he lifted the pages, gazed at his daughter’s face, and stapled the paper to a telephone pole.

  Orla lifted from the bed, straining into her elbows, crushing the paper in her hand. She sagged back, head flopped down, heart thudding.

  Crow opened her fingers and removed the page.

  “Anger amplifies the impressions, doesn’t it?”

  She turned her head away. The tears she’d held back earlier poured over her cheeks. She wanted her father, to lean into his broad torso and his big arms. She wanted to smell his Teak aftershave with the sweat and dirt combination of a day on the job. He would kill this doctor. If she ever escaped and told him what happened, he would crush the man’s head beneath his boot.

  Orla snorted laughter, and the doctor stepped away.

  He eyed her wearily.

  The door opened, and Ben shuffled in holding a tray in his hands. Orla gaped at a piece of toast and a glass of water.

  Her stomach cramped at the sight. She hadn’t eaten since the morning before.

  “Are you hungry?” Crow asked. “Of course you are. And after you answer my questions, you shall have breakfast.”

  “Fruit,” Orla said, staring hungrily at the toast. “I want an apple.”

  Crow sat back in his chair, leaving Ben to fidget by the door.

  “A request?” He laughed, but the sound was humorless and cruel. “An apple must be earned.”

  He turned to Ben.

  “Leave. Come back in an hour with an apple. We’ll see if she earns it.”

  Ben backed from the room.

  Dismayed, Orla watched the toast disappear from view.

  “Tell me about your first impression through your hands.”

  Orla closed her eyes and sighed. The answer came easily, she’d recalled it many times over the years. The challenge was offering up such a vulnerable part of herself to this man.

  “I had pneumonia, and they hospitalized me for three days. I don’t remember the sickness. My dad said I nearly died. When I woke up, my mother was beside me, crying and praying. She put a wooden cross in my hand. I saw…” Orla pressed her eyes tighter, the memory making her miss her mother. “I saw a robed man waving incense over the cross. My mom was kneeling beside him. I felt how her knees hurt against the prie-dieu, the prayer bench. I tried to tell her about the vision, but she just cried and shook her head and lay across me.”

  “Did you tell anyone else?”

  Orla bit her lip. She remembered stepping into the confessional in her family’s church. Father Flannery had listened to her story, reminded her of the common fever dreams of illness, and assured her not to give it another thought.

  “I told our priest. He said I was dreaming. But then it happened again.”

  “How soon after the first occurrence?”

  “I don’t know, a week or two. My parents took me to the park. Some kids were playing ball, and it rolled over to us. I picked it up and saw Andy, the kid who owned the ball, getting hit in the back with it. When he did something bad, his dad threw the ball at his back over and over to punish him.”

  Crow took notes as she spoke, somehow filling the page with her scant words.

  “And you told your parents?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did they say?”

  “My mom pretended she didn’t hear me. My dad didn’t know what to do. He put us in the car, and we went home.”

  “Did you ever undergo medical testing?”

  Orla gazed at him, confused.

  “In a laboratory, where they questioned you about the abilities while checking heart rate and other vitals?”

  Orla shook her head.

  “It became a secret. My mom made me gloves. I learned to control it.”

  “Someone taught you to control it?”

  “No. Every time I told someone about the experience, they either didn’t believe me, or it turned out poorly. I learned to keep my mouth shut and wear my gloves. If I didn’t wear the gloves, I learned to ignore the impressions.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know how,” she snapped. Her stomach growled.

  “And you’ve never used the gift for your own benefit?” Crow’s voice rose as he spoke.

  “How so?”

  “I can think of many ways, but let’s start with blackmail. I’m sure you learned dark, secret things about people. Did you ever use that information to attain money or favors?”

  Orla frowned.

  “I’m not a thief.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “I’m also not a morally shallow bitch.”

  Crow gazed at her steadily.

  “But you wanted to, didn’t you, Orla? All that power, literally at your fingertips…”

  Orla glared at him. No, she hadn’t wanted to. It had never crossed her mind to use the knowledge to control people, but this man wanted to.

  22

  Hazel

  Hazel didn’t bother to muffle her cries as she watched Abe pull into the driveway and climb from his car.

  “Today is my mother’s birthday,” she sniffed. She wiped her eyes with the hankie she’d brought into the garden. She sat next to a pile of weeds, gazing at their tangled roots.

  Dead, gone, ripped from the earth. Did they know? Did the surrounding flowers realize she’d uprooted their earth-mates to ensure the weeds didn’t steal the nutrients from her valuable flowers and vegetables?

  “I’m sorry?” Abe faltered.

  She offered him a sympathetic smile.

  “She’s dead. That’s why I’m crying.”

  “Damn. Well now, I’m doubly sorry.”

  She waved a weed.

  “You don’t need to be sorry. She was suffering. I try to remember that. It makes the missing her a little easier. How can I want her here when she was in pain? I can’t, simple as that, but I miss her just the same. And now the anniversary is coupled with Orla.” Her voice hitched. “Do you think she’s dead, Abe?”

  He gazed at her for a long time, and then beyond her, through her.

  “After forty-eight hours, the
likelihood of finding an abducted person alive is much smaller. But it happens.”

  “We’re not searching for Orla, are we? We’re searching for a body or for a madman, but not for my friend.”

  Abe nodded.

  “There’s a good chance, yes.”

  “You’d make a terrible grief counselor,” she told him.

  “Yeah. I’m built for what I do and little else.”

  “Speaking of what you’re built for, how’s the story coming along?”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. I’d like you to read the portion about Orla. Make sure I’ve got my facts straight.”

  Hazel stood and brushed off her skirt, gathering the weeds in her arms and dumping them in her compost pile.

  “Go ahead and have a seat.” She gestured to her patio furniture and slipped inside to grab a plate of cookies and pitcher of mint tea she’d made from her garden.

  Abe picked up a cookie, took a bite, and made a face.

  “They’re sage shortbread. Orla’s favorite,” Hazel told him.

  He took a second bite, cocked his head and nodded.

  “Not what I expect in a cookie, but intriguing.”

  He set the cookie down and ruffled through his briefcase. A huge stack of typed pages emerged.

  “Is that your story? It looks like it will take up the entire newspaper.”

  He shook his head.

  “I write the story ten times, ten different ways. Then I ask everyone to check their pieces. I do my final fact check, and then I modify the story that most jumps out on my second read-through.”

  “Sounds like a lot of work.”

  “The twenty hours I spent writing these,” he touched the pages, “don’t compare with the work of the last year of my life. It made me sick to cut so much.”

  Hazel lifted a cookie for a bite, and then returned it to the plate. She’d lost her appetite. She pulled the page with Orla’s story closer and read.

  * * *

  “Do you believe in fate, Hazel?”

  Hazel looked up from the sheet of paper.

  Abe sat across the patio table, his eyes distant.

  “Yes, though I think there are many fates, and we determine the path. Why do you ask?”

  “When you consider the missing girls,” he started. “Every single one of them vanished without a trace. Not a single witness saw them get into a brown truck or walk into a certain store. What if they’d varied their choice by some tiny thing? Left their house fifteen minutes later? I bet we’d be staring at different girls’ faces. This guy chose them because there was no possibility someone could trace the abductions.”

  “Which implies you don’t think it was fate, but an opportunity that put each of them in danger.”

  He frowned.

  “It’s a notion I’ve struggled with my entire life. Is it all random? Is there no lesson in all of this? No greater truth?”

  Hazel looked at her garden. Some flowers would live, others would die. Who made the call?

  “I like to believe there’s something more… but maybe it’s not dictating our lives.”

  He shrugged.

  “How could they disappear without a trace? Without a fucking trace?”

  Hazel sighed.

  “The woods. Right? Isn’t your theory that they all vanished in the woods?”

  Abe frowned, chewed his lip.

  “Rita was afraid of the woods. Her dad told me she never hiked, hated camping. She got lost in them once when she was young. They found her within a few minutes, but it had a lasting impact.”

  “How do you know so much about all of them?”

  His expression had grown distant as he gazed at the photos.

  “Because how can we discover the choice, that tiny imperceptible moment that put them in the path of this man, if we don’t know everything about them? She didn’t go hiking in the woods. That’s not where he found her.”

  “Where did she like to go that’s remote?”

  He smiled.

  “Now you’re thinking like an investigator. She liked to go to the beach, once beach in particular, where she searched for Petoskey stones.”

  “A beach is not exactly isolated.”

  “Some of them are. And she went on gray, windy days, because she often found more stones. She polished them. She covered her dresser in jars filled with Petoskey stones. He’s local, he’s an opportunist. He does not target these girls before he takes them. The who doesn’t even matter. Here’s what matters: their long blonde hair. I suspect that’s the focus. Long blonde hair and a moment of opportunity.”

  “Orla has dark hair.”

  “Orla was an anomaly. I haven’t made sense of it yet. Maybe the urge was too strong, or she had some other trait that made her desirable. Something…” he trailed off.

  “It’s great,” Hazel finished, pushing the paper back across the table. “You captured the spirit of Orla in this. One little thing, though, she prepped food at Zander’s. She didn’t wait tables.”

  Abe grabbed a pencil and crossed out a line, put a note beside it.

  “Pat said waitress.”

  Hazel smiled.

  “Pat probably assumes the only work for women in a restaurant is waiting tables. Orla joked that she’d forget the water if she had to waitress.”

  * * *

  Abe

  Abe sat on the long wooden bench, staring into Detective Moore’s office. The shades were drawn, but the door stood open. He’d tried to walk directly in, but an eager young deputy refused to let him pass. After fifteen minutes, he shifted his attention to the deputy. The moment something distracted him, Abe was making a move for the office.

  Detective Moore stepped from the office, his suit coat clutched in his hand. His eyes found Abe, and he froze, and then started to turn as if he intended to slip back into the office. His gaze darted toward desks containing deputies, up to the wall clock, and then finally back to Abe.

  “I can give you five minutes, tops,” he barked, waving for Abe to join him.

  Abe stood and followed the burly man into his office. Paperwork flooded the detective’s desk. Family photos lay jumbled at the back, some fallen over, as if edged aside to make room for more paperwork.

  “Any developments on the Orla Sullivan case?”

  The detective sat on the edge of his chair, not settling in. Abe preferred to stand. After a moment, the detective stood as well, clearly not comfortable looking up at the young journalist.

  “The suspected runaway? No.”

  Abe blew out a frustrated sigh.

  “She’s not a runaway. Are you incompetent? Does anyone in this office actually investigate crimes?”

  Abe should have bit his tongue. It didn’t pay in his profession to be on the bad side of the cops, but unfortunately Detective Moore rubbed him the wrong way. He seemed to view anyone under the age of thirty as a lazy, pot-smoking communist. Abe was no exception.

  The detective rested his hands on the desk and leaned toward Abe.

  “Be careful, young man, or I’ll make sure you never squeeze a tip or so much as a fart out of this office again.”

  Abe tensed his jaw, glaring at the detective.

  “I assume you’re not connecting Orla to the other five missing girls?”

  The detective cocked an eyebrow.

  “I get it. You want your big story. But guess what? In my line of work, the crime has to fit the evidence. Where’s the evidence, Abraham? Where’s the eyewitness connecting a single perp to these women? They’re from different cities, they didn’t know one another, they disappeared years apart. Visit any state in the country, and you’ll find scores of missing young women. Could you lump ‘em all together and cry connection? Sure. Would you be a damn fool for doing so? Absolutely.”

  “I’m not the only one who sees this, Detective. You want to know what I think? You’ve lost your instincts, your gut. You can’t see the connection because you’re blinded by your own prejudice.”

  The
detective flicked his finger at the door.

  “Get out of my office. I don’t have time to talk conspiracy theories today.”

  Abe didn’t go home. He’d given Moore one last chance to prove his competency, and the detective had failed.

  He drove to the newspaper and delivered his story. His editor was on the phone, but grinned and gave him a thumbs-up when Abe rested the pages on his desk.

  23

  Abe

  Abe stepped into the office. He could see his editor on the phone, his face red, his eyes lit as if he were in a heated conversation. Throughout the office, phones rang. Several other reporters scurried to answer them, jotting down hurried messages.

  When Brenda, who wrote obituaries and entertainment stories, spotted Abe, she grinned.

  “Oh my God, Abe!” she squawked. “People are going nuts.”

  She held up a copy of Up North News, his headline plastered on the front: The Missing Girls of Summer - Are the Police Paying Attention?

  He paused, his breath catching as he gazed at the six women staring out from their black-and-white photos. A sensation of exhilaration, floating on a tremor of fear, coursed through him.

  His editor Barney walked from his office, his glasses askew, his eyes wide.

  “That was Detective Moore. He’s livid!” The editor grinned and clapped Abe on the back.

  “Well done, Abe!”

  It was not a typical reaction. Many editors would be furious if their head reporter ostracized the police, but Barney was old-school. He believed that journalists were the watch dogs, whether they were outing the criminals, the cops, or the politicians. More than once, he’d proclaimed their reaction to the missing girls as gross negligence bordering on criminal.

  “What did he say?” Abe asked.

  “Oh, the usual. Reckless journalism, jumping to conclusions. We’ve created a shit storm, and vigilante parents will soon fill the streets with their rifles and a hangman’s noose.”