Ashes Beneath Her: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “They’re perfect,” Hazel called. “I’ll help you tie them.”

  Liz and Hazel took balloons and moved among the tables, tying the balloons to the legs.

  “Orla’s favorite color is yellow,” Hazel confided.

  “Susan’s was green. Her graduation from high school was like a leprechaun’s birthday party.”

  Hazel smiled.

  She spotted Mr. Sullivan’s pickup moving down the road. He parked at the curb and moved to the back, lifting out a cardboard box.

  “Hi, Patrick,” Liz said, offering to take the box.

  He nodded at Liz, and then Hazel.

  “Fiona and I really appreciate you putting all this together,” he said. “There’re clothes in that one. I’ve got tools and some other stuff.”

  When he returned with a small wooden rocking horse, Liz shook her head.

  “Oh, no, Patrick. Don’t give away Orla’s rocking horse.”

  “It wasn’t Orla’s,” he said.

  Hazel glanced at Liz, but neither of them asked the question.

  He answered anyway.

  “Fiona and I lost our infant son.”

  “I’m sorry,” Susan murmured.

  “Me too,” Hazel added.

  She considered the three of them, such different people, experiencing such similar pain.

  “Someone donated a first edition of The Catcher in the Rye! For a garage sale,” Calvin yelled as he dug through a box. "Hazel, I’ll give you twenty bucks for it right now.”

  Hazel rolled her eyes.

  “He loves books,” she explained. “Sure, Calvin. Put your money in the lockbox.”

  “Abe’s article’s been shaking things loose,” he said. “Had three cops stop by my house in the last two days.”

  “No cops at mine,” Liz sighed. “But half a dozen reporters. I try to remember there’s no bad publicity, but Jerry’s taken to sneaking across our neighbors’ back lawn and borrowing their car if he needs to go to the store.”

  Patrick nodded grimly.

  “Fiona’s not one for the attention, either. She hasn’t opened the store since the article came out.”

  “Did she read it?” Hazel asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Unlikely. She’s hangin’ by a thread. My sister Effie’s coming for a visit this weekend. She has a way with Fiona, calms her.”

  “That’s Liam’s mom?” Hazel asked. Orla had told Hazel about her aunt, who she loved like her own parents. The woman drank beer and swore while knitting booties for Liam’s baby daughter.

  “That’s her. She’s a brute, though she barely reaches my shoulder. Used to thump me good as kids. She still keeps me in line. Orla and her are thick as thieves.”

  “Good,” Liz murmured unpacking a box of coffee mugs. “It’s important to have support right now. The early days are the hardest.”

  Hazel saw tears welling in Patrick’s eyes, and he turned away.

  “Channel six news,” Calvin announced, pointing at a news van pulling up across the street. “You guys ready to raise some reward money?”

  By the end of the day, they’d raised over eight hundred dollars. Nearly everyone who purchased items from the sale donated an extra few dollars.

  “My feet are killing me,” Liz sighed, plopping into a patio chair on Hazel’s porch.

  “It’s my lower back,” Patrick complained. “Feels like somebody took a jackhammer to it.”

  “Lemonade, or if you’re willing to wait a few minutes, Calvin is whipping up some margaritas,” Hazel announced, setting a pitcher of lemonade on the table.

  Patrick yawned and stretched his legs before standing up. He pounded his fists into his back a couple times.

  “It’s a bottle of Coors and a foot rub from my wife for me,” he told them.

  “A foot rub?” Hazel asked. “She must be devoted.”

  He grinned.

  “Most likely she’ll just wash my socks and demand I hose my feet in the backyard, but if I close my eyes, it almost feels like a foot rub.”

  Hazel gave him a hug and handed him the envelope of cash from the sale.

  “I’ll have to ask Abe to print the new reward amount,” Patrick murmured, tucking the envelope in his back pocket.

  “I’m surprised he wasn’t here today,” Hazel added.

  “I’m not,” Liz admitted. “That article has people talking. I’d say the cops, the families, and other reporters are after him, not to mention the tips. I always hope not to see Abe, because it means he’s following a lead.”

  She hugged Patrick goodbye.

  “Give Fiona our love,” Liz told him.

  He nodded and headed for his truck.

  Calvin appeared on the porch with two margaritas. Bethany followed behind him with two more.

  “Bethany, this is Liz Miner,” Hazel told her roommate.

  Bethany put a margarita before the woman, and then shook her hand.

  “Great to meet you, Liz. I’m really sorry about your daughter.”

  Liz thanked her and sipped her drink.

  Hazel noticed a little crease between Liz’s eyebrows, and the way her eyes shifted back to Bethany’s face again and again.

  Hazel gazed at Bethany and realized why. She bore a striking resemblance to Susie Miner. Golden blonde hair in a cascade over her shoulder. Her eyes were green, her nose little and upturned, with a spray of freckles across the bridge.

  Liz stood abruptly, leaving her glass half-full.

  “Best get home,” she said, her voice thick.

  Hazel stood and reached to hug her, but Liz had already started down the steps.

  She offered a half-wave as she hurried down the driveway to her car.

  * * *

  Abe

  It was the third sighting that put Abe on edge. Something about that number three, as if two didn’t quite validate the claim, but when you added the third…

  The young man sat in the line of plastic visitor chairs just inside the office at Up North News. He held a cup of untouched water on the knee of his ripped jeans. He looked young, eighteen or nineteen, with long hair tied back by a piece of leather. His tanned face gave him a beach bum appearance, but when Abe glanced at his rough hands, he pegged the guy for an outdoor worker - lawn maintenance or construction.

  “Mr. Levett?” the young man asked as soon as Abe strode into the office.

  Abe glanced toward his editor’s office, but the door stood closed and his boss was on the phone.

  “Yes, how can I help you?” Abe had an armload of paperwork, his briefcase clutched beneath his armpit.

  “I have a… clue.”

  “A tip?” Abe asked, lifting an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, yeah, a tip.”

  “Follow me.” Abe led the young man to his desk and dumped his stuff on top.

  The man glanced around. Other reporters sat at their desks, a stream of noise filtered from typewriters, the shuffling of papers, conversations. The guy fidgeted, shoving his hands in his pockets and shifting from one leg to the other.

  “Shall we take a walk?” Abe asked.

  “Yeah, sure. I could use a smoke.”

  Outside, the young man took a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” Abe told him. “Do you mind if I tape this?”

  The man licked his lips and looked at the recorder.

  “No, sure, yeah, that’s fine.”

  Abe smiled, hit record, and they walked.

  “My name’s Ricky.”

  “Have a last name?”

  “Palmer.”

  “Okay, Ricky Palmer. Fill me in.”

  He took another drag, licked his sunburned lips, and glanced sidelong at Abe.

  He let out an uncomfortable laugh and inhaled again.

  “I don’t publish tips,” Abe reassured him, “and even if I did, sources are anonymous. Understand? You won’t see your name in the paper.”

  The man nodded, tugged on his ponytail, and dropped th
e butt of his cigarette. He pulled out a second.

  “I saw a girl who looked like the Susan girl from your article.”

  “Looked like her, or was her?”

  He croaked a shrill laugh.

  A trickle of cold sweat slid down Abe’s spine; the odd, familiar sense of déjà vu nipping at his heels as they walked.

  “If I hadn’t read your article and only looked at the picture, I would have said it was her, without a doubt.”

  “But the article makes you question that?”

  Ricky nodded.

  “Tell me about seeing her. Every detail you can remember, dates, times.”

  “It happened about a month ago, real late at night, about three a.m. My girl and I watched some boob tube, and then I hit the road. Joan’s dad’s real funny about me staying overnight. So long as I’m gone when the sun comes up, we’re cool.”

  “Where does your girlfriend live?”

  “Empire.”

  Abe clenched his jaw, bracing for the story to come.

  “I was driving up M-22, south of Leland. That’s where I’m staying with my cousin. We’re working on a construction site in Northport.”

  Abe nodded, glancing at the little wheel turning in the tape deck.

  “Dig it?”

  “Yeah,” Abe muttered.

  “I was cruisin’ pretty good, went peeling around a curve, and saw a girl standing on the side of the road.”

  Abe took his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and squeezed.

  “I pulled off, leaned over the seat, and swung the passenger door out. My girl would’a bugged out, but I wasn’t plannin’ to tell her. This girl got in my car. She had on a rad shirt - one of those Rolling Stone’s mouth shirts. Weird thing was, she had only one shoe on.”

  He looked at Abe and laughed.

  “I said, ‘That shirt’s bitchin’,’ and started to ask her where she was headed, but…”

  Ricky scratched his head, his eyes troubled. He took another drag on his cigarette, only to realize he’d smoked it down. He dropped it on the sidewalk, stared at as if it were a mysterious insect, and ground it beneath his boot.

  “She wasn’t there. The seat was empty. I was sitting on the side of the road, talking to air.”

  “And what do you make of that story?” Abe asked.

  Ricky laughed, groped around behind his ears and came up empty.

  “I didn’t think much of it until my girlfriend showed up at the job site with a copy of your article.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to tell your girlfriend?”

  “I wasn’t. But then I did a few days after I saw her. It was strange, man. One minute, we were eatin’ Chinese food, and the next I’m spillin’ the whole freaky-deaky story. Joan said ‘you saw a ghost,’ like any old thing.”

  “She said you saw a ghost?”

  He bobbed his head up and down.

  “She’s into weird stuff, reads a lot of spooky books. I tried to laugh it off, but she told me some stories of her own, seeing things that shouldn’t’a been there. Joan thinks Susan is dead. She’s trying to reach out or somethin’.”

  Abe looked down the sidewalk. It sloped toward the bay. People sat on the grassy courtyard having picnics beneath colorful beach umbrellas. It seemed to be a regular summer day in northern Michigan. At least that’s what appearances said, but on the inside, Abe felt pressure gathering, an avalanche preparing to wash an entire mountain into the sea. His left eye pulsed with the start of a headache, and he realized he’d forgone his cup of coffee at the office. He needed caffeine.

  “And you believe the girl you saw matched Susan from the newspaper article?”

  “Unless that girl has a twin.”

  “But you said yourself it was late, it was dark. How can you be sure?”

  Ricky laughed, kicked at a weed poking up from the sidewalk.

  “I wouldn’t bet my mom’s life on it, but when I saw that girl in the newspaper, I got a case of the willies like you ain’t never seen. I tried to think maybe she ran off, was hitchin’ that night, but…” He shook his head. “She disappeared, man. Up in smoke.”

  29

  The Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane

  Orla

  “Jesus Christ, Benjamin, watch where you’re going,” Dr. Crow snapped, shoving the young man away the from the metal table he’d nearly walked into.

  Benjamin shuffled away, standing near the wall and waiting for orders.

  “I need the vials, now,” Crow barked.

  Benjamin hurried from the room and returned a moment later.

  Orla’s eyes appeared closed, but she peered through tiny slits.

  Crow drew her blood, but she continued to feign sleep.

  After Crow left, Benjamin began his usual ritual of cleaning the room, removing the bloody cotton balls, putting the doctor’s tools in a washbasin.

  “Ben?” Orla spoke the man’s name, gazing at him.

  He froze, as he’d done before when he she spoke to him, but this time he looked up.

  “It’s better if you don’t talk to me,” he whispered, stealing a glance toward the door.

  “He’s gone,” she said. “He won’t be back today.”

  Orla had learned Crow’s movements. He administered his drugs in the morning, returned in the evening to sedate her, but she never saw him overnight. She would not have known the time, except that Crow wore a watch, and Orla stared at it whenever he entered the room, allowing her to piece together a timeline of his comings and goings.

  “I’m here against my will, Ben. I’m not a patient. I’m-”

  “I know,” he said, allowing his hair to fall back over his eye.

  “Then help me,” she pleaded.

  He shook his head.

  “Why? Please,” she begged. “My family must be terrified. My parents, Ben. My friends. There are people who love me, who are desperate to find me.”

  “I can’t help you,” he muttered. “I know you don’t understand, but I can’t.”

  “Because he’d hurt you?”

  Ben looked away.

  “I don’t have anyone else. Okay? This is my life. If I let you go… I just can’t, okay?”

  Orla needed something, a way in. Crow had put gloves on her hands before he left. She rubbed her hand against the bed, allowing one glove to slide off.

  “Could I have a drink of water? Please? My throat is so dry.”

  He glanced at her, his dark eyes searching. Finally, he nodded and left.

  He returned a moment later with a glass of water and moved to her bedside. He trembled as he held the water to her lips.

  She reached toward him with her bare hand, touching his shirt.

  Gulping the water, she searched the images that rose in her mind, reaching deeper to ferret out some clue that might get him to open up.

  “Lemon,” she murmured.

  He jumped when she spoke and spilled water on her face.

  “Sorry,” he said, grabbing a towel and wiping the water from her cheek.

  “You had a dog named Lemon.”

  He stared at her mistrustfully.

  “How do you know that?”

  She twittered her fingers, the nude glove resting beside them.

  “You saw her?”

  Orla nodded.

  “Why did you name her Lemon?” Though she already knew the answer. She had seen the dog happily carrying a lemon around in her white-and-brown speckled muzzle.

  He smiled sadly.

  “She played with them, carried them in her mouth, even buried them in the yard.”

  “Where did you get her?”

  A wistful expression transformed his face.

  “Here at the asylum. A patient came in with a puppy in his bag. He shoved her at me and said, ‘she’s yours.’ And she was.”

  “Until Dr. Crow killed her.”

  He backed away, smacked into the metal tray with the doctor’s tools. They went crashing to the floor so loud that even Orla exp
ected Crow to reappear in the doorway. He didn’t.

  “It was an accident,” Ben whispered.

  Orla shook her head.

  “It wasn’t. He hated your dog. He backed over her with his car. He saw her in his side-view mirror and hit the gas.”

  Ben shook his head, brown eyes tormented.

  He didn’t run from the room, but he stopped looking at her and didn’t speak. He moved slowly as if heavy with the burden of her words. He didn’t leave until he’d cleaned the room and carried all the supplies away.

  When he walked out, he avoided her eyes, flicking off the lights and leaving her in darkness.

  30

  Hazel

  Hazel touched the crumbling banister that flanked the old house. Moss-streaked gargoyles sat at either end of the rotting wooden staircase. Grass and weeds, even a few flowers, poked through the sagging planks. Shuttered windows closed the interior from prying eyes.

  Time had weathered the house and given free rein to the vegetation, jungle-like, that surrounded the aged walls - once white, now chipped and peeled. Delicate clusters of yellow blooms speckled the moonseed vines climbing up the exterior.

  When Hazel lifted the knocker, she feared the door beneath the brass ring would chip away. It didn’t. She heard the loud bang echoing through the house.

  A woman opened the door, her eyes a dazzling opaque blue, her hair long and golden.

  “Hi,” Hazel stammered, unnerved by the beautiful woman like a fairytale princess dropped into a haunted old mansion.

  “Are you here for Mrs. Cooper?” the woman asked in a soft, lyrical voice.

  “Mrs. Cooper?” Hazel asked, trying to get her bearings. The house loomed deep and bottomless. White candles flickered from tables in the dusky interior.

  “She lives here,” the woman continued.

  “Umm, yes, maybe.” Hazel laughed. “I’m not sure. My friend Miranda told me to come here for Hattie. I need help.”

  The woman’s smile faltered, but she stepped back, allowing Hazel to enter.

  Hazel walked into the stifling foyer. Despite the house’s size, it felt oddly claustrophobic and too warm.

  They passed a great room with a fireplace crackling in a stone hearth, despite the hot summer day.