Asylum

by Kristen Selleck

  “I’ve got a Red Wings t-shirt!” Chloe defended herself. “And I know the fight songs for U of M and MSU…and I’ve been to the auto show! See? Trolls have their own culture too! We go to Greek town in Detroit and eat baklava and we go to Windsor when we turn nineteen, because it’s the legal drinking age in Canada!”

  “You got nothing on da U.P., babe,” Sam aped a perfect yooper accent, “we drink as soon as we can hold our own sippy cups, yah…because it’s so cold no one cares!”

  “Alright, alright,” Seth said, calming the brewing argument, “So where did the desk say this place was?”

  “Odd ends,” Chloe answered, “on State street.”

  “We should head out to the asylum too,” Sam added, “I bet it’s just ruins by now, but we might be able to find something out.”

  The waitress returned, baring a heavily weighted tray. She unloaded some dishes at a nearby table and then stopped in front of them.

  “Cherry pancakes,” she announced, dropping a plate in front of Sam, “Number three…” a plate landed in front of Seth, “and a cherry bomb for our comedian.” The largest plate landed in front of Chloe with an angry cha-chink. The waitress was off again before Chloe had the chance to reply.

  “Whew!” Sam said eyeballing Chloe’s plate.

  A portion of scrambled eggs smothered in a chunky red goop steamed on one side of the plate. A pile of hash browns and greasy bacon, and a red, sticky-looking baked mass with a crumbly brown top completed the platter.

  “Eggs with cherry salsa, hash browns, cherry wood smoked bacon and baked cherries,” Sam explained, “If you’re brave enough to risk eating spit!”

  Chloe felt her stomach suddenly rumble with hunger. She picked up her fork and smiled serenely at Seth.

  “When in Rome…” she ventured.

  With uncomfortably full stomachs, they drove slowly down State street trying to see addresses on business store windows. Downtown Traverse City was a slice of old time Main street Americana. Dozens of tiny mom-and-pop stores with variously colored awning and carefully crafted display windows were crammed into each block. It was Sam that first spotted the cluttered store window with the faded red awning over it which read: “Odd Ends, Antiques and Collectibles.”

  Inside there seemed to be more dust motes than breathable air. A corroded French horn sat atop a stack of moldy water-logged books, and a wrought iron contraption with the shape of a woman’s body displayed a stiff and decaying purple dress that hadn’t been worn in the last century.

  At the far end of the store, behind a glass counter stuffed with costume jewelry and mismatched china dishes, sat the obvious proprietor. He looked exactly as Chloe would have expected. He was tiny and bespectacled with white hair, a sweater vest and a bow-tie.

  “Hello?” Chloe called, trying to draw his attention away from the yellowed pages of an aged book, “Excuse me…Mr. Gold?”

  The old man squinted at them from behind his glasses, and carefully closed the book, marking his place with a faded silk strip.

  “You wouldn’t happen to be the students from Birch Harbor that Reginald called me about, would you?” the elderly man asked in a squeaky voice.

  “I-I think so, yes,” Chloe answered. “We’re students from Dr. Willard’s class. He sent us to pick up some old letters from the asylum…for his…for his collection.”

  “Well I don’t have them,” he warned them, “I told him so this morning, but he said you might still come anyways.”

  “You sold them?” Chloe gasped, “Do you remember who you sold them to? Was it-”

  “I didn’t sell them!” he cut her off, “I never had them!”

  “I don’t understand,” Chloe faltered.

  “What I told Reginald, last time he came through, was that I could get my hands on some more things he might want. I told him about some letters I had seen. One of my regulars brought them in. A man who finds a lot of memorabilia from the old asylum for me. He came in with a whole load of old papers and I bought some…thought about buying the letters, but wasn’t sure that they were what Reginald was looking for. I told him what I remembered about them and he didn’t seem interested, so I just forgot all about it. At least, until he called me this morning. But the bottom line is, I don’t have them, and I don’t know when I’ll see them again.”

  “But you just said the man who tried to sell them to you was a regular,” Chloe argued. “You must know something about him. If you know where he lives, you could call him-”

  “He don’t have a phone,” the old man said.

  “Well, maybe you could tell us where he lives and we could…” Chloe trailed off watching the little shopkeeper shake his head.

  “Now look,” he explained. “Most of the things I find for Reginald all come from the same source. If I just told you who it was and where you can find him, that’d just cut me out entirely, wouldn’t it? I’m trying to earn a living here young lady.”

  “If you told us,” Chloe said quickly, “we’d get it from him and come right back here and pay you…what do they call it? A finder’s fee? And it’ll just be this one time, Dr. Willard will still do business with you same as ever. It’s just this once…it’s really important…for…for his research. We really need those letters.”

  The old man studied her over the wire rims of his glasses. His eyes were watery and still blue. They were kind eyes, Chloe thought.

  “You probably won’t be able to find him anyways,” he decided. “Will isn’t easy to find, less he wants to be found.”

  “Will…” Chloe mused, almost dreamlike, “not…Will Gannon?”

  The shopkeeper started and slapped his hand against the counter.

  “Now…you see? Reginald probably already knows and is doing business with him, and I’ll bet it’s my own fault! Seems like I must have mentioned his name a time or two before,” he complained dejectedly.

  “No!” Chloe said. “No I’ve just…I mean we’ve seen his name before, somewhere in Dr. Willard’s files, I think.”

  “Well, you probably already know how he comes across so many of those old papers then,” the old man said. “He used to be a patient there, up at the old asylum. Will was there when they closed up shop.”

  “When they closed the asylum?” Sam clarified.

  “Sure,” the old man continued. “Back in ‘89 I think. They just shooed the last of the patients out and locked the doors behind them. Most of ‘em wandered into town and have been homeless ever since.”

  “Will Gannon is homeless?” Chloe asked, “Where could we look for him? Are there homeless shelters?”

  “Sure,” the old man answered, “but you won’t find Will in one. If you were going to look for him, I’d say check the woods around the old asylum. Still a few of them out there, living in tents and under trees, and last I heard, that’s where Will was.”

  “Can we get directions to the asylum?” Seth asked sensibly.

  “The Commons they call it now,” the old man clarified. “Get out on Front Street, take that to Elwood. Make a left, take that to 11th street, Can’t miss it, big old buildings. You’ll want to check the woods west of there for Will.”

  Chloe was already headed towards the door, pulling Seth along behind her. Sam dropped a jointed wooden doll she had been studying and followed.

  “Wow! Can you imagine?” Sam asked. “They just let all the mental patients go and locked up behind them! That seems like it should be illegal or something, doesn’t it? What do you think it’ll look like now? If there are homeless people living in the woods, why do you think they haven’t moved into the building? I mean, if it’s deserted and falling apart, don’t you think it’d beat living outside? Maybe it’s haunted!!”

  “I don’t know,” Chloe answered, as Seth slid into place behind the wheel. “That was twenty years ago. It doesn’t make sense that a bunch of patients have just been hanging around for twenty years, homeless. Why wouldn’t they just go back to where they came from…to their families?”

>   Seth started the truck and turned in his seat to fix them both with a dark scowl.

  “So let me get this straight,” he began. “You want me to take you out to an abandoned asylum so that you can walk around in the woods looking for homeless mental patients?”

  “Yes, please,” Sam and Chloe answered.

  “Okay…can you understand why that might give me some pause?” he asked cautiously.

  “No,” Sam smiled brightly. “We have a big, strong, hockey player type guy to protect us, so I don’t really see the problem.”

  Chloe shrugged, trying to avoid eye contact.

  “I just want to go on record as having said that I don’t think this is a good idea,” Seth continued.

  “Duly noted,” agreed Sam.

  “Clo?” Seth asked.

  “His name was on the wall,” Chloe said, “Will Gannon…it was just above mine. His name was on the list too. Even if he didn’t have the letters I’d try to find him. I want to know what he knows.”

  Seth looked miserable as he pulled out on the street.

  “Then can you wait in the car, and let me look for him?” he asked softly. “It doesn’t make sense for us all to-”

  “No, no noooo!” Sam interrupted, and Chloe was secretly glad, because she would not have been able to wait in the car. “I’ve got this feeling…like we’re on to something big…like we’re about to figure it all out. We’ve been dealing with this since we came to Birch Harbor and it’s not fair to tell us to just sit it out now, when we’re so close. It’s not fair!”

  Seth still looked miserable, but he didn’t argue. He followed the old man’s directions. Driving at the pace of a blind, geriatric turtle seemed to be his only means of protesting. Sam was practically bouncing in the seat next to her.

  The asylum rose above the trees as they approached, reminding Chloe of their own dormitory. Still, it was nothing like she expected.

  For the briefest moment, Chloe wondered if they had gone back in time. The asylum looked new. The massive yellow-bricked face of the building gleamed as though it was freshly scrubbed. The white wooden trim around the roofline looked bright and freshly painted, higher still, the roofs of several small spires glowed cherry red against a blue sky. The grounds were immaculate, fresh and green with the perfect straight lines of a newly mown lawn. It was the people walking around outside that brought Chloe back from her fantasy. They wore modern clothes, chatted gaily with one another, rode bicycles, walked dogs.

  “They…they renovated it?” Sam asked.

  “The Village at Grand Traverse Commons,” Seth read off a nearby sign. “Condos, shops, restaurants…looks nice. You want to see if there’s somewhere we can go in and look around?”

  “No, go around behind…I think behind the building is west. See if there’s somewhere we can park,” Chloe decided.

  Seth pulled around the circle drive and back down the street, making the first right turn available. Over the trees, and through gaps in the woods, the girls could still see the old hospital, a massive, sprawling complex, much larger than Kirkbride Hall. Chloe felt very small looking at it.

  “It’s pretty,” Sam admitted quietly. “You can really believe that it’s what they were trying for when you see it look all new like that. But it’s still…there’s still something about it…”

  “It’s intimidating,” Chloe finished for her. “So pretty and clean, but also so solid and huge…like a fortress in camouflage.”

  “Yah,” Sam agreed.

  Seth parallel parked on the street. They could still see the hospital through the trees on one side. On the other it was nothing but woods.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Let’s do this,” Sam said excitedly, jumping out of the truck.

  Chloe moved slower, being more aware of Seth’s disapproval. It felt like a blast of heat against her back.

  The group crossed the street and ventured into the woods. There were no discernible trails at first, but after a few minutes of walking they saw signs of recent human traffic. An empty bottle next to one tree, a wadded up fast food sandwich wrapper, farther on a ratty old sleeping bag rolled up and covered by a few branches. Still, they saw no people and heard no voices or footsteps. It was Chloe that found them first, found them by tripping over an unexpected leg.

  She screeched and smashed headfirst into a prickly scrub bush. Next to her, the culprit leapt up, dropping a newspaper and quickly grabbing her arm and yanking her back to her feet. Seth pulled her backwards, putting himself in between her and the new person. The young man threw his arms up defensively.

  “Thought she saw me,” he soothed. “Wasn’t trying to hurt her, she tripped over me!”

  From behind Seth, Chloe got a good look at the stranger. He was young, maybe their age. He crossed his arms over a coat that was dirty and frayed, but still thick and warm. A dark blue knit cap with long yarn ties hung down on either side of his lean, tanned face. When he spoke she noticed a gap or two where teeth should be.

  “I’m just sitting here, reading a paper, minding my own business, wasn’t doing anybody any harm,” the young man continued. He stopped and looked the three of them over quickly. “What are you all doing out here anyways? You from the college, or from the condos out there?” He started to look suspicious.

  “We’re looking for someone,” Chloe said quickly. “Somebody named Will Gannon, we heard he lives out here and we need to find him.”

  “What do you need to find him for?” the young man asked, scowling now.

  “We want to buy something he has. He was going to sell it to an antique shop, that’s how we heard about it, from the guy that owns the shop. He didn’t want it, but we do, and we want to talk to him about it. We’re…we’re researchers, from Birch Harbor. We’re researching the old hospital,” Chloe explained.

  “Ohhh,” comprehension dawned on the young man’s face, “Sure, I can find old Will. He’s the one you want to talk to then. He knows more about that place than anyone. Used to live there. Got lots of stuff from it too. He went through it before the salvage crews even. Some people like that kind of stuff, I guess.”

  “You can take us to him?” Sam pushed.

  “I guess so,” the man turned to lead them on, but stopped and looked back over his shoulder. His expression was worried. “You’re not lying, are you? You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? Will’s sure a good guy, he’s helped me out lots of times. It’d be real bad for me if you’re here to get him for something. If you’re cops or something…I’d feel pretty bad. But you’re not lying?”

  Chloe looked directly into his eyes. She stepped around Seth and held her hand out to the young man.

  “We wouldn’t lie to you. My name’s Chloe, what’s yours?”

  Strange that all of a sudden, talking should come so naturally to her, but Chloe knew this boy. She didn’t know him personally, of course, but she knew his fears. At Woodhaven there were all sorts of patients full of fidgets and quick sidelong glances. Mistrust fostered by years of abuse. It was important to speak clearly and kindly, to make eye contact, and hold it.

  “Steve,” he said shaking her hand heartily. The worried look evaporated as he did. “Steve Fleming, from Lansing originally.”

  Steve Fleming soon forgot he ever had a concern. Chloe walked beside him, nodding as he launched into a detailed history of his life. Sam and Seth followed. Steve talked about the people he knew, his childhood home, his dog that had died in the summer, his problems with the government, his theory that people were all basically pieces of the same giant field of energy, and his little brother who played football and was going to get a scholarship and go out-of-state. He talked and talked, breaking only when he ran out of air. Chloe recognized in him a person who had spent too much time alone, thinking. It was probably a great relief for him to be able to siphon off some of his thoughts. Sometimes she was sure he was a very normal man who just seemed to wear the fact that he was very lonely on his sleeve. At other times, she had a feeling th
at he might have seen the inside of a psych ward himself once or twice. He was unflinchingly honest, about everything…a fact that probably argued for the case that he may have been mentally unstable.

  They passed a few other people. A couple of older men sitting on battered wooden lawn chairs near a tent, and a wizened middle-aged woman who glanced distrustfully in their direction as she made repairs with cardboard to something that looked like a teepee made out of scrap metal, salvaged wood and sticks.

  During one of Steve’s short breaks for air, Sam took an opportunity to pipe up.

  “Are there a lot of people that came from the asylum around here?” she asked.

  Steve scratched his stubbly jaw.

  “I don’t think so,” he ventured. “Not so much anymore. Seems like there were a lot of them years ago, but people move on, and the hospital closed a long time ago. More people come from the factories closing, shops shutting down. Old Will’s the only one I know for sure that come from the hospital. I don’t know, might be more I guess, you’d want to ask Will though, he’d know.”

  They had walked so far into the woods that Chloe was starting to wonder if their guide really remembered where he was going or if he was just enjoying the walk. She was working up the nerve to ask him, when she stumbled again. This time over a carefully-placed…tripwire? Steve held out an arm to steady her.

  The string was tied to a stick from which hung an odd assortment of empty tin cans and glass bottles. It jangled strangely. Chloe whipped her head around, searching for the person who had set the trap.

  “That’s just Will’s doorbell,” Steve explained. “He moves it around a bit, never keeps it in the same place. He’ll be along anytime now. We’ll wait here, it’d be rude to go right on up.”

  Steve whistled once, a long low note, and then stood still, watching the trees. Seth, who hadn’t said a word since entering the woods, crossed his arms and moved closer to her.

  Will Gannon seemed to materialize from nowhere. She never heard the crunching of leaves or the snapping of twigs to signal his approach. Chloe glanced away and suddenly he stepped out from behind a tree directly in front of them.