Some Can See
Contents
Title Page
Copyright © 2018 J.R. Erickson
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
Sneak Peak: Calling Back the Dead
About Me
J.R. Erickson
www.jrericksonauthor.com
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Some Can See
A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel
by J.R. Erickson
Copyright © 2018 J.R. Erickson
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Author’s Note
Thanks so much for picking up a copy of Some Can See. I want to offer a disclaimer before you dive into the story. This is an entirely fictional novel. Although there was once a real place known as The Northern Michigan Asylum - which inspired me to write these books - it is in no way depicted within them. Although my story takes place there, the characters in this story are not based on any real people who worked at this asylum or were patients; any resemblance to individuals, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Likewise, the events which take place in the novel are not based on real events, and any resemblance to real events is also coincidental.
In truth, nearly every book I read about the asylum, later known as the Traverse City State Hospital, was positive. This holds true for the stories of many of the staff who worked there as well. I live in the Traverse City area and regularly visit the grounds of the former asylum. It’s now known as The Village at Grand Traverse Commons. It was purchased in 2000 by Ray Minervini and the Minervini Group who have been restoring it since that time. Today, it’s a mixed-use space of boutiques, restaurants and condominiums. If you ever visit the area, I encourage you to visit the The Village at Grand Traverse Commons. You can experience first hand the asylums - both old and new - and walk the sprawling grounds.
Prologue
August 18, 1935
Sophia
Sophia lifted the rock, hoping for a salamander. She kicked the black dirt crawling with ants and moved onto a downed tree branch. The previous summer she and her friend Ellen had found half a dozen salamanders at least. This summer Ellen didn’t want to play in the woods. She wanted to go into town with her mama and gaze in the store windows at the new dresses on display. Or she liked to stay home and practice French braiding her hair.
“We’re thirteen now,” Ellen had said to Sophia half a dozen times at least - as if that explained why she wanted to sew a new dress instead of swim in the pond.
Sophia yawned just thinking about it.
Sophia had asked her brother Grimmel to join her, but he preferred to play in the cow pasture with the neighbor boys. Plus, Mama had given him new chores since Daddy died and he hardly had time to play with his friends let alone his little sister. Sophia too had new chores. She mucked the stables and fed the chickens every morning.
That day, rather than fill the wood box, she’d streaked for the woods praying mama didn’t spot her through the kitchen window.
A branch snapped nearby, and Sophia tucked behind a tree searching for a wandering deer. Sophia liked to lie in the downed grass where the deer nested at night. Their beds were soft and matted and she could almost imagine wrapping her body around a little fawn and stroking his knobby spine. She crept further, listening for another sound, but heard nothing.
Giving up her search, she scanned the ground for more rocks. Her daddy had told her that salamanders like dark, damp places and rocks were their perfect hideouts.
“Sophia…” she heard her name and glanced up to find Rosemary on the deer path in front of her.
Rosemary wore a pretty yellow dress streaked in mud and dark stains. Her mama would have her hide for that. Her dark curls, usually neatly arranged on her head, hung loose and wild. She watched Sophia with big empty eyes.
“Rosemary?” Sophia asked, feeling a trickle of fear light along her spine for Lord knows why. She surely wasn’t afraid of Rosemary. “Your mama is lookin’ all over for you. The sheriff came by our house. You better run home fast. Maybe stop at the pond and wipe off your dress.”
Rosemary didn’t speak or even blink. Something wasn’t right with her eyes. As Sophia stared at her, she noticed other wrong things. A trickle of blood hovered just beneath Rosemary’s nose and her arm seemed bent at a weird angle, like it had been broken, and now hung in a sack of skin.
Sophia wanted to take a step back, but instead she walked forward, lifting a hand.
“Are you hurt, Rosemary?”
Rosemary nodded and turned back the way she’d come. She didn’t speak but walked further into the forest. She moved in a jerky limp that should have sent the girl sprawling, but somehow didn’t. They came to Earl’s cabin, an old hunting shack abandoned for years since the old man who lived there died in his sleep. It was only four walls with a dirt floor and a few holes for windows. Rosemary stopped at the door.
Sophia stared at it, knowing Rosemary wanted her to look inside the cabin, but her feet had grown roots and she couldn’t move a muscle. The hot day grew hotter. She sleeved a sheen of sweat off her upper lip and turned back the way they’d come thinking for the first time she should run for help.
Rosemary hitched forward into the cabin. The door creaked on a rusted hinge. Sophia stepped in behind her leaving the glare of sunlight for the stifling darkness of the cabin. It smelled like the barn after daddy had slaughtered a pig. Sophia wrinkled her nose and stuffed her t-shirt up over her face. The door had swung closed, and she couldn’t see. Her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark and the windows offered little light. Something lay on the floor in the center of the cabin. Sophia blinked down. Where had Rosemary gone?
Sophia stepped to the door and kicked it open. It clattered against the side of the cabin making her jump. Turning back, she looked at the cabin floor trying to understand what lay there. It had been covered with an itchy looking blanket, and next to the mound lay a knife with a bone handle. Sophia bent down and picked the knife up with one hand while pulling the blanket back with the other.
Her breath caught hard in her chest as she stared at the body of Rosemary Bell. The girl lay in a pool of spreading darkness. Her face was tilted toward the door and Sophia saw her wide eyes staring vacant, the whites red and veiny. Her mouth hung open and blood trickled from her nose.
Sophia stumbled back, clutching the knife tight in her hand. When a crow called in the forest, Sophia whirled around and leapt from the cabin running hard, pausing only when she remembered that Rosemary had taken her to the cabin. How? But she didn’t stop to consider. Jumping over logs and tearing through raspberry bushes that pricked her bare legs, she raced for home.
Only when her feet met the edge of her families’ property, thick with black-eyed Susan’s, did she slow and catch her breath. Gasping, she hurried for the house walking first into the barn and calling out for Timmy. She still clutched the knife, and she threw it hard on the floor before running to the house.
Her mama stood at the kitchen sink, elbow deep in a basin of sudsy water.
“Mama… mama,” she whispered, pushing through the screen door and shaking her head back and forth as if she might clear the vision of Rosemary slumped on the floor.
“Sophia Ann Gray, if you are tracking dirt into this kitchen, I’ll…” but her mama didn’t finish the sentence. She whipped her hands from the sink, dried them on a cloth, and strode to her daughter, grabbing Sophia’s shoulders and bending low to look into her face. “What’s happened?”
Sophia looked at her hand and wondered at the dark red streaks there. Had she cut herself on the knife? But no, it was Rosemary’s blood she stared at.
“Are you hurt?” Sophia’s mother took her hand and gently turned it over.
Sophia shook her head.
“Not me, Mama. Rosemary. I found her…”
Sophia’s mama frowned, her eyes moving from Sophia’s face back to her bloody hand.
“She’s hurt? Where is she?” Her mother straightened up, yanked off her apron and slipped into her shoes. She pulled open the door and grabbed Sophia’s hand smearing the blood onto her own.
Sophia pulled back, holding her ground, afraid to return to the woods and the cabin and…
“Sophia, snap out of it. This is not time for one of your daydreams. If Ros
emary Bell is injured-”
But Sophia didn’t let her finish.
“She’s dead, mama. Rosemary is dead.”
****
Twenty Years Later
1955
The Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane
Doctor Kaiser held the framed photograph in his hand. His mother had been beautiful and terrible like a witch from a fairy tale who appeared golden and glowing until you saw her reflection in the mirror. Then you’d see her molten skin and flashing red eyes, her hands like claws reaching out for you when you turned your back.
He put the photograph in his desk, locked the drawer and stood.
He wound through the asylum’s administrative floor, nodding at the doctors and nurses, avoiding the small talk. The intolerable Dr. Moore tried to catch his eye, and he turned taking an alternate route, descending a set of stairs to the patient transport tunnels.
An orderly ushered a young man down the hall. The man’s eyes darted around and when he glimpsed Kaiser, he stopped in his tracks clutching the woman’s shirt.
“It’s okay,” the attendant, a young woman, whispered, patting the patient on his back. “Good morning, Doctor.”
“Good morning,” Kaiser murmured.
He hurried down the tunnel and into the light of day, glancing back at the dark hole he’d emerged from. The tunnels were necessary in the northern Michigan climate. He was grateful for the enclosures when the snow piled high and ice encased the sidewalks. However, he never felt at ease moving within them. It was like experiencing burial while still alive.
He turned and stared at the Northern Michigan Asylum. His eyes climbed to the spires that rose pointed into the gray morning sky. Lights blazed in a hundred windows.
Careful that no one saw him, Kaiser ducked into a thicket of trees. He followed a path in his memory, his steps growing faster when he met the little hill that would take him to the hidden forest chamber.
The Umbra Brotherhood met six times a year in asylums all over the country, and today, an especially curious patient would be displayed.
He met Dr. Knight on his walk as he ascended the hill.
“I barely slept a wink last night,” Dr. Knight admitted as they hurried down the slope into the gnarled basin of trees hidden in the forest.
“Why is that?” Kaiser asked, wishing he had made the entire trek alone. He preferred to gather his thoughts before entering the chamber and getting besieged by the voices of the others.
“I’ve never presented before,” Dr. Knight said. “Dr. Claymore, from the Eastern Michigan Asylum, helped me bring the patient in. I had to run back to my office for an antacid.”
Kaiser cocked an eyebrow, but didn’t offer his sympathies. He’d presented half a dozen times. He was less interested in the doctor’s nerves than his patient.
Supposedly the man could channel the dead.
“Here, I’ve got it,” Knight announced stopping at a wall of brambles that hid the chamber door from view. He groped in the branches, fumbling until Kaiser considered shoving him out of the way and doing it himself.
Kaiser glanced at the hill behind them, checking again they weren’t followed.
“There,” Knight sighed, followed by a satisfying metallic click. Knight pushed through the branches and Kaiser followed.
They moved through a long rock passage lit with torches. Condensation gathered on the walls creating a slippery tunnel that reminded Kaiser distastefully of a yawning mouth.
The brick chamber opened before them. Doctors, over twenty-five in all, filled the wooden benches around a raised platform. On the platform, strapped to the bed, lay patient number six-twenty-four. His eyes stared wide and glassy. His lips moved, but no sound emerged.
The last meeting of the brotherhood at the Northern Michigan Asylum had not gone well. The patient, a young woman who could levitate objects, died on the table.
Kaiser settled onto a bench, staring intensely at the patient.
The young man cranked his head to the side and locked his green eyes on Kaiser’s. A rush of unease moved through the doctor as the patient opened his mouth and began to scream.
Chapter 1
July 11, 1955
Hattie
Hattie’s hands shook, her fingers trembling over the flat glass surface, callused plump ends shining back at her in the candlelight. The peach-colored candle dripped a stream of wax into its soft belly slowly caving out of sight. Her face was reflected in the glass case, but the flame distorted her image, revealing another Hattie - a ghoul version of her eight-year-old self.
If she touched the glass - the beautiful sprayed and smoothed glass, so clean it reflected the fine satiny cobwebs clinging to the chandelier - it would smudge. Smudges were fingerprints, evidence, and hers so obvious with her fat fingers that Gram Ruth called baby sausages.
Instead, she went for the shining Mahogany frame; the corners carved in neat spirals that twisted down and down. Crevices impossible to clean, Gram said, huffing and puffing with a dirty sock and a can of lemony spray that made Hattie sneeze. It was not the case itself that Hattie longed to touch, but what lay inside.
She wanted to set the candle down, but dared not soil a single piece of furniture. Gram Ruth’s parlor was off limits. No playing, no pets and above all else no kids. Her mama told her that rule every time they visited Gram Ruth and Gram mentioned it three or four thousand times. Hattie’s sister Jude and her twin brother Peter would moan We Knoooooowwww and roll their eyes, but Hattie never said boo. If she kept quiet, Gram would let her peek while she cleaned the room, let her walk carefully amongst the shining furniture, not touching anything.
Hattie switched the candle to her left hand, the hot wax giving just barely beneath her anxious fingers. “Not too tight,” she whispered.
On Daddy’s last birthday she’d gotten so excited placing lit candles on his chocolate cake she’d squished one and dripped melted wax all down the sleeve of the navy blue dress her mama had just made her. Daddy laughed and kissed her head, but Hattie’s big sister, Jude called her a clumsy little fool and lit the rest herself.
The flame mesmerized Hattie, as did the sweet smell, like the oatmeal Mama made on weekdays, when a woman couldn’t be burdened with some fancy meal at breakfast time.
Holding her breath, she slipped the left edge of her palm beneath the heavy glass lid, the wood pressed firmly against the flesh of her hand. It sat there unmoving, no startling screech as it gave way, no shift at all. Hattie was strong for an eight-year-old. The previous year when Ben Kinney pulled her hair at school she squeezed his fingers so hard he cried. Mrs. Updike made her miss recess for two days, but Hattie didn’t care because Ben was a scuzzbucket and he got what he deserved.
Hattie bent her legs and maneuvered her shoulder beneath her palm. Her daddy did this when he had to get their cellar door open to let in some fresh air, usually after their cat Turkey Legs had pissed. Hattie wasn’t supposed to say pissed, but Peter did and so did Jude. Pushing up, Hattie felt the lid give way.
She stared hard at the candle flame and gripped the smooth edge of the lid, moved its weight from her shoulder to her hand, almost losing it when the full burden took hold. The flame dulled, dipped beneath the pink-orange crater and slid back out, a serpent’s tongue lighting her way. Carefully, sweat sliding like oil down her armpits, she pushed the lid up and back, slowly, slowly until it rested with a groan on its metal hinges.
The candle was no longer shaped like a neat cylinder; her chubby fingers had squashed the juicy wax into a strange sculpture, something she’d see in her mama’s art books. For a moment, she forgot about the glass case, too preoccupied with imagining what the candle might now be. In clouds, Hattie often spotted puppies and airplanes, but in this candle she could see only the purple rubber sheaths on her sister’s bike handlebars.
The glass on the case reflected the flame and Hattie turned gazing down. Her eyes raked over the contents. The floor of the case was covered in crisp, pink velvet, each fiber combed flat by Gram Ruth. Hattie had never seen Gram brush the velvet, but her mama had told her she did it every Saturday morning with a genuine silver brush filled with soft bristles. Her own pink fingers looked pale and ugly against the showy fabric. But it was the prize inside that mattered.