Some Can See, page 26
part #1 of Northern Michigan Asylum Series
“Fine, come in, you’ve got exactly five minutes and then I want you out.”
Damien stepped into her apartment.
“I’m sorry, Jude,” he started, holding out his hands, soft smooth hands that she remembered traveling her body.
“You‘re here to ask my forgiveness?”
“Not exactly,” he admitted, stepping further into the apartment. “I’m here because I think I’ve made a horrible mistake and….”
“And what?” Jude snapped, feeling her throat pulse from the place Dale had squeezed. Jude frowned, letting her hair fall over the side of her face, perhaps masking some bruises.
“I lied when I first met you,” Damien went on. “And it was unforgivable.”
“Damien,” she huffed, glancing towards the closed door of her bedroom. “Get to the point.”
“I screwed up that night, Jude. I had too much to drink and…”
Jude laughed and planted a hand on her hip, infuriated at Damien’s words. The night had meant absolutely nothing to him. He’d had too much to drink.
“Get out, Damien.”
She walked over and shoved him hard. He stood his ground, barely shifting beneath her push.
“I’m worried about Hattie.”
Jude narrowed her eyes, the sound of her sister’s name on his lips igniting a new bubble of rage within her.
“What about Hattie?” she demanded.
“I told Kaiser that Hattie sees spirits.”
“You what?” Jude spit the words more than said them.
“He cornered me and I panicked. I was babbling, not thinking and-”
Jude glared at him, her mind reeling.
“He can’t touch Hattie. She’s not in the hospital and he can’t have her committed for that.” Jude wasn’t really talking to Damien, but more to herself wondering if her mother could hear their conversation.
“I’m worried about Hattie, Jude,” Damien said softly. “I don’t know where she lives. I dropped her off at the church this morning. I tried to call her this evening, but-”
“You think I’m going to lead you to my baby sister? You‘re nuts. Forget your doctorate Damien, you need to join your patients.”
He looked wounded by her words, but she played on his guilt. He could not talk back to her; his shame wouldn’t allow it.
“Dr. Kaiser doesn’t play by the rules,” Damien continued. “I didn’t know him when I started working with him. I had read some of his publications. He has a brilliant mind. One of my professors spoke very highly of him. I had no idea that he was…”
“What?”
“Twisted, obsessed maybe.”
“Obsessed with what? My mother?”
“Yes, but not only your mother. He’s obsessed with patients who claim supernatural connections. It’s taken me months to realize it. I thought it was simply a focus for his treatment, but I started digging a bit. He requests those patients, the ones that claim to see things. Three have died in his care in the last decade. Three patients, Jude.”
Jude opened her eyes wide, studying Damien who looked ready to cry. He was not a man at all, just playing at being one.
“And you gave him Hattie? You really are a coward, Damien.”
Damien looked away, at her ceiling, down at the floor. He made a weak attempt at petting Gram, but the dog shifted away.
Jude’s bedroom door opened and her mother stepped out.
Chapter 37
September 20, 1965
Jude
Mrs. Bowers, a widow for well over two decades, owned the house beneath Hattie’s apartment. When Jude knocked on her door, a cacophony of cats greeted her.
“Go on now Fuzz, Beatrix, Marigold - you’re going to trip this old lady up,” Mrs. Bowers said through the door, and Jude imagined her wading through a sea of cats using a wooden oar to push them aside. She opened the door and two cats raced on to the porch. Despite their urgent escape they immediately dropped into positions of lazy, rolling in patches of sun on the wooden deck.
“Don’t mind them,” Mrs. Bowers said waving them away and casting her green eyes, tinged with yellow, on Jude. Despite the warm day, she wore a heavy knit sweater, thick corduroy pants and men’s slippers.
“Hi, Mrs. Bowers, sorry to intrude. I knocked on Hattie’s door and didn’t find her. I was wondering if you’ve talked to her today?”
Mrs. Bowers grinned and held up a length of orange scarf.
“Darning this for little Hattie right now. That slender neck is bound to get a chill. I saw her late this morning. Seemed a bit upset to tell you the truth. Said she was going to Traverse City.” Mrs. Bowers cocked an eyebrow that implied scandal and winked. “She’s been gone a lot lately, thought maybe she had a beau up that way.”
Jude frowned. The only connection Hattie had to Traverse City was the Northern Michigan Asylum.
“What happened to your face, doll?” Mrs. Bowers asked, frowning.
“Clumsy,” Jude told her. “Fell down my apartment stairs after a few glasses of wine.”
“You independent girls, my goodness,” she shook her head and laughed. “I would have been right terrified livin’ on my own at your age. Course guess now I do, but after twenty years with Barny I realized I’d have to fend for myself. Snored like a freight train, somebody could’a broke in and murdered me and he never would cracked an eye.”
“I’ve gotta go, Mrs. Bowers. If Hattie comes back can you ask her to give me a call?”
Mrs. Bowers nodded and peeked past Jude to her car where her mother stared out from the front seat, quickly turning her head away. Damien sat in the back, his face grim.
****
Hattie
Hattie swam in a universe of black. No - not swam - floated. She didn’t have control of her body, it drifted, soared, fell as if a dozen currents pushed and pulled her first there, now here, but she saw nothing.
She opened her eyes but felt removed from her body as if thinking of opening her eyes involved telling her brain, then racing from her brain to her eyelids to tell them and then back up to her brain to relay they’d heard, but they were so heavy. One lid came up and then the other and the room swam in the same currents of black, occasionally broken by streaks of orange light. Hattie let her head flop to the right and saw a torch lit against a curving brick wall. It reminded her of a pool. Was she sitting in the bottom of a pool?
She gazed for a long time - falling, floating, steadying only to dive again, her body on a strange journey, the room sometimes acting similarly, rolling to the side, righting itself. She lifted an arm, but it didn’t move, more than heavy, it seemed to be fastened down. She tried the other and then her legs, all impossibly heavy, unmovable. More flickering light on the ceiling when she looked up, flickering lights when she closed her eyes, and the sound of voices murmuring, some crying.
“Hattie,” a clear strong voice broke through the jumble of sensations, a man’s voice. She lolled her head to the left and there was the man, the doctor, with his winter blue eyes searching her face. “It’s begun to take effect,” he said.
He walked to a bag and dug through it. His body seemed to shrink and grow, a monster man with hunched shoulders. Hattie remembered a show that Jude and Peter used to love, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When he turned around, the doctor’s eyes would have gone from blue to black and he’d be holding a knife.
But no, he turned, stepped toward her, the light played tricks - ghoul’s face, man’s face, ghoul’s face like he was taking off a Halloween mask so fast she couldn’t see the flicker of his hand. He held a framed picture. He pushed the photo in front of her, held it too close, she tried to recoil, but her head pressed into the bed and stopped.
Her eyes couldn’t focus, the glass reflected firelight, the images within the photo were tiny little particles moving, colored nonsense.
“Water?” she asked him, blinking, slipping into the void, returning some time later. The man stood as if no time had elapsed, his eyes angry, the frame clutched in his hand.
“Look at the photo,” he hissed.
She looked, saw a woman in a long dress with a cold smile and colder eyes. It didn’t register in Hattie’s mind, she swam through the darkness, flickering orange light, the woman’s face mean, grinning, sneering.
More sounds, whispering voices, someone was crying. A little girl was crying, and now there were shadows in the room, darting, faster than Hattie’s eyes could follow.
“Call her here, call this woman,” the doctor snapped, jabbing a finger at the glass frame. “Speak to her! Tell me what she says!”
Hattie blinked, and every blink took hours and catapulted her into a space and time where the world was fluid, darkness and light streaming, pulsing. She tried to focus on the man, so angry, but the shadows grew thicker, surrounded him and then dissipated like bursts of vanishing powder from a magic show.
And then the woman was there, standing just behind the man, long slender arms, but something wasn’t right. Her head looked funny and Hattie stared and stared because she couldn’t make sense of this woman’s strange head. It was not round, but flat on the side and when the woman shifted, Hattie saw the side of her head was caved in, blood matted her hair and stuck to her neck with little bits of white and gray. Bone and brains, Hattie thought though she couldn’t imagine finding those words on her own.
“You killed your mother…” Hattie murmured, eyelids drooping.
The doctor’s eyes flashed, fear, and then triumphant rage. He gripped the picture in his bony hands so hard the glass in the frame shattered. Still, he held it, and blood flowed from his cut fingers and dripped to the floor.
“What does she say?” he screamed into Hattie’s face.
“Who?” Hattie mumbled, already losing track of the conversation.
“My mother! What does she say?” He shook the frame at Hattie. She felt a droplet of his warm blood hit her cheek.
The shadows in the room seemed to be shifting closer to the blood, wanting the blood.
One shadow, a young man, darted towards Kaiser and nipped him. Kaiser dropped the frame, spun around, and then stared at his bleeding hand. Had he felt the spirit’s bite?
Hattie tried to follow the man’s shadow but it disappeared into the darkness. Another shadow darted forward, the woman from the photo. Kaiser yelped and stumbled back, his eyes shifting from anger to terror. His hand was bleeding more now, dark rivulets seeping over his wrists.
****
Sophia
They piled from the car and Sophia ran into woods, ignoring the tremors of anxiety that rose as she spotted the asylum looming in the distance.
“Hattie!” she screamed, pushing through a wall of bushes and searching for the trail Kaiser had taken her down months before.
“Wait, Mom,” Jude called, wincing as her arm jiggled in its sling. “Maybe she’s in the asylum. She might be talking to a nurse or…”
Sophia shook her head.
“I know, Jude. Dr. Kaiser has her. But I can’t remember how to find the hidden doorway.”
Damien ran ahead shouting Hattie’s name and plunging in and out of a dark grove of trees.
The moon rose, but offered little light, even less through the thick boughs of leaves soon to fall. A half hour went by, and they searched. Sophia realized she’d seen that tree, that stump - they were moving in circles.
“Alice,” Sophia shouted, grabbing Damien as he trotted past her. “Go to the hospital and get Alice!”
“Dr. Kaiser’s nurse?” Damien asked, bewildered and already shaking his head ‘no.’
“It’s the only way. She took me there. She can find it again,” Sophia said, urgent, shaking him.
Jude appeared, squared off against him, her eyes so filled with anger and hurt that Sophia wanted to wrap her in a hug, but couldn’t - there wasn’t time.
“I’ll expose you, Damien. I’ll print the most horrifying story about you imaginable if you don’t get that fucking nurse, now! I swear to God I will devote my life to ruining you,” Jude spat.
Damien looked between the two women, eyes wide and then he nodded.
“Okay, no, you’re right. I’m not thinking clearly. I’ll go.”
He turned and ran for the hospital.
Jude and Sophia hid in the trees. If Alice saw them, she’d never take them to the secret chamber where Kaiser and his sick group showed off their patients.
Sophia held Jude’s hand, watching the trail. After a lifetime of counting seconds, Damien appeared on the path, pulling Alice along.
“Damien, Dr. Kaiser never mentioned that you were aware of the Brotherhood. I’m breaking an oath, I….”
“Alice, I’ve been here with Dr. Kaiser only once before. He’s in danger, I’m telling you. The patient who escaped-”
“Sophia?” Alice hissed.
“Yes. She lured him out here. His note was cryptic, but I’m telling you, that’s where she took him.”
Sophia knew Alice’s jaw would be working, sorting through the possibility Damien lied.
“It’s this way.” Alice picked up her pace.
Sophia and Jude slipped onto the trail behind them and kept their distance. They walked along a patch of old-growth trees, stepped over a tiny creek and hurried up a broad grassy hill. Alice took a sharp left at a wall of bushes. They plunged through, down a hill, and Sophia saw the strange trees from her previous visit. They sprawled along the earth, crawling, rather than raising into the sky.
Alice ducked beneath a large bone-white trunk. Sophia started to follow, but Jude held her back. A dirt mound rose out of the earth, and Alice pushed her hands into a mass of brambles. Sophia heard a click.
“This way,” Alice whispered rushing into the tangle of branches.
Damien disappeared behind her. Jude and Sophia followed.
****
Sophia clenched her eyes shut, the sounds of the dead swirled through the tunnels. Dark pools of emotion - pain, anger, despair assaulted her senses. She stopped, put her hand on a wall and whipped it back when a howl of rage burst in her skull.
“Mom, Mom, are you okay? Jude whispered, touching her mom’s shoulder.
“Yes, keep going. I’m fine,” she said. But the memories of that night were coming back, and worse the cries, shouts and whispers grew louder. The chamber seemed to trap the spirits, to ignite their fury, and amplify their grief. Sophia had encountered many spirits in her life - these were different - angry, hostile, menacing.
“Dr. Kaiser?” Alice called ahead of them.
Sophia heard Dr. Kaiser’s voice, shrill.
“Get off me, get away, stop them. You stupid girl, stop them.”
Sophia ran, Jude beside her. They charged through the dark tunnel and into the room. The torches flickered from the walls.
Hattie lay on the bed, her face waxen, her blue eyes huge with black dilated pupils in their center.
“LSD,” Sophia murmured.
Damien unbuckled Hattie’s straps and lifted her from the bed.
Alice hunched over a man in a white coat.
Kaiser.
He was shrieking and flailing at the air, the ground, and he slapped at Alice’s hands.
“They’re eating me alive,” he howled. “The blood, my blood.”
Blood gushed from his hand and yes, the shadows seemed to be descending upon him in droves, waves, moving towards that blood.
Jude ran to Hattie and Sophia broke her trance and followed.
“Oh baby,” she whispered.
“Mama?” Hattie asked looking at her with huge petrified eyes.
“You’re okay, honey. Go,” she urged Damien, and they ran from the room, hearing the calls of Dr. Kaiser and the pleas of Alice as they streaked down the tunnel into the dark forest.
Epilogue
The Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane
September 25, 1965
Kaiser
Kaiser sat in the hall outside his room. Another patient was sweeping the hallway, occasionally crouching to the floor to brush his hand over the cement as if he’d missed a spot.
A cold sweat popped along Kaiser’s brow and he wiped it quickly away lest the patient see his fear.
Dr. Knight paused in the hallway staring at him for a long moment before plastering on one of his placating smiles.
“How are you today, Stephen?” Knight asked squatting down in front of Kaiser.
Kaiser held his hands balled in his lap. He wanted to punch and pummel the doctor. How dare he address him by his first name in front of patients? It was the most terrible breech and an intentional one at that.
“I’m sure you can imagine how I am, Larry,” Kaiser hissed. “Where is Alice?”
“She was needed on another floor. How did you sleep last night? Have the nightmares improved?”
Knight spoke to him as if he were a feeble-minded child.
“The Brotherhood is very concerned, Stephen. If you were to say something during one of your episodes,” Knight trailed off.
“I got you into The Brotherhood, Knight. Me! You were unworthy, most of them are. How dare you threaten me?”
Knight stood up, holding his hands in the air and stepping away as if Kaiser was a wild animal ready to attack.
“Whoa, Stephen. Please calm down or I’ll have to call for an orderly. Have you seen the new one who just started? Frank something or other? He’s great big.” Knight held his arms out wide. “Not the brightest fellow, but strong as an ox.”
“Wait,” Kaiser gasped, grabbing at Knight’s white coat. “You have to get me out of here. She only has power here. Don’t you see? This pace,” he gestured around wildly, “is a gateway for the dead.”
Dr. Knight prised Kaiser’s hands from his coat and offered him another of those demeaning smiles.
“Stephen, perhaps it’s time for a new treatment,” Knight suggested, checking his watch.
“I want to speak with Alice, now,” Kaiser bellowed, struggling up from his chair. His body heavy from medication refused to step forward. He collapsed back into his chair.
The patient who’d been sweeping paused.
Damien stepped into her apartment.
“I’m sorry, Jude,” he started, holding out his hands, soft smooth hands that she remembered traveling her body.
“You‘re here to ask my forgiveness?”
“Not exactly,” he admitted, stepping further into the apartment. “I’m here because I think I’ve made a horrible mistake and….”
“And what?” Jude snapped, feeling her throat pulse from the place Dale had squeezed. Jude frowned, letting her hair fall over the side of her face, perhaps masking some bruises.
“I lied when I first met you,” Damien went on. “And it was unforgivable.”
“Damien,” she huffed, glancing towards the closed door of her bedroom. “Get to the point.”
“I screwed up that night, Jude. I had too much to drink and…”
Jude laughed and planted a hand on her hip, infuriated at Damien’s words. The night had meant absolutely nothing to him. He’d had too much to drink.
“Get out, Damien.”
She walked over and shoved him hard. He stood his ground, barely shifting beneath her push.
“I’m worried about Hattie.”
Jude narrowed her eyes, the sound of her sister’s name on his lips igniting a new bubble of rage within her.
“What about Hattie?” she demanded.
“I told Kaiser that Hattie sees spirits.”
“You what?” Jude spit the words more than said them.
“He cornered me and I panicked. I was babbling, not thinking and-”
Jude glared at him, her mind reeling.
“He can’t touch Hattie. She’s not in the hospital and he can’t have her committed for that.” Jude wasn’t really talking to Damien, but more to herself wondering if her mother could hear their conversation.
“I’m worried about Hattie, Jude,” Damien said softly. “I don’t know where she lives. I dropped her off at the church this morning. I tried to call her this evening, but-”
“You think I’m going to lead you to my baby sister? You‘re nuts. Forget your doctorate Damien, you need to join your patients.”
He looked wounded by her words, but she played on his guilt. He could not talk back to her; his shame wouldn’t allow it.
“Dr. Kaiser doesn’t play by the rules,” Damien continued. “I didn’t know him when I started working with him. I had read some of his publications. He has a brilliant mind. One of my professors spoke very highly of him. I had no idea that he was…”
“What?”
“Twisted, obsessed maybe.”
“Obsessed with what? My mother?”
“Yes, but not only your mother. He’s obsessed with patients who claim supernatural connections. It’s taken me months to realize it. I thought it was simply a focus for his treatment, but I started digging a bit. He requests those patients, the ones that claim to see things. Three have died in his care in the last decade. Three patients, Jude.”
Jude opened her eyes wide, studying Damien who looked ready to cry. He was not a man at all, just playing at being one.
“And you gave him Hattie? You really are a coward, Damien.”
Damien looked away, at her ceiling, down at the floor. He made a weak attempt at petting Gram, but the dog shifted away.
Jude’s bedroom door opened and her mother stepped out.
Chapter 37
September 20, 1965
Jude
Mrs. Bowers, a widow for well over two decades, owned the house beneath Hattie’s apartment. When Jude knocked on her door, a cacophony of cats greeted her.
“Go on now Fuzz, Beatrix, Marigold - you’re going to trip this old lady up,” Mrs. Bowers said through the door, and Jude imagined her wading through a sea of cats using a wooden oar to push them aside. She opened the door and two cats raced on to the porch. Despite their urgent escape they immediately dropped into positions of lazy, rolling in patches of sun on the wooden deck.
“Don’t mind them,” Mrs. Bowers said waving them away and casting her green eyes, tinged with yellow, on Jude. Despite the warm day, she wore a heavy knit sweater, thick corduroy pants and men’s slippers.
“Hi, Mrs. Bowers, sorry to intrude. I knocked on Hattie’s door and didn’t find her. I was wondering if you’ve talked to her today?”
Mrs. Bowers grinned and held up a length of orange scarf.
“Darning this for little Hattie right now. That slender neck is bound to get a chill. I saw her late this morning. Seemed a bit upset to tell you the truth. Said she was going to Traverse City.” Mrs. Bowers cocked an eyebrow that implied scandal and winked. “She’s been gone a lot lately, thought maybe she had a beau up that way.”
Jude frowned. The only connection Hattie had to Traverse City was the Northern Michigan Asylum.
“What happened to your face, doll?” Mrs. Bowers asked, frowning.
“Clumsy,” Jude told her. “Fell down my apartment stairs after a few glasses of wine.”
“You independent girls, my goodness,” she shook her head and laughed. “I would have been right terrified livin’ on my own at your age. Course guess now I do, but after twenty years with Barny I realized I’d have to fend for myself. Snored like a freight train, somebody could’a broke in and murdered me and he never would cracked an eye.”
“I’ve gotta go, Mrs. Bowers. If Hattie comes back can you ask her to give me a call?”
Mrs. Bowers nodded and peeked past Jude to her car where her mother stared out from the front seat, quickly turning her head away. Damien sat in the back, his face grim.
****
Hattie
Hattie swam in a universe of black. No - not swam - floated. She didn’t have control of her body, it drifted, soared, fell as if a dozen currents pushed and pulled her first there, now here, but she saw nothing.
She opened her eyes but felt removed from her body as if thinking of opening her eyes involved telling her brain, then racing from her brain to her eyelids to tell them and then back up to her brain to relay they’d heard, but they were so heavy. One lid came up and then the other and the room swam in the same currents of black, occasionally broken by streaks of orange light. Hattie let her head flop to the right and saw a torch lit against a curving brick wall. It reminded her of a pool. Was she sitting in the bottom of a pool?
She gazed for a long time - falling, floating, steadying only to dive again, her body on a strange journey, the room sometimes acting similarly, rolling to the side, righting itself. She lifted an arm, but it didn’t move, more than heavy, it seemed to be fastened down. She tried the other and then her legs, all impossibly heavy, unmovable. More flickering light on the ceiling when she looked up, flickering lights when she closed her eyes, and the sound of voices murmuring, some crying.
“Hattie,” a clear strong voice broke through the jumble of sensations, a man’s voice. She lolled her head to the left and there was the man, the doctor, with his winter blue eyes searching her face. “It’s begun to take effect,” he said.
He walked to a bag and dug through it. His body seemed to shrink and grow, a monster man with hunched shoulders. Hattie remembered a show that Jude and Peter used to love, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When he turned around, the doctor’s eyes would have gone from blue to black and he’d be holding a knife.
But no, he turned, stepped toward her, the light played tricks - ghoul’s face, man’s face, ghoul’s face like he was taking off a Halloween mask so fast she couldn’t see the flicker of his hand. He held a framed picture. He pushed the photo in front of her, held it too close, she tried to recoil, but her head pressed into the bed and stopped.
Her eyes couldn’t focus, the glass reflected firelight, the images within the photo were tiny little particles moving, colored nonsense.
“Water?” she asked him, blinking, slipping into the void, returning some time later. The man stood as if no time had elapsed, his eyes angry, the frame clutched in his hand.
“Look at the photo,” he hissed.
She looked, saw a woman in a long dress with a cold smile and colder eyes. It didn’t register in Hattie’s mind, she swam through the darkness, flickering orange light, the woman’s face mean, grinning, sneering.
More sounds, whispering voices, someone was crying. A little girl was crying, and now there were shadows in the room, darting, faster than Hattie’s eyes could follow.
“Call her here, call this woman,” the doctor snapped, jabbing a finger at the glass frame. “Speak to her! Tell me what she says!”
Hattie blinked, and every blink took hours and catapulted her into a space and time where the world was fluid, darkness and light streaming, pulsing. She tried to focus on the man, so angry, but the shadows grew thicker, surrounded him and then dissipated like bursts of vanishing powder from a magic show.
And then the woman was there, standing just behind the man, long slender arms, but something wasn’t right. Her head looked funny and Hattie stared and stared because she couldn’t make sense of this woman’s strange head. It was not round, but flat on the side and when the woman shifted, Hattie saw the side of her head was caved in, blood matted her hair and stuck to her neck with little bits of white and gray. Bone and brains, Hattie thought though she couldn’t imagine finding those words on her own.
“You killed your mother…” Hattie murmured, eyelids drooping.
The doctor’s eyes flashed, fear, and then triumphant rage. He gripped the picture in his bony hands so hard the glass in the frame shattered. Still, he held it, and blood flowed from his cut fingers and dripped to the floor.
“What does she say?” he screamed into Hattie’s face.
“Who?” Hattie mumbled, already losing track of the conversation.
“My mother! What does she say?” He shook the frame at Hattie. She felt a droplet of his warm blood hit her cheek.
The shadows in the room seemed to be shifting closer to the blood, wanting the blood.
One shadow, a young man, darted towards Kaiser and nipped him. Kaiser dropped the frame, spun around, and then stared at his bleeding hand. Had he felt the spirit’s bite?
Hattie tried to follow the man’s shadow but it disappeared into the darkness. Another shadow darted forward, the woman from the photo. Kaiser yelped and stumbled back, his eyes shifting from anger to terror. His hand was bleeding more now, dark rivulets seeping over his wrists.
****
Sophia
They piled from the car and Sophia ran into woods, ignoring the tremors of anxiety that rose as she spotted the asylum looming in the distance.
“Hattie!” she screamed, pushing through a wall of bushes and searching for the trail Kaiser had taken her down months before.
“Wait, Mom,” Jude called, wincing as her arm jiggled in its sling. “Maybe she’s in the asylum. She might be talking to a nurse or…”
Sophia shook her head.
“I know, Jude. Dr. Kaiser has her. But I can’t remember how to find the hidden doorway.”
Damien ran ahead shouting Hattie’s name and plunging in and out of a dark grove of trees.
The moon rose, but offered little light, even less through the thick boughs of leaves soon to fall. A half hour went by, and they searched. Sophia realized she’d seen that tree, that stump - they were moving in circles.
“Alice,” Sophia shouted, grabbing Damien as he trotted past her. “Go to the hospital and get Alice!”
“Dr. Kaiser’s nurse?” Damien asked, bewildered and already shaking his head ‘no.’
“It’s the only way. She took me there. She can find it again,” Sophia said, urgent, shaking him.
Jude appeared, squared off against him, her eyes so filled with anger and hurt that Sophia wanted to wrap her in a hug, but couldn’t - there wasn’t time.
“I’ll expose you, Damien. I’ll print the most horrifying story about you imaginable if you don’t get that fucking nurse, now! I swear to God I will devote my life to ruining you,” Jude spat.
Damien looked between the two women, eyes wide and then he nodded.
“Okay, no, you’re right. I’m not thinking clearly. I’ll go.”
He turned and ran for the hospital.
Jude and Sophia hid in the trees. If Alice saw them, she’d never take them to the secret chamber where Kaiser and his sick group showed off their patients.
Sophia held Jude’s hand, watching the trail. After a lifetime of counting seconds, Damien appeared on the path, pulling Alice along.
“Damien, Dr. Kaiser never mentioned that you were aware of the Brotherhood. I’m breaking an oath, I….”
“Alice, I’ve been here with Dr. Kaiser only once before. He’s in danger, I’m telling you. The patient who escaped-”
“Sophia?” Alice hissed.
“Yes. She lured him out here. His note was cryptic, but I’m telling you, that’s where she took him.”
Sophia knew Alice’s jaw would be working, sorting through the possibility Damien lied.
“It’s this way.” Alice picked up her pace.
Sophia and Jude slipped onto the trail behind them and kept their distance. They walked along a patch of old-growth trees, stepped over a tiny creek and hurried up a broad grassy hill. Alice took a sharp left at a wall of bushes. They plunged through, down a hill, and Sophia saw the strange trees from her previous visit. They sprawled along the earth, crawling, rather than raising into the sky.
Alice ducked beneath a large bone-white trunk. Sophia started to follow, but Jude held her back. A dirt mound rose out of the earth, and Alice pushed her hands into a mass of brambles. Sophia heard a click.
“This way,” Alice whispered rushing into the tangle of branches.
Damien disappeared behind her. Jude and Sophia followed.
****
Sophia clenched her eyes shut, the sounds of the dead swirled through the tunnels. Dark pools of emotion - pain, anger, despair assaulted her senses. She stopped, put her hand on a wall and whipped it back when a howl of rage burst in her skull.
“Mom, Mom, are you okay? Jude whispered, touching her mom’s shoulder.
“Yes, keep going. I’m fine,” she said. But the memories of that night were coming back, and worse the cries, shouts and whispers grew louder. The chamber seemed to trap the spirits, to ignite their fury, and amplify their grief. Sophia had encountered many spirits in her life - these were different - angry, hostile, menacing.
“Dr. Kaiser?” Alice called ahead of them.
Sophia heard Dr. Kaiser’s voice, shrill.
“Get off me, get away, stop them. You stupid girl, stop them.”
Sophia ran, Jude beside her. They charged through the dark tunnel and into the room. The torches flickered from the walls.
Hattie lay on the bed, her face waxen, her blue eyes huge with black dilated pupils in their center.
“LSD,” Sophia murmured.
Damien unbuckled Hattie’s straps and lifted her from the bed.
Alice hunched over a man in a white coat.
Kaiser.
He was shrieking and flailing at the air, the ground, and he slapped at Alice’s hands.
“They’re eating me alive,” he howled. “The blood, my blood.”
Blood gushed from his hand and yes, the shadows seemed to be descending upon him in droves, waves, moving towards that blood.
Jude ran to Hattie and Sophia broke her trance and followed.
“Oh baby,” she whispered.
“Mama?” Hattie asked looking at her with huge petrified eyes.
“You’re okay, honey. Go,” she urged Damien, and they ran from the room, hearing the calls of Dr. Kaiser and the pleas of Alice as they streaked down the tunnel into the dark forest.
Epilogue
The Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane
September 25, 1965
Kaiser
Kaiser sat in the hall outside his room. Another patient was sweeping the hallway, occasionally crouching to the floor to brush his hand over the cement as if he’d missed a spot.
A cold sweat popped along Kaiser’s brow and he wiped it quickly away lest the patient see his fear.
Dr. Knight paused in the hallway staring at him for a long moment before plastering on one of his placating smiles.
“How are you today, Stephen?” Knight asked squatting down in front of Kaiser.
Kaiser held his hands balled in his lap. He wanted to punch and pummel the doctor. How dare he address him by his first name in front of patients? It was the most terrible breech and an intentional one at that.
“I’m sure you can imagine how I am, Larry,” Kaiser hissed. “Where is Alice?”
“She was needed on another floor. How did you sleep last night? Have the nightmares improved?”
Knight spoke to him as if he were a feeble-minded child.
“The Brotherhood is very concerned, Stephen. If you were to say something during one of your episodes,” Knight trailed off.
“I got you into The Brotherhood, Knight. Me! You were unworthy, most of them are. How dare you threaten me?”
Knight stood up, holding his hands in the air and stepping away as if Kaiser was a wild animal ready to attack.
“Whoa, Stephen. Please calm down or I’ll have to call for an orderly. Have you seen the new one who just started? Frank something or other? He’s great big.” Knight held his arms out wide. “Not the brightest fellow, but strong as an ox.”
“Wait,” Kaiser gasped, grabbing at Knight’s white coat. “You have to get me out of here. She only has power here. Don’t you see? This pace,” he gestured around wildly, “is a gateway for the dead.”
Dr. Knight prised Kaiser’s hands from his coat and offered him another of those demeaning smiles.
“Stephen, perhaps it’s time for a new treatment,” Knight suggested, checking his watch.
“I want to speak with Alice, now,” Kaiser bellowed, struggling up from his chair. His body heavy from medication refused to step forward. He collapsed back into his chair.
The patient who’d been sweeping paused.
