As Abe studied the other disappearances and tried to find a connection, his gaze drifted back to Stuart’s comment. The asylum was only a few miles away. He could put the issue to rest in under an hour. He gazed at his scattered papers, sighing as he shuffled them into a pile and stuffed them in his briefcase.
“Done for the day?” Mona asked, mopping up spilled soup on the booth behind his.
“No, I need to check something out. I’ll see you later.”
Abe had never been inside the asylum walls. The structures were huge, overwhelming, yet beautiful. He felt small and inconsequential. Gazing up at the stately buildings, he tried to imagine the madness within. He could imagine how someone might disappear within their rooms and hallways.
A small woman, with large spectacles propped on her pointed nose, sat at a reception desk within the yawning entrance.
“Hi. My name is Abe Sevett. I’m a reporter for Up North News.”
She gazed up at him, unmoved.
He took out a picture of Orla. “I received a call that someone may have admitted this woman. She’s a local girl and has been missing for more than a week.”
The receptionist looked at the picture.
“I know who she is,” she said. “A darn shame, but if you ask me, she probably jumped in a car and headed out west. She’s sunning on a beach in California by now.”
Abe frowned.
“Actually, we think that’s very unlikely. So do the police. They’re investigating this as serious missing person’s case. A woman who is possibly in grave danger.”
“Well, she’s not here,” the receptionist clipped. “We have a logbook of every patient who comes through these doors. The police contacted us days ago inquiring about the girl. She’s never stepped foot in this hospital.”
“What about a Jane Doe? A woman who didn’t remember her name?”
The woman rolled her eyes.
“This isn’t network television. We deal with real problems here. Schizophrenia, suicidal behaviors, manic depression. This girl isn’t in the asylum. Whoever told you otherwise was pulling your leg.”
Abe set the picture on the table.
“I’d like to leave this here. Maybe you could show it around. There’s no tip too small.”
“I’ll give you a tip. Send someone to the beach in California.”
Hazel
Hazel found Miranda in the back room of the Moon Wisdom Bookstore.
“Knock, knock,” Hazel called, shaking the beaded curtain as she stepped through.
“Hazel,” Miranda bubbled, stepping away from the shelf to grab Hazel in a hug. “The anniversary of your mother’s passing. I drew a card for you this morning. The four of swords, time for some rest and recuperation.”
“Thanks, Miranda,” Hazel told her. Miranda had known Hazel’s mother, who’d visited her for tarot readings for years. Miranda had joined Hazel to stand vigil at her mother’s deathbed three years before.
“How can I support you today, honey? Has there been any news on Orla?”
“Nothing on Orla, and I am here for help, but not about my mom.”
“My pleasure, honey. Let’s go to the tarot room.”
Hazel followed Miranda into the store and through a heavy maroon curtain.
The small room was dimly lit, with a round table in the center butted by two chairs. A tarot deck lay on a silver scarf. On one side of the room, a long, narrow table contained a jumble of polished stones and porcelain figures of saints, goddesses, and even the horned figure of the Devil from the tarot deck.
Hazel sat down. Miranda lit several candles before dipping her fingers in a small basin of frankincense oil and brushing it along her temples and third eye.
“Tell me,” Miranda said after she took a seat.
“I was in Milly’s Bakery this morning, and I saw a woman on the docks.” Hazel paused, remembering the girl’s distinctive t-shirt. She’d looked at the Missing poster enough to recognize her face. “She’s one of the missing women.”
“One of the six?” Miranda asked. Since Abe’s article, everyone in town knew about the missing women of summer.
Hazel nodded.
“You believe one of them is alive?”
Hazel shook her head.
“I hope Orla is still alive, but I saw Susan Miner.”
“The girl from Petoskey?”
Hazel nodded.
“And I realized I saw her more than a week ago. It was late at night, after Calvin and I ate dinner at Leone’s - the first night Orla didn’t come home. I’m sure it was her, and now again today. She was there, and I sort of panicked, and when I looked again, she was gone.”
“You’ve seen her spirit,” Miranda murmured. She touched the tarot deck, fanned the cards out, flipped one over. The Queen of Wands, and then a second card, the Moon.
“There is a woman,” she said after gazing at the cards. “She has a connection to the dead.”
“A connection?”
“She sees spirits. Her mother was a gifted medium, though not publicly. I believe she now denies the abilities, but her daughter remains… open.”
Miranda stood and left the room. She returned a minute later with a Moon Wisdom business card. On the back, she’d written the name Hattie, and an address.
“Do you have a phone number?”
Miranda shook her head.
“It’s best if you approach her directly. If you call, she might get spooked.”
Abe
Abe walked to his car, gazing over the spacious grounds. The property looked more like an English boarding school than a haven for the mentally ill. Along the back of the property, hundreds of acres of dense state forest loomed as a picturesque backdrop to the magnificent hospital.
But Abe had heard stories. Anyone who lived in Traverse City for more than a few years was subject to frightening tales of life in the asylum. One reporter at Up North News had lived less than a mile from the asylum. Sometimes she awoke at night to the shrill asylum alarm, warning of an escaped patient.
Another of Abe’s friends described picking up a man hitchhiking near the hospital. As he drove the man across town, he told a story of shooting his grandfather in the back when he was twelve years old. Abe’s friend never picked up a hitchhiker again.
And then there were the strange stories told by those who loved to give a scare. Stories of weird inhuman experiments, haunted rooms, and sinister happenings in the woods around the hospital. Abe avoided such yarns. He didn’t believe them, and he preferred not to spend time or energy on fictional monsters when the real ones were hiding in plain sight.
Chapter 27
Abe
Abe looked up when the bell tinkled over the door at Grady’s Diner. A big man in a plaid shirt, his stomach pushing out the fabric, lumbered in. A dark beard, spotted with gray, covered the lower half of his face.
When he stopped next to Abe’s table, Abe looked up, surprised.
“Can I help you?” Abe asked, wondering if he’d taken over the guy’s usual seat in the diner, and he was about to pull the macho move of demanding Abe pack up his shit and move along.
Instead, the man smiled, his dark blue eyes crinkling at the corners, and slid into the booth.