Chapter 19
Liv
Small windows, near the attic floor, sat on opposite ends of the long room. Liv had to lie on her belly to gaze at the property below.
She watched orderlies, nurses, and doctors, all dressed in white, ushering patients between the buildings. Sometimes the patients walked freely.
She saw a young boy and longed for the children of the orphanage she’d left behind.
If she called out, would they come?
She thought so, but it would not be to release her. No, they would hand her over to Stephen Kaiser, and he would silence her.
For now, he kept her, his little pet in the attic of his new world, the place where he had absolute power.
She rolled onto her back and gazed at the crow perched on the rafters. Somehow, he moved in and out of the building. She’d searched for the hole that morning after dawn but had yet to find out how.
“The door is open,” she murmured, trying to make sense of George’s words in her dream.
He’d set things into motion. Of that she was sure, but how? Had his death allowed him to see what she’d done all those years ago? Or had he always known, and his death acted as the catalyst to draw her home?
Liv heard a clank of metal near the door.
She jumped to her feet, expecting the door to swing in. Instead, she saw a pair of hands slipping through a hole in the door’s bottom. A metal grate slid back into place.
A bowl of stew and a small loaf of bread sat on a little metal tray. He’d also added a fresh pitcher of water.
Liv walked to the door but did not speak. She could see Stephen’s shadow beyond the grate.
“Why didn’t you just kill me last night, Stephen? Why have you brought me here?”
He didn’t speak, but Liv listened to his breath.
“You know what scares me, Liv?” Stephen told her after several minutes of silence. “I’m scared that if you die, I’ll lose it.”
“Your mind?” she asked, sitting and pulling the tray across the floor with a dull scrape. She leaned close to the stew and smelled. No bitter aroma hovered beneath the spicy scent of onions and pepper.
He laughed.
“Oh, no, not my mind; not that at all. My sense of knowing things. Before I accepted the position at the Northern Michigan Asylum, I knew this place was special. I came here on a tour during my undergraduate work. I felt… the power hidden in this place. You feel it too, don’t you, Liv? It breathes as we breathe. It sleeps and hungers. It reaches out into the world and draws us in. Do you know how many patients arrive at this hospital who can do special things? They can speak to the dead or discern your darkest secrets. There are asylums all over the world, but this place is unique. Extraordinary people are drawn here. There’s a magnetism, Liv.”
Liv nibbled the plain bread and wondered if she could prise the grate open. Even if she could, she’d never fit through the small hole.
“I’m working with a woman right now who sees the dead. She speaks to them,” he continued, his voice rising excitedly.
“And what do the dead tell her, Stephen? Do they seek vengeance for your crimes?”
He was silent for a long moment.
“Pretend you’re innocent, Liv. Deny your culpability, but that summer we were guided, driven. I was not alone in that room.”
The bread stuck in the back of Liv’s throat, and she struggled to swallow it. She remembered retching into the woods that Halloween night, the smell of her bile mixed with the dahlias and the blood, always the blood.
Liv hunched forward, bracing her elbows on her crossed legs. Tears slid from the sides of her eyes and into her hair.
“You’re sick, Stephen. All those years ago it wasn’t your fault, but now…”
His voice came again, closer, as if he’d pressed his mouth to the grate.
“You don’t have to pretend with me, Liv. I’m the only person you could ever be real with. Not even George, because he needed you to be pure and good. You longed for that dark magic. It is inside of you. Liv, you’re the only woman, the only person, I could ever have joined with. Think for a moment of the influence we’d have in the world if we gave ourselves over to this power? Let it act through us.”
Liv sat up, understanding now why he’d kept her. Their heinous crime had not dashed his delusions from that summer, it had strengthened them.
Chapter 20
Jesse
Jesse woke with a start, blinking into the dark parlor. He rolled to his side and fumbled for his matches and the candle he’d placed on the floor earlier that evening.
A long, terrified scream split the house, and Jesse froze, the match between his thumb and forefinger.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs.
Jesse didn’t light the match, but jumped up, ready to face whatever hurtled from the darkness.
In the shaft of moonlight that illuminated the front hall, he saw a wisp of a woman as she raced down the stairs. Her eyes were large and terrified, and her dark curls were glossy in the opaque moon glow. Her slender neck disappeared into a pale purple dress, but her body seemed to grow more ethereal the lower his gaze moved.
And then she was gone.
The front door didn’t open, and her footsteps didn’t continue onto the porch.
Jesse swallowed, clutching the match and candle, and tiptoed to the hall.
It was empty.
The woman had vanished.
Jesse struck the match and lit the candle.
He turned to the darkened stairway, knowing the girl had not run back up them. She had not run at all.
He ascended the steps numbly.
When he glanced in a mirror in the second-floor hallway, Jesse jumped at his own reflection. His face looked sunken in the glass, his eyes black and hollow.
Beyond him in the reflection, he saw the slender fingers of a woman’s hand clasping the frame to the bedroom door.
Frozen, he watched the fingers disappear into the dark doorway.
The door slammed behind him, and Jesse spun to face it.
His mind ran with possibilities, but he knew no explanation existed in the world of science.
He recalled the harsh words of Sister Anne, one of the crueler nuns at an orphanage he lived in for several months: ‘As for the person who turns to mediums and to spiritists, to play the harlot after them, I will also set My face against that person and will cut him off from among his people,’ she had hissed, quoting scripture from the bible. ‘They’re in purgatory, Jesse, those spirits you court at night. Keep conversing and God will turn away from you. He will forsake you!’
He’d woken to find her at his bedside, her hands curled around his thin wrists. He’d been having a nightmare and must have been talking in his sleep.
The nuns’ opinions of ghosts and spirits had been clear. They were lost souls, punished by God to purgatory for their sins.
Jesse had found the words empty, but he’d not slept that night, and for many nights after, he woke afraid he’d open his eyes and find the nun’s leering face above him.
Gritting his teeth, he walked to the bedroom and shoved the door open, thrusting the candle before him.
The room was empty, but he caught sight of the closet door clicking shut.
He had to look in the closet. His only other choice was to walk out the front door and never look back.