Asylum Lake Read online

  ASYLUM LAKE

  By:

  R. A. Evans

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  R. A. Evans

  Asylum Lake

  Copyright © 2010 by R. A. Evans

  Authors Note

  The stigma associated with mental illness is real. It creates an enormous hurdle for many who truly need help. Regardless of what most people believe, statistics confirm that individuals with a mental illness are much more likely to be the victims of violence than to actually be violent offenders themselves. I encourage you to learn more about mental illness and join the fight against its stigma by visiting the National Alliance on Mental Illness website at www.nami.org.

  Asylum Lake has been a team effort. Without the vision of Wendy Mersman of Moon Designs, Inc. the eerie images associated with both the website and cover design would never have been possible. For better or worse, she saw into my dark mind and captured what haunted me. Doree Colon was also an integral part of team Asylum Lake. A sharp yet delicate red pen is always a writer’s best friend, and Doree wielded hers with both strength and compassion.

  To the fans, friends, and family members who believed in me long before I believed in myself – I thank you. It is for you and because of you that I continue to ask the dark and terrible questions that have spawned this story and others not yet written.

  April 10, 1972

  Bedlam Falls, Michigan

  Six days squirreled away inside the small room behind the clerk’s office had angered, divided, and eventually broken the juror’s spirits to the point of surrender. The exhausted procession of wrinkled suits and downcast eyes shuffled to the jury box as hushed whispers swept across the anxious gallery.

  Three sharp raps of the gavel brought the courtroom to near silence; the Honorable Orrin J. Huntley’s steely glower finished the job. He was a sour old man with pruned lips and deep lines that crisscrossed his face. With his thin neck jutting out from the top of his black robe and talon-like fingers grasping the gavel, he surveyed the courtroom like a vulture perched menacingly over dying prey. Leaning forward from his roost, he placed his elbows upon the bench and pierced the jury box with his unblinking stare.

  “Mr. Foreman, has the jury reached its verdict?”

  Sonny Diedrich, Jury Foreman and Bedlam’s only insurance salesman, slowly rose to his feet. “Yes, your Honor, we have.”

  Huntley shifted his attention from Diedrich to fix his eyes on the stoic boy seated at the defense table. His words scraped like sandpaper from his dry mouth."Will the defendant please rise?"

  Dressed in a crisp white shirt that buttoned tightly at the neck and shark-grey trousers, the youth rose alongside his attorney. Awaiting the verdict with the unfailing faith of a supportive father, the Reverend James Collins, stood directly behind his wisp of a son. Delicate features defined the lad’s fair-skinned face, while hair the color of autumn leaves spilled down over his forehead. But beneath the maze of curls, brown lifeless eyes stared, as cold as two pennies rusting in a late November rain; the boy’s eyes could chill blood.

  Shaken, Huntley tore his eyes from the defendant, recasting his focus toward the jury box. “Mr. Foreman, as of count one of the indictment, the murder of Joanna Reed, how does the jury find?”

  “Your honor,” he hesitated, “We find the defendant g-g-guilty.” The words passed through Diedrich’s trembling lips with cowardly hesitation.

  Both joyful tears and heart-wrenching sobs erupted from the gallery. Huntley lurched to his feet and banged the gavel on his bench. “Order, I will have order,” he cried, “or I will clear this court!”

  The commotion subsided, to a degree. Soft murmurs hung in the air. Huntley collapsed back into his chair as the hum of cameras and recording devices reverberated throughout the courtroom. An army of reporters from across the state had invaded the small town weeks before asking questions and digging for answers. But answers had been elusive, and each detail that had emerged throughout the trial had only posed more questions. The reporters, for now, had the answer that mattered most to them and were salivating at the prospect of sharing it.

  In a matter of moments, young Lionel Collins, the same boy who had shoveled driveways and mowed lawns, and with whom Sunday sermons and meals with most everyone had been shared, had been found guilty on all five murder charges; he had been convicted of brutal crimes committed not only against his neighbors and community, but against humanity itself.

  He was led by deputies from the courtroom; the chains that were clamped tightly about his wrists and ankles jingled with each unbalanced step. He peered over his shoulder into the gallery; a sly smile curved his thin lips.

  In the wake of people rushing from the courtroom, a nondescript man rose from a hard wooden seat in the back of the gallery. His presence during the trial had gone unnoticed, as it had been at the funerals months before. Not that anyone should notice. More than a decade had elapsed since he had last walked the streets of Bedlam Falls.

  The man was pale with a tuft of dark hair atop his head and rail-thin; his natty black suit hung from his bones eerily similar to the way clothes hang on a scarecrow. His sunken and red-rimmed eyes, appearing to have stared into the bottom of one too many a whiskey bottle, darted around the empty room as he made his way forward to the oak table where Lionel returned each day to sit with his attorney.

  Resting on the desk’s polished surface lay a bracelet. The man’s whiskey-soaked eyes widened as a look of recognition, then horror, crept over his face. With a palsied hand, he scraped it from the table.

  Much as a painful sliver slowly works its way from one’s flesh, this sinister token had somehow surfaced from the murky depths of Asylum Lake. Alone in his knowledge of how it had come to rest on the rocky lake bed, the man looked down at the words stamped on its battered surface and winced as he traced a trembling finger across the cold plastic. He stood there, trance-like. Suddenly, his gnarled fingers closed around the bracelet, quickly hiding it away inside his breast pocket.

  As the stranger walked from the empty courthouse into the damp air, a chilling wave wracked his entire body. He paused on the steps, steadying himself against the handrail. The spring breeze, which usually held the promise of brighter days to come, today carried an ominous scent.

  With more than a passing suspicion that Lionel's verdict, and the evidence introduced throughout the trial, had been an omen of a long-forgotten darkness looming on the horizon, the man in black shambled from the courthouse. Breathing slow and deep, he placed a protective hand over his heart and headed south into the afternoon chill, The Lord's Prayer falling from his lips.

  August 18, 2010

  Bedlam Falls, MI

  There was a Bedlam Falls before the trial of Lionel Collins and Bedlam Falls after the trial of Lionel Collins. Del’s Grocery had been replaced with a Kroger and thirteen miles outside of town a McDonald’s now greeted the tourists exiting off US-31. On the surface, little had changed in the quaint, northern Michigan town.

  However, buried deep in the marrow of Bedlam Falls, malignant wounds from the town's dark past were beginning to fester.

  Four years after Lionel’s conviction, FORD Motors Company had decided the sleepy town would be as good a place as any to build a stamping plant. As new jobs and unfamiliar faces flocked to Bedlam Falls, the close-knit community transformed. Gone were the days of unlocked doors and neighborly chats over hedges. Within just a few short years, the town’s backwoods charm and personality were replaced with the same malaise that people had once come to Bedlam Falls to escape.

  Brady nearly missed the exit. His mind had gone numb four hours into the six-hour drive from Chicago. As he pulled out of the McDonald’s, a brimming cup of too-hot coffee cradled between his thighs, anxious knots began
their tug-of-war inside his stomach.

  Six months ago, he had been the young ace at the Chicago Tribune. His investigation and coverage of the shocking murder of Janie Pearce, a twenty-eight year-old pregnant mother of three who had been beaten to death outside a downtown Chicago eatery, had been picked up by the Associated Press and made headlines across the country. The perpetrator was a homeless schizophrenic who claimed that voices had urged him to commit the crime; he had been a familiar figure within the revolving door of Cook County’s over-burdened mental health system.

  The case had resulted in swift and sudden changes in how the chronically mentally ill received treatment in the State of Illinois. Janie's Law, as the legislation would later be named, mandated monthly psychological testing be performed and evaluated by a team of state-certified medical specialists before and after a patient's release, as well as bi-weekly reviews of a patient's medical history and medication usage.

  The goal of the new enforcements was an attempt to safeguard the general public, as well as the patient, from the physical and psychological strains associated with their reintroduction to society.

  Although some measures met with opposition, the so-called draconian measures coined by human advocacy and civil-rights groups, most were lauded by neighborhood organizations and law enforcement agencies alike.

  Illinois crime statistics linking Cook County mental health discharges with violent crimes had risen steadily since the 1980s. But only after Janie Pearce’s untimely death, and Brady's thorough and meticulous exposes, was the facts illuminated.

  Brady’s critically acclaimed work, which had been a catalyst in the institution of Janie's Law, resulted in his name and the Pulitzer Prize being talked about in the same conversation. The award had never materialized, but Brady's reputation had still transcended itself. The buzz around the newsroom had him being groomed for the city desk, all this before age thirty. Although most of the Tribune's elder statesmen found his boyish good looks and casual style more than a bit off-putting, his new-found yet well-deserved celebrity had provided a much, needed boost to the paper's slumping circulation. His female co-workers, however, were all in agreement; Brady Tanner was very easy on the eyes.

  His reporting had also garnered attention from the publishing front and before long a book deal had been discussed with a signing bonus large enough to finally move out of their shabby one-bedroom apartment above the bakery on Lexington. New dreams could be realized moving to the suburbs; a home office for Brady and a home large enough for a budding family for Karen.

  As negotiations with a small publisher intensified, the couple collectively crossed their fingers and toured a gorgeous 2,100 square-foot Colonial, located in the quiet, northern Chicago suburb of Morton Grove. While walking down the hall toward the second level master bedroom, Karen had already mentally decorated the first room on the left; the perfectly-sized nursery room would be done-up in greens and yellows since they had already decided to keep the baby’s sex a surprise. Even though she desperately wanted to paint the room cotton-candy pink, Karen knew that boys ran in her family. She prayed the baby feet that would one day in the not too distant future be scuttling across the floors would belong to an “Allison” or an “Audrey” and not to a “Brady Junior.” Not that she would be disappointed if she had a son. She just wondered how a girl raises a boy.

  Brady raised the coffee to his lips and took a slow sip. “Damn!” At the sound of his voice, Brady’s passenger sat up. “I guess I won’t be using my taste buds for awhile, eh, Gruff?” He reached over and began to stroke the yellow lab that rode beside him. Gruff smiled the way only a dog owner could recognize and curled back into a ball.

  Gruff had been Karen's security system. Three break-ins and a handful of muggings in their Southside Armour Square neighborhood had spooked her. More than anything, she had wanted the sense of security that would come from having a house with a fenced yard and vigilant neighbors. But Brady's salary could barely cover rent, let alone the expenses of owning a home, and Karen's parents had already been paying her way through law school, a fact that relentlessly had been the topic of conversation whenever the in-laws visited. The thought of borrowing down-payment money for a house from the Greene’s sickened Brady.

  His temporary solution for abating Karen's fears, while also avoiding further indebtedness to her parents, had been to sneak thirty dollars from the cookie jar where Karen had kept the grocery money. He scampered off to the animal shelter and returned two hours later with a puppy under one arm, and a bag of dog food and adoption papers under the other. The new addition to the Tanner family would be dubbed McGruff for his supposed crime fighting abilities and never again would security be an issue.

  Less than a year later, Brady guided his Volkswagen through the winding roads that led to Bedlam Falls. Gruff warmed the passenger seat, his over-sized paws tucked under his chin. Yawning, Gruff raised his head and looked at Brady with the “pet me” look. Brady lovingly obliged and ran his fingers down Gruff’s neck, scratching and petting the soft fur. As he drove, Brady’s thoughts continued to drift.

  The book deal had been inked just a month after it had been first proposed. The process culminated with a final meeting in New York City that had gone well, too well, in fact. A celebratory drink with his new editor, coupled with cross-town traffic, had caused him to miss his 5:30 p.m. flight back to Chicago. Brady had planned to treat an unsuspecting Karen to a night at Abuelo's, a Mexican restaurant on the city's trendy Westside. Although Brady wasn't sure how Karen's second trimester tummy-bundle would react to spicy enchiladas, Brady thought Karen definitely deserved a four-star meal, pickles and pineapple cheesecake just weren't cutting it! Besides, what better place to tell Karen how much he had missed her than at a romantic candle-lit table surrounded by serenading mariachis? But, as misfortune would have it, Brady's surprise would have to wait 'til the weekend. His 6:45 p.m. alternate flight had been delayed as well; it wasn't until 10:30 p.m. that the plane finally touched down in the Windy City.

  “Brady! Brady!” a familiar voice called. He scanned the throng of travelers merging to his left and spotted Will, Karen’s brother. With a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, Brady burrowed through the congested terminal toward his brother-in-law, expecting to see an echo of excitement on the man’s face. Instead, Will’s eyes were red and puffy, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. Brady’s smile vanished.

  “Damn you, Brady. Where the hell have you been?” Will asked, grabbing Brady’s shoulder with one trembling hand and steering him away from the crowd. Before Brady could respond, Will continued, choking back tears. “There's been...an accident.”

  “What do you mean an accident?” asked Brady, his mind stuttering over the pain in Will’s voice. “What’s happened to Karen?”

  Will’s grip tightened on Brady’s shoulder. “She’s gone, Brady. Karen is dead.”

  The sound of a blaring horn roused Brady from his reverie. A sharp turn of the steering wheel brought his car out of the lane of oncoming traffic. He peered into the rear-view mirror, his heart still pounding. A pale face and eyes brimming with tears stared back at him. “Get a hold of yourself,” he demanded under his breath.

  Brady wiped the salty wetness from his hazel eyes. With his vision restored and heartbeat once again nearing normal, he caught sight of a road sign ― Bedlam Falls: A Great Place to Land.

  “Hokey,” he scoffed aloud. Brady's voice roused Gruff from his slumber. At the sight of his yawning companion, Brady pushed a button to lower the passenger window. Assuming his canine co-pilot position, Gruff poked his head toward the sky, lapping the fresh breeze.

  Brady turned his attention from his passenger to the buildings and landmarks that were coming into view. The sight of The Hayloft brought a hint of a smile to his lips. Standing just outside the city limits, the dilapidated tavern hadn’t been governed by the blue laws that had once banned the sale of alcohol. Brady’s smile widened at the memory of swigging his first beer
behind that dusty-red barn.

  The parking lot was empty, save for an odd-looking man on a bicycle. Unkempt and unstable, he rode fruitlessly in wobbly circles that cast long shadows across the barren blacktop. Scrawled across the tattered sandwich-board sign that hung loosely around his neck was a single word – REPENT. With a snow-white beard hanging in a tangled mess between his knees, the haggard rider looked like a strung-out Santa, Bedlam Falls had definitely changed.

  The house was cradled by rolling hills in a thick copse of trees overlooking the lake. To those who had recently settled in or visited the area, the small body of water was known as Half-Moon Lake for its crescent shape, but the locals knew it as Asylum Lake, an odd homage to the enormous psychiatric hospital and grounds that loomed on its northern shoreline. Abandoned and empty, Lake View Asylum stood as a silent reminder of the town’s dark history.

  One of only a handful of homes with lake-frontage, the Up North House as Brady’s family fondly referred to it, had been built by his great-grandfather in the 1940s. Its log construction gave the appearance of a rustic hunting lodge.

  Brady paused in the driveway and stared through the dusty windshield down the overgrown pathway to the house. Although the afternoon sun left much of it in shadows, it was evident the Up North House had seen better days. Trees blocked the lake from his view, but not the sound of the gulls in the distance; their cries echoed through the silence.

  He stepped from the Jetta and kicked the tangled grass and fallen branches that had collected through the changing seasons of neglect. The house, once meticulously kept, looked not merely vacant, but forgotten.