Chapter 11

It rose from the middle of the forest like a solitary prison only a mile or so out of town. Three stories in a rectangular form, made of brick with no embellishments other than an iron-rail fence bordering its yard. Cut from the woods, the clearing was remarkable, and the trees butted up not far from the fence line as though they wanted to grow over and into the yard but dared not. Moss and mold had turned some of the brickwork dark green with age. Windows lined all three stories. Ten across and three down. They were glass-plated with four panes each, the grid a simple cross of dark lines. Behind them, inside, were bars. Horizontal lines that silently said if one were to enter, one would not leave by way of a window. The roof was shingled and dark. Everything about the building was dark.

Thea’s feet grew heavy, and she stopped her subtle trail of Simeon Coyle. She rested her left palm against the trunk of an oak tree that rose high above her. Old leaves blanketed the forest floor, along with pine needles. There was some underbrush, but mostly the carcasses of rotting logs long fallen from their woodsy sentinel. A pungent smell filled Thea’s senses, like the mixture of damp, fresh air and the mold of fallen autumn leaves. But she ignored the eerie beauty of the woods and the imposing simplicity of the building in front of her.

It was Simeon she watched.

He reached the gates, which rose at least a foot above his head. They opened to his touch, the sound of iron hinges groaning their protest. His steps were slow but not intimidated. He seemed neither anticipatory to enter nor frightened to leave. Rather, Thea saw the downward slope of his shoulders and it reminded her of resignation.

Simeon closed the gates behind him, latching them shut. There was no key turned into the gate lock, Thea noted. She could follow, if she wished.

So she did.

Tiptoeing forward, she strained to make out words painted on a green sign that hung over the double doors of the building’s front entrance. She noticed that Simeon turned right and away from them, his steps leading him across the lawn toward an outbuilding in the distance. When she arrived at the gates, Thea reached out. The instant her gloveless hand curled around the iron bar, something inside of her recoiled. She dropped her hand.

An invisible sort of weight settled on her chest and made it hard to breathe. Thea stared through the bars, narrowing her eyes to make out the sign’s thin script, written in dark brown lettering almost impossible to read against the green background.

Valley Heights Asylum.

She squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them, only to read the words again. An asylum? In the woods outside of Pleasant Valley? But Mrs. Brummell had said nothing of it, and wouldn’t that have been of far more import than a street dividing the town into denominational sections?

Thea took a step back. She would not enter. No. She’d heard of sanatoriums. Places where—

“It’s a place for the mentally insane.”

Thea’s mouth dropped open in a silent scream. She spun on her heels at the voice behind her.

“Rose!” She snapped her mouth shut as she took in the woman who, it seemed, had followed her as she had Simeon. Only Rose wasn’t secretive in her approach. Her eyes were gentle, questioning, with a slight raise of her dark eyebrows. A lucid but sad glow in her sapphire eyes.

“Were you following my brother?” she asked. There wasn’t accusation in her voice, and, if she didn’t appear so pale and worn from grief, Thea would almost have wondered if a small laugh had tilted her lips.

“No!” Thea denied. Then she thought better of it. “Well, I—perhaps.”

Rose looked beyond her, at the asylum, her eyes taking in the breadth of it. “When family brings a relative here,” she murmured, “they don’t intend on returning for visits or pleasantries.”

She wanted to ask why Simeon was here, and even more so, why Rose. Instead, Thea turned and followed Rose’s line of sight. The building was a prison then. Of the worst sort perhaps. She glanced back at Rose.

Rose sniffed and adjusted her grip on the handbag she clutched. Her hands were gloved in black, and the black dress she wore was simple but made her features stand out so beautifully, so pale and etched, that Thea could hardly look away.

“Simeon is the groundskeeper,” Rose explained. “Among other things.” Then a tiny laugh did escape her, but not one that entertained any sort of humor. “It’s the only work he could find. Pleasant Valley is . . .”

“Yes,” Thea finished for Rose. There was no need for the woman to explain. She’d experienced enough of Pleasant Valley already to understand why the woman let her sentence hang.

Rose sucked in a deep breath. The determined sort that matched the squaring of her shoulders and the upward tilt of her chin. “This is where Dr. Ackerman works.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar.

Rose met Thea’s questioning eyes.

“You met him at—my sister’s funeral.”

Oh! Yes. Thea remembered now.

“Would you like to come in with me? The hospital doesn’t approve of random visitors, but they’ll let you in if you know me.” Rose invited her almost as if one would offer entrance into one’s home.

Thea didn’t miss a tiny flicker in Rose’s eyes. Hesitation perhaps, or shyness. She wasn’t sure. She certainly wasn’t going to ask why Rose had earned the right to enter.

While she had no innate desire to pass through those iron gates and walk the stone path to the front door of this place, another thought festered in the back of Thea’s mind. A memory of her dinner at the Amos house when Mrs. Amos had inquired of Thea’s mother and Mr. Amos had abruptly changed the subject just as his wife was about to offer a suggestion.

Perhaps this was it. Mrs. Amos’s suggestion. Her mother, not known by a longtime citizen of Pleasant Valley, was perhaps . . .

“Please.” Rose’s voice had lessened to just above a whisper. “Do come in.”

Thea forced herself to remember why she’d come to Pleasant Valley in the first place. To bring closure to the remembrance of a woman she wanted to forget. A mother who had shirked not only her responsibility but, more importantly, turned a stiff back to love.

She swept a searching look over the rectangular windows on the third floor. Like a row of tombs that, when one was granted entrance, all memory of them in the live world faded. A place where minds were stirred by uncontrolled thoughts, where actions were spurred by irrational behaviors that could be described in no other way than—insane.

No. No, she didn’t want to enter. She didn’t want to consider or even suggest that her mother might have once crossed the threshold of this place. If she did, it changed all of Thea’s already turbulent emotions about the woman. It wasn’t clean, nor was it a firmly closed matter like it would be if Thea found her mother’s name engraved on a tombstone.

Sometimes death was more welcoming an ending to a story. It was final, and the lives left behind could grieve, if needed, but then move on.

But a home for the mentally insane?

Thea saw the faces of the photographs in Simeon’s albums. The suspension between life and death. Eyes neither alive nor dead. Minds neither aware nor empty.

It was a horrible, terrifying trail to follow, and Thea would need more answers before she was willing to walk it.

She left Rose there, alone, at the gates of Valley Heights Asylum, shrouded in its canopy of towering trees. She hadn’t even said farewell, nor had she turned at the sound of Rose’s concerned cry.

Instead, Thea had run.

When Mrs. Amos opened the door, a surprised look on her round, wrinkled face, Thea wasted no time with pleasantries.

“Last evening,” she began, breathing heavily. Catching her breath after her harried pace back to town would have been a clever idea if she’d stopped to think first. “You were going to mention something—an idea—about my mother. Mr. Amos stopped you. Why?”

Mrs. Amos opened the door further. “Oh dear. Do come in.”

Thea nodded. The warmth of the home, coupled with the smell of freshly baked bread, covered her with an unexpected sense of calm as she entered. Her spirit grappled for it. Like a lifeline.

Mrs. Amos motioned Thea into a small parlor. Two stuffed chairs, arms covered with doilies and the seat cushions worn, bordered a fireplace. There were coals in it.

“Please sit,” Mrs. Amos instructed.

Without argument, Thea relaxed into one. Mrs. Amos took the opposite seat, sank onto it, and adjusted the folds of her dark blue skirt. Her blouse was full over her broad bosom, and her waist was almost indiscernible as it met her hips. The roundness of Mrs. Amos reminded Thea of the perfect grandmother. Soft, cozy, and safe.

“Now . . .” Mrs. Amos smiled gently. “Mr. Amos was expecting you at work, wasn’t he?”

Oh yes. Thea bit her lip. She’d been foolhardy.

“Posh.” The old woman waved her hand. “He’ll live to see another day regardless. It seems you have far more depths to explore than a portrait.”

Thea winced. The woman read her well.

“To answer your question”—Mrs. Amos straightened the doily that had been brushed askew on the arm of her chair—“as we chatted last evening, I was reminded of a hospital we have just outside of town.”

“The asylum?” Thea interrupted.

“You know of it, then?” Mrs. Amos appeared surprised.

“I just recently found out.”

“Yes. Well, it was uncalled for. I must apologize. Sometimes this old mind of mine goes to places where proper manners don’t follow. My father used to call me a curious cat when I was a little girl. Regardless, Mr. Amos stopped me before I finished. Forgive me for the implication your mother may have been, or might be, a patient there. I meant absolutely no insult!”

Thea was anything but offended. In fact, to a degree she related even more to Mrs. Amos. She told Mrs. Amos so and watched relief fill the old woman’s faded eyes.

“I have vague memories,” Thea admitted, and the kindly look on Mrs. Amos’s face was all the coercion Thea needed. “Most of them leave me bereft and not endeared to my mother at all.”

Mrs. Amos nodded, her lips rolling together in an empathetic frown.

“I’ve no reason—no reason at all—to believe your mere suggestion has any merit. Yet, now that I am here in Pleasant Valley, there are so many . . .”

“Oddities?” Mrs. Amos supplied.

“Yes!” Thea gave her the sort of exasperated sigh she more than likely would have squelched in front of anyone else. “Mrs. Brummel has told me stories and—”

“Mrs. Brummel has a wagging tongue, and it bodes no good for anyone. Especially for Christian charity.” Mrs. Amos tapped her finger on the chair. Her blue eyes sharpened. “I suppose she went on about how the town is split, Catholic and Protestant?”

“Yes.”

“And how it all started when Mathilda Kramer married Fergus Coyle?”

“Precisely.” Thea sagged into the chair, a bit relieved that Mrs. Amos didn’t appear as intense or disturbed by the stories as Mrs. Brummel had made them out to be.

Mrs. Amos gave her fingers a little wave. The lace at her sleeve was haphazardly tucked into the bottom of her cuff, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Mr. Amos and I knew Mathilda Coyle. The stories have haunted that poor family for years, and all because she wished to wed the one she loved. My goodness! I would have done quite the same as she did.”

“So, Mrs. Brummel’s story is true?”

“Which one?” Mrs. Amos shrugged. “All of them have merit to one degree or another. Mathilda’s father did disown her because she converted to the Catholic Church.”

“And that’s a mortal sin?” Thea didn’t know, and she truly wondered.

Mrs. Amos’s lips tightened. She toyed with the lace at her cuff and pulled it out from where it’d been tucked. “All I’ll say is, the Christian church has been divided on many grounds and for many reasons and for many years. The heart of the matter, I believe, isn’t to do with the name on the door but the God within.”

Thea blinked. It made some sense. She wished to ask more but didn’t want to sidetrack away from the main topic of conversation. “And Misty Wayfair?”

“Misty Wayfair.” Mrs. Amos shook her head sadly, her white cap well attached in place over her white hair. “She is a story. That is all. A rumor.”

“You don’t believe in ghosts? In curses?” Thea surmised.

Mrs. Amos smiled wanly. “Well, if I let my imagination go wild, I’m quite adept at being taken in by it all. The Coyles have had a sad and tragic series of passings. But because Misty caused them? Oh, so doubtful. For what could a wandering spirit really do, if it truly existed? They don’t hold the power of God over life and death, do they?”

Thea wasn’t sure if she was supposed to answer that. And if she was, she didn’t know the answer.

Mrs. Amos continued, her wobbly and aged voice musing aloud. “I thought when Mr. Kramer’s nephew, Mr. Fortune, inherited the logging company, things might be set to rights. But I’m afraid Mr. Fortune has turned a blind eye toward his cousins the Coyles. Regardless, it is what is.”

Thea leaned forward. “What type of passings?”

“Hmm?” Mrs. Amos tilted her head as if she didn’t understand.

“You mentioned the Coyles had a series of unfortunate deaths . . .”

“Oh yes. They did. They have. When Simeon and Rose were in adolescence, they lost their father. A most horrific accident. He fell from the loft onto his pitchfork, no less. It was then the rumor began that someone had seen the ghost of Misty Wayfair the night before. She’d been singing and dancing through the woods.”

A chill riddled through Thea. The memory of the vision the night before was ripe in her mind.

“Then their mother passed not long after. She passed away . . .” Mrs. Amos hesitated, as if warring with herself. “She died due to melancholia. She was never the same after her husband’s death.”

“Melancholia,” Thea repeated.

Mrs. Amos gave her a knowing glance. She lifted her index finger. “This is where Mr. Amos would tell me to bite my tongue. But I see in your eyes you think as I do.”

“How does one die of sadness?”

“Yes!” Mrs. Amos leaned back, a bit satisfied. “How does one? Wasting away, I understand. Becoming reclusive, failing to get proper nourishment, yes. But then, if one does die, isn’t that because one contracts an illness because of a poor state of mind? So then wouldn’t she have died of pneumonia? Or perhaps the fever? But to call it melancholia . . .”

As Mrs. Amos let her sentence drift away, her eyes met Thea’s.

Thea nodded. “And that is why people believe in Misty Wayfair’s curse.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Amos nodded. “Mr. Coyle falls on a pitchfork. Mrs. Coyle dies of sadness? And then Mathilda herself? She passed away in her sleep. Poor Mary, of most recent times, just like her mother? It is all very unexplained. Especially in the wake of the fact that Misty Wayfair died such a violent death. Strangulation, so the story goes.”

Mrs. Amos didn’t appear mortified. For an elderly woman, she seemed a bit too intrigued. Had Thea unwittingly opened the door to Mrs. Amos’s age-long curiosity?

“The story goes that on the night of Mathilda and Fergus Coyle’s wedding, Misty Wayfair was strangled and thrown into a well. The rumors state she was—involved with Fergus.” Mrs. Amos touched her lips with her fingertips as though by doing so it would lessen the shock of her story.

Thea waited. She’d already heard something similar from Mrs. Brummel, but perhaps Mrs. Amos would add more detail.

Mrs. Amos busied herself by picking at a wayward thread on her sleeve. “Mathilda would never speak of it. Only to defend Fergus’s honor and that he was never involved with the woman.”

“Who was Misty Wayfair?” Thea breathed.

Mrs. Amos’s eyes flew up to meet hers. “She was—a woman. Who kept guests from the camp.”

Thea blushed.

Mrs. Amos nodded. “The entirety of the story is sad. On all accounts. But, not more than twenty years ago, Mr. Kramer—who was very old by then and on his way out of this world shortly after—built the asylum. Valley Heights, they called it. With room for a handful of patients.”

Thea collected her thoughts. The story of Misty Wayfair, the origins of the asylum, it all had nothing to do with her mother. And yet the story of the Coyles and the logging company so permeated every facet of Pleasant Valley, it seemed hard to disassociate them.

“And you think maybe my mother was one of the patients there?”

Mrs. Amos’s eyes grew tender. She leaned forward, reaching for Thea’s hand. Thea gave it to her and welcomed the warmth of the old woman’s grasp.

“Many strange things happen here. Mrs. Brummel will blame it on superstitious lore. I contend, if someone would merely speak the truth, it would all make sense. But as for your mother, I can only surmise. If you’ve been told she was from Pleasant Valley, I would have known of her. So, to not know of her means only that she must have been there. At the hospital. So much of life is a mystery, and so often it is left unsolved.”

Thea swallowed back a sudden rush of tears. Ones that demanded she be honest and ones that surprised her with their poignancy.

“I wished my mother to be dead,” Thea admitted.

Mrs. Amos’s hand tightened in understanding.

Thea swiped at a tear. “Now, hearing the story of the Coyles, Kramer Logging, of Misty Wayfair and whatever it was she suffered . . . now I wish my mother were alive. That she wasn’t touched by this cursed place.”

“Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Amos breathed. “This place isn’t cursed. No more than any other. It is a wilderness of people wanting to understand where they belong. To build a life, to live it, and to one day pass on to glory should they be firm in their faith and knowledge of their Creator’s saving grace.”

Her words left Thea empty.

“I have none of that.” Thea swallowed again as the lump in her throat grew tighter. “No family. No life. No . . . eternity. I don’t even know who I am.”

Mrs. Amos reached forward with her other hand and took both of Thea’s in hers. Her firm grasp and steady gaze captured Thea in a way no one ever had.

“You are created to be an image of your Creator, my dear. That is a great honor. To be designed as Thea Reed, and signed by the mark of the Artist himself. You are a work of genius. But until you know that, your name, your roots, your past, and your future will be what you chase after. Like a leaf that blows in the wind. I would bid you all the best in catching it, only, if you do, it won’t satisfy. You will still wonder who Thea Reed is, long after your primary questions have been answered.”