The Space between Atoms 15

 “Honest Oahusha was the wife of the Moravian minister Felix L. Oahusha.  Befriended by Henry Chapman Mercer, both the church and the couple benefitted from his largesse.  When Honest began to show signs of what was then called schizophrenia, or lunacy, Mercer donated the structure known as Honest Oahusha Asylum to the distraught clergyman’s church.  State aid soon supplemented the modest surplus of the Moravians, and in 1930 the asylum came fully under the care of the state.”  Mich read aloud quite well.  The library, in which a few books had been left, was on the third level, just above the entrance.  Up here the light from the clerestory windows was comparatively strong, out in the corridor.  Good enough for reading, anyway.

Mich put the book down.  “Ronald Reagan stopped government support of mental institutions in the early 1980s, before I was born.  Dick Thornburgh followed suit for Pennsylvania.  Honest Oahusha was closed in 1985.  I’m guessin’ most of the vandalism took place just after that.  When I was in school kids talked about it, but not very often.  Mostly around Halloween.”

Terah was inclined to let Mich talk.  He might reveal more of himself that way.  He fell silent however.

“So you grew up around here?”

“No personal questions, Cal.  My house.”

“I get it.  Your rules.  So about these ghosts…”

“I noticed ‘em right away.  My friends used to call me a ‘sensitive.’  I dint have trouble believin’ what I was seein’.  You start doubtin’ yourself ya won’t survive.”

“You said getting to know the place better would help me understand.”  The sun fell behind a shadow and the third floor landing suddenly grew gloomy.  The silence was unnerving.

“Ya think these books tell everythin’ that went on here?  There’s more to the story.  I found some old notebooks.  They’re cryptic enough, but some things I figured out.  That couple ya saw?  Robert Wednesday was the chaplain in the seventies.  Mary Kriss was a young nurse.  She was infatuated with Wednesday—he had power over people.  Their affair was pretty widely known, I’m guessin’.  One of the inmates walked in on ‘em.  He was fond of Kriss, an’ he thought Wednesday was hurtin’ her.

“Inmate was what we’d call a savant.  Used to be an electrician before he was admitted.  Rigged the bed—Wednesday lived by his schedule—electrocuted them both.”

“Sounds like an urban legend to me,” Terah said.

“I read the newspaper article.  In the Pocono Record.  I’m not gullible.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that.  It’s just that the story sounds incredible.”

“Yet you saw the fuckin’ ghosts.”

Terah kept silent.

“Had to do a paper on local history in high school.  I’d heard talk about this place and wrote a report on it.”

In the half-light a loud clang startled them.  Mich put a finger to his lips, quick to revert to his defensive posture when he heard anything.  Signaling Terah to stay still, the boy slipped soundlessly down the stairs.  The clanging grew louder.  Deafening.  Terah clapped his hands to his ears, ducking instinctively.  When he saw flashes of light on his eyelids, he opened to see Mich playing the flashlight across his face.  “That was them.”

“The ghosts?”

“At least one of ‘em.  You barricade the front door?”

“When I thought you’d left.”

“You’d barricade me outta my own house?”

“Look, Mich, I thought you’d gone home.”

He kept the light on Terah’s face.  “Look, man.  This is my home.  How many times I gotta tell you that?  I don’t have another ‘home’ to go to.”

“It’s just—“  Terah then thought better of bring up his age.

“Just what?”

“Could you lower that light?  You’ve got to understand, Mich.  When you reach a certain age, particularly as an instructor, you feel you need to take care of your students.  At least I felt that way.  They’re so young.  And vulnerable.

“I once caught a girl—I suppose I should say women—plagiarizing.  I’m pretty sure it was innocent.  She simply didn’t know any better.  This was at a non-competitive college that served the local area.  I was just an adjunct, but the Dean made me fail her and tell her why.  The school had a zero tolerance policy.  The Dean sat in my office while I told her.  The girl was crying, obviously shocked and hurt.

“You’ve heard stories about lecherous professors, I’m sure.  There are plenty of them.  There are some of us, however, who really cared for our students.  Every tear sliding down that girl’s cheek ate into my soul like acid.  I wanted so bad to offer her a way out of the situation, but the Dean was adamant.  Some of the regular faculty there told me I was too soft.  I didn’t grow up in a privileged environment.  My parents weren’t educated.  I can see how an innocent mistake like that could happen.

“I want to believe the best about people.  I only want to help.”

“She played you like a skin flute.”  Mich snapped off the light.  “You can be as sentimental as you like on your own time, but here we live by the rules.  No barricades on the door.  I like havin’ you here, Cal, but there’s some risks I won’t take.  We use the door alarm, not a full barricade.”

Terah’s heartbeat was slowing down.  He nodded.  “What was that clanging?”

“I think it’s their way of remindin’ us of whose house it really is.”

“How many ghosts do you think there are?”

“Here?  No idea.  Record books have a lotta deaths.  Most of ‘em not that old.  They say ghosts are all about unfinished business.  I wonder if the spirits of the inmates weren’t the most sane bein’s in this damn place.”

“How do you mean?”

“Mental illness ain’t a spiritual condition.  Some of the bastards that worked here were ‘sane’ but sick dudes indeed.”

“You’ve told me about Wednesday, but who else?”

Mich shook his head slowly.  “I’ve only started to tell you about Wednesday.”