Shadows of Ashland Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  SHADOWS OF ASHLAND

  ROBIN G. AUSTIN

  Kindle Edition

  © 2016 Robin G. Austin. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process or by photographic recordings nor stored in a retrieval system transmitted or otherwise copied for public or private use including words and illustrations, other than brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews, without written consent of the author. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and events are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Reference to brands, media and trademarks are used fictitiously and under the fair use doctrine.

  Chapter One

  §

  “Jan Abbott, here to see Eunice Cohoon.” I shout this at the iron gates and right at that moment, all the lies in my world begin to unravel.

  The wind whips my jacket as I step from the car, my scarf slips from the collar and flees back towards the gates, giving me one last chance to do the same. I catch it with the toe of my shoe and make my way to the entrance, sidestepping the fractured concrete as if playing a game of hopscotch.

  Her name is Eunice… and Matilda. “She’ll let you know which, just don’t go deciding for her,” the head nurse had said at my initial visit with a chuckle that was more cold than kind.

  I smiled back, not at her callus humor but at how her gray-threaded bun set lopsided on top of her head. How it reminded me of a circus monkey wearing a tiny hat.

  After I sign in, I make my way to the second floor– one solemn step at a time. I’ve been given almost unlimited access to the facility, and the woman. That doesn’t seem to concern anyone as much as it does me.

  I don’t remember the high ceilings, the buckled and patched walls, or the cheap tin light fixtures, which are faded to milky gray. I should, but thirty years is a long time.

  I’m no longer the young and eager reporter who came here to cover the story on Ashland’s director and psychiatrist. The man charged with taking indecent liberties with female patients. For me, those paper and ink days are long gone; for Ashland, so is the psychiatrist– Ira Kaufman.

  When I left Ashland and the little New England town of Ruston in the summer of 1985, I vowed never to return. Most would guess the obvious reason why: my utterly failed attempt at reporting the story. While that reason would be cause enough for nearly anyone, it wasn’t mine. I’m watching for the real reason right now: the shadows of Ashland.

  At the west corridor, I turn left. Ammonia stings my nose, but it doesn’t quite do the job intended. Neither the putrid odors nor the dull green walls are stored in my long-term memory, though I’m sure they’ve been here all along, since the very first patients.

  “What’s that smell?” I’d once asked a building inspector when covering a demolition story.

  “That there’s a little sulfur, methane, benzene, and hydrocarbons.” He’d leaned close to watch me write on my notepad. “Hydrocarbons,” he’d said, when I paused. “Or you can skip all that stuff and just put dead rats.”

  Remembering those rats now, I take shallow breaths down the long corridor to Room 216; it’s nothing but walls and closed doors.

  The building is old, more than seventy five years old. The hallways are too narrow to meet current safety codes. Ashland was granted an exemption by the town council. What else could they do? There was no money for renovations, nowhere else to put the patients.

  The corridor is quiet except for an occasional crash or slam and a scream or two– not blood-curdling ones, just ones of frustration, anger, despair. Or maybe that’s just me, why I’d scream if I lived here.

  My sensible heels click-clack on the linoleum covered concrete, an irritating sound that’s irritating me.

  I’m four closed doors from Room 216 when a patient bolts from one of the other rooms and deliberately bumps into me. He grumbles something and spits on himself. He’s shorter than me by five or six inches, probably not even five feet tall, but he’s wide and stocky and at this moment, fierce. I freeze, neither flight nor fight is activated.

  He has issues with his face and scalp. Fingers of both hands rub and slap the skin raw, hair has been uprooted. His elasticized pants look clean but stained, his tee-shirt looks as ill-treated as his skin and hair. The smell of vomit is overwhelming.

  He’s inches from me, turned sideways now, hunched and staring at the floor, squeezing his fists tight at his collarbones. His knuckles are rough and crusty and colored with blue ink. The only sound is our breathing, first erratic then in sync. I don’t know what he wants and doubts he does either, but I’m sure he could cause me serious damage.

  I step away with no intent of stopping, click-clack, click-clack. He doesn’t follow but his moans do. I suspect he’s rubbing and slapping. I’m rushing. When I glance back, he’s focused on the long corridor in the direction I came. For now, he’s forgotten me.

  I’m here to write Eunice Cohoon’s story, if she’ll tell it. If she can. I’ve already met Eunice, but was told she won’t remember me our first few visits. I’m told this by the facility’s current director who thinks my article will be good for Ashland.

  Dr. Edward Rodham said he wants people to get to know the residents in a personal way so they can understand them better. Perhaps even care about them– while not invading their privacy.

  I’d asked exactly how that would work. His smile was his only answer. Still, I think it’s a noble objective, noble but unsound.

  Room 212, 214, 216. I knock softly, wait, knock louder, wait. A desperate moan causes me to jump; the moaning man is heading my way. I open the door and close it tight behind me.

  She’s sitting in a chair facing the wall, all but wearing a dunce cap. Eunice’s room is the same faded green as the corridor, has the same once brown or perhaps gray linoleum flooring. A single florescent light in a ceiling fixture flickers. Her furnishings consist of one bed (twin), one dresser (four drawers), one nightstand (no lamp), two chairs (plastic). No windows. Personal items are a little more than none. I shiver from an imagined chill.

  Stepping into her room reminds me of a story I once did on unclaimed bodies at the Ruston Morgue. It was requested by the police chief who needed leads on the death of one of the town’s senior citizens. A woman who died in her sleep, whose body no one came to claim.

  “We keep them a month or more,” the attendant had said. A single thick, black bag laid on a shelf that was seven feet long. Three shelves above it, going halfway to the ceiling, were empty.
The opposite wall had a matching configuration. The room’s temperature was a brisk thirty six degrees. The attendant waited while I wrote this last, apparently important, detail.

  I asked him why there were so many shelves. How many unclaimed bodies could a town of just eight thousand people possibly have? Strange as it is, along with my recall of the exact temperature of that room, his answer is still stuck in my head: growth projection.

  “Eunice?” My back is pressed to the door. She doesn’t move. “Hello, Eunice. I’m Jan Abbott. We met a few days ago. In Dr. Rodham’s office? I’m a writer for Matrix Media. I’m here today to talk to you. If you don’t mind that is– about….”

  She still hasn’t moved, hasn’t looked away from the wall. I take the second chair and place it next to her so I can make that understanding and caring connection. Then I try again with a softer tone.

  “Hello, Eunice. It’s nice to meet you.”

  She turns her face towards me and my breath catches, my body actually recoils. The same way it recoiled when the Ruston Morgue attendant unzipped that thick, black bag for a peek inside– “Just in case you recognize her,” he’d said, with a grin and a wink.

  Days before, the head nurse, Nurse Fowler, had paraded Eunice in and out of Dr. Rodham’s office for an initial introduction. His office is shielded by soft lighting and the illusion of sanctum. Right now that mood is more distant than a Tibetan monastery.

  Eunice doesn’t seem to notice my shock, though I don’t know how I could tell if she did. She stares with huge, round lunatic eyes and a one-sided smile. Horror actors train for years to mimic something even close to the look.

  She doesn’t blink, according to Rodham. “She has a medical condition known as myokymia– an involuntary twitching of the eyelids. Normally a temporary disorder. With Eunice, I suspect it’s a compensatory action. One likely saving her eyesight.” Rodham said all this as if giving a lecture before an ambitious audience of young pre-med students.

  I think how painful it must be not to blink as well as annoying to twitch. To Rodham, I suggested the milky white glaze over her eyes, which he referred to as another compensatory action, is probably cataracts. He smiled like I was one of those gong-ho but naïve students.

  The left side of Eunice’s face permanently droops. The space created by missing back teeth suck skin inward, giving her a crater size dimple close to her ear. The right cheek is pulled up tight, marionette style. Sometimes it twitches as if the strings are being pulled by a sadistic puppet master. Nerve damage ensures her facial muscles will never frame a different expression, will never betray a single real emotion. Looking at Eunice, I sense I’m getting another peek inside.

  “Hi,” I say, as I would if talking to a child. “How are you doing today? I’m Jan.” I touch my chest in the same way researchers teach apes sign language. Me Jan, you Eunice.

  “Dr. Rodham suggested we get to know each other. He thought you would be willing to answer some questions.” She’s back to staring at the wall. I’m less interesting than a wall.

  Dr. Rodham described Eunice as shy, timid, very docile. His professional advice in working with the woman is to give her time to get comfortable with me. I doubt there’s that much time available to either one of us.

  In my notebook, I jot my first impression of the woman, diary style. Dear Diary: I met Eunice Cohoon today. She’s tall and rail thin with wild, stringy yellow hair cut short to frame a face that convinces me this article will never get written.

  After ten minutes of silence, I want to zip closed the black bag that encases this poor woman’s soul and run out screaming.

  “Maybe next time,” I say, closing my notebook. “Would it be okay if I came back tomorrow, Eunice?”

  I’m talking just to hear the sound of my own voice as I gather my things. I leave her as I found her while wondering why I’m not a travel writer or food critic, and make my way down the long empty corridor. I listen to the moaning, the screaming, and look out of the corner of my eye again, hoping to see nothing more than the faded green walls. Today, for now, that’s all I see.

  “Takes a while for her to warm up,” the nurse at the front desk tells me as I sign out. “She’ll forget you if you don’t come back soon.”

  I hear hope in the woman’s voice, I’m not sure for what. “Thank you. I’ll be back tomorrow.” I want to add that I have no choice but to return. I agreed to this assignment. It wasn’t my first choice or even my third.

  “Bring her something.” The nurse yells this across the lobby.

  I’m waiting for her to press the buzzer so the door will open and let me out of the place. “Like what?”

  “Nothing sharp.” She laughs in an unsettling way then ponders my question. “Stuffed animal.”

  I turn away from her at the sound of the buzzer, ready to push open the heavy door, make a quick exit and breathe the fresh air.

  “No eyes,” the nurse yells.

  I stop, wondering if she’s still talking to me. “No eyes?”

  “Yeah, she’ll just pull them off and eat them.”

  Chapter Two

  §

  I call my client from the car telling her this assignment may take longer than anticipated. To Melissa Palmer this is unacceptable. A deadline is a deadline. Advertising space has already been sold for the two part advocacy piece– she stresses advocacy like it’s her word of the day.

  My instructions from Palmer are to write “a pro-institutionalization, human interest story– period.” I’m tasked with selling an approach that, academically, looks very good in black and white but is getting little financial backing. The article will post over two days for wider coverage, double advertising dollars. Besides my deadline, my problem is that the first half must sell the second half. After my solo visit with Eunice, that’s clearly a good size problem.

  Palmer reminds me that Matrix hired me for the assignment based on my work for Newsweek and Psychology Today. Translation: be professional, get it done, don’t make excuses, and most of all, don’t screw up.

  I want to scream, I know, I was a damn newspaper reporter. Instead I pacify Palmer– enough to get off the phone anyway– by saying I’ve already started writing the story behind the woman.

  Eunice Cohoon’s identity will remain anonymous, but her story must be transpicuous, another Palmer word of the day. Allegedly, Eunice’s crystal clear story will unfold with the help of Dr. Rodham and interviews I’ve scheduled with the nurses, her brother, and sister– although I’m not sure about the latter.

  Eunice’s sister, Joyce, is the reason I have access to the sample– Palmer’s label for Eunice.

  “Just a formality,” Dr. Rodham said. It’s the law and he knows it, or he should.

  Joyce lives in Michigan and hasn’t seen Eunice since she was committed to Ashland forty one years ago. She’s also the only family member the court would consider appointing as legal guardian.

  “Never right in the head, you know?” Joyce had said. “Maybe you can figure her out. I never could. Fruity as a fruitcake on Christmas morning. Probably got dropped on her head one too many times.”

  Right, the one time too many theorem. Although based on Eunice’s file, it’s an acceptable assumption.

  Eunice was seven when her mother took her to Ashland. The reason for handing over the youngest of her eight children was scribbled on the form by Mrs. Cohoon: gust crasy kide cant work cant kep her.

  “Not much is known about her life before Ashland,” Dr. Rodham had explained. When we first spoke he’d fumbled through Eunice’s file as if he’d never looked at it before. “Parents long since dead, one brother local, you talked to the sister,” this information he read list-style.

  “Ah, here we go,” he’d said, upon finding her admission record. “Patient is unable to speak, isn’t toilet trained, and has clear signs of severe physical abuse.” Rodham followed this reading with a wizard’s smile.

  Of the other six siblings, I’ve located two: one who told me to go f-myself
after saying he didn’t have a family, and another who still runs the family pig farm located on the outskirts of town. Roger Cohoon has agreed to meet with me on Thursday.

  I’d asked Joyce about Matilda, about this other person in Eunice’s mind. “Don’t know nobody named Matilda. Must be somebody else you’re thinking ‘bout. Eunice is Eunice.”

  On second thought, I’m going to consider those words my full interview with the woman, and I mentally cross her off my list.

  Ashland’s twenty minutes from the center of town and in my opinion, neither place is much different than thirty years ago.

  Ruston’s a town where three story buildings are high rises, where cows outnumber people, and where the key selling point of shoes is how dry they keep your feet. I turn left on Main Street, slow to the speed limit then find a parking space in front of Grant’s Diner.

  Box fans in the windows send the full bouquet of home cooking from one end of the street to the other. As soon as I step through the door, I’m told to grab a menu and sit anywhere. Eyeballs of curious locals follow me to a corner booth.

  I have every intention of starting my first draft. Instead, I pull out Eunice’s file and read the same words over again.

  She was originally diagnosed as suffering from dementia praecox. Even forty years ago, the term was obsolete. Her current diagnosis is dissociative identity disorder– multiple personalities. In Eunice’s case, one other personality– Matilda. I guess I’m getting two samples for the price of one.

  “What’ll you have, hon?” The waitress, Kasey according to her name tag, places a glass of water on the table with one hand and fills a coffee cup with the other.