Of Sound Mind and Body

By Eve Morton

When Nelson gets a night job at the Sleep Eaze Motel, it's not long before he's pretty sure he's seen it all: junkies, criminals, and of course, the suicides. But when a group of professors travelling for a conference all die in their rooms -- seemingly by their own hands -- he's not too sure what's going on. Only that something's not right.

So when the nephew of one of the victims -- a deaf man named Jeremy -- comes to stay at the motel, Nelson pays attention. Jeremy has his uncle's journal, and longs to complete his cryptic research, but he needs Nelson's help. Soon the two fall under the spell of the same mystery that took the so-called Suicide Five, and they fall for one another.

Can Jeremy complete his uncle's research before it's too late, or are there some secrets better left unheard?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: May 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685504519

Book preview

Chapter 1

When you work at a motel, you expect your first suicide. And you remember it.

Mine was a woman I had checked in at seven PM on one of my first full night shifts. I was working the front desk of the Sleep Eaze Motel, located just off the Canadian 401 highway, in between the larger city of Kingston where I attended university during the day, and the small town of Roblin, where my grandparents had lived up until their deaths when I was twelve and fourteen. I was used to the area, including the trains that ran in the middle of the night and the lack of cell phone service. I was used to the older people who lived in squat houses and seemed to have no children, no extended family, and only the mega church that had opened on the other side of the Canadian highway for company. I was even used to the shadows of people who showed up at the motel, wandering between the psych facility in Kingston or the jails, like this woman who would be my first suicide.

I didn’t think she’d kill herself, but I knew something wasn’t quite right. She was thinner than I’d ever seen a person before. Her skin was sallow, almost yellow, from lack of nutrition. Her hair seemed to fall out whenever she touched it, which she did as she signed the form for her credit card. A black strand got caught in the pen’s lid. She didn’t even notice, but I stared at it as she gathered her bags, thinking it looked like a spider’s web.

That’s all I really remembered about her. Oh, maybe the wrists. They were thin like the rest of her, but they had red markings over them. I figured she was a junky or recently let out of the local prison that housed both men and women a few minutes away by car, or half an hour, by bus. My boss had let me know that we’d probably get a lot of criminals or the recently released staying here for a night before their vouchers ran out. Don’t worry about them, though, Earl told me. They’re mostly harmless and just thankful to no longer be frisked before bed.

I figured her marks had been from being handcuffed. I didn’t look at them long, thinking it was better for me to give her space and privacy, after having it stripped from her for so long. I buried my nose in my law textbook, for an exam I had the next morning, and read statues that supported my outlook.

In the morning, when I was heading to my car to go to that early morning exam, I heard one of the maids scream. She came out of a room on the first floor—we only had two floors, and the second was often in disrepair, rarely rented out—and crossed herself outside. I remembered the number—108—since it was the same course code as the class I had to attend that morning. I knew the woman I’d