Darkness Stirring: A Troubled Spirits Novel

by J. R. Erickson

  He shut it down and started his ride. The trees were as they'd always been—neutral, neither positive or negative, an aspect of his environment that he encountered every day, necessary for human survival, but of little interest during his bike ride. He moved too fast to notice them deeply, to worry about what their leafy boughs might conceal.

  Cycling had been his meditation, his process to bypass the shit that life threw his way, and he'd be damned if fear and superstition stole something so integral away from him.

  He took a different route, pedaling away from his house and heading east rather than west.

  There was a lake out that way that had once held a resort. In the summer, families flocked from Detroit Metro, packed into their station wagons, ready for a weekend at the warm, weedy lake. The kids would do cannonballs off the docks and the parents would sit beneath umbrellas and straw hats, the dads sipping Scotch and the moms drinking highballs.

  Before Ben’s dad took the plunge into full alcoholism, he'd told Ben stories of vacationing with his own parents at the now-abandoned resort. He’d amused Ben with tales of his first French kiss with a Jewish girl from Rhode Island who’d spent summers at the lake visiting her grandparents. He’d spoken of the time when he'd gotten banned from the lake gift shop for throwing a water balloon at the owner.

  The stories had always struck Ben as the kind of golden realities that only existed in retrospect. If he could have zoomed in on his father's life during those years, he would probably have seen a station wagon filled with fighting kids, his dad pulling his sister's hair. His grandfather white-knuckling the steering wheel as his wife badgered him to slow down.

  Ben's grandfather had also been an alcoholic, but they never called him that despite his death at sixty-two from cirrhosis of the liver. Drinking had been viewed differently in those days, as acceptable for everyone, even pregnant women. The term ‘alcoholic’ was relegated to bums drinking from brown bags on the street. Regular Joe Schmoes with day jobs and families were just kickin' back, relaxing after a long day, week, month.

  As he rode, Ben’s thoughts grew narrow and then vanished. He breathed, noted the passing pavement and geography, but went blank for a while.

  He wasn't sure when he became aware of the engine behind him, the sound of tires eating pavement, going faster than even the cars who sped on the back roads like they were drag racers, not rusted old Chevys and Fords. The opposite side of the road was empty, plenty of space for the car, or truck from the sounds of it, to swing wide around him. Still, Ben inched closer to the shoulder, careful not to angle onto the dirt where his wheel might slide out.

  He sensed the vehicle moving closer, heard it. It wasn't passing. It had decelerated, but not much, only enough to keep from slamming into Ben’s back wheel, but it was bearing down.

  Ben glanced over his shoulder and glimpsed a dark green pickup, a Ford, gaining on him.

  Ben swept an arm forward, signaling for the driver to pass. The truck slowed, and then the tires squealed as it accelerated fast. It was coming up close now, so close that Ben could feel the heat of the truck's engine against his back.

  He looked back again, but the truck's windshield seemed to be tinted and the glare of the sun obscured anything he might have witnessed behind the dark glass.

  "Go! Pass!" Ben shouted, waving his arm again, angrier now. He'd dealt with aggressive drivers before. They were nearly always white guys driving big trucks who were infuriated with the mere concept of a bicycle, let alone having to share the road with one.

  Ben pedaled harder, faster, but it was no use, even at his fastest he couldn’t outrun the truck.

  Ben slowed. He'd pull to the side, park his bike and wait for the asshole to pass. Maybe he'd even memorize his license plate number and report him to the police.

  As he decelerated, the truck's bumper nipped his tire.

  "What the fuck?" Ben screamed and turned, but the truck hadn't backed off. It was still coming, harder and faster, and Ben felt the impact as the truck slammed into the back of the bike.

  Ben went airborne, arms and legs flailing as he sailed toward the ditch. He heard the crunch of metal as the truck devoured his bike, but it was far away, the other sensations taking center stage as he landed with a sickening thud on his shoulder. He heard and felt the snapping of his own bones, the sound merging with the frame of his bicycle being crushed.

  The truck screeched to a stop, taillights glowing red in the hazy afternoon sun.

  Ben lay crumpled on the roadside. Flames lit the right side of his body, his ribcage and hip especially. Warmth oozed from his chin where it had struck something sharp in the ditch, a rock or broken glass. Still, the physical pains came secondary to his focus on the truck.

  The driver had hit him on purpose and now sat idling in the road, contemplating, Ben imagined, finishing him off. Perhaps throwing the truck in reverse and backing right into the high grass at the roadside where Ben lay struggling for breath.

  The brake lights glowed, and Ben couldn't wait a second longer. He heaved himself to a crouch and, screaming between his clenched teeth, he hobbled into the woods. Blood roared in his ears and a spell of dizziness swept over him. He staggered against a tree, clutched it for a moment and then moved on, limping, pain searing through his midsection. His right knee pulsed with the beat of his heart.

  Behind him, he heard the door of the truck slam. The driver had gotten out.

  Sweat poured into his eyes, burning. Everywhere he felt the burning, but he plunged further, dropping to his knees when the pain became too much and crawling on his belly into the ferns that stood nearly two feet high. He lay, unmoving, struggling to rein in his breath and hear, above his own body's outcry, the sound of the man from the truck.

  He thought he heard the crunch of twigs underfoot, leaves crackling, but he couldn't be sure and after a while he heard nothing at all.

  37

  Lori arrived at the Loomis Junkyard and found the weedy driveway to Hank Loomis’s trailer. The Prius nearly bottomed out on a hollow in the two-track, but she managed to keep it going.

  She parked and climbed out, surveying the trailer suspended on stacks of cinder blocks. A rusted aluminum roof had been erected above the structure and stood on wooden stilts. Lori could see the grooves in the aluminum, thick with dead leaves and grime, and she thought she spotted a tuft of fur, but tried not to look too closely.

  A man wearing a grimy ball-cap and equally soiled t-shirt lumbered through the front door and down the steps. “Yous here about the Toyota parts?” he called.

  “No. I’m Lori Hicks. I called this morning about your trail cam video.”

  “Ah, okay. I tried ter tell them po-lice, but them's thinkin' another a'those Loomis boys causin’ trouble. It’s trespassin is what it is, but theys don’t care." He chuckled and leaned a thick hip against a rusted-out pickup. "Ain't never stirred up trouble m'self, but Rocky and Boyd's been kickin' up dirt since they could walk on two legs."

  "What did you see in the trail cam?" Lori asked.

  "I'll show yer, come on." He straightened up and trudged back toward the front door.

  Lori did not want to walk into this man's trailer and yet her feet carried her forward up the rickety wood steps.

  Hank opened the screen door, which let out a shriek of metallic protest, and held it open for Lori to walk inside. She considered leaping backwards off the stoop and sprinting back to her car, but the sheer politeness that had been drilled into her would not allow such a rude act, so she stepped into the musty little trailer that stank of over-full ashtrays and cat piss. The likely culprits of the piss, two matching black cats with yellow eyes, jumped down from the counter and twisted around Hank's legs, meowing loudly.

  "Git. Go on, git," he barked at the cats, leaning down to shoo them out the door.

  He was surprisingly gentle with the cats, running his dirty hands over their sleek backs as they both darted from the trailer and made for the woods beyond.

  "I have a cat,
" Lori admitted, searching for small talk and fighting the urge to plug her nose.

  "Them's Black and Blackie. Shown up here years back and never left. They're all right."

  "My cat's name is Matilda," Lori said.

  "Never understood folks namin’ their beasts after people." He continued across the room to a sitting area with a sagging couch. A stack of cardboard boxes took the place of a coffee table. Hank plucked a plastic camouflage box from the surface, flipping open the top to reveal a small dark screen inside. "Boyd bought a dozen a' these last year fer the yard. I put two in the woods to catch thems deer spots, but saw more than thems deer." He clicked around, his thick fingers surprisingly deft on the small buttons. “Ain't used this one since the thing. Thought I'd best keep ’er on here."

  Lori watched the screen. A fuzzy gray video appeared. Lori could make out the trees and in the dark background two glowing eyes.

  "That's a porcupine," Hank said. "But watch here."

  A minute passed and then two. The stench in the apartment made Lori's head swim and she rocked on her feet before reaching for a wall to steady herself.

  Hank didn't seem to notice. "’K, here we go."

  As Lori watched, something moved in the darkness of the trees, something she could barely see, though it was larger than an animal. It shuffled into view, moving slowly and hunched over. It took her several moments of staring to make sense of the shape. It appeared to be a person walking bent over with a dark tattered blanket over its head. Except blanket wasn't right. It was more like a cloak made of animal pelts.

  Lori thought of the figure in her dream, the woman covered in animal skins and furs.

  "Saw this three nights back. Night before that girl went missin’ down yonder."

  “The girl in Baldwin?”

  “Yessum. Might be nothin’, might be something.’”

  Ben heard someone creeping towards him. He blinked his eyes open to see a hunched figure shrouded in animal hides. It seemed to be sniffing at the air. He squinted, but the figure blurred, sweat and maybe blood running into his eyes. He blinked, but the figure was gone. He was not sure if it been there at all.

  He had no sense of the passing of time, but the light in the forest looked different. Hours might have gone by.

  After a while, he again heard the rustle of leaves.

  "Anybody in here? Hello?" a man's voice called.

  Ben tried to roll onto his back, but the sting in his hip shouted in angry protest, and Ben groaned. He hadn't passed out exactly, but lay suspended in a red room between waking and sleeping where the forest appeared tinged with a crimson glow and the plants and trees throbbed with the pounding in his temples.

  "Help," he gurgled, his mouth filled with saliva.

  He thought he might vomit, and clenched his mouth and eyes closed. His interior world rolled and nausea coursed through him. He retched onto the forest floor, recoiling from the smell. Aching, he dragged himself away from the puke.

  "Did you hear that?" A woman's voice said.

  "Yeah," the man agreed.

  Ben heard the man and woman moving closer.

  "Here," Ben croaked, lifting one arm awkwardly above the ferns.

  The footsteps grew faster, and then he felt a hand touch him gently between the shoulder blades.

  "Holy shit, man," the guy said. "We saw your bike and thought, This is not good. But you're alive. Esther, go call 911."

  "Okay," she said. "Hang in there," she called to Ben.

  He heard her retreating. The man's hand still lingered on his back, the touch gentle, reassuring. "How you doing? You okay?"

  "Mm-hmm… fractured ribs, possibly fractured hip, I hope not. Meniscus tear on my right knee." Ben huffed the words out, every breath excruciating, but it gave him something to focus on, something beyond the pain itself.

  "Okay, okay," the man said. "I'm Tom. Are you a doctor or—"

  "Nurse," Ben murmured.

  "What's your name? And if it hurts too much to say, then just lie there and be quiet."

  "Ben."

  "Okay, Ben. I'm sorry this happened to you. Did someone hit you?"

  "Yeah."

  Another surge of nausea rolled up, and Ben turned his head to the side and puked. He scooted away, grunting in pain. Tom tried to help him, but he could feel the man's fingers were hesitant to take hold of him, as if they might cause further damage.

  "They're on their way," the girl yelled.

  Minutes passed. Tom didn't speak, and neither did Ben. The girl had returned to the roadside to flag down the ambulance.

  Ben counted his breaths, but lost track around six hundred and fifty. He heard the siren in the distance.

  "Here we go," Tom murmured, again lighting fingers on Ben's back. "They're almost here. Esther and I were on our way to adopt a dog up in Harrison. It's a mutt, but real sweet-tempered, according to the lady at the shelter. A boxer-pit mix. We were thinking about calling her Custard. We own a little ice cream and custard shop down in Rosebush. Maybe once you're all patched up, you can come in and get a custard—on the house."

  Tom talked on, and Ben appreciated the distraction. Soon more bodies were moving through the woods and paramedics laid a spinal board in the grass beside him.

  Hands and fingers groped along his back.

  "No spinal injury," he told them. "Unless I'm missing it somehow."

  "Ben?" Zander's voice spoke.

  "Yep, it's me," Ben muttered.

  Large, powerful hands gripped Ben and carefully positioned him on his back. The two paramedics lifted him onto the spinal board and strapped his forehead, chest, hips, and legs in place.

  Zander looked pale as he worked, glancing at Ben's face now and then.

  "Almost done," Zander said as he took one end of the board.

  "Ready?" the second man asked.

  "Yep, one-two-three-lift," Zander said.

  They hoisted the board up, and Ben saw Tom and Esther standing to the side. They were his age or younger, maybe late twenties, and wore matching tie-dye shirts with the words ‘The RoseBush Custard Cup is the Place to Be’ in blue block letters.

  He twitched his fingers at the couple, unable to move any other body parts. "Thank you," he told them.

  "Sure thing," Tom said. "I'm so grateful we found you."

  "Me too," Ben murmured, though he could no longer see them as Zander and the second paramedic carried him to the ambulance.

  "What happened, Ben? Hit-and-run?" Zander asked.

  "Yeah," Ben said, as they pushed him into the back of the ambulance. "I got hit by a truck."

  And though he hadn't seen the man behind the wheel, he knew who had been driving: Hector Dunn.

  38

  "Ben…"

  He heard Lori's voice and opened his eyes. The sharp pains in the early hours after the accident had dissipated, replaced by something dull and aching. He cringed as he smiled, drawing in a shuddering breath.

  "Carmen called me,” she told him, squeezing his hand. “I came right away. Does it hurt?" She gestured at his bandaged ribs.

  "Less than a lobotomy, worse than a root canal."

  "Less than a lobotomy? Have you had one of those?"

  He smiled, but only halfway. Any more movement hurt. "No, but if it means I won't feel this anymore I might request one."

  "Don't do that. Who's Scully without her analytical brain?"

  He raised an eyebrow. "Someone not getting run over by psychopaths."

  "You think it was him? That Hector Dunn hit you?"

  "I do. I talked to a detective who said they'd be contacting police in Luther to question him, but… I don't know. My faith in their ability to bring him in is suspect. Still no developments on Adrian?"

  "No. How long will they keep you?"

  "Two days and they’re going to release me. I'm pretty banged up, but no major injuries. Guess I was lucky. My bike sure wasn’t.”

  Lori followed the news in Baldwin, but they’d still found no trace of Adrian. Two days after
the accident, she picked Ben up from the hospital and drove him home.

  He sat in her passenger seat with a bag of prescriptions in his lap. “Don’t take me home,” he said suddenly as she turned onto his street.

  “What? Why?”

  “He’s in for questioning today. He goes in at eleven o’clock.”

  “Who? Hector Dunn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What does that mean then?”

  “It means he won’t be home. I want to go to his house.”

  Lori shook her head. “That sounds like a terrible idea. Have you looked at yourself lately? You’re not exactly in breaking and entering condition.”

  “I don’t want to break in. I just wanted to look around. There are two places he could hide a pickup truck—the garage and the barn. I want to peek in and see if it’s there. In and out, five minutes tops. I’ll snap a picture with my cell phone and we’ll be on the road back here.”

  Lori thought of Adrian. Her family had posted pictures of her on social media—images of Adrian playing Frisbee with her golden retriever, or wearing her gymnastics leotard. They told stories about how she wanted to be a special education teacher when she grew up, how she volunteered at the animal shelter. Already Lori would have recognized her if she passed her on the street, with her wavy white-blonde hair and her childlike blue eyes. If Hector had taken her, there was a chance, albeit slim, that she was still alive, that she was in his house, bound or trapped.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Yeah.” Ben sat up higher in his seat, slapping his hands together. “Okay, let’s do this. What changed your mind?”

  "If it's him, if he took Adrian, this might be our only chance to save her," Lori said, driving them out of town.

  "That's assuming he doesn't kill them within hours,” Ben said. “But you're right. Even if she'd dead, he's not likely to have gotten rid of all the evidence by now. There has to be some trace of her left behind."

  39