Dark Omen: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “How did you know what I wanted? I mean, I’d say you guessed, but how could you have guessed that?”

  “Maybe it was on your website at the college. Or I could have overheard you talking about it in class one day.”

  He frowned, and Crystal watched him consider both possibilities. He shook his head.

  “No, no way.”

  Crystal leaned across the table and whispered. “I’m magic.”

  His eyes widened, and he glanced at her hands. She wondered if he expected to see a wand clutched in her fingers.

  “Or I’m just very perceptive,” she added.

  “I don’t think anyone is perceptive enough to be that accurate. Come on, tell me,” he said, peeling off his black scarf and draping it over his chair.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Not tonight, though. Tonight, I want to hear about your poetry.”

  He studied her, and she could see he didn’t want to let the subject go — but finally he leaned back, conceding defeat.

  “I’ve been writing poetry since I was ten,” he said. “The year my parents got divorced, followed by my mother moving to California. I needed an outlet. I lived in Detroit. Most angry kids got into fights, but the neighbors in the apartment above ours had immigrated from Chile. Their mother, Camila, had four children. She started to bring me empanadas and read me the poetry of Pablo Neruda. I got hooked on both. I’ve been writing poetry and music ever since.”

  “Neruda wrote beautiful poetry.” Crystal smiled. “I spent a few months in New Orleans, and I saw an exhibition of Pablo Neruda while I was there.”

  Weston’s eyes twinkled as if speaking of a poet he loved made him come even more alive.

  “What’s your favorite by him?” he asked.

  Crystal drew a deep breath and closed her eyes, remembering the displays, the huge canvases covered in black calligraphy. She’d read the poems for hours returning to one in particular again and again.

  “Tonight I can write the saddest lines,” she recalled.

  He quoted a line further into the poem, “I loved her and sometimes she loved me too.” A flush rose to his face as he said the words.

  His eyes found hers and all the sounds and movement in the cafe seemed to stop. Even her breath, the steady lilting sound, disappeared.

  “Café au lait,” Polly announced, sliding a purple mug, resting in a green saucer, onto the table.

  Crystal blushed and smiled up at her.

  Cafe Luna refused to serve customers on matching dishware, one of the many reasons Crystal loved the coffee shop.

  “And espresso with two sugar cubes," Polly added, pushing Weston’s drink in front of him.

  He smiled and lifted the tiny black-and-white, spotted espresso cup off the dainty orange plate and laughed.

  “I like your style in here,” he told Polly.

  She winked at him.

  “We celebrate diversity at Cafe Luna.” Polly ambled away, her big combat boots enormous on her tiny body.

  Weston directed his attention back to Crystal. “I’ve never been in here before. I think I like it.”

  Crystal studied him. For an instant she’d felt… a secret tucked in his chest and throat. A shadow slipping back and deep, hiding from the part of her that sensed people’s mysteries. The part of her that knew he drank espresso with two sugar cubes, that he loved dogs, but didn’t own one, and that he ran from the past as if it wanted to devour him.

  “Do you write poetry, Crystal?” he asked, lifting the little silver spoon and swirling the sugar in his cup.

  She nodded. “I do. I believe poetry is in everything, music, conversations, the rustling of autumn leaves, making love.”

  He stared at her and then rubbed his hands together as if he’d gotten a sudden chill.

  “I agree, completely,” he said. “I tell my students poetry is swimming in the ocean, walking in the woods, hugging your child — all of it is writing a poem. We just don’t always commit the experience to the page, but when we do, we have the chance to touch people in a way that rarely translates in conversation.”

  “I love that,” she murmured. “I’ll have to take your advanced poetry class next semester.”

  “Yes, you should,” he said. “What are you going to school for, Crystal?”

  She dipped her face forward, feeling the frothy cream stick to her nose.

  When she lifted her head, Weston grinned.

  “Professional circus clown,” she confessed.

  He laughed.

  “I didn’t know we offered that at Michigan State. I must look into expanding my portfolio. Really, though. Do you want to be a writer for a living? A poet?”

  She stirred her drink. “I love how earnestly you ask that question. Most people are filled with such doubt when referring to writers and poets professionally. But you’re completely

  sincere.”

  “My dad reacted that way. I guess that’s why I’m a teacher. At the end of the day, I still had to pay the bills.”

  “I rarely do anything because I have to pay the bills. If I don’t love it, I don’t do it.”

  “Do you work now?” he asked.

  She wiggled her fingers. “My sister says I hummingbird.”

  “I’m intrigued,” he admitted.

  “I work at a coffee shop, not this one, and I work occasionally at a used bookstore. I work two days a week at Hospice House in downtown Lansing. In the summer, I work on a lavender farm part time. Hence, I flit from place to place like a hummingbird.”

  He chuckled. “My head spins just hearing about all those jobs. How do you keep track?”

  She paused and tilted her head, swaying slowly in her chair.

  “The Man I Love,” she murmured.

  His eyes widened.

  “Billie Holiday.” She gestured to the speaker behind them.

  She watched him incline his head as if straining to hear the low, sweet melody, and then his face softened when he caught the tune.

  “Yes, right there,” she told him. She closed her eyes and listened, drifting for a time on Holiday’s yearning.

  When she opened her eyes, Wes watched her with unshielded desire.

  Another long stare. She took in the heart-shaped curve of his upper lip, his slightly crooked front tooth and most dazzling, the flecks of firelight in his blue irises.

  “That’s how I keep track,” she offered, feeling the same fire in his eyes leap high into her throat and crawl to her face. “I live in the moment. That’s it. I don’t organize my life; I don’t create routines. Every day is new. I greet the morning unburdened by habitual ways of being. We never know how much time we have left in this life. I try to live every day like it’s my last.”

  Wes leaned back in his chair, his coffee forgotten. “I want to do that. My alarm goes off every morning at six fifteen a.m., and I operate on auto-pilot until noon,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I had an original thought while drinking my coffee or even tasted it!”

  Crystal inhaled the scent of her café au lait, the slightly sweet froth and the deeper, darker coffee aroma at the center.

  “Do it right now.” She gestured at his cup. “Lean in and smell it.”

  “I already drank it,” he laughed.

  “But it lingers. Go on, inhale the memory of it.”

  Wes leaned over his cup.

  “Close your eyes,” she told him.

  He did.

  “Tell me about it.”

  His long lashes fluttered on his cheeks, and a small smile curved his parted lips. It was a playful smile, but Crystal had serious intentions. She’d known this man would come into her life for years. That he was the one, to use that naïve and often misunderstood label.

  It wasn’t girlish vanity that told her Weston Meeks was meant to be in her life. It was the same ability that told her he loved espresso with two sugars, that he had secrets he wanted to share but feared the repercussions if he did so.

  “Rich,” he said, breathing deeply. “Like
dark chocolate melting on your tongue as you lean in close to a wood fire…” he trailed off and opened his eyes.

  They sat that way, staring at each other, silent, until the waitress arrived to refill their waters.

  Weston laughed and brushed a hand through his long hair.

  “Thanks,” he told Polly. He returned his gaze to Crystal’s. “I don’t think I’ve ever truly appreciated my espresso until this moment.”

  Crystal smiled. “It’s amazing how vibrant the world is when we pay attention.”

  He nodded and gazed around the coffee shop. She watched his eyes linger on the brightly colored paintings on the wall before drifting to a clear display case filled with bowls of fresh fruit.

  “It’s also amazing what the fire does to your red hair. You look like Brigid, the Celtic goddess with flaming hair,” he told her.

  “The goddess of what?”

  “Fertility,” he admitted. “And interestingly enough, poetry.”

  “Then she must be a kindred spirit," Crystal agreed. “Do you love your job, Professor?” she asked.

  He looked at her and nodded slowly, as if not entirely sure how to answer the question.

  “Yes. I have days where I long for a more creative life, I guess. I miss playing music and staying up all night writing poetry by candlelight. Maybe I’m just guilty of painting the past in a golden light. I am just the same as when our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers,” he murmured.

  “That’s lovely. Did you write it?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Not at all. It’s from the poem After a Journey by Thomas Hardy. Hardy wrote often of the past and his yearning for times gone by. You’ll learn about him. I teach him every semester in my classes. Probably because his poetry resonates with me.”

  “You long for the past?” she asked.

  “Not really. I have an ugly past. I long for my dream of the past. I’m a liar, you see. I remember it differently than it was.”

  “I’d call you a dreamer, not a liar,” she disagreed. “Maybe your subconscious is trying to help you change the present so you can have a golden past someday.”

  Again, their eyes met. Neither of them spoke, and Crystal’s breath caught. She wanted to freeze the moment, the warm light from the faux Tiffany lamps, the smell of coffee, and the sense that something extraordinary was about to begin.

  The bell on the door jingled and a man and woman, arm in arm, burst into the cafe bringing with them a flurry of snow.

  Weston stared at the door and Crystal knew he was going to leave.

  She smiled up at him as he stood.

  “This has been really wonderful, Crystal. I have to go, though. I have class bright and early.”

  “Until next time,” she told him, offering her hand.

  He took it, but didn’t shake it. He held it tightly and then released her, slipping into his coat as he hurried toward the door.

  5

  Now

  When Bette reached home, she paused with her blinker on, staring at the empty driveway, the driveway of the home she and Crystal had grown up in.

  Bette’s shoulders sagged. She’d hoped to see Crystal’s VW Beetle parked there, hoped to walk into the house to find her sister boiling water for tea and rattling off a thousand excuses for her tardiness. But the driveway stood empty.

  In the entryway, the little red button glowed on her machine.

  “Please be Crystal, please be Crystal,” she repeated as she hit play.

  “Hi, Bette, it’s Dad. I just got home and listened to your message. I haven’t seen Crystal. Is everything okay? Call me back ASAP.”

  Message two:

  “I’m calling for Bette Childs. This is Gloria at the Lansing Public Library. The books you put on hold have come in. You can pick them up anytime.”

  No more messages.

  Bette slumped over the machine.

  She picked up the receiver and dialed Crystal’s number. It rang five times before her machine picked up.

  She listened to Crystal’s cheery message, imagining her sister recording it as she doodled flowers on the notepad next to her phone.

  “Crystal, it’s Bette. I’m starting to panic now, okay? I just reported you missing at the police station and I really need you to call me back. If you get this, when you get this, call me back. I’m serious. Don’t even stop to pee. CALL ME BACK!”

  Bette set down the receiver and walked into her living room where her two cats, Chai and Oolong, lay curled into a single ball of gray fur. Chai’s head perked up when she entered, but when Bette didn’t whip out a can opener or shake the bag of treats, she nestled her face into her sister’s back and returned to her nap.

  Without turning on the lights, Bette walked to the easy chair by the window and sat down. It had been their father’s chair. It was old and ugly, with the seams frayed and one side bearing deep scratches from her cats’ claws. She should have gotten rid of it, years earlier, when their dad left the house and abandoned the chair. But she couldn’t let it go. She had memories of the chair. Memories of sitting on her mother’s lap, fighting for space with Crystal as their father climbed a ladder to put the star on the Christmas tree.

  Bette rocked back and forth in the chair, listening to the creaks and groans, unable to stop her legs from trembling. She braced her hands on the worn armrests, feeling the wood frame poking through.

  Beyond the window, the street lay dark and quiet. Occasionally headlights passed. Sometimes two or three minutes elapsed between cars, and every set of headlights made her tense, her fingernails digging into the chair; but each car drove by, disappearing into the darkness.

  Crystal had spoken of dying young for as long as Bette could remember. She’d been saying the words years before it was cool—only the good die young, and all the nonsense teens started to pick up as more and more rock stars perished before they reached twenty-five.

  Bette remembered Crystal leaning close to their mother’s casket at the funeral and whispering, “I’ll see you soon, Mama.”

  It had upset Bette so much she’d run from the funeral home and taken shelter in the foyer, where her mother’s best friend, Lilith, had stood talking to Bette’s Uncle Jerry.

  “But that’s just Crystal,” Bette insisted to the quiet room.

  Chai looked up, eyes going hopefully to Bette’s hands before again returning her face to Oolong’s fur.

  A car passed, break lights shining, and Bette jumped up, ready to run to the front door. The car pulled into Bette’s driveway and her stomach leapt into her throat.

  Mingled joy and anger erupted in her mind as she flung the front door open, but the car had already begun to reverse into the street. It was only a stranger turning around. She watched it drive several houses down before pulling into the Hammonds’ residence. Their boys, who had gone to school with Bette and Crystal, were both grown and away at out-of-state universities.

  Bette watched the doors of a car that was not Bette’s swing open. An older woman climbed out, reaching back in for a paper bag before walking to the front door.

  Bette stood on the doorstep, watching driveways illuminated by porch lights. A few people were out and about. Cecilia Gomez walked an envelope to her mailbox. When she spotted Bette, she lifted her hand and waved.

  Bette waved and slid into the house, unable to close the door behind her. She left it open. The night breeze ruffled the papers on Bette’s kitchen table and sent them in a whoosh to the floor.

  The phone rang, and she jumped, running to the kitchen and startling both cats who stood, backs arched, as she snatched up the phone.

  “Hello!” she half-yelled.

  “Bette?” her father asked slowly. “Is everything okay, honey?”

  Bette sighed.

  “Dad, have you talked to Crystal?”

  “No, not for a few days. She called me on…” He paused, and Bette assumed he was looking at the day planner next to his phone. He was a meticulous record keeper. He wrote down appointments,
phone calls, even what he ate for breakfast most days. “Tuesday.”

  “Not since Tuesday?” Bette sagged against the wall.

  “What is it, Bette? Is something wrong with Crystal?”

  Bette imagined their father, the person she could thank for her neuroses, on the other end, tapping his fingernails on the side table next to his reclining chair. His dog Teddy would be snuggled in the chair beside him, head resting on her father’s lap, ears perked when he sensed Homer’s distress.

  Bette wanted to lie and appease him. She’d done it a thousand times before. She’d learned to manage her father’s emotions, in the years after their mother died, when a spat between her and Crystal might send him pacing up and down the driveway for more than an hour, hands jittery, anxious eyes watching the house for signs of the inevitable storm.

  But that night she couldn’t bring herself to tell the lie. She needed someone to commiserate with her, she needed someone who would understand.

  “Dad,” Bette paused and took a deep breath. “Crystal is missing.”

  She couldn’t hear the tapping, but she imagined his fingers, drumming seconds before, suddenly pausing in mid-air.

  “What do you mean, she’s missing?”

  “Well today is—”

  “I know what today is,” he said.

  Homer never spent the anniversary of his wife’s death with his daughters, not since they were girls, but he marked the date in his own way. The year before he’d been leaving the cemetery just as Crystal and Bette had arrived with flowers.

  “She was supposed to meet me here at the house at five,” Bette explained. “She never showed. I’ve been to her apartment, the Hospice House, the bookstore, the coffee shop. Nothing, not a trace.”

  On the other end, her father’s chair creaked.

  “Get down Teddy, there you go,” her father told his dog. “Have you called her girlfriends? Or how about the boy across the hall? The one who came to Thanksgiving last year. What’s his name again? Grady?”

  “Garret. Yes, I’ve talked to everyone. The last person to see her was a guy from the coffee shop, Rick. She got a coffee at nine this morning. That’s all I’ve got.”