Dark Omen: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “Hold on,” Hart said. “A little girl was out at Frasier Gorge at midnight?”

  Alvin nodded and scratched his beard. “That look yer havin’ right now about sums up how I was feeling. What in God’s green earth is this child, no more than eight or nine, doing in these woods in the middle of the night? I had my windows rolled down, and she was singing that funny little song kids like, “Ring around the rosie, pockets full of posies-”

  “I know the song,” Hart interrupted before the man could sing the entire nursery rhyme.

  “Anyhoo,” Alvin went on, “I sort of craned around, looking for her parents or maybe an older brother. There’re a few houses up that way. Not many, mind you, and most of ‘em a good mile from that spot.”

  He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his worn blue jeans.

  “That little girl walked right up to the lip of the gorge and stopped singing, and I thought she was gonna jump. I was about to hop out of my truck when she started throwing pebbles off the cliff into the canyon below. Ain’t nothing down there but a bunch of woods, or so I thought. But as I’m sitting there, quiet as a cup of soup, I hear these little metal pings.”

  He paused as if to make sure they were still following the story. “Ping… ping… they went. Each time she threw a pebble, another little ping. Add I’m thinking, there’s something metal down in that gorge. I’m a scrapping man. Something I do for a few bucks on the side, but I’m only half thinking that because I’m still wondering where this strange girl's parents are. Finally, I think I need to say something, so I gather myself and step out of my truck and… poof, she was just gone. Gone like a rabbit, I guess, into the forest.”

  “She ran away?” Hart asked.

  Bette stood beside him, trying to puzzle the story together, her hands growing sweaty in the pockets of her shorts.

  “I didn’t see her run away, but she must have, because by the time I closed the door of my pickup, she was long gone. I listened real good, thinking I’d hear her in the woods, ya know? Twigs snappin’, leaves crunchin’. But nothing, not a peep. I did a little walk around. Walked out to the road, walked into the brush a bit and finally decided she’d run off real quiet like, probably noticed me in the truck and got spooked.”

  He tugged on his beard. “The kiddies don’t like this beard, or so my brother says; his young-uns run like wild pigs when I show up. I waited a few more minutes and then thought what the hay, might as well climb down that gorge and see what the girl had been hittin’ with her rocks. I went back to my truck and grabbed my flashlight and walked down.”

  Alvin paused as a few other searchers moved closer. They too were listening to his story.

  “About halfway down, I shined my light and spotted something blue. A light blue, but it was kinda covered over with leaves. I got all the way down and saw it was a car, a Beetle Bug or whatever they call those with the round top. This one had a black soft top, the kind that folds down. Anyway, there’s a light blue Beetle sitting at the bottom of Frasier Gorge like somebody drove it right off that cliff.”

  Bette’s knees buckled, and she hit the grass with a thud, sinking her butt onto her heels.

  She shook her head from side to side.

  “Homer,” Hart called out, waving.

  Bette’s dad looked up from where he’d been cross-sectioning a map with another searcher. When he noticed Bette, he ran towards them.

  “Gosh, I’m sorry, Miss. I didn’t mean to—” the bearded man said, removing his Stetson hat and holding it over his chest.

  Homer knelt and took Bette’s hand.

  “Are you having a panic attack, Bette?” he asked.

  She shook her head and pointed a shaky finger at Alvin

  Hart signaled to another officer.

  “Radio the station. We’ve got a witness who found a blue Volkswagen Beetle at the bottom of Frasier Gorge. We need confirmation."

  Homer looked up sharply at Hart’s comment. He stood, Bette forgotten on the grass.

  “Someone found my daughter’s car? Who? You?” He turned to face the bearded man whose eyes darted between the police officers.

  “Yes, sir. I found a little blue Beetle Bug at the bottom of Frasier Gorge.”

  Homer sprang forward and grabbed his shirt.

  “Was she in it? Was Crystal in the car?” he demanded.

  Alvin stepped back, blinking at Homer’s hand as if a tarantula had leapt onto his chest.

  “Homer,” Hart said, touching him. “Please release this man’s shirt.”

  Homer’s shocked eyes turned to Hart and then back to his hand. He let the fabric go, his arm dropping heavily to his side.

  “I didn’t see anyone in the car,” Alvin told them. “I read the paper. I saw the cops was lookin’ for a little blue Bug so I didn’t touch nothin’. I climbed out of the canyon and called the station first thing this morning. They told me to come here, so that’s what I did.”

  * * *

  More than an hour passed before Officer Hart returned.

  Bette didn’t have to ask if it was Crystal’s car.

  Homer stood, clutching his Styrofoam cup of coffee.

  “The license plate is a match,” Hart told him.

  Homer crumpled the cup, cold coffee spilling over his hand. Bette watched his profile as everything contracted, his mouth and eyes screwing tight against the news.

  Bette had known it was Crystal’s car the moment she heard Alvin’s story. Blue VW Bugs weren’t common. Weston Meeks had taken Crystal to Frasier Gorge. There were too many coincidences for it to be a coincidence.

  “Was Crystal…?” Homer asked, his voice almost too low to hear. He didn’t finish the question.

  Hart shook his head. “She wasn’t in the car. We’ve done a preliminary search of the surrounding area, but a larger search is in the works. Right now, we’ve got to get the car out. In the meantime, the chief is organizing the search. There are already officers out there cordoning off the woods. Are you familiar with Frasier Gorge?”

  Homer shook his head.

  Hart looked at Bette.

  “I’ve never been there, but Crystal told me about it,” she said.

  Hart’s expression perked. “She liked to go there?”

  Bette shook her head. “Weston Meeks took her there once for a date.”

  Hart frowned, but didn’t ask more.

  “We’ve canceled the search here. Frasier Gorge is a better use of our resources right now. If that’s a dead end, we’ll reconsider searching here, but…” He offered his empty hands. “In the meantime, you both might as well head home, eat some breakfast. I’ll call if we find anything.”

  Homer’s shoulders slumped, and he sat on the park bench next to Bette. He still clutched his crumpled cup in his hand.

  11

  Then

  Weston stopped mid-pour, a glob of pancake batter splattering his bare foot.

  He’d followed Crystal to her apartment the night before and neither of them had said a word as they walked up the carpeted stairs to the second floor. She’d unlocked the door and stepped inside. Before she’d even turned on a light, his hands hand found her. He’d stripped her slowly, whispering poetry as he kissed every inch of her skin.

  They’d made love on her living room floor, and again in her bedroom. And one last time that morning before he jumped out of bed and announced he was making Crystal breakfast.

  His hair, more golden than brown in the morning sun, rested on the smooth slope of his shoulders. The muscles in his back shifted as he lowered a ladle into the batter and poured it into the pan. It sizzled and popped.

  He turned and caught her watching him.

  “I ache for you, Crystal,” he said as if in wonderment at his own emotions. “You’re right there and still…” He put a hand to his chest. “It’s as if you’ve awakened me.”

  Crystal sat naked except for Weston’s ”Get Lit” t-shirt, which he’d left discarded on her bedroom floor the night before. The chair pressed cold against her
legs and bottom, but her body prickled at his words. She too felt the ache, the deep calling from within her. A foreign sensation, so alien she wondered if Wes had ignited an internal flame that had been dark her entire life.

  How many men had she dated? A few she’d even thought she loved, but now… now she understood she’d been terribly wrong.

  She stood and walked to him, softening against his hard chest, nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck. He held her, and his breath whooshed soft in her ear. The pancake in the skillet released a slightly noxious odor as it burned.

  She didn’t care. Neither of them cared. She’d never eat again if it meant they could stand there, suspended in time and space, holding one another.

  The phone rang and she jumped, bumping his chin with the top of her head.

  “No,” he murmured, though she hadn’t pulled away to answer it and she didn’t intend to.

  A charred odor drifted up from the pancake on the stove.

  Weston slipped a hand away and deftly flipped it with the spatula revealing a blackened pancake.

  Crystal giggled into his chest.

  The phone rang until her message machine picked up.

  They both listened to her voice on the machine followed by Bette’s.

  “Hey, call me. A girl I work with is having a birthday, and she loves pigs. I was thinking of giving her one of Mom’s. The one with the top hat. Just a thought. If you don’t want me to, I won’t. Love ya, bye.”

  “Who was that?” Weston asked, still keeping one arm around Crystal as he attempted a second, less scorched pancake.

  “My sister, Bette.”

  “And your mom has pet pigs? One that wears a top hat, no less?”

  Crystal sighed against him. “Our mom died. Cancer took her when I was eleven. Her mother collected pigs, figurines, not the live ones, and my mom kept a lot of them after my grandmother died. Bette is now the keeper of the pigs.”

  “I’m sorry you lost your mom,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head.

  Crystal pulled away and looked into his eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Do you still have your parents, Wes?”

  He’d mentioned his parents’ divorce, but she knew little else about the life of Weston Meeks.

  He furrowed his brow as he flipped a pancake. This one formed a perfectly round golden disc.

  “My mom left when I was ten. I have no idea if she’s still alive. My dad died when I was seventeen.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, squeezing him harder.

  He stroked her back.

  “It’s been a long time. It hurt when I was young but getting older helped me see her side. Now that I’m a man, I’ve forgiven both of them. My mother for leaving. Life with my father was hard, and she never wanted to be a mother. My dad was a workaholic and a very distant person emotionally. He paid the bills, and that’s about it. My mom…” he trailed off. “I think she just woke up one morning and decided she wanted a different life.”

  He pulled Crystal away and guided her back to her chair.

  “I want to keep holding you,” he assured her, “but if I do, we’re eating blackened pancakes.

  She laughed.

  “Anyway,” he continued returning to the stove. “She sent cards for the first few years and then…” He shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Did you ever try to find her?” Crystal asked.

  Wes nodded, turning the pan over and dropping the first edible pancake onto a plate before pouring another scoop of batter in the skillet.

  “After my dad died, I hooked up with a band and we started touring,” he grinned and looked embarrassed. “And by touring, I mean we drove around in a rusted van and begged dive bars to let us play for their drunken patrons. They paid us in booze.” He shook his head. “The dark ages. During my infrequent days of sobriety, I made a few calls. I never found her.”

  Crystal tried to imagine letting her mother go. Had the woman tried to leave, Crystal would have chased her to the ends of the earth. But then, Crystal’s mother would never have left, not of her own free will.

  “I tried again a couple years ago,” Wes said. “I was getting ready to turn thirty and… I wanted to know she was okay. I didn’t care if we had a relationship. I just wanted to put the questions to rest.”

  Crystal waited, noticing the crease between his eyebrows, the stiffness that settled in his shoulders.

  “Nothing. Not a thread of her anywhere. I searched through my dad’s stuff. I still have a few boxes. I found some of the old postcards she’d sent and I tried to track her through those, but her address changed frequently. She just disappeared.

  Crystal started to ask more, but he cut her off.

  “Enough about me. Did you grow up here in East Lansing?” he asked.

  “No, but nearby. Dimondale. It’s west of town,” she said.

  “Sure, yeah. I’ve been to the village bar once or twice. A pretty happening town,” he joked.

  Crystal laughed. “Yeah, if you’re ninety. I wanted to travel after high school. Once I saw more of the world, I realized how tiny Dimondale truly is. My sister still lives in our childhood home. She sort of followed in my dad’s footsteps. He’s an archeologist. She’s an anthropologist. They’re two peas in a pod.”

  “That’s great. It fascinates me when people pursue the same careers as their parents. Does your dad dig up dinosaur bones? That kind of thing?”

  Crystal laughed. It was the most common question asked when she told someone her father was an archeologist.

  “He’d absolutely love that,” she said, “but no. He used to do digs out of the country. He excavated skeletal remains in Australia and England with groups he was part of, but after my mom got sick, he shifted to a full-time teaching position and then a few years ago he retired. He’s part of the Michigan Archeological Society now. Most of his work these days involves directing young archeologists as they dig up old civilizations here in Michigan. They find pottery and tools.”

  “Intriguing,” he admitted, holding up a plate stacked with pancakes.

  “Voilà,” he announced. “I hope my goddess is hungry.”

  Crystal grinned and stood to grab syrup and butter.

  “For you,” she told him, “but I can make room for pancakes too.”

  * * *

  They ate at Crystal’s little kitchen table.

  Weston flipped the cover on one of her journals.

  “What’s this?” he asked, tapping the page where she’d written the series of seven numbers that had been plaguing her since childhood.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “It’s a number I’ve always had in my mind.”

  “But you don’t know what it means?” he asked.

  Crystal looked at the sequence, tilted her head sideways. Seven digits, seemingly random, and yet they’d been floating through her head for ages.

  When had she first thought of the number? When she was seven or eight. She remembered carving the digits into an oak tree, something she felt guilty about later but at the time seemed okay. All the kids were doing it. Bette had carved, ”Bette and Crystal 4 Ever” into the same tree and then added a crude heart around the words.

  “Six, two, five, one, nine, nine, one,” he read out loud. “It almost looks like nine-one-one in that part. A cry for help?”

  He smiled at her in a mischievous way, a tell-me-more way, but a tremor crept down her spine at the suggestion. The numbers had been on repeat in her brain for years and yet, whenever she truly gave it her attention, a sense of foreboding surrounded the numbers.

  “I do think they mean something,” she murmured.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  He squinted at the numbers and then picked up a pencil. He wrote an F beneath the number six.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Lining them up with the alphabet.” He finished and read the letters. “F - B - E - A - I - I - A. Fbeaiia? That mean anything to you?” he wondered.

 
She didn’t immediately answer. As she’d watched him transcribe the letters, her hands had begun to shake. Now, as she stared at the incomprehensible message, the fear slid away.

  He looked at her and she shook her head, standing and grabbing his plate.

  “Nope. Doesn’t mean a thing.” And it didn’t. But still, as she carried their plates to the sink, she found she didn’t want to turn around and look Weston in the eyes.

  12

  Now

  Bette sat near Officer Hart’s desk.

  She’d planted herself there nearly an hour before, refusing to leave until he told her what they’d found.

  When he walked over, his eyes looked troubled.

  “What?” she said, shooting to her feet. “Did you find her?”

  Hart shook his head and set a folder of papers on the desk.

  “No. There’s no sign of her in the woods. We have a search group still out there and two dogs. They couldn’t pick up a scent,” he explained.

  “But something happened?” Bette insisted, searching his face.

  “We interviewed Weston Meeks. Bette, are you aware that Mr. Meeks is married?”

  “Wait,” Bette held up a hand, which trembled so badly she pressed it against her chest. “Did you just say he’s married? As in he has a wife?”

  Officer Hart nodded.

  “Yes, he’s married to—” He paused and looked at a sheet of paper before him, “Hillary Meeks. They have a house in Traverse City where she works as an ICU nurse at Munson Hospital.”

  Bette’s heart raced beneath her hand.

  “But they’re separated, right? Or getting divorced?”

  Hart shook his head, lips set in a small thin line. “No, they’re not. We haven’t interviewed the wife, but we will. Wes came clean. He admitted he’s been having an affair, and that his wife knows nothing about Crystal.”