Dark Omen: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  Bette squinted at the table that seemed to blur and shift.

  “Was he with her when Crystal went missing?” Bette stammered.

  “He claimed he was in Traverse City all day Friday. He saw Crystal Wednesday, returned to Traverse City that evening. The following day, he developed some kind of stomach bug and spent the rest of Thursday and all day Friday in bed. He returned to Lansing on Saturday.”

  “Crystal said he teaches part time in Traverse City,” Bette mumbled. “Just a few classes on the side. Turns out he’s actually going home to his wife.”

  Hart nodded. “He divides his time. He was teaching at Northwest Michigan College and got the offer from MSU two years ago. It was a position too good to pass up, but his wife loves Traverse City and wasn’t interested in moving. He spends three days a week in East Lansing teaching and the other four days at home. He’s been doing that for two years.”

  Bette shook her head. “But he doesn’t spend four days at a home,” she said. “He spent almost all of his time with Crystal. Every time I called her, they were together. He wasn’t in Traverse City.”

  “His wife has been traveling a bit over the last couple of months. That, combined with lies, made it work. He told her he was slammed with grading and exams, that he’d volunteered to work with a writers’ group. He lied, Bette.”

  Bette sagged back into her chair, feeling suddenly sick.

  She thought of Crystal’s adoring eyes as she spoke of the man she’d claimed was her soul mate after they’d only shared a coffee together.

  It had all been a lie, a total fabrication.

  “It gets worse, I think…” Hart continued. “And this is between us, got it?”

  Bette put her hands to her face, unable to look at him, unsure if she wanted to know how it could possibly get worse.

  “A young woman disappeared from Traverse City two years ago,” Hart confided. “She was Weston Meeks’ assistant at the college. I have a friend in the force up there and I called him to see if Meeks had ever been in any trouble. No record, but my friend questioned Mr. Meeks extensively two years ago about his missing assistant. She disappeared without a trace. They’ve never found her.”

  Bette pulled down her hands and hunched over in her chair.

  She struggled to breathe, to think, to piece together what he was trying to say.

  Why would that be connected? Why would it matter? But she knew why. The fairytale man had lied to her sister; he had a wife, and now Crystal was missing—and she wasn’t the first young woman to go missing in Weston Meeks’ life.

  “Was he seeing her? Were they having an affair too?”

  Hart shook his head.

  “They never found evidence of that, but she was very pretty, and apparently she worshipped the ground Weston Meeks walked on. It’s not a huge leap to assume that something was going on.”

  Bette sat up and tried to channel her breath. It rushed in and got stuck in her throat as if her constricted diaphragm refused its passage. The room before her narrowed to a pinhole. Dark blotches shuffled at the edges of her vision.

  “Bette?” Hart asked.

  He stood and walked around the desk. He touched her arm and she blinked at him, but he was fading. She couldn’t catch her breath. She hadn’t had a panic attack in years and yet one was upon her, its concrete arms wrapped tight around her body hugging, squeezing until she’d suffocate and die.

  Hart reached for his desk, grabbed something and shoved it into her face. He gently pressed the back of her head toward her thighs.

  “Breathe into the bag, Bette, breathe,” and as her breath whooshed into the paper bag, releasing a wave of crinkling, she remembered Crystal doing the exact same thing after their mother died.

  “Breathe, Bette. It’s okay, come on, just breathe,” she’d whispered into Bette’s ear. The sack had ballooned out, collapsed, ballooned again.

  Hart’s fingers brushed Bette’s long dark hair from her face as if she were a co-ed who’d had too many plastic cups of cheap beer. His fingers felt cold and clammy against her neck, not unlike her own hands, tightly woven together in her lap. The sensation, the coolness of his touch, drew her back from the tunnel of dark she’d been slipping down.

  As she blinked toward the paper bag, it slid into focus. The hysteria ebbed away and the overbright fluorescent lights filtered back in.

  “I’m okay,” she murmured, sitting up. “Thank you. I’m okay now.”

  Hart let go of her hair and removed the bag. He walked back to his chair and sat down.

  “I’m sorry. That was too much, too quickly. I’ve been guilty of that before. Tactless, my ex-girlfriend called me.”

  Bette would have smiled but the muscles in her face felt weak as if she were a mannequin in a wax museum. She managed a nod of her head.

  “What now?” she asked, suddenly exhausted beyond measure. So tired and so afraid that she couldn’t imagine walking into the dark evening, climbing into her car and driving home.

  Hart glanced at the sheaf of papers on his desk.

  “More interviews. I’m heading to Traverse City tomorrow with my partner. We’re going to talk to Hillary Meeks and look into the case of the missing assistant. It’s never good when we find another missing person’s case related to a suspect, but it does give strengthen the theory that Weston Meeks was involved.”

  “Suspect. He’s a suspect?” Bette asked.

  Hart nodded.

  “He is now.”

  13

  Then

  “This love is better than books and movies. It’s better than any fictional romance I’ve ever heard of,” Crystal said, sitting on the floor in the living room and drawing invisible circles in the cream carpet.

  That morning she’d arrived at Bette’s house, formerly their childhood home, and Bette had been grilling her for details on Weston Meeks.

  “Better than Ralph and Meggie in Thornbirds? No way!” Bette said, finishing her cup of coffee.

  “Way better than that,” Crystal insisted. “It’s not forbidden.” Though something tugged at her spine when she said the word “forbidden,” that creeping sense of knowing. She pushed it down.

  “Except it is forbidden, right?” Bette countered. “He’s a professor. You’re a student.”

  Crystal shrugged. “We’re careful.”

  “Refill?” Bette asked, standing and holding out a hand for Crystal’s mug.

  Crystal handed it to her. It was pink with white polka dots and said “World’s Best Mom.” They’d given it to their mother for Mother’s Day the year before she died. Crystal loved the mug and chose it whenever she had coffee in her childhood home.

  “He sounds too good to be true. When will I meet the fairytale professor?” Bette asked.

  Crystal watched her refill the coffees, adding milk and sugar to Crystal’s cup. The sugar caught the sunlight filtering through the window. It fell like fairy dust, glittering and unreal.

  “Too good to be true,” Crystal murmured, returning to her carpet designs.

  “Is he?” Bette asked, overhearing her.

  She handed Crystal the mug.

  Crystal took a drink. The coffee still tasted bitter. The fairy dust hadn’t done the trick.

  “No, he’s perfect.”

  Bette rolled her eyes.

  “Come on,” Bette took a big swallow of her black coffee and set it on a coaster on the coffee table. “Tell me what’s wrong with him. Not for my sake, but for yours. You need to ground this thing back in reality before the rose-colored bubble you’ve stuck your head into explodes.”

  Crystal laughed. “He loves fish, like loves it, loves it. We’re going on a date tomorrow night to some place called Frasier Gorge, and he’s bringing his specialty. Fish tacos!” Crystal moaned.

  Bette made a gagging face. “You’ll have to throw yourself into the gorge to escape them. Ugh! What kind of person chooses fish tacos as their specialty?”

  Again, Crystal laughed. She and Bette both had a lifelong a
version to fish, a repugnance born from all the fish sticks their father fed them in the years after their mother’s death.

  “Tilapia tacos,” she added. “I’ve heard tilapia’s not that bad, sort of tasteless.” She wrinkled her nose and Bette nodded.

  “Sounds delicious. This guy’s clearly got issues.”

  Crystal stuck out her tongue and reclined on the floor, propping her knees up.

  Chai jumped down from the couch and padded over, nuzzling her face into Crystal’s hair.

  “Hi, Chai baby. How’s the best kitty in the whole wide world?”

  “Don’t let Oolong hear you,” Bette told her. “She’s already licking her tail bald. If she thinks you prefer Chai, she might start on her hind legs.”

  Crystal stroked Chai’s back and then twittered her fingers at Oolong, who still lay stretched out on the couch.

  “Come here Oolong, come get the petties.”

  Oolong ignored her.

  “It’s too late,” Bette said. “She’s a grudge-holder, that one. You’ll be lucky to get a sniff on your deathbed.”

  “I guess I’ll have to ask Wes to bribe her with some fish tacos.”

  Bette scowled and mimed sticking a finger down her throat.

  “In all seriousness, Crystal. This guy sounds a little over the top. The poetry, the longing for you over centuries. I mean, who talks like that?”

  Crystal turned on her side, propping her head in her hand.

  “I love it. I do. I love him, Bette. I’m completely in love with him.”

  Bette raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

  “Okay, well, how about his family? Or friends? Have you met anyone in his life?”

  Crystal shook her head.

  “His mom left when he was young. His dad was more of a part-time dad who worked all the time. He died when Wes was seventeen and Wes started moving around the country, sleeping on people’s floors, playing music and writing poetry.”

  “Which all sounds very romantic, but also means Wes has some problems. I mean you know that, right? Crystal, you have a better read on people than anyone I’ve ever met. He has to be affected by those things. A mother who abandoned him and a negligent father.”

  Crystal sighed, wishing for once that Bette could just accept someone at face value.

  “He’s good, Bette. His heart is good. He should be scarred by what happened to him. We’re scarred by what happened to us. No one makes it to adulthood without being shaped by everything that came before. Should I judge him for that? Run away because he had a hard childhood?” Crystal demanded.

  Bette sighed and held up her hands.

  “Okay, I’m sorry. I don’t believe in fairytales, Crystal. You know that. But maybe he’s the real thing. I want to meet him, though. When are you bringing him over for dinner?”

  Crystal grinned.

  “Maybe this week. Let me talk to him.”

  * * *

  “So, this is Frasier Gorge,” Crystal said, marveling out the window as Wes maneuvered his Jeep Wagoneer up the winding forest road. "How have I never heard of this place?”

  “Top secret,” Wes told her. “The closest we get to the top of the world in the flat plains of central Michigan. I’ve heard it called a lover’s lane. Maybe the universe didn’t want you to discover it until you found your great lover.”

  “Mmm.” She snuggled against him. “I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather experience it with than you. Did you have a lover’s lane in high school, Wes?”

  He turned onto a grassy trail, his headlights illuminating a path barely carved from the dense forest.

  “Sundrops Park,” he said. “On most Friday nights, there’d be a dozen cars parked there, windows so steamed up, you’d think there were locomotives inside.”

  Crystal laughed and reached into Wes’s lap, rubbing his thigh. “I’ve never seen the inside of a car when it’s all steamed up. Maybe we could make that happen tonight?”

  “Yes, please,” he murmured, and kissed the top of her head. “Your wish is my command.”

  He parked the car, and Crystal climbed out. The forest bustled behind them, but in front of them, a grassy space, trampled by cars, sat overlooking the forest and sky. Frasier Gorge plummeted a hundred or more feet into more dense woods, green-black beneath the purpling sky.

  A flood of exhilaration poured through her as she surveyed the miles of wilderness stretched before her and further, the distant lights of the city. It was a secret paradise, a cliff tucked amid long flat farmlands and concrete cities.

  Crystal tilted her head to look at the sky. Wes walked behind her and pressed his chest into her back, wrapping his arms around her and tracing his fingertips over her jaw and down her neck.

  He kissed her ear.

  “Tell me what you feel,” he whispered.

  She craned her head back further, traced the curve of the sky with her eyes.

  “Like a single fleck of dust floating down from the stars. Held, immersed, free.”

  14

  Now

  Bette opened her door to find Officer Hart standing on the porch.

  “I wanted to drop off this box of stuff from your sister’s car. The Volkswagen won’t be released for another week, but we’ve gone through this already. There’s a journal, which we photocopied, and a few other personal items.”

  Bette took the box with trembling hands.

  “Come in,” she told him.

  Hart followed her into the house.

  Bette set the box on the table and peeled back the flaps. The first thing she saw was the faded photograph Crystal kept tucked behind her steering wheel, blocking the speedometer. It was an image of her and Bette, hand in hand, on a Lake Michigan Beach. Their mother had taken the photo. Their dad had been scouring the shoreline for Petoskey stones, wading knee deep into the water to pluck them from the sandy depths.

  Gritting her teeth, she took the picture out. A faint residue of light powder smudged the edges where the police had dusted for fingerprints.

  “I can’t lose my sister,” Bette gasped, clutching the picture. “I can’t be without a mom and a sister. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…” Bette cried as she spoke, unable to keep it together, unable to plaster on her strong face.

  Chai, distinguishable only by her single black ear, plodded from the living room and gazed mistrustfully at Officer Hart.

  Everything within Bette twisted. She wanted to rip things from the walls. She wanted to pull out the pain, somehow make it stop, but she couldn’t. There was no way to make it stop and proof, evidence, the truth, that might be worse yet. Right now, she held a shred of something, not hope, no, nothing close to hope existed in her tense, desperate body, but something… something other than complete despair.

  Hart didn’t touch her. He watched, tensed, his eyes filled with the unfathomable truth that Bette didn’t want to see.

  He regularly told people their loved ones were dead. She could see it on his face. He wasn't a stranger to her desperate grief.

  “Can I call your dad, Bette? Or someone else? A friend?” he asked.

  “My sister,” she screamed, dropping the picture and pulling at her long dark hair. “Call my sister.” The shriek turned into a wail and she crumpled to the floor, tucked her legs into her body and buried her face in her knees.

  “Call my sister,” she mumbled again because that was the only person who could make it right.

  * * *

  “Bette, I’d like you go see Dr. Bliss,” Homer said.

  He’d walked in with paper bags of Chinese food as Bette was having a meltdown and had proceeded to brew a pot of coffee and see Officer Hart out.

  Bette narrowed her eyes at him, her hands wrapped around her mug like it contained the last shreds of her sanity. She’d opted for the World’s-Best-Mother mug that Crystal always chose when she visited.

  “Are you serious?” she asked, barking a derisive laugh.

  She and Crystal had joked many times about Dr. Bliss. His name alone
ignited peals of hysterical laughter in the sisters. He was a dry, monotone man with painted pictures of elk hanging from his beige office walls.

  Their father had chosen him as their child psychiatrist after their mother’s death because he knew Dr. Bliss from the university. The doctor couldn’t have been a more inappropriate child psychiatrist. He used words like bereavement and functional impairment. There hadn’t been a single colorful item in his office.

  “Dad, Dr. Bliss didn’t help when I was eleven years old, and he sure as hell won’t help me now,” Bette snapped.

  “Well, he could prescribe something for the anxiety. You don’t look good, Bette. You’ve nearly finished the pot of coffee, and I haven’t seen you eat all day.”

  Bette blinked at him.

  “Who cares about eating? Do you?” She narrowed her eyes at the plate of Chinese food he’d barely touched.

  “You can’t help Crystal if you have a nervous breakdown,” he said quietly.

  Bette blinked at him, shocked and hurt by his words.

  He wasn’t entirely off base. Bette had suffered breakdowns before. The first occurred during her senior in high school when she was passed over for Valedictorian. The second when her first serious boyfriend, Elijah, died in a car accident.

  Both instances landed Bette in the emergency room after hours of hysterical crying. The doctors sedated her, and when she woke, the terror no longer consumed her. She’d tried to explain the terror to Crystal later, the sheer horror that seemed to bypass her mental faculties and lodge in her body, trapping her in a stream of fight or flight. Except she couldn’t fight or flee her failure, nor could she fight or flee from Elijah’s death. 

  She’d come to understand the physiological responses to fear during her graduate work in anthropology. Humans and chimpanzees were the only species that regularly engaged in war. Thousands of years spent in an environment of battle and death had primed her to be ever vigilant and given her body’s sympathetic nervous system full control when a threat arose.