Dark Omen: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

She’d simply known it. The dog’s name was Willy after the character in Willy Wonka.

  “Tags,” she offered, tugging on the dog’s collar. She had no idea if the dog had a nametag, but assumed so.

  Four other people had signed up for the trip. Two middle-aged couples. The husbands worked together at a large insurance company downtown and their wives had been planning the trip for months.

  “Why don’t you ride up front with me?” Dan asked, flashing her his gorgeous lopsided smile.

  She nodded, grabbing her notebook and climbing in to the seat.

  Willy bounded in through the back, laying on the floor between them.

  Dan closed the door and leapt into the driver’s seat.

  As he started to pull from the parking lot, Crystal jumped as a hand pounded on her passenger side window.

  She turned to find Wes, hair messy, eyes gleaming, standing outside the van.

  She didn’t roll down the window. She pushed open the door and jumped into his arms.

  “I cancelled everything. I signed up. I’m going,” he announced.

  He waved his ticket at Dan in the driver’s seat.

  Dan turned off the engine and climbed out, examining Wes’s ticket.

  “You guys know each other?” Dan asked, looking slightly crestfallen as he glanced back and forth between them.

  Wes put an arm around Crystal’s waist, lifting her.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear.

  She looked at him, his eyes telling her everything she needed to know.

  “I love you,” she murmured, realizing she had spoken the words after they’d already slipped out.

  His eyes widened, and he leaned his forehead against hers.

  “I love you too. I love you so much it hurts.”

  “Guess you guys are in the third row,” Dan interrupted, pointing toward the back of the van. “Willy, you get to ride shotgun after all.”

  * * *

  Crystal hoisted herself onto the cliff ledge, skipping across the hard, uneven surface. She paused at the edge, waiting for Wes to catch up.

  When he climbed to the top of the cliff, he paused, craning his neck forward.

  “I don’t know,” he murmured. “That cliff down there looked safer.”

  Dan climbed behind him, muscular and agile. He reached the edge in two long strides.

  “Epic fall, baby,” he said to Crystal as he stepped backwards to the ledge and jumped.

  Crystal watched him fall, feet first, arms and legs straight. He shot into the water like a bullet.

  She turned back to Wes, ready to talk him into the jump, but he took off, running head down toward the edge.

  She gasped as he flung himself into the wide expanse of sky. He curled over and stretched his arms out, making the long dive, hands first into the water below.

  Dan popped up and clapped as he watched Wes take the plunge. The ripples where Wes disappeared into the water spread out, creating an ever-widening circle in the calm lake.

  Crystal watched, waiting, the smile slowly falling from her face. Her heart spasmed, and she saw Dan’s own features far below warping into a grimace as he scanned the water for Wes.

  She clenched her hands and stepped to the edge, still desperately searching for Wes, sure he’d hit the bottom, broken his arms, or worse, his neck.

  Panicked, she jumped.

  As she fell, Wes popped up, a few yards out, his wet hair a shade darker against the blue water.

  He lifted a hand to wave, but she’d already leapt from the cliff. She flailed for a moment before sticking her legs together, falling fast, and slicing through the water feet first.

  When she broke the surface, Wes paddled to her, grinning.

  “Let’s do it again,” he beamed.

  She smiled, heart crashing in her ears, as she wrapped her arms around his slick neck and hugged him.

  * * *

  They ate hot dogs and marshmallows by the bonfire. Dan regaled them with spooky stories of a man-sized crow that stalked the Upper Peninsula woods feeding on the hearts of cruel men.

  “I’m going to head back to the yurt,” Weston whispered in her ear. “Wait five minutes and join me?”

  “What are you up to?” she asked, nuzzling her face into his beard.

  “Who, me?” he asked, feigning innocence. “I just want to be sure my beloved doesn’t get eaten by the ten-foot crow if he’s tucked into our bunk.”

  Crystal laughed. “Go on. I want to take a quick swim. Might be more like ten minutes than five.”

  His eyes flicked to the slope of the dune leading down to the beach.

  “Alone? Are you sure? Maybe I should come with you.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve been doing things alone for many moons, Professor Meeks. Go slay the man-eating crow.”

  She kissed the tip of his nose and stood, bidding the others goodnight. Running down the sandy bluff to the water’s edge, she slipped off her t-shirt and kicked her shorts away.

  The nearly full moon cast the lake in a ghostly light.

  As she stepped in, wading quickly to her waist, the icy water stole her breath. In the bright midday sun, distracted by the exhilaration of cliff jumping, she hadn’t noticed the cold. Now it sank into her flesh like icy teeth.

  She gathered her courage, sucked in a breath and dove forward, slicing through the frigid water. For several seconds, the cold jarred her. Gradually her body acclimated, and she swam deeper into the lake.

  Rolling onto her back, she stretched her arms wide and floated, gazing at the velvet black sky adorned with a million stars. She tried to quiet her mind, calm the voice urging her back to Weston.

  “Let me be here first,” she murmured, a token phrase she’d used for years when she found her mind jumping to the future and threatening to miss the glory of the moment blossoming around her.

  She breathed and floated, and marveled at the heavens, and she did not fear the end of her life, though she felt it looming, knocking quietly at a door in some faraway place.

  Stilling her churning legs, she allowed her body to drift beneath the surface before sliding back out and swimming for the shore.

  A shadow passed above her, and Crystal glanced up to see birds, hundreds of dark birds, swarming across the sky. They blotted out the moon and the stars, and for several seconds she didn’t swim but watched them in awe.

  Goosebumps lit her spine from nape to tailbone. As she reached shallow water, she stood and walked uncertainly toward the beach.

  The birds, and more still coming, settled in droves in the trees. She heard their mad chittering and saw them nipping and rustling their feathers, but their numbers made the trees themselves appear like giants perched on the bluff.

  As she approached the trail leading back through the dune grass, the crows, as if in unspoken agreement, hushed.

  Their silence was more unnerving than their sound, and Crystal stopped, pulling on her shorts and t-shirt and looking down the beach, vaguely hopeful that Weston had followed her and she wouldn’t have to walk beneath the gathering of birds alone.

  Her mind hurdled to Dan’s story of the man-sized crow and she shuddered, imagining the birds melting together, forming the monster that would devour her on the moon-washed beach.

  Lifting one leg, she tried to step forward, but her other foot held firmly in place, half of her refusing to walk into the shadow of the sleek birds. She watched them watching her, pictured a thousand shiny black eyes studying her on the white sand.

  A shadow broke from the trees, tall and man-shaped, and Crystal gasped and pedaled backwards as it fled down the sand toward her.

  She threw up her hands and shrieked.

  “Crystal?” a familiar voice called. Dan’s voice.

  She lowered her hands to find Dan standing before her, a wicked smile stretched across his face.

  “Damn, I scared you, huh?” He laughed and shook his head. “I always get somebody with that old crow story.” He clapped his hands together as if te
rribly pleased with himself, and Crystal offered a shaky smile in return.

  “Thanks a lot, Dan. If someone throws a snake in your tent tonight, don’t look at me,” she told him, brushing past him to the walk up the dune.

  “Oh, come on, your knight in shining armor would have protected you from the crow man. And if he didn’t, I’d swoop in to save the day,” he yelled to her back as she trudged up the hill.

  She offered a backward wave, and as she passed under the line of trees, she realized the birds had returned to their chittering.

  The eerie silence had vanished.

  When she peeled back the canvas door on the yurt, she saw Weston had lit white candles along the floor and sprinkled yellow rose petals across the bed.

  “Too much?” he asked when she stepped in, barefoot and still wet.

  Her hair dripped water in rivulets down her body. Wes sat on the edge of the bed, wearing only a pair of black boxer briefs. He watched her, his face glowing in the candlelight, his chest steadily rising and falling.

  Crystal pulled her t-shirt off and lifted a hand to her bathing suit top, untying the strings and letting it fall to the floor. She kicked off her shorts and crossed the space between them, feeling his hands, warm and large, run up her clammy backside.

  He pulled her into his lap, and she pressed her face into his shoulder.

  “You’re shaking,” he whispered, kissing her temple.

  “Cold water,” she murmured, but it was the crows that rose into her thoughts.

  * * *

  The following day, their group ate a light breakfast of fruit and granola bars before launching kayaks and paddling toward Pictured Rocks.

  The huge sandstone cliffs rose from the water, revealing half a dozen layers of copper, cobalt, sand and cream.

  “These cliffs were formed millions of years ago,” Dan called as they drifted into the lake. “The colors originate from different minerals. Iron creates the red shades, manganese is responsible for the blues and blacks, limonite contributes to the whites and tans, and finally copper adds the green tones.”

  “The copper color isn’t from copper?” Melanie, one of the two wives in the group, asked, lifting a disposable camera encased in a plastic Ziploc bag.

  “Nope,” Dan answered. “Ever worn copper jewelry? When copper interacts with the air, it leaves a green residue.”

  The tip of Melanie’s kayak knocked against her husband’s.

  “Hey, now, bumper kayaks is not my idea of a good time,” he complained, using his paddle to nudge her kayak away as he drifted toward the other husband in the group.

  “Look at that,” Crystal murmured, pointing to a heart-shaped cliff above them.

  Wes tilted his head up.

  “Wow,” he breathed. “Can we jump off of that one?” Wes called to Dan, who had paddled over to Kristy, a fifty-something homemaker who hadn’t been away from her three children since they were born. Her husband was yapping away to his colleague about insurance claims, oblivious that his wife was dangerously close to flipping.

  “Ha, I’d lose my license for that. Some of those cliffs are two-hundred-feet high,” Dan responded. “This is an adventure tour, not a suicide mission,” he told them. “Kristy, I need you to you stay in the center of the kayak. Okay, doll? No rocking with the boat. Understand?”

  The woman pursed her lips and nodded, holding still as she attempted to paddle further between the rocky outcroppings.

  Her husband continued chattering on, and Wes shot Crystal an amused look.

  “Come on,” he told her, nodding toward an opening in the bottom of a cliff.

  They kayaked over, Dan still trying to keep Kristy from tipping.

  As they slid into the dark cavern, Crystal studied the slick rock walls.

  Weston paddled ahead of her.

  She glanced at the water. It had gone from green to black in the darkness.

  Without warning, a fist seemed to grab hold of Crystal’s heart and squeeze. She gasped, dropping her paddle, her hands flying to her constricted chest.

  Weston hadn’t realized she’d stopped. He was paddling on, moving deeper into the darkness.

  Crystal was sure the moment had arrived: the point of her young and untimely death. She had thought there was still time. Time to leave notes, to tidy up the loose ends of her short life.

  Her kayak thumped against the slimy black rock, and she struggled to pull air into her choked lungs.

  A voice sounded behind her. Dan’s voice calling out to them.

  A shadow pushed from the darkness in the cave. A pale hand reached out, and she shrieked, pushing it away. The tumult rocked her kayak too far, and her head smacked the rock as she plunged sideways into the water.

  The cold of the water shocked her and stole the meager breath she’d sucked in before going under.

  It was black beneath the surface, the sun blocked by the yards of impossibly heavy rock overhead.

  She thrashed her arms and legs trying to swim for the light, but she couldn’t tell up from down. Her fingers scraped against rock.

  Something grabbed her from behind, hard fingers snaked into her hair and pulled. She fought away from the grip and kicked back, her foot connecting with something soft like a stomach.

  She swam forward, she saw the first glimmer of light and then a figure in front of her.

  Dan.

  He was blurry but recognizable. Her lungs screamed for air as he grabbed her arm and hauled her to the surface. She burst from the water, gasping and coughing.

  Dan wrapped an arm around her waist.

  “Where’s Weston?” he shouted.

  Crystal’s eyes shot wide open. She’d forgotten about Wes.

  “He’s… He’s…” She struggled to get the words out. Her throat burned when she spoke.

  A head exploded through the water behind them.

  “Wes!” she croaked.

  He gasped and swam to Dan and Crystal.

  “My God, are you okay? What happened?” he demanded. “I heard you flip. I tried to help you, but…”

  Dan didn’t wait for Wes’s story.

  “Throw us those life vests,” he yelled to Kristie, whose kayak bobbed by Dan’s.

  She grabbed three life preservers and flung them across the water.

  “Here,” Dan thrust one to Wes.

  He made sure Crystal had a life jacket clutched in her hands before he released her, and then he slid his arms into one, buckling the front as he floated on his back.

  He helped Crystal fasten the buckle on hers and checked Weston’s.

  “You’ll never get back in your kayaks in this deep water. Best if we just swim into shore,” he told them.

  Dan tied their kayaks to those of the other members in their group, and they began the slow swim to shore.

  “What happened, Crystal? I heard you scream, but by the time I got there, you were flipping.” Weston spoke in huffs as he did a wide breaststroke in the cold water.

  Crystal closed her eyes and thought again of the pale hand coming from the darkness.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Wes. The darkness and the small space. I guess I panicked.”

  It wasn’t entirely a lie. She didn’t know what had happened. For those long, frightening seconds in the cave, she thought death had arrived to take her.

  23

  Now

  Bette sat on Garrett’s couch sipping her glass of wine and watching the tiny metal balls in his Newton’s Cradle clink back and forth. She’d set it moving a moment earlier. It stood next to a large coffee-table book filled with glossy photographs by Ansel Adams.

  Garret returned with a black date book.

  “This is my bible. I’d forget to tie my shoes without this thing.”

  He sat next to Bette on the couch and flipped open to the week Crystal disappeared.

  “So, two days before I last saw Crystal, I worked from nine to three, left early to get my teeth whitened. Hmm…” He mumbled a few things. “Oh, yeah, yes. I
went bowling with my friend Jack. I invited Crystal, but when she opened her door, I saw Wes stretched out on her floor, a towel wrapped around his waist. I’m sure you can imagine what they were up to.”

  A knock sounded on the door and Bette jumped, managing not to spill her wine, which would have sent Garrett scrambling for a rag and carpet cleaner.

  “Garret?” a voice called through the door.

  Weston’s voice.

  Bette held a finger to her lips and pointed at Garret’s bedroom door.

  “Answer it. I want to hear what he says.”

  Garret cringed and shook his head, but Bette grabbed his arm and dug her fingers into his wrist.

  “Yes,” she hissed.

  Bette slipped into Garret’s bedroom, where she had a clear view of the couch and could easily listen to their conversation.

  Garret opened the door.

  “Hi Wes,” Garret said, and Bette grimaced at the forced politeness in his tone. “Come on in.”

  Wes followed him into the apartment.

  Garret glanced at Bette and quickly plastered on a smile when Wes faced him.

  Bette eyed Wes, who looked haggard under the bright apartment lights. Dark grooves marred his forehead, and his cheeks were sunken and hollowed.

  “How are you holding up, Wes?” Garret asked. “You look… tired.”

  Wes closed his eyes and teetered on his feet for a moment.

  Garret grabbed his arm to steady him.

  “Are you drunk?” Garret asked.

  Wes shook his head. “I haven’t slept in days, and I’ve been getting sick a lot. I’m having nightmares. My world is just… it’s falling apart and Crystal…”

  Garret directed a horrified expression at Bette as he guided Wes to the couch.

  Bette wished she could feed him the hundred questions circling in her mind.

  “Can I get you something? A cup of coffee or—?”

  “Have anything hard?” Wes interrupted. “Vodka?”

  Garret nodded. “Yeah, sure, vodka cranberry?”

  “Just ice,” Wes murmured.

  He leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes, reopening them and gazing at the table where Bette’s and Garret’s glasses of wine sat.