Dark Omen: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “A lot of rumors circulated. Some people thought he might be seeing a girl on the sly, maybe somebody with a boyfriend and her boyfriend showed up that night. Matt’s friends, my son Nate included, swore up and down that wasn’t the case. He was still dating Greta, although he intended to break it off. Matt didn’t have a disloyal bone in his body. He wouldn’t run around, especially with another guy’s girl.”

  Montgomery picked up another cookie and picked a chocolate chip off the top, sliding it into his mouth.

  “What about Peter Budd?” Bette asked.

  “The coroner classified his death as an accidental fall.”

  “But you didn’t believe it?”

  He laughed. “I notice how you keep putting words in my mouth.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to presume.”

  “It’s okay, you’re presuming right,” Montgomery confirmed. “I didn’t believe it. One, because not a single person had ever heard of Peter Budd going up to that cliff. Not his wife, his buddies, nobody. The man was lazier than a toad. He had to hike a mile up a rocky path in the woods to get to that cliff. Nature enthusiasts and teenagers are the only people who hike up there. It’s beautiful.

  “But Peter wasn’t exactly a man who appreciated nature. He rarely veered far from his trailer and his refrigerator of beer. When he did go out, he frequented a pub within walking distance of his trailer. When he fished, he went to the river a few miles from his place. I found it odd that he’d go to Black Rocks, even odder that he’d get close enough to the edge to fall. Odder still that he left all his fishing gear in the truck.”

  “Did you investigate his death?”

  “Sure, absolutely. I prodded the coroner to do a thorough autopsy including a toxicology screen. I wondered if someone had drugged him. He wasn’t a loved guy, so I had more than a few people to consider if murder had been the cause of his death, but the coroner came up empty.

  “A couple saw him on the trail that day and said he was alone. He was struggling up the hill, panting. One funny thing is they saw a blanket laid out on that cliff edge. They passed it before Peter, so he couldn’t have taken it with him unless he’d gone up and back down. Anyhow, they didn’t see anyone else around, but when they passed the area twenty minutes later, the blanket and Peter were gone. They had no idea he’d gone over the cliff. They didn’t hear a scuffle, a scream. They figured the man they’d seen had walked back down the hill. They saw his truck when they left the park.

  “The couple spotted his picture in the newspaper a few days later. His body had washed up on the beach about a mile from the park. Once they came forward, we found his truck and got a better idea of how he died.”

  “How do you know he fell off the cliff?” Bette challenged.

  “Our guys searched the whole park and the cliffs. We had a deputy who rappelled out there on the regular and found one of Peter’s shoes lodged between two of the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Seemed likely that he’d fallen on the rocks. His foot had been stuck, but the water eventually pulled his body out, leaving the shoe behind. The coroner also suspected a fall based on the damage to his body.”

  “Did he have life insurance?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “Nope, didn’t leave a penny to his wife.”

  “Was she a suspect at all?”

  Again, Montgomery shook his head. “She worked full time at the plant. She’d clocked in that morning and worked on the line until five that evening.”

  “How about Greta?”

  “Well, she was harder to pinpoint. Greta attended school that day and claimed she returned to the trailer that night. There was no one to verify her whereabouts that evening, but you’ve got to remember Greta was a teenage girl. How did she lure him up there? How did she push him off? It seemed like an unlikely scenario and one I gave zero thought to until Matt died.”

  “And then you wondered if Greta was behind it?”

  Montgomery shrugged.

  “I mulled it over a bit. I asked around about Greta and Peter’s relationship. It sounded tense. A few of the residents in the trailer park thought Peter had a thing for the girl. I wouldn’t have put it passed him to act on those urges, but if he did, she never told anyone. At least no one who came forward and reported it.”

  * * *

  Bette checked into a hotel overlooking Lake Superior. The wind had picked up throughout the day, causing the water to churn and crash. She watched it smash against the dark rocks jutting from the surf.

  Bette wondered if the woman she met could have done the things people believed. Slit her boyfriend’s throat? It didn’t seem plausible. The girl had only been sixteen. The grown Greta was thin. The sixteen-year-old version had probably weighed a hundred pounds.

  And then there was Peter Budd. Montgomery had described him as big and paunchy. He probably outweighed Greta by more than a hundred pounds. Greta’s boyfriend, Matt, played football and in their photos Matt stood a foot taller than his lanky girlfriend. How could she have killed them both?

  Bette had stopped at a convenience store and bought a nightshirt, toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb and a bottle of wine. She pulled the wine from the bag and dropped the other items on the bed, walking to the window.

  “Where are you, Crystal?” she whispered, leaning her forehead against the glass.

  She uncorked the bottle of Cabernet and started to pour a glass.

  A knock sounded on Bette’s door and she jumped, nearly spilling the dark liquid onto the beige carpet. She set the wine on the table and walked to her door, peeking through the viewing hole.

  40

  Then

  Crystal listened as Greta paced outside her room. Up and down the hall, the sharp slap of her shoes on the wood floor. The woman sometimes said things as if she were speaking to someone else.

  “Of course,” Greta suddenly shouted. “But I’ll kill her when I’m ready!”

  Crystal curled into a tight ball and imagined a white light swirling around her, protecting her and the baby. She’d done the little visualizations for years, any time she was injured or someone was ill. She imagined they were wrapped in a ball of white light. It was a light so strong that evil, hatred, darkness could not enter.

  When Greta finally flung the door open, Crystal cringed, sure she’d streak into the room with a knife and start sinking the blade into Crystal’s back.

  Her hands had been bound again while she slept, this time in front of her. She’d tried to work them free, but the zip ties were so tight they bit into her wrists. She stopped her rocking as Greta paused at her bedside.

  “I saw in the newspaper that you have a sister,” Greta said, sitting on the bed and smoothing the hair away from Crystal’s face. “I have a sister too.”

  “Bette?” Crystal whispered.

  She tried to imagine Bette at that moment. Bette didn’t handle stress well. She would be going crazy trying to find Crystal.

  “Bette. She’s desperate to find her sister. She’ll do anything.” Greta laughed. “People are so naive. As if appealing to a captor on television will help. Most people are dead within hours of being abducted. Can you imagine how many days, years, of people’s lives are wasted hoping their sister or their mother or their daughter will come home? Wake up, people!” Greta shouted. “They’re never coming home.”

  Crystal’s eyes filled with tears. They slipped over her cheeks and soaked the mattress.

  “We’re going to take a little trip today,” Greta announced, pulling on Crystal’s bound hands until she stood.

  Her legs felt weak, but she stepped into the hall in front of Greta, recoiling when she saw a single wood chair at the end. A child-sized doll sat in the chair with long dark hair braided into pigtails. The doll watched them with glassy blue eye. Bits of plastic had flaked off her chin and one cheek. She wore an ugly gray dress with black stitching.

  Greta didn’t address the doll as they passed it, but Crystal was sure she was the object Greta had been ranting to minutes before.r />
  * * *

  Crystal watched the sprawling brick buildings topped by sharp spires. As they walked closer, Crystal’s heart galloped in her chest. Her muscles grew taught beneath her skin, and she wondered whether she’d ever be found if she died in one of the abandoned buildings.

  Bette and her father would never know what became of her. Weston would never know. She’d be a mystery, a hindrance to all their future happiness.

  The mere thought of her sister made her knees go weak. She stumbled and almost fell, but Greta grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her up. Crystal cried out and lifted her bound hands toward her head, wincing.

  “If it hurts, then don’t fall,” Greta snapped.

  Greta stopped at a brown metal door and pulled a ring of keys from her pocket. She inserted one into the lock, shimmied her hand and shoved the door open. A long dark corridor lay empty before them. Crystal felt the nearness of those who had left, the jumble of nurses, doctors and administrators filtering through the doors as a wave. The sadness, despair and fear of the patients shuffled out. Some of them wanted to leave and leapt for joy when they fled the building. Others grabbed at the doorframes, clung to the orderlies and sobbed like children.

  Crystal’s head throbbed with the onslaught of feelings that overwhelmed her as Greta forced her into the hallway. The walls were brick, the floors carpeted but worn thin.

  Tall windows had already been shattered by stones thrown by teenagers. Broken glass speckled on the dirty carpet. Wheelchairs, desks, file cabinets, and clothes lay scattered in the halls and rooms. The building looked as if the occupants had barely bothered to take their coats as they left.

  “This was the children’s ward,” Greta said, waving her hand at a mural of the Seven Dwarves. “And Maribelle stayed in this room.”

  “Maribelle is your doll?” Crystal asked, though she knew that wasn’t quite right. Maribelle was the doll, but she’d once been… “Your sister,” Crystal breathed as the realization came to her.

  A yellowed cot stripped of its bedding leaned against one wall. Another cot stood tall next to its frame. A plush yellow Big Bird, its arm torn off to reveal a plume of white stuffing, rested among scattered drawings and broken crayons.

  “What happened to your sister?” Crystal asked.

  Greta kicked the Big Bird. It tumbled into the dark crack beneath the bed.

  “Loose lips sink ships,” she murmured.

  She knelt and picked up half of a red crayon. She walked to the wall and scrawled the words on the brick — LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS — in the big broken letters of a child’s handwriting.

  “Someone killed her?” Crystal asked.

  “Oh no,” Greta took on a small girl’s voice and shook her head adamantly. “She fell and hit her head.”

  Greta didn’t look at Crystal, and Crystal suddenly thought the chance to run was upon her; but the moment she lifted her foot, Greta snatched her arm, sinking her sharp nails into Crystal’s bicep.

  * * *

  They returned to the mammoth asylum building at night, Crystal’s arms pinned to her sides, her legs free.

  Greta held a small flashlight. They went in through a different doorway this time. No carpet stretched down the long hallway. The floors were cement, the walls a formidable brick that seemed to close in on them. File cabinets crowded the corridors and papers littered the floor.

  “Hi-ho, Hi-ho, it’s to the tunnels we go,” Greta sang under breath.

  “What are the tunnels?” Crystal asked.

  Greta didn’t answer. She didn’t answer most of Crystal’s questions, but Crystal asked them anyway, unable to stand the silence broken only by the clap of their feet on the hard floor.

  Greta stopped at another door and pulled out her keys.

  “Time to go down… down… down… down,” Greta sang again in a deep, creepy voice that made Crystal want to scream.

  Crystal spun around and ran through the dark corridor, quiet, holding her breath, heart racing. She barreled sideways into a door marked “Stairs,” nearly tripped, fell into the darkness and then found her balance. She clamored up, legs pumping, arms stuck to her sides.

  Greta didn’t yell out, she didn’t threaten Crystal, but she pursued her. Crystal heard the double slap of the other woman’s footfalls, and she saw the beam of light as Greta burst into the stairwell behind her.

  Crystal dove through another doorway and then slowed, trying to move quietly as a whisper, tiptoeing down the hall. She could barely see. Her shin struck the sharp edge of an object sitting on the floor, and the flash of pain in her leg momentarily blinded her.

  Crystal pressed her back against the wall and shuffled until she came to an opening. She slipped inside and crouched low into a corner.

  She heard Greta’s footsteps walking down the hall, slow, deliberate. She was not hurrying, not afraid that Crystal had escaped.

  “One, two, three, four, five,” Greta called out in a sing-song voice. “Ready or not, here I come.” She released a loud, shrill laugh.

  The yellow glow from Greta’s flashlight swept down the hall. The beam paused at the doorway, and Crystal held her breath.

  It swept through and then back out again. She sighed and sagged against the wall.

  If Greta walked further into the asylum, Crystal could double back, retrace her steps and escape.

  She waited, listening to Greta’s footsteps get further away.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Greta called.

  Crystal used the wall to stand up. Holding her breath, she crept back to the hall and started down the stairs, unnerved by the blinding darkness and a haunted chill. She moved painstakingly slow, pressing each foot gingerly to avoid tripping.

  When she was halfway down the stairs, she heard a sound beneath her and froze.

  Before her, a light flicked on.

  Greta stood at the bottom of the stairs, the flashlight beneath her chin, a diabolical grin on her pale face.

  “Gottcha,” she snarled, pulling her lips away from her teeth.

  Crystal tried to turn and run, but she’d barely taken two steps when Greta’s hand sank into her hair and jerked her. She fell backward, but the woman shoved her forward into the cement steps.

  Crystal couldn’t put her arms out to protect herself. Her knees and her chin cracked against the unyielding stairs.

  “Oh-h,” she cried out, as her head snapped back painfully.

  Crystal had little time to register the pain as Greta wrenched her to her feet.

  She pressed something cold and smooth against the side of Crystal’s neck.

  “Feel that?” Greta whispered. “Run from me again, and I’ll drag the blade across your throat. Slow. You’ll feel it slice through skin and fascia, then muscle, the carotid artery and the jugular vein, all the way to the spine. It’s not as hard as you’d think to decapitate someone.”

  Greta’s breath was hot against Crystal’s neck.

  “Walk,” the woman hissed, and Crystal did as she was told.

  41

  Now

  Bette half expected to see Hillary’s piercing gray eyes staring back at her from the hotel hallway.

  Instead, Matt’s sister, Lisa stood in the corridor.

  Bette pulled open the door.

  “Hi,” Lisa said, smiling apologetically. “I tried to call, but the front desk was busy.”

  “No, that’s totally fine. Is everything okay?”

  Tears shone in Lisa’s eyes but she nodded. “After you left, I dug around in the attic and found this box. It has… well it’s my Matt box. Yearbooks and photos and also newspaper clippings from after his death. I thought you might like to look through it. I’ll need it back.”

  “Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Lisa. Listen, I’m going to go downstairs and grab a bite to eat—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Lisa apologized. “I left my daughter with my neighbor to drop this by. But if you’d like to call and ask questions or talk about anything, I’d love that.”


  “Sure, thanks Lisa.”

  Bette took the box and closed the door, returning to sip her wine, before investigating its contents.

  Inside the box, she saw photo albums and yearbooks.

  Her stomach growled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten a meal all day.

  She’d seen a restaurant and bar in the lobby of the hotel.

  Bette took another sip of her wine and gathered up two of the albums before slipping into the hallway. The hotel was nearly empty on a Monday evening. The thick carpet muted her footsteps as she walked to the elevator. A song too low to hear came from the scratchy speaker in the elevator, and she watched the numbers light up as it dropped from the fourth to the first floor.

  She found the lobby as empty as the hallway had been.

  When she stepped into the dimly lit restaurant, she noticed two men at the bar, but all the tables were empty.

  “Sit where you like,” the bartender, a slim thirtyish woman with short dark hair, said.

  Bette opted for a little a booth near a window looking out onto the lake.

  The sun had set, but tall light posts at the water’s edge illuminated a rush of turbulent waves.

  “What can I get ya?” the bartender asked, stopping near the table.

  “Umm… I’d like a glass of Cabernet and an ice water, please? And a menu for food.”

  “Sure, hon. Just need to see some ID.”

  Bette pulled out her driver’s license. She regularly got carded, but sometimes the idea seemed absurd. What person trying to sneak a drink would order a glass of wine?

  The bartender glanced at her driver’s license.

  “A lower peninsula girl. What brings you way up here?”

  The woman had a kind smile and interested blue eyes.

  “Doing some sightseeing,” Bette lied. “And I think I’ll just have the cheeseburger with coleslaw,” she added, pointing to the chalkboard listing the specials.