Dark Omen: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

45

  Then

  “Why I am still alive?” Crystal mumbled.

  She’d woken to find Greta sitting on the bed beside her, brushing her long hair. It flowed over the pillow in a plume of red. Her hands were still zip-tied in front of her, her ankles secured to the bed frame.

  “That sounds like an existential question,” Greta said, continuing to slide the brush through the strands.

  Near the door, a stiff-looking gray dress hung.

  The fever had passed, but Crystal’s arms and legs still felt heavy and weak.

  “Why haven’t you killed me?” Crystal asked.

  “I grew up in this house,” Greta said ignoring the question. “People thought my father worked for the asylum, but he worked for the monster in the woods.” She chuckled. “That’s what we called it when we were little, my sister and I, the monster in the woods. The insatiable monster who fed on blood and fear and suffering.”

  Greta stood and walked to the wall, running a hand over the fading wallpaper.

  “Only when I got older did I realize the monster was the land itself.”

  “What happened if you didn’t feed it?” Crystal asked.

  “Bad things. Our people died, my mother, my sister. My father went insane. You learned not to test its power, not to question its reach.”

  “Those things happened when you didn’t feed it?” The questions were ridiculous.

  Greta was insane, but Crystal wanted her to open up; she clearly longed to tell the stories, and there were stories to tell. Crystal sensed them swirling within the woman, a thousand angry shadows leaping for her attention.

  “I spilled the blood once,” Greta said, walking to the blurred window. “It was February. I must have been ten or eleven and my hands were frozen with cold. I had gloves on, but it didn’t matter. They’d gone numb within minutes of walking away from the house. I started losing the sensation in my fingers, but I trudged on, my father in front of me. And suddenly one of the buckets just fell out of my hand. It splashed across the snow. There was so much blood, and the snow was so white. The snow made the blood look vivid, scarlet.”

  She lifted a hand to the windowpane and moved close, as if she were watching the scene unfold before her.

  “My father turned back and saw it. He cursed and stomped over to me, setting his own buckets down. Taking mine, too, before he whacked me on the side of the head. My ear rang for days after.”

  Greta put a hand to her right ear and winced.

  "‘Cover it up,’ he yelled. He was going back to the house for a shovel. I dropped to my knees and scooped snow in my already numb hands. You’d think it would be easy, wouldn’t you? Burying a little blood in the snow. Just the opposite. It’s like painting a red wall white. Coat after coat and the red still shows. That blood was like a fire burning through every layer of snow I heaped on it. Eventually my dad came back, and by then I was so cold I couldn’t open and close my hands, but I knew after he buried that blood, I still had to carry the bucket. If I dropped the second one, I‘d spend three nights in the cellar.

  “So, as he shoveled snow on the blood, I pulled off my gloves and stuck my hands into my pants, and into my underwear. It was about the only space warm on my body. I carried the bucket to the chamber, and we dumped the blood. When we got home, my hands were like blocks of ice. The tip of my right pinkie had no feeling at all. A few days later, Mrs. Martel told my father I had frostbite on it, and I’d better see the doctor. We didn’t have a primary physician. The medical doctor who worked at the asylum came in and treated me. The tip of my pinkie had turned black.”

  Greta walked to the bed and thrust her hand in Crystal’s face. The tip was flat rather than curved.

  “They cut it off in a surgical room at the asylum. Afterward, the doctor gave me a lollipop — but when my father saw it, he threw it in the trash and screamed at the doctor for feeding me garbage.”

  “That’s terrible,” Crystal told her, and she meant it.

  A part of her hated this woman, but another part of her grieved for her suffering.

  “Do you understand it?” Crystal asked. “The thing in the woods?”

  Greta cocked her head to the side. That sheaf of white blonde hair falling over one cold gray eye. She chuckled and tucked the hair behind her ear.

  “He keeps a diary. Did you know that?” Greta asked.

  Crystal gazed at her, puzzled. And then realized Greta had shifted to Weston.

  Crystal had never seen Weston’s diary, though she’d watched him write poems and thoughts on napkins and slips of paper. He pressed them into something, of course, but she’d never seen the book itself.

  Greta pulled a leather journal from a large black purse she’d deposited by the door.

  “I bought this for him. I had it engraved with his initials, and I gave it to him on our fifth anniversary. And what did he write in it?” Greta asked lightly, holding the journal by its spine.

  Crystal watched slips of paper, dried flowers, and even a fortune from a cookie fall out.

  She knew what the fortune said: “Love, because it is the only true adventure.”

  He’d read it out loud, lying on his back in Crystal’s bed, his head nestled in her lap. They’d made love, and then Weston had gone for Chinese takeout.

  The tiny white slip floated down and wedged between two floorboards. It took Crystal’s breath away, and a spasm of anguish snaked through her chest.

  “He wrote about meeting you. About your hair, the color of the setting sun, and your eyes luminous and hypnotic.” Greta rolled her own eyes. “He called mine as expansive and turbulent as the sea crashing against rocks when I first met him.”

  Greta flipped the pages, glancing back and forth between Crystal and the book.

  “You didn’t think you were the first woman he felt that way about?”

  Crystal said nothing. But no, she hadn’t presumed that Weston hadn’t loved before. She herself had loved before. Never with the intensity she experienced with Weston, but she knew he had loved before. And she could see why he fell in love with Greta. She was a beautiful mystery, a poisonous flower.

  “What happens after I’m gone?” Crystal asked.

  A little smile played on Greta’s lips.

  “Nothing much, except my husband starts making it home for dinner again.”

  46

  1973

  Greta Claude

  Greta didn’t bother cleaning up her hairstyle, despite her aunt’s insistence that she looked like a molting chicken and Peter’s stare of disgust.

  When she walked into school, the other students gaped at her. Some of them laughed and snickered. A few looked troubled.

  To her surprise, Matt stopped at her locker.

  “I like the new look,” he told her. “Very Joan Jett.”

  Greta thought of asking, “Who?” but didn’t care to know.

  “Can I walk you to class?” Matt asked.

  Greta looked at Matt with guarded eyes, but he didn’t flinch from her stare. After a moment, she nodded.

  As they walked, he told her about the football team, his brother and sister, and how he hoped to become a veterinarian someday.

  Greta had never had a boyfriend. Her father had forbidden it, and life on the asylum grounds didn’t offer many eligible bachelors. There were orderlies and doctors. More than a few had taken second glances at Greta, but she’d never considered them as romantic prospects.

  Her father knew everything that went on at the Northern Michigan Asylum, and he would have punished her for such a violation.

  The first time Matt kissed her, Greta had gone stiff in his arms. His mouth was warm and soft, his touch tender, but her skin crawled as she remembered her Uncle Peter’s hands groping her body, pinching and squeezing.

  She’d pushed him away and run into the park, to the circle of rocks.

  She hadn’t cried. Greta rarely cried, but the emotions had risen, huge, like waves crashing against rocks.

  When Matt found
her, he hugged her and petted her hair and murmured nice things until slowly she told him why she’d run away. She told him how her uncle had raped her for months. Matt had been furious. He’d hugged her tightly and sworn he’d protect her.

  And he did. He confronted Peter the next day, carrying his father’s shotgun when he arrived at the trailer to pick Greta up for a date. He’d pointed the barrel square at Peter’s chest and said if he ever touched Greta again, he’d get a bullet in the heart.

  Her uncle had listened. He didn’t rape her again, but he did other things to hurt her. He put dirt in her shampoo and threw her new shoes on the porch to get rained on. He stole her books from her backpack and ripped the pages out. He deleted phone messages from Matt and often unplugged the phone from the wall when her aunt was at work, and closed it in the bedroom with him while he drank and watched television.

  Greta had thought it would disgust Matt when she revealed her uncle’s abuse. Instead, it had the opposite effect. He seemed to fall more in love with her. He surrounded her, coddled her. He picked her up and dropped her off. Bought her flowers and candy and little pieces of jewelry from the gift store in town. He loved her fiercely and hopelessly, and soon she owned him. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her. Well, almost nothing.

  Greta had known she would kill Peter since the first morning he’d crept into her bedroom. She might have asked Matt to do it. She could have convinced him, but she also recognized in Matt a weakness. He believed in a certain moral code. If he murdered Peter, he would confess. Even if the police accepted the death as an accident, the deed would haunt Matt until he purged his conscience.

  She couldn’t risk it. Not only would she be implicated, but the truth of what Peter had been doing would become public knowledge. They would see her as a victim.

  * * *

  “Peter,” Greta said.

  He looked up from his bowl of Franken Berry cereal. It looked like a puddle of sodden pink mush, and Greta’s stomach churned with disgust.

  “What?” he asked gruffly before scooping another spoonful into his mouth. Pink milk dribbled down his chin.

  Disgusting pig, she wanted to hiss.

  Instead, she smiled and tugged at her t-shirt. It pulled up, offering him a slight glimpse of her pale belly.

  His eyes immediately dropped to the exposed skin, his mouth falling open.

  “Matt’s not as good as you, not as large.”

  Greta stared at the table as if her eyes could pass through the cheap wood. His erection had probably already pushed against his dirty sweatpants.

  He stood, pushing the chair back, cereal forgotten.

  “Not here,” she said, gazing at him seductively. “Matt will be here any minute to pick me up. He has football practice tonight. I’ve always wanted to screw beneath the stars. Meet me at Black Rock. The cliff at the top of the red trail. Matt and I have been there a few times in the afternoon. We have a pile of blankets up there and a bottle.”

  Peter didn’t move. His hands were balled at his sides. His little prick poked against his sweatpants.

  Greta’s stomach churned again, but she forced herself to lick her lips as she gazed at his hard-on.

  “Tell Dolly you’re going fishing.”

  Outside, they heard the rumble of the Pinto as Matt pulled up to the trailer. He didn’t honk the horn. He never did.

  “This a trick?” Peter demanded, looking towards the window.

  The shades were closed, but they heard Matt’s car door open and shut.

  Greta closed the space between them. She pressed her hand against Peter’s erection and squeezed.

  “A girl wants what she wants,” she whispered. “Meet me there.”

  She pulled open the door before Matt could knock. She didn’t look back at Peter, but she saw Matt’s eyes narrow at the man behind her.

  * * *

  Greta gazed at her watch. It was a quarter after nine and still no Peter. She stayed in the shadow of the trees, knowing the daylight waned.

  Her fury at being stood up grew, but quelled when she heard loud footsteps on the dirt path. Twigs and leaves stamped under his heavy boots, and his breath came out in ragged wheezes just as she knew it would. Peter was not in shape. Lugging a beer gut up the steep wooded trail would leave him winded and with little fight when he reached the peak. She’d laid the blanket near the cliff’s edge, knowing he would go there, straight to the spot of colorful fabric like a bull chasing a red flag.

  “Steep climb, huh?” she heard a woman ask.

  Greta’s eyes shot wider, and she slipped further into the darkness.

  “Ugh, yeah,” Peter wheezed.

  “Great workout, though,” another man said.

  As Greta watched, two svelte twenty-somethings powered up the hill, their arms and legs pumping as they walked. They both carried walking sticks.

  They passed within feet of Greta, oblivious that she stood in the shadow of the trees.

  How long did she have? They’d hike to the overlook, surely, another quarter mile up, maybe stay to catch their breath, and begin their descent down. Fifteen minutes, twenty tops.

  They disappeared up the slope, and Peter appeared to her right.

  He was panting, hunched over. He spotted the blanket but didn’t walk to it, choosing instead to lean a hand against a tree. It wasn’t night. Wouldn’t be for another half hour. She had no time to waste.

  She stepped from the forest and pulled her long sleeve shirt over her head, revealing a slinky black tank top. She let one strap drop down her shoulder. She’d taken off her bra, and her breasts hung loose beneath the shirt.

  Peter’s mouth fell open, still heaving for breath.

  “Fuck,” he whispered.

  “Exactly,” she told him.

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the blanket. He started to sit down, but she squeezed his arms and shook her head.

  “Not yet,” she told him.

  He glanced nervously at the drop off behind him, trying to corral her back.

  “I want to hear the waves,” she told him, holding him steady. “While I suck you off.”

  He was already hard. He’d probably been hard since she’d spoken to him that morning. She tugged his sweatpants and underwear down to his ankles, feeling his hard flesh press against her hip. He pinched one of her nipples and she gritted her teeth against the sensation.

  Taking him in one hand, she used her other hand to prod him back another step. He no longer remembered the cliff edge. He’d closed his eyes. Saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth. She released his penis for only a moment, putting one foot back to increase her strength. She shoved him as hard as she could, ramming both palms against his chest.

  Peter’s eyes shot open, his arms reached, but he was already over the edge, falling, flailing.

  He didn’t scream.

  There was no time. She heard a grunt as he struggled to catch hold of something, but air surrounded him. He hit the rocks with a far-off thud.

  Greta stepped to the cliff edge and studied his broken body. She couldn’t see his face, but imagined his eyes open and terrified, staring at her as he died.

  She glanced at her watch. Barely five minutes had passed.

  Greta savored his broken body for another moment, and then she gathered the blanket and slipped into the trees.

  47

  Now

  Nate widened his eyes and let out a little whistle of breath.

  “Oh man, that’s bad. I haven’t seen Greta in a very long time, but unless she found Jesus or has spent the last twenty years in intensive counseling, I’m guessing she’s only gotten more hateful.”

  “I don’t really know her. Her name’s Hillary now. Hillary Meeks,” Bette admitted. “I met her and she seemed… I don’t know, kind of unfriendly. But then I talked to her and she sounded really hurt by the affair. I was convinced that Weston did something to my sister, but now…”

  “Weston is Greta’s husband?” Nate asked.

&n
bsp; Bette nodded.

  “Don’t count on it,” he said. “Greta wasn’t the type to date a violent man. She was the violent one. She treated Matt like a horse that needed to be broken. But she played him exactly the right way. She had the perfect sob story. Both parents dead. She was an orphan forced into that trailer. And there was more, lots more. I’d bet my life Matt knew things about Greta that he never told me.”

  “What do you mean, more?”

  Nate scratched his goatee and tugged on his large lower lip.

  “I think Greta Claude was getting raped by her Uncle Peter. I went with Matt to pick Greta up a few times, and he stared at her uncle like he wanted to kill him.”

  “And then Peter died,” Bette murmured.

  “Yeah, but Matt had nothing to do with Peter’s death. He was with me the night Peter Budd fell off that cliff.”

  At the front of the store, they heard the meow from the plastic cat as someone entered.

  “I thought Greta did it. I said as much to Matt. He defended her. I told him she was bad news. She hated me. She hated anyone that came between her and Matt. He kept blowing me off and one night I confronted him. I told him he was pussy- whipped. He told me her whole story, parents dead and all that. I felt bad for her. I did. But I also knew she was twisting it, using it to control Matt.”

  “You really think she could have done it?”

  “Matt was with us that night. We were playing music in my garage after football practice. He didn’t go home until like midnight. But we hadn’t done that in months because Greta was all over him about spending every waking second with her. It seemed pretty strange that the one night he gets to hang out with us, her uncle ends up dead.”

  “Did you tell your dad?”

  Nate shook his head.

  “Not at the time. Only later, after Matt died, did I start to connect the dots. I didn’t know Peter personally, but I heard he was a drunk and just fell in the water and died. I was seventeen and still so naïve. After Matt, though… everything changed. I changed. I quit the football team, got involved with drugs for a while.