Darkness Stirring: A Troubled Spirits Novel

by J. R. Erickson

  The ride had emptied Ben's mind, but it fired back on the moment he walked through the door that led from his garage into his kitchen. He scooped an electrolyte mix from the container on his counter and stirred it into twenty ounces of water, drinking it in three gulps. As he walked into his living room, he thought again of the woman who’d appeared at his house, Lori Hicks.

  What if she was right, and the girls were connected? What if that one piece of information led him to the person who’d abducted Summer all those years ago?

  Ben grabbed his laptop and sat on his couch, propping it on his knees and powering it on. He hadn't looked into Summer's case in a couple of years, but prior to that, he'd get the urge usually around this time, June, the time when she'd vanished. He'd get online and search for her name to see if there'd been any updates. Then he'd search for arrests and crimes in Manistee, Michigan, on the chance that police had arrested someone who might be linked to her. Beyond the occasional anniversary story, there'd been no breaks in the case.

  He typed 'Summer Newton' into the search bar and scanned the same articles he'd already read more times than he could count.

  Lori had said her friend's name was Beverly something, Silver, he thought. He typed 'Beverly Silver Manistee National Forest.' The search engine corrected the name to Beverly Silva, and a stream of articles about the disappearance appeared.

  He started reading, his whole body tensing as the story took him back to his own night in the woods, searching for Summer Newton. He pulled his eyes from the screen and set an alarm on his phone. He had a night shift starting at nine p.m. and didn't want to get so distracted that he arrived late.

  As Ben read the articles on Beverly Silva, he crept closer to Lori's conclusion. The cases were similar. The same time of year, same age, same 'without a trace' oddness, same funky little piece of jewelry that made a ringing sound. Both girls had gone into the woods with a close girlfriend who was also their age.

  He returned to the blank search bar and typed 'girl vanished in Manistee woods.' Articles for both Beverly and Summer appeared, but as he scanned, he found another name: Peyton Weller.

  He clicked the article posted in the Scottville News.

  Searches continue for fourteen-year-old Peyton Weller, who went missing two days ago while hiking with her friend in the woods off Ridge Road. Despite searches on foot and by ATV, no sign of Peyton has been found.

  Ben looked at the black-and-white photo of Peyton. She was pretty, with wavy dark hair and wide-set hazel eyes.

  She'd disappeared in June 2008, five years before.

  He found several more articles, but each simply regurgitated the original article's information. The only difference was the passage of time—twenty-five days since Peyton Weller disappeared, six months since she disappeared. One final article on the one-year anniversary and then nothing.

  He continued clicking deeper into the search engine and found yet another name: Bella Palmer.

  Girl vanished from Reed City Woods.

  He clicked the link and read.

  It's been twenty-two days since thirteen-year-old Reed City middle-schooler Bella Palmer walked into the forest on Peak Road and never walked back out.

  Bella, along with her best friend (not named in the press), went to the woods in search of blackberries. According to Osceola County Deputy Tim Harbor, the girls got split up while looking for berries, and Bella's friend was unable to locate her.

  Because of the late time of day, only a cursory search was performed the night of Sunday, July thirteenth, but law enforcement assumed Bella might have hunkered down for the night and would reemerge in the morning. However, on Monday, Bella did not reappear, and a larger, more thorough search was conducted. Searches continued including volunteers and police for two weeks, at which point official searches were called off.

  If you have information regarding the whereabouts of Bella Palmer, please contact the Osceola County Sheriff's Department.

  Ben wrote down the names of the missing girls and the cities from which they'd disappeared. He opened another window in his browser and pulled up a map of Michigan, typed in the locations of each city.

  All the cities where the girls had disappeared bordered the Manistee National Forest.

  9

  As Lori made the hour’s drive south to Mount Pleasant on Monday morning, her cell phone buzzed with a new text message.

  Ben: Hi. This is Ben Shaw. Call me if you still want to talk.

  Lori parked and looked at the clock. Five minutes until she needed to be seated at her desk, reading her daily emails, and she'd not brought a to-go mug of coffee because she'd started out at her grandma's house where they were out of everything except decaf.

  Lori texted him back.

  Lori: I do, but heading in to work now. Will call you this evening.

  As she hurried through the parking garage, her cell phone dinged.

  Ben: Working the night shift tonight. I'll call you before ten. Good?

  Lori: Sure.

  She skipped the elevator, opting for the stairs to take her down the two levels from the parking garage to the lobby.

  Inside the Synergy Marketing building, Lori showed her badge to the security guard and crowded into the elevator, full with other employees. The smells of coffee, perfume, and body odor wafted in the stifling space.

  Lori's stomach rumbled loudly, and the guy beside her glanced her way. She hadn't forgotten to eat breakfast. She'd avoided the kitchen knowing her mother would have set out a plate of cinnamon toast, some kind of sticky buns and a box of Golden Grahams—Grandma Mavis's favorite cereal. It was a carb buffet and if Lori had so much as laid eyes on it, she would have felt the old, familiar longing.

  When the elevator opened, she beelined for the break room, filled a Styrofoam cup with black coffee and selected a beef stick from the options in the vending machine.

  The day passed with Lorraine marking the minutes rather than hours at work. Human resources had never been the most interesting job, but usually the day presented enough challenges to keep her busy.

  "Knock, knock."

  Lorraine looked up to see Naomi, her supervisor, standing at the door to her office. "You awake in here? It's been so quiet I thought you might have nodded off under your desk."

  Lori smiled and yawned, covering her mouth. "Sorry. Nope, not asleep, just trying to get these new employees added to the system." She gestured at a stack of new-hire paperwork.

  "Better you than me," Naomi joked. "Want to walk down to the lobby and grab a coffee? I was heading down there."

  "Sure. I need to stretch my legs."

  Lori followed Naomi down the hall to the elevator. The gray carpet muted their footfalls.

  "I am so pumped for this weekend," Naomi told her. "Trevor booked one of those Airbnb things up north. We're taking a wine tour. How romantic is that? Fingers crossed he's going to propose." Naomi's blue eyes sparkled beneath a heavy layer of black mascara.

  "Wow, really? Has it even been a year?"

  "A year this weekend," Naomi gushed. "I even got a manicure last night on the chance he does." She wiggled her fingers, nails painted a glossy pink.

  "And you feel ready to get married?"

  "Well, sure, I'm twenty-five. If I'm going to have three kids, I need to get started."

  "Three kids!"

  Naomi laughed. "Oh, Lori, I hate to tell you, but the rest of the world doesn't move at a snail's pace. My mother always said if you want it, grab it now—tomorrow it might be gone. And I try to live by that. You know? Trevor is amazing. He'd make a great husband and a great dad."

  "I bet." Lori watched the descending floor numbers light above them as the elevator dropped toward the first floor.

  "I'm getting a mocha to celebrate. Are you working out today?"

  Lori nodded. "Yeah, I need to. I didn't all weekend."

  "Oh, that's right! Your camping trip. How was it?"

  "It was fine."

  Naomi made a face. "Fine? That sound
s really exciting. Come on, that's it?"

  Lori shrugged and stopped at the coffee kiosk. "A black coffee, please," she told the barista.

  "Mocha for me," Naomi chirped. "My treat." She handed the guy a ten-dollar bill.

  "I'm not a fan of camping," Lori admitted.

  "Well then, why did Stu drag you along for that? You should have said you wanted to go somewhere else. Like wine tasting." Naomi grinned and nudged her.

  "That would definitely have beat the woods."

  "Of course, it would have. What's romantic about trudging through the woods in a plume of bug spray?"

  "Not a whole lot."

  They got their coffees and started back toward the elevator, Naomi babbling on about her hopeful engagement and all the things that made Trevor ‘the one.' Each time Naomi said 'the one,' Lori cringed inwardly. She'd been with Stu for four years and no part of her thought of him as 'the one.' Frankly, she didn't believe the one existed, not for her, not for Naomi and not for anyone. Nothing about the world had shown her such magic except perhaps for books, but at the end of the day, those too were merely words on a page.

  Synergy’s office had a gym connected by an underground tunnel. It was possible to reach the gym by walking out of the building, across a parking lot and into the separate smaller building the fitness area occupied, but Lori rarely went that way. Usually, Naomi joined her in the gym so she didn't have to walk the tunnel alone. Her shoes slapped against the cement as she walked and the pale yellow lights offered little illumination in the dark hall.

  The gym was empty, likely thanks to the beautiful weather. People often preferred to take their workouts outside in the summer months. The emptiness suited Lori just fine. She changed into her workout clothes and climbed onto a treadmill, selecting a forty-five-minute pre-set workout.

  Lori rarely showered at the office gym. Nudity in front of anyone was difficult, but especially colleagues she might be sitting in the boardroom across from. But after forty minutes jogging on the treadmill, she was sticky with sweat.

  The women's locker room was as empty as the gym itself, so Lori grabbed a complimentary towel and slipped into one of the glass-walled showers. She stripped down in the stall and hung her clothes over the door. Turning the shower to cool, she stepped beneath the spray, sighing as it sluiced down her body.

  She thought of Bev, as she had so many times that day, and of Summer Newton. Two girls who’d never lived to become women. Could they possibly have been abducted by the same person?

  Lori pressed the soap dispenser and sudsed up. As she rinsed, she heard a sound outside the shower. Another employee at Synergy must have arrived to work out.

  Lori shampooed her hair, but as she pulled her head out from under the water another sound reached her. A scratching sound as if someone were walking along the row of metal lockers and scraping something sharp across the surface.

  Breath caught in her chest, Lori strained toward the noise, trying to imagine who or what could be causing it. Something in the ventilation system?

  She considered calling out. With the shower on, if someone were out there, they already knew where she was. Still, she couldn't bring herself to speak nor to turn off the shower, though she desperately wanted a better sense of what was making the sound.

  The screeching dulled and quieted as if growing further away. After several minutes of silence, Lori eased the nozzle to off and stood for another moment, listening. The cool shower no longer refreshed her. Goosebumps covered her from the neck down.

  Shivering, she pulled her towel from the hook and wrapped it around her waist, reluctant to open the stall door.

  It was the vents or someone stopping to get something they'd left from a locker. The spray of water had distorted the sound, nothing more.

  She pushed open the shower door and stepped into the locker room facing the line of mirrors on the opposite wall. She caught a glimpse of herself, pale, wet hair plastered to her head, eyes wide with fear. She smiled as if to reassure herself and turned for the lockers.

  The lights went out.

  They didn't flicker. The space went from bright to black in an instant.

  Lori's heart plunged into her stomach and she gasped. The darkness was so complete in the windowless locker room, tucked into an interior of the building, Lori became instantly disoriented.

  She reached into the black, flailing, whimpering. It was as if she'd woken in the night in an unfamiliar place, except it was much worse than that.

  Something was in the room with her. She heard it beneath the sounds of her own ragged breath. A chewing, a crunching as if someone sat in the space by the lockers, chomping and slurping.

  A little moan escaped her, and the chewing stopped. It was listening for her now. It had heard the sound she made.

  Lori backed up, sliding her feet along the tile floor. She pulled her arms in close for fear sharp teeth would suddenly clamp down on her fingers.

  Something shuffled in the darkness, coming closer, its own breath a steady huff.

  In her terror, Lori couldn't even imagine what it was, what creature had found its way into the locker room and now pursued her in the darkness.

  She continued backpedaling and then the cold tile wall met her back and she could retreat no further. She could smell it—like rotted meat and damp earth.

  It was closing in.

  Lori started to scream.

  10

  The lights flared on, bright fluorescents washing the gray-tiled room in technicolor.

  Lori's scream echoed off the shiny floors and walls, reverberating into the locker room where a woman swooped into her line of sight.

  Lori cut off her scream, blinking at the stunned woman, who wore white pants and a pale blue shirt, the uniform for the Synergy office’s cleaning crew. She held a mop in one hand.

  "Holy Moses, girl! Are you all right?" she asked.

  Lori stared, teeth clenched so tight she wasn't sure she could unhinge her jaw and speak.

  The woman took a tentative step toward her. "Need me to call somebody? Security?" The woman unlatched a radio hanging on the belt at her waist. The radio crackled, but before the woman could speak into it, Lori shook her head.

  "No. It's okay. I'm okay. The lights went off—"

  "The lights went off on their own?" The lady frowned, glancing up at the overhead lights.

  Lori nodded. "Did… did you see anything when you came in? Like an animal?"

  The woman offered a half smile, as if she thought Lori were joking. "I sure hope not. I doubt Synergy would be paying for our cleaning services if we were letting varmints run loose in here."

  "A person then? Someone walking out when you came in?"

  The woman shook her head. "Not a soul around here except you. I've two other girls, but they're working on different floors. There's still a few people working late, but they’re in the main building."

  Lori held her towel tight against her, grateful it had not fallen to the floor during the terrifying blackout. "Thank you. I think I'll get dressed now."

  "I'll leave you alone for that," the woman said, but Lori shook her head vehemently.

  "No, please. You can mop. That's okay."

  The woman looked like she might protest, and then she just nodded. "Sure thing."

  Lori didn't walk through the dim tunnel that connected the building to the parking garage. She sprinted and hit the unlock button the moment her car came into view. She wrenched open the driver's door and jumped in, yanked the door closed.

  She sat, catching her breath and staring through the windshield at the shadowy car park.

  From her bag, her cell phone rang, and Lori reached for it, her hand shaking.

  "Hello?" She heard the tremor in her voice.

  "Hey, this Ben Shaw. Everything okay?"

  Lori took in a breath and switched the phone to speaker so she could pull out of the garage. "Yeah. I just got in my car, so I was a little breathless."

  "Okay. I did some digging yesterday
into Summer's case and Beverly's. I found some other girls too."

  "Other girls?"

  "Yeah. Other girls who went missing in the Manistee National Forest. Maybe it's nothing, but then again, like you said, maybe it's the missing link. If you still want to get together and compare notes, I'm up for that."

  Lori maneuvered her car out of the dark garage and onto the street, grateful for the sunlight beaming down. "Yes. I would like to."

  "I'm off tomorrow," Ben told her.

  "Great. I work until four and then I could meet you. It'll take me about an hour to get there. I live in Mount Pleasant."

  "Gotcha. I can meet you if you'd rather."

  "No, that's okay. I'll come to you."

  "There's a great little café here—the Mulberry Café."

  "I've driven by it before. I'll meet you there at five."

  "See you then."

  When Lori got home, she poured a glass of wine and tried to rationalize what had happened in the gym. It had been her own imagination combined with some electrical failure. But that didn’t explain the scratching.

  “I was afraid, simple as that,” she muttered, opening her laptop and logging into Facebook.

  She hadn't logged into her account in weeks. Stu had talked her into getting on social media when they'd both worked at the restaurant, but Lori had never enjoyed the space. It felt voyeuristic, scrolling through the intimate lives of people she hadn't seen in years or, even more strange, people she'd never met who sent her friend requests because they were from her home town or because they knew Stu.

  The little icon in the top right listed forty-seven notifications. She didn't click it, but instead went to the search bar and typed ‘Ben Shaw.’

  Dozens of profiles appeared and none of them looked like the man she'd met. She went back to the search bar and typed ‘Carmen Shaw.’ Again, multiple options returned, but one was listed with an address in Michigan. Lori clicked it.