Darkness Stirring: A Troubled Spirits Novel

by J. R. Erickson

The profile picture revealed a woman around her own age with short frizzy brown hair. She held a baby in her arms and next to her stood a man not much taller than her, holding a toddler. Neither child looked at the camera. The little family was all dressed in white and navy blue. It was the kind of picture that had been popular in her own childhood.

  Parents and children in matching outfits all piled into the minivan to drive to the Sears Portrait Studio and stand in front of a backdrop of a mountain range or a field of flowers. The photos never turned out the way the mothers hoped. The kids often fought; the husbands looked annoyed. Carmen had managed to get a picture of her and her husband smiling, but no such luck with the kids.

  Lori clicked through Carmen's pictures, which mostly included snapshots of her kids. She found one of Ben. He was lying in the grass and the toddler, a little boy, lay balanced on Ben's feet which he'd stuck in the air. He held the boy's hands in his own, both wearing matching grins as the toddler Supermanned above him.

  Lori returned to Carmen's profile but didn't see any mention of Summer Newton in the posts. Not that she expected to. She'd never posted anything about Beverly. No one who knew her in her current life even knew that Bev had ever existed, including Stu. Even after four years of dating, she'd never told him the story of the one event that had probably most impacted her life.

  Back at the web browser search bar, she typed in 'Dr. Chadwick, Traverse City, Michigan.' She selected the first result, which pulled up a picture of a vaguely familiar man sitting at a large black desk. He had a long thin face and inquisitive blue eyes. His bald head shone in the light pouring through the wide window behind him. Just beyond his slender hands, which rested on the desk, stood a little gold plaque: ‘Dr. Arnold Chadwick, Ph.D., Jungian Analyst.’

  Services listed on his site included ‘Jungian Analysis’ and ‘Psychotherapy.’

  Lori clicked on the ‘Contact Us’ button and filled out the form including her name, email address and phone number. She added a short note.

  'Dr. Chadwick. My name is Lori Hicks. I met with you many years ago regarding nightmares. I hoped we could schedule a session to talk about those things. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.'

  It was a slow night for Ben in the ER.

  After changing I.V. fluids for a patient who'd arrived hours before complaining of abdominal pain, but was now in a deep sleep, Ben slipped into the hall and allowed the door to whoosh slowly closed behind him. At the opposite end of the floor, a young woman was walking away from him. He stared at her, two things striking him funny. One, it wasn't visiting hours, far from it, and this looked like a teenage girl in regular clothes. Two, she looked familiar.

  Thick, wheat-blonde hair fell to the center of the girl's back. She wore red and white striped shorts and white sneakers. As she moved further away, turning a corner in the hall, he realized where he recognized the girl from. She looked like Summer Newton. She even wore the same type of clothing Summer had been wearing the night she disappeared in 1993.

  Ben followed her, walking quickly to the end of the hall and glimpsing her as she rounded another corner. He sped up, hitting a slow jog, his tennis shoes slapping. As he came around the next corner, he saw her profile as she turned into a visitors' room.

  She'd walked into the waiting room they called the Dead Room, coined such because they'd noticed an abnormally large number of patients who coded had visitors in that room. It had become an ongoing joke on the ward that people were drawn to one of the two waiting rooms.

  The Kitten Room, labeled thus due to framed photos of kittens playing in a field of flowers, was on the south side of the building and it had a lighter, brighter air. The Dead Room did not. It was darker, the lights often burning out, the coffee always burned. And when someone died in the ER, the nurse or doctor was nearly always directed to the family or friends in this room.

  Ben didn't believe the attraction part. More than a few of his colleagues were convinced the room harbored the spirits of the dead. He thought people who were facing the likely death of someone they loved simply chose that room because it was further back, more secluded for their grief.

  He stepped into the doorway and scanned the dim room, eyes bouncing over empty chairs and tables scattered with magazines. The single television was off. No visitors sat in the room, none at all, including the girl he'd seen walk in only seconds before.

  He walked all the way in, winding through the chairs to the bathroom that sat opposite the coffee counter where someone had spilled coffee grounds and not bothered to swipe them into the little white trash can beside the counter. The door to the bathroom stood open, the light off. It appeared empty, and yet she couldn't have gone anywhere else. Ben knocked on the wall beside the door.

  "Hello? Anyone in there?"

  No one spoke. He reached through the doorway and flicked on the light. The room illuminated, revealing the white porcelain toilet and sink and the eggshell-colored tile.

  He turned the light off and returned to the room, as empty as it had been moments before. On one table tucked into an alcove of the room that he thought of as the crying corner lay a single book.

  Ben read the title in dripping red letters: Strange Michigan: Spine-Tingling Stories from the Mitten State.

  The image beneath the words depicted a man-sized dog, a werewolf maybe, with its mouth stretched in a howl.

  Ben picked the book up. He hadn't read a book in ages, but if the evening dragged, it might offer a way to pass the time.

  11

  Ben woke up around noon, earlier than he liked after working the night shift, but he'd still gotten a solid five hours of sleep and felt refreshed. He'd already decided the night before how he would spend part of his day off.

  He drank coffee, ate two pieces of toast, climbed into his car and drove west toward Luther, Michigan.

  Ben let off the gas pedal and turned onto Hector Dunn’s road. He eyed the house, set far back off the scruffy front yard with its brown grass and scattering of broken-down cars, tires nearly swallowed by weeds, and an old rusted swing set that had been giving Ben the creeps long before Hector Dunn existed as a figure in his mind.

  He hadn't driven by the house in years. A pit of fury formed in his stomach as he stared at the dark windows and remembered the man's face when he'd walked out nearly two decades before. He'd looked straight at Ben and smiled. Ben had wanted to kill him. He felt sure this was the man who'd stolen Summer. This sick perv who'd been arrested for trying to abduct another young girl one year after Summer vanished.

  But he'd gotten off on a technicality and the police had never so much as searched his rusted Dodge van. As Ben scanned the property, overgrown, mostly buried in a tangle of brush, he spotted the remnants of the Dodge van.

  The vehicle now occupying the driveway was, unsurprisingly, another van, this one as rusted as the Dodge had been back in the day. It was a silver minivan and the rear window was exceptionally dark, as if Dunn had hung something to hide the interior.

  Ben coasted his car by and then pulled off the road, killed his engine, and reached for a pair of binoculars he'd tucked into the glove box. He twisted around in his seat and put the binoculars to his eyes. Nothing moved in the dark windows of the house.

  In the 1990s, Dunn had lived with his mother, but even then the woman had looked like she had one foot in the grave, rake-thin and perpetually smoking menthol cigarettes. She'd had shrewd dark eyes and lips so thin they receded into the hole of her mouth.

  It had been Dunn's mother who'd gotten him off in court. Despite their home, the woman had a nest egg of money and potentially a few connections that allowed her to call in favors when her only child faced a charge of attempting to abduct a minor.

  Ben wondered if Cora Dunn still lived.

  As he watched, something flickered in a window. Ben focused the binoculars on the side window and realized the curtain which had been fully covering the glass a moment before had a dark slit in the center, as if someone had peeled it back to
look out.

  At me, Ben thought, glaring through the eyepieces and wishing Dunn could see his face, wishing the man could feel his fury.

  "That's right, motherfucker. I'm watching you," Ben muttered.

  He lowered the binoculars, intending to step out and stand in the middle of the country road, binoculars to his eyes. He wanted Dunn to know he was being watched, that he needed to look over his shoulder. Before Ben could open his door, his cell phone rang and he saw Carmen's name on the screen.

  Frowning and considering ignoring it, he lifted the binoculars back to his eyes and trained them on the window. He could no longer see the dark crevice in the fabric.

  "Hey," Ben said, answering the call.

  "Hey, Ben, how's it going?"

  "Good, what's up?"

  "Oh, not much. It's just that Jonas is having a hard time getting clipped into the bike." Carmen laughed. "He's fallen twice now and scraped up his shoulder and elbow pretty bad. I wondered—"

  Ben sighed. "I'll come over today. I've got a thing this evening, but I'm off right now."

  "Oh, perfect. Thank you, thank you. I do really appreciate your getting him into cycling. He loves to ride once he can get his legs moving without falling." She laughed again.

  Ben heard an engine rumble to life. He turned and saw Dunn's minivan backing down the driveway in a cloud of dust. Moments later the van sped by, but Ben couldn't get a glimpse of the man behind the wheel, as the passenger window was so grimy it concealed the driver.

  "See you in a couple hours," he told Carmen and ended the call.

  He turned his car back on and made a u-turn, cruising slowly back by Dunn's house. It was probably empty. The only vehicle in the driveway was gone with Dunn most likely driving. Ben braked near the driveway and then caught the shape of a vehicle looming in his rearview mirror. It was still too far off to identify, but his gut told him it was Dunn coming home. He'd driven off only to get a glimpse of who was lurking around his house.

  "What are you hiding?" Ben whispered, tempted to pull in anyway, to confront Dunn now as a man and let the chips fall where they might.

  Instead, he slammed his foot on the gas pedal and pushed it to the floor, roaring away from the derelict little house that Hector Dunn called home.

  Lori parked on the street in front of the Mulberry Café.

  The restaurant stood on the edge of downtown Clare, where the business district gave way to residential streets. The café occupied a maroon antique Victorian house, likely built at the turn of the twentieth century. The owners had updated it with a wide, wheelchair-friendly wood ramp and sprawling back porch for outdoor seating. Flowers burst from enormous bushes lining the stairs leading up to the front door.

  Though Lori had lived in Clare at her grandmother's house after her family had moved from Baldwin, she'd never visited the café. She found Ben on the back porch, seated at a round table beneath a large red umbrella. He waved when she arrived.

  Lori took the chair opposite Ben. He'd already ordered a coffee.

  "This place is neat," she told him. "I've never been here."

  "I come here at least once a week. Amazing coffee, quiche, the works. But you said you don't live in Clare?"

  She shook her head. "Mount Pleasant. But I went to high school here."

  "How'd you end up in Mount Pleasant?"

  "I went to school there, Central Michigan University, and then after I graduated, I got a job, so..." She shrugged.

  "What did you study at CMU?"

  "Folklore and mythology."

  Ben grinned as if she were joking, and then his smile disappeared. "Really? That's a degree?"

  Lori blushed. "I think my mother uttered those exact words."

  Ben chuckled and held up his hands. "Sorry. I didn't mean to offend. I've just never heard of anyone majoring in that. What do you do? Write fables?"

  "I work in human resources for a marketing agency."

  "That's quite a leap from folklore and mythology. And you like it?"

  "I don't not like it."

  "What a lackluster response for your life's passion." He smiled and twittered his fingers.

  Lori turned to see a woman walking a little girl down the sidewalk, who waved at Ben.

  "Do you know her?"

  He shook his head. "Nope." He squinted. "I hope not, anyway. If I do, I'd have likely encountered her in the ER."

  "And that's your life’s passion? Being a nurse?"

  "Yeah. I can't imagine doing anything I'd love more. Not to mention the cafeteria has the best chocolate cake on Planet Earth."

  Lori brushed a hand across her stomach and tugged at her shirt, wishing she'd run home and changed. She still wore a pale pink blouse made of a synthetic silk material and she'd begun to sweat. She could see the dark streaks where her perspiration touched the fabric. "I wish I loved my job. It's fine, but…"

  "But it doesn't light your soul on fire?"

  She laughed dryly. "Decidedly no. So you found other girls?" Lori started, but stopped as the server walked from the café.

  "Hi there," she said cheerily, coiffed blonde hair bobbing as she nodded. "Have you been to the Mulberry Café before?"

  "No. This is my first time."

  "Well, you're in good company with this guy." She nodded at Ben, who smiled back at her.

  "Thanks, Deb."

  "We have the cinnamon latté on special and for entrées the Reuben sandwich, which is divine. We also have a new salad with feta and chicken."

  "I'll take a black coffee," Lori told her.

  The woman's pencil-thin eyebrows shot to her stiff hairline. "That's all?" She turned her attention to Ben. "Well, I know you won't disappoint me."

  He grinned. "Not a chance. I'll take the quiche and side Caesar salad. Once she sees my food, she'll have to order her own."

  Deb walked back into the café.

  "Not hungry?" Ben asked.

  "I had a late lunch." Lori had in fact skipped lunch and scarfed down a bag of peanuts on her drive to Clare. Her day at the office had turned hectic when a new hire had accused her manager of sexual harassment. Lori's day had been spent sifting through correspondence and meeting repeatedly with the two parties in a boardroom. In the end, they had put the manager on administrative leave.

  "If nothing else, consider a piece of pie. It's all homemade right here. I've got a soft spot for the rhubarb, but Deb favors the lemon pecan."

  Lori loved pie, but she didn't eat it. "Maybe," she said. "So… tell me what you found."

  She was tired, her head a little full-feeling, and a tickle hovered in the back of her throat she feared might morph into a cold. The night before at the gym had ensured a night of tossing and turning, followed by a stressful work day. As much as she wanted to talk to Ben, when she'd left work, she'd also just wanted to drive home and crawl into bed.

  Deb returned with her coffee balanced on a little plate piped in red calligraphy.

  "Thank you," Lori told her, lifting the cup to her mouth and taking a long drink despite the hot liquid.

  "Tired?"

  "Yeah. Is it that obvious?"

  "You just looked at the cup of coffee like it was a thousand-dollar bill."

  "I didn't sleep well last night."

  "Because of all this? Bev and Summer?"

  "Partially, yeah."

  Ben picked up his phone and clicked. "I have a notes app in here that I stored links and names on. Here's what I found yesterday.

  “Summer disappeared from Manistee in 1993. Five years later and forty-five miles to the southwest, still part of the Manistee National Forest, your friend Beverly disappeared. Then, in 2003, Bella Palmer went missing in Reed City, which is less than twenty miles east of Baldwin, still in the Manistee National Forest. And finally, in 2008, Peyton Weller disappeared from Scottville, just over forty miles to the west, still in the Manistee National Forest."

  "Four girls. Did they all disappear in the woods?"

  "Not only did they all disappear in the woo
ds, they were all walking or hiking with one of their girlfriends. They vanished without a trace."

  "Holy crap."

  "Yeah."

  "1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008. That's five years apart for every one of them,” she murmured.

  "Yep."

  Lori leaned back in her chair and stared up into the red umbrella, overwhelmed by the possibility of what Ben had discovered.

  "You think one person took all four girls?” she asked. “And he… what, did it on a schedule? Every five years?"

  "Possibly. But I don't want to narrow the focus too much. The schedule could mean a lot of things. Waiting five years so the heat cools off. Waiting five years because that's when he comes into town. Waiting five years because whatever sick hunger he has is satiated for that amount of time. Maybe he doesn't even know he's done it every five years."

  "Maybe it's not one person."

  "True, but there's a lot supporting it being one person. What are the chances there are two people abducting teenage girls in a sixty-mile radius?"

  "I don't know."

  "Did you ever have any suspects?" Ben asked.

  Lori sipped her coffee and shook her head. "No. I… I never even got that far in my thinking. It was just such a big, scary mystery. I didn't think about who so much as what. I remember that night thinking about the Dogman."

  Ben cocked an eyebrow. "Seriously? The Dogman?"

  "I was fourteen."

  "I didn't mean it like that. Well, I did, but not entirely. It's just a bizarre coincidence. I found a book in a waiting room at the hospital, and guess who was on the cover? The Dogman."

  Lori's eyes widened. "I'd like to see it."

  "It's in my car. I'll show it to you when we leave. I didn't straight away think about people either. I was sure Summer had snuck off to play a trick on Carm, and then she got lost and injured. But after the searches, that got harder and harder to believe."

  "Yeah, that was my first thought too, that Bev was hiding and going to jump out and scare me. But then… she never did."

  "Who was there that night?" Ben asked. "In the neighborhood, in the search—that kind of thing." Ben took a yellow legal pad from a backpack sitting beneath his chair. He pulled the top off the pen and poised it over the paper.