Darkness Stirring: A Troubled Spirits Novel

by J. R. Erickson

  "Meeting Jonas reminded me of what it felt like to feel safe again, loved unconditionally. Was I scared of falling in love with him? Yeah, definitely, but I was more afraid to turn into Ben. That's a horrible thing to say, but it's true. I saw how he ran away from anyone or anything that really touched him. He chased all kinds of stuff that gave him a thrill, but anything that offered something deeper than that, something more, he hopped on his bike and pedaled away as fast as his legs could carry him."

  "I really don't know him that well," Lori murmured, feeling awkward talking about Ben when he was standing just across the yard.

  “I hope you get to know him, Lori. I hope he’s finally ready to let someone in.”

  “Mama, come see,” the little boy called, waving his picture in the air.

  Carmen walked back down the steps, kneeling on the blanket beside her little boy. “Oh, Thomas, that’s so pretty, what is it?”

  “Uncle Bem!” he announced.

  He held the picture high. Lori saw a round circle with several squiggles coming out of it.

  “That looks just like Uncle Ben.” Carmen laughed, winking at Lori. “Sit, relax.” She said patting the blanket.

  Lori sat down, crossing her legs and sweeping her fingers through the fragrant grass.

  "I rarely talk about Summer because what is there to say?” Carmen said, frowning at Lori. “I've told the story a thousand times. I've mulled over what might have happened, but none of my imaginings gets me closer to the truth, and I don't want to be trapped in the past. I want to live my life here and now, with these two, with my husband, with this sky full of pink clouds.

  “It's not that I'm afraid, it's that I'm no longer deluded into some skewed idea that I'm Nancy Drew and I'm going to unravel the big mystery. People disappear. They get taken, sometimes they're never found. I won't be one of those people who squander the lives they were given chasing a phantom. I got to live. Me. There were two of us that night and I got to live. You did too, Lori. You are alive."

  The baby bent over and reached for the plastic tray of food. She popped a large, round grape into her mouth.

  Carmen's eyes bulged and she screamed. “Maddison, no!”

  Lori fell back as Carmen lunged for her daughter and wrenched the child's mouth open, fished the grape from the girl's cheeks and flung it away as if it were a live wasp. She clutched her daughter against her chest, rocking and moaning and patting the girl's head. Maddison’s bottom lip trembled and she started to cry, calming only when Carmen handed her a bottle.

  As if remembering Lori, Carmen looked up and color rose into her ashen cheeks. She released her baby carefully. The girl rolled onto her back, clutching her bottle with both her hands and feet. Carmen stood, smoothing out her skirt and tucking her hair behind her ears.

  "I'm sorry. I…" She gestured at her daughter. "Grapes are one of the most common foods babies and small children choke on. I hate them. That's a weird thing to say. Who hates grapes? But I do. I hate them. And marshmallows too. Choking is the leading cause of death for kids under four years. Jonas insists on buying them and our nanny Brenda, even though I've told her a million times not to, puts them in the kids’ premade lunches. I'm sorry."

  "No, it's okay. It would scare me too."

  Carmen smiled, watching her daughter, but her spine stayed rigid as if she were on red alert for the next catastrophe awaiting her two beautiful children. "That's the price, I guess, and maybe the reason Ben doesn't have children or a wife because if you lose them… they're gone." Her voice trailed off on the last two words.

  Ben and Jonas stepped from the garage.

  "Did somebody scream?" Ben asked.

  Carmen waved at them. "It's fine. I panicked when she put a grape in her mouth."

  Jonas shot Ben a look as if to say, You know Carmen.

  Ben wiped his hands on a dirty rag and walked toward the yard with Jonas beside him. “Lori, this is Jonas.”

  “Hi,” Lori said, getting to her feet and offering her hand.

  He shook it. “What are you kids up to tonight?” He looked between Ben and Lori. “Not another Scientology potluck, I hope.” Jonas muffled his laughter, while Carmen grabbed another grape from the container and threw it at him.

  “Not funny, Jonas.” She laughed.

  “Ha-ha.” Ben rolled his eyes. “Officially the one and only time I’ll let the two of you set me up on a blind date. No potlucks for us this evening, we’re doing some digging into a missing person’s case over in Reed City.”

  Carmen made a face. “That’s romantic.”

  “Really? Not another girl?” Jonas asked, curious.

  “Yeah, remember I told you I’d found some others? This is one of them.”

  Carmen got to her feet, swinging the baby up with her. “Time for a diaper change,” she announced, walking toward the porch. She turned back. “Nice to meet you, Lori. Be careful, you guys.”

  They watched her disappear into the house.

  Jonas grabbed Ben in a half-hug. “Text me when you’re home safe. I don’t want to be up half the night thinking you’re out there chasing a serial killer.”

  Ben hugged him back, grinning at Lori over his shoulder. “Yes, Dad.”

  Jonas draped his arms over their shoulders, walking them toward Ben’s car.

  “Bem, Bem!” Thomas shouted running after them with his drawing in hand.

  Ben squatted down. “What do you have here, Sir Thomas?”

  “It’s you.”

  Ben took the drawing and nodded. “I’ll cherish it. Thanks, man.” He gave Thomas a high five and then stood and followed Lori too the car.

  As Ben drove away from the farmhouse, Lori watched him gazing at Jonas and Thomas in the rearview mirror.

  “They’re really nice,” she said.

  “Yeah, they’re great. Carmen gets a bit high-strung now and then, but it’s just her mama bear coming out. Did you have a good chat?”

  Lori bit her lip, wondering if she should mention what Carmen had told her. She knew if she didn’t it would consume her brain until she blurted it out in some less appropriate moment. "Why didn't you tell me you were going out with Summer when she vanished?"

  Ben glanced at her. "Didn't I?"

  "No."

  He looked out the window. "I don't know. I figured I had. Everyone knew. I assumed you read it in a newspaper article or something."

  He said no more about it and they drove the rest of the way to Reed City in silence.

  "I think that's her," Ben said when they walked into the Sunset Grill. "She told me she'd be wearing an MSU Spartans t-shirt.”

  Renee Douglas sat at a high-top table drinking a glass of red wine. She wore a green Spartans shirt with stone-washed jeans. She was short and heavier-set, her small feet dangling high above the ground.

  "Renee?" Ben asked.

  Her eyes lit at the sight of Ben and she quickly brushed her curled brown hair away from her face, smiling shyly. “You’ve found her.”

  "I'm Ben,” he said, offering his hand. “And this is Lori."

  "Hi." Renee shook both of their hands. "Great to meet you both."

  "You too, Renee. I appreciate your taking the time to talk with us."

  "You're welcome. I already finished a glass. This is number two. I haven't told the story in a long time. I thought it'd be no big deal, but then when I was driving here tonight and remembering what happened, I realized I needed a couple of adult beverages to retell it."

  "I'm right there with you," Lori said, glancing at the cocktail menu.

  "Did it happen to you too?" Renee asked.

  "Yes,” Lori told her. “In 1998. My friend went missing when we were walking in the woods."

  Renee nodded, eyes flooding with tears. "Bella was my very best friend in the whole world. She was pretty and popular and none of those other girls ever gave me the time of day, but Bella did. She had a heart of gold, and I don't say that because she's gone. You know how people do when someone is gone… She just loved
everyone and everything. Including me." Renee lifted her glass to her lips.

  Their waiter, a slim kid with a bad case of acne, stopped to take their order.

  “Gin and tonic, please,” Lori told him.

  “Ginger ale for me,” Ben said.

  “Ugh.” He scratched at a crater in his face and then quickly dropped his hand, eyes darting toward the bar as if he’d been reprimanded more than once for picking at his face while on the job. “Is Vernors okay?” he asked Ben.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  The kid wandered back to the bar, and Renee returned to her story.

  "We wanted to make blackberry cobbler," Renee said. "We'd learned how to make cobbler in home-ec class in school before summer break and we couldn't wait to pick our own berries and make the cobbler at home. We played in the woods a lot back then. All the kids in town did. That evening we went later than usual because Bella had dance class, and then I walked to her house afterward. We took plastic buckets and went to the woods and started looking. I don't know when we got separated. We'd been chatting but then drifted off on our own and next thing I knew she was gone.

  “I kept listening for her whistle, thinking she'd blow it when she realized we'd gotten separated and not seen each other in a while."

  "Her whistle?" Lori asked.

  "A rape whistle," Renee explained.

  "Why was she carrying a rape whistle?" Ben asked, leaning forward in his chair.

  "Her mother insisted she wear it every time she left the house. Bella's mom was great, but she was a little kooky. She lived in terror of anything happening to her kids. She had fire-drill plans posted in every room of the house. She used to lecture us a lot on never going with strangers. The summer before Bella vanished, her mom made her wear a lifejacket our whole time at summer camp. She was twelve, for Pete's sake."

  Lori frowned. "Did she blow it that night?"

  Renee nodded. "Yeah, she did. A few times just for fun and then… well, later I heard it, I thought, but… they never found any sign of her, so…"

  "Was she wearing anything else? A bell or—"

  "Gin and tonic and a Vernors. You guys want some apps? The loaded potato skins are totally addictive." The waiter arrived, notepad ready.

  "I think we're good," Ben told him. He turned his focus to Renee. "Were there any men around that night, Renee? Any men loitering in the area?"

  She shook her head. "The police asked that too. I didn't see anyone, but… I was distracted. One of my other friends had called that morning and said this boy in our grade liked me. Jared was his name, and no boys had ever liked me. I was gushing about it to Bella. The boys always liked her. She was gorgeous with long chestnut hair and really pretty green eyes. It seems so stupid now. I probably wouldn't even recognize Jared if I ran into him these days." She shrugged. "Such is the mind of an eighth-grader."

  Lori lifted her glass, got a whiff of the alcohol, and put it back down, her stomach curdling. The queasiness that had followed her after her last night of gin and tonics coursed through her and she pushed the cocktail away.

  "How about guys around town?" Ben asked. "Guys who got in trouble for messing with underage girls? Or guys people whispered might have been involved?"

  Renee tilted her head, thoughtful. "We sometimes thought the school janitor was a little creepy, but I don't think he ever got in trouble. He died in a car crash when I was in high school. No one else I can think of."

  "Other than the whistle, did she have anything on that made noise? A bell-type thing?" Lori asked, sensing Ben stiffen beside her. She ignored it.

  "A bell?" Renee shook her head. "No. Just the whistle. But people heard it after she vanished. It was weird because several of the searchers heard the whistle and tried to track it, but never a sign of her. Really, there were a lot of strange things that happened during the searches."

  "Really? Like what?" Lori asked.

  "More than a few people got lost during the searches. My mom told me later about this woman named Gina. She was in a line, you know, walking within arm’s reach of people on either side, and then suddenly her husband noticed she wasn't there, so then the group was calling for her. They couldn't find her.

  “She ended up out on the interstate waving down a farm truck passing by. He drove her back to the lot where everyone started the search. She said one minute she'd been walking in the group and the next minute she was alone in the forest, kind of dizzy, with no clue how she'd gotten over there, how much time had passed. It was weird—so weird her husband insisted she go into the emergency room and get checked out. He was afraid she’d had a stroke."

  "Had she?" Lori asked.

  "Nope. Doc said she was right as rain. No fever, heart rate and blood pressure were good. They ran labs just in case. Didn't find a thing."

  "And there were other stories like that?"

  "A handful. People getting separated from the group, feeling lightheaded. I wasn’t there for most of that, but my mom told me about it later. She said the woods gave her the creeps."

  They said little as Ben drove back home. Lori mostly stared out the window. He glanced at her profile now and then and thought he saw the quiver of her chin as if she were struggling not to cry.

  He parked in his driveway and turned off the engine. "Are you okay?" he asked.

  She faced him, nodding, though her face looked drawn. "I'm worn out. I need to sleep for about twelve hours."

  "You're welcome to stay if you're too tired to drive."

  "No." She shook her head. "I need to be in my own bed. Thank you, though."

  "Okay." He opened his door and waited until Lori had climbed out as well. "So, I got an email back from Gertrude Weller this evening. She's Peyton Weller's aunt and she said she'd be happy to talk to us. She’s over in Scottville."

  "Wow, okay. When?"

  "Are you sure you're up for it?" Ben asked.

  "I'm sure."

  "I'm going to take a long ride tomorrow. Want to meet here again? Say four o'clock and then we'll drive to Scottville?"

  "I'll be here."

  23

  Lori pulled her pillow over her head to mute the sound, but it seemed to make no difference.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch…

  Gnawing and pulling and slurping and all of it right outside her door. She'd kill Henry for waking her up. She let her arm flop to the side where the pillow fell from her hand to the floor.

  The chewing continued and she couldn't imagine what he could be eating that would make so much noise.

  She sat up in her daybed and stared across the room, eyelids heavy and wanting to slip closed. But she'd never fall back asleep with him out there. She stood and started for the door, stepped on something hard and yelped in pain. She reached down and felt along the carpet, eyes adjusting to the dark. It was a little metal ball. When she lifted it, it tinkled. Lori held it in the fragment of moonlight that had gotten past her curtains. It was a little round bell with pretty designs etched in the surface and something in her belly throbbed at the sight of it—so familiar, and yet… crunch.

  She pocketed the ball and continued toward her door, reaching for the handle. It was warm and almost wet beneath her palm. The crunching had stopped. Lori lowered her eyes and stared at the bit of strange light spilling beneath the door. It carried with it a reddish-brown fog that seeped slowly into the room.

  Lori's fury at Henry shrank down and another emotion replaced it—fear. She was suddenly sure whatever had been eating had heard her wake up and approach the door. It stood just on the other side, perhaps its long nose tilted up, trying to catch her scent. Its maw hung agape, its meal growing putrid in the warmth.

  Another sound arose, beginning at the top of her bedroom door. A grating screech as if whatever stood on the other side had long pointed nails and had begun to drag them down the face of the door.

  "Yo, dude, maybe you better call 911."

  Lori woke to a mass of voices, many talking over the others, unfamiliar and disjointed.
<
br />   "She may be having a seizure—"

  "At least the screaming stopped—"

  "Bro, I totally have E downstairs. Let me get out of here before you call the cops."

  "Lori, hey, Lori." Rough hands shook her shoulders, and she blinked and clamped her eyes shut when the bright lights of her living room fixture blinded her. She shoved both hands over her eyes.

  "She's awake," a girl said.

  "Lori. Hey, it's Kenny. You okay?"

  The voices subsided, and when Lori pulled her hands from eyes, she saw Kenny, her downstairs neighbor, kneeling beside her and no fewer than ten of his friends loitering around her apartment. Most of them held beer cans. One was smoking a lit joint, the tendril of smoke swirling into the air above the kid's head.

  "What are you doing in my apartment?" she asked, trying to raise her voice, but it came out as a croak.

  She sat up, wincing at the ache in the left side of her neck, for which she could thank falling asleep on the couch. As she sat up, her eyes caught her bare legs, and she snatched a throw from the back of the couch, settling it over her pale thighs.

  It had been warm when she’d returned from her outing with Ben, and she'd lain down in a pair of old, elastic-less underwear that she usually wore during her time of the month and an oversized t-shirt with a faded picture of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the front.

  "You were screaming," Kenny explained, standing up and grabbing a can of beer off her coffee table. She saw the ring of condensation he'd left behind on her hardcover copy of Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone.

  "What are you talking about?" she asked, still groggy, her throat hoarse. She wanted a glass of water, but sure as hell wouldn't be getting up and trotting across the room in her holey underpants to get one.

  "It was crazy," a girl wearing a cut-off CMU t-shirt that left her midriff bare chimed in. "Like, we were all partying and drinking and somebody said, ‘Hey, quiet, do you guys hear that?’ and we all went quiet and it was like—"

  "You were being murdered," a guy with a ball cap pulled low on his forehead finished.