“Okay, thanks.”
Bette walked out to her car and slid behind the wheel.
Grace… Bette searched for the friend in her mind. Someone that Crystal met at the bookstore, at college, maybe at Hospice House. Impossible to say. Crystal had a thousand friends, and she made them everywhere. Bette often joked that Crystal couldn’t get a tank of gas without making a new friend.
Bette drove to The Reader’s Retreat, a used bookstore on Pearl Street. She parked and pushed into the dimly lit space, which smelled of coffee, incense, and old books.
The shop’s owner, Freddie, had fallen in love with Crystal the moment he’d seen her despite being thirty years her senior, married and with six kids. Theirs was a love affair that existed only in Freddie’s mind, and he wasn’t afraid to say so. Crystal worked the third weekend of every month at the store in exchange for free books.
Freddie sat in an overstuffed chair; a box of books balanced on the scarred coffee table before him.
“Bette,” he said, smiling and blowing a layer of silt off the book in his hand. “If I wasn’t just thinking of you not ten minutes ago. Lookie here.” He stood and shuffled behind the heavy oak desk where an ancient typewriter sat on next to an equally ancient cash register. Freddie’s was the only business in Lansing that refused to accept credit cards.
He held up a copy of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
“It’s a fourth edition. Impeccably cared for. Look at that binding. Not a single crack.”
Bette nodded, barely looking at the book over which she normally would have salivated.
“It’s beautiful, Freddie, but I’m looking for Crystal. She was supposed to meet me almost two hours ago and never showed. Has she been in today?”
Freddie stared at her, not believing her lack of reaction to the treasure in his hand. When she continued to wait silently, he set the book on his desk and returned to his chair.
“Not so much as a crimson hair has passed through that door in two weeks. She’s been busy with that new flame, I’m sure. A sword to the heart, I might add,” he said, clutching his chest as if mortally wounded.
2
Then
Crystal watched Professor Meeks stride into the auditorium, his smile easy, chatting with a student who followed him like a duckling after its mother.
“Welcome to Poetry 101,” he announced, striding to the blackboard behind him. “I’m Professor Meeks, and I’ll be the guy trying to look like a beatnik up here at the desk all semester, or so I’ve been told.”
The class laughed.
“Truth be told, had I been born in the age of the beatniks, I would surely have joined them. Instead, I’ve been blessed with the lot of you.”
He started to go through the syllabus outlining the poetry they’d focus on that semester.
Meeks seemed to be in his early thirties. His sandy brown hair brushed his shoulders, and a neatly trimmed beard covered the lower half of his face. He was handsome and looked the part of a shaggy poet. Crystal imagined him sitting at a scratched wooden desk drinking scotch and pouring his soul into a tattered notebook before collapsing into bed, exhausted.
He’d have only a shred of passion left for teaching, but he’d stretch and warp it until he could cast a luminous veil over every student in the room.
He wore dark jeans and a t-shirt covered with a wrinkled-looking blazer. As he spoke, his hands flew nearly as fast as his lips, and the students in the room watched him, rapt.
Crystal had read both of Professor Meeks’ poetry chapbooks, crying during each as she’d sat at her favorite coffee shop listening to Christmas music and missing her mother. Poetry and memories of her mother walked hand in hand in Crystal’s life. The poetry could be unrelated, about seagulls or lemons, and still she’d find the words curving into the shape of her mother’s smile or softening like her hands.
Meeks wrote about abandonment, fear, travel and love. It was the love poems that had struck her like a bell deep in her ribs. The reverberation continued for days after she’d read them. She’d been excited to meet the man who’d put the heart’s longings, the sheer magnitude of them, onto a one-dimensional page.
When his eyes fell upon Crystal, he paused, his sentence cut in half, the silence stretching out long and empty.
He ducked his head, breaking the stare, and chuckled.
“Sorry folks, lost my train of thought there.”
As the lecture continued, Professor Meeks kept his gaze averted. Whenever he drifted toward the right side of the stadium seats where Crystal sat, he’d pause as if realizing his mistake and shift his eyes left.
When class ended, Crystal made her way to the front of the room.
Up close, she saw thick dark lashes fringed the professor’s blue eyes.
“Professor,” she said.
He glanced away from the boy he’d been talking to, and his smile faltered as if he’d been struck silent for a second time as he stared at her.
The student glanced at Crystal as well and then back at the professor.
“I’m just nervous,” the boy said, tugging on the collar of his gray polo shirt. “I’ve never read any of my poems out loud. My girlfriend says Open Mic Night is the perfect time to share, but… " He grimaced as if the mere suggestion brought him physical pain. “I’m sick at the thought of it.”
The professor smiled and put a hand on the boy’s arm.
“Forget the crowd, Ben,” Meeks said. “Choose one person. Better yet, bring your best friend or your girlfriend. Bring the person you can read the poem to and mean every word. Read to them and only them.”
Ben swallowed a big shaky breath and nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “Bring one friend. Thanks, Professor.”
He nodded and headed from the room, continuing to mumble the advice to himself.
“Hi,” Meeks said, returning his gaze to Crystal. “And you are?”
“Crystal Childs.”
She held out her hand, though it seemed an awkward thing to do suddenly.
He grinned and shook it.
“Lovely to meet you, Crystal Childs.”
Their hands lingered together, warmth coursing from his hand into hers. She gazed at him, their eyes, like their hands, lingering overlong.
He forced his eyes away as if with great effort and stared down at the desk where he shuffled papers together. “Are you looking forward to Poetry 101?”
She heard him trying to sound casual, forcing an ease that didn’t flow into his limbs. He looked stiff, awkward, as if he suddenly wasn’t sure what to do with his body.
“I’ve been excited to start this class for weeks,” she confessed. “I read Musings in the Morning Light and Long Drives.”
He studied her, as if surprised by the admission.
“I must admit, it’s rare that a student reads my work before the semester starts. I try not to force my own poetry on my classes. My goal is to teach you the greats.”
“It was…” she murmured, “great.” And it had been. She thought of the poem titled Her, a long list of words that described a mother present in the flesh, but never in the heart.
He took a step back as if the space between them had grown too small, though it hadn’t changed.
“Thank you. I’ve been writing poetry for twenty years, and I still stammer when someone comments on my work. That’s the beauty of it, though. The vulnerability. Of course, your experience of my poetry has nothing to do with me at all.”
Crystal smiled and nodded, studying the fine bones beneath his large, long-fingered hands.
“That’s why I’m drawn to poetry. It evokes something different in us all,” she murmured.
“Exactly,” he agreed, reaching to grab a planner on his desk.
His hand brushed Crystal’s, and she shivered. The contact moved between them like an electric current. Soft and enveloping, as if someone had thrown a sheet, warm from the dryer, over top of them. For an instant they were together beneath that shroud, tuck
ed safely, solidly, and then the door banged open and a girl, probably a freshman judging from her frazzled expression and the campus map clutched in her hand, burst in.
“I’m sorry. Is this Poetry 101?” she squeaked.
Professor Meeks blinked, took another step away from Crystal, and nodded.
“Yes, you’re in the right place. Grab a seat wherever,” he told her.
He returned his gaze to Crystal and now he didn’t break away from her eyes.
“I have to…” he gestured at his notes as if in explanation.
“Yeah, absolutely. I’m sorry to have kept you, Professor Meeks.”
“Wes,” he told her, reaching out as she turned and touching her wrist.
He looked surprised that he’d offered the word, his name, to a student he’d only just met.
“Thank you, Wes,” she said and left.
She paused at the confused student who peered at the two hundred seats in the room as if her seat choice was the first question on the exam, and she was bound to fail.
Crystal pointed to the upper back section.
“They dim the lights for slides. You’re practically invisible up there,” Crystal told the girl, who gave her a timid smile.
“Thank you,” she whispered, clutching her map and hurrying up the stairs.
As Crystal slipped into the hallway, she glanced back and saw Wes watching her.
3
Now
Bette drove to the Hospice House where Crystal worked several nights a week. They hadn’t seen her.
She returned to Crystal’s apartment, where she called every name and phone number listed in her address book. Crystal had owned the address book since high school, and it wasn’t up to date. Several of the phone numbers were disconnected. A few of Crystal’s old friends admitted they hadn’t spoken to her in years.
Finding Weston Meeks’ number nowhere in the book, Bette called Michigan State University and left a message on his office machine.
After exhausting every avenue, she pulled in to the East Lansing Police Department.
“I need to report my sister missing,” Bette told the woman at the desk.
The woman studied her, and perhaps seeing the alarm Bette felt was written across her face, she stood.
“Just a moment, please,” she said, disappearing behind a wall.
Bette heard voices beyond the wall and imagined a sleepy police station with men drinking cold coffee and telling stories of their latest traffic stops.
Several minutes passed, and the receptionist returned with a man in police uniform.
“Hi, ma’am. I’m Officer Hart. Come on back, and I’ll help you out.
Bette followed him around the wall and was surprised to see an array of neat cubicles, many decorated with family photos or posters of superheroes and movie characters.
The deputy led her to his own cubicle, which contained a framed photo of a dog wearing a red bandanna next to another framed photo of an older man and woman smiling as they stood in front of a sloping vineyard.
“Your sister is missing?” the man asked.
Bette sat in the hardback chair next to his desk and nodded. She clasped her hands in her lap, weaving her fingers together to keep them from shaking or tugging and pulling at her long dark hair. She was a nervous fidgeter, prone to anxiety in normal circumstances and practically a bouncing ball during moments of crisis.
“Yes, her name is Crystal Childs. C-R-Y-S-T-A-L. She’s twenty-two years old, long red hair, green eyes. She drives a 1979 Volkswagen Beetle. It’s a light-blue convertible with a black top.”
“Okay, hold on. You’re talking faster than I can write.” The man jotted the words down in a scrawl that Bette doubted he’d be able to read after he finished.
“When did she go missing?”
Bette looked at the clock. Three hours since their scheduled meeting time, but who knew how long her sister had actually been missing. Five hours, eight. The last person Bette had spoken to who confirmed seeing Crystal that day was Rick at the coffee shop. That had been at nine a.m. — nearly eleven hours before.
“I’m not sure. She was supposed to meet me at five. That was three hours ago.”
The deputy paused and looked up at her.
“She’s been missing for three hours?”
Bette watched him lay the pen down.
“Pick that back up,” she snapped, grabbing the pen and holding it out to him. “Fine, never mind. The last time I saw her was Wednesday afternoon. That was three days ago. She’s been missing for three days.”
The deputy took the pen and sighed.
“Ma’am—”
“My name is Bette,” she snarled.
“Okay, Bette. I understand it’s frustrating when someone misses an appointment. I get it. I have a sister and she’s notoriously late for everything. I kid you not, I’m still shocked she arrived on time for her own wedding. But I can’t file a missing person’s report on a twenty-two-year-old woman who hasn’t been seen in three hours. The Chief of Police would not look kindly on that. You see, there’s hours and resources that go into missing person’s cases.”
“Do you know how many people are” —he paused and made air quotes— ”’missing’ every single day? How many husbands come home late from work, or how many kids ride the bus home with their friend and forget to mention it to their parents? Do you know how many actual crimes wouldn’t be solved if we had every deputy in our department tracking down sisters who missed dinner dates?”
Bette stood so abruptly her chair smacked into the cubicle and sent it wobbling. The officer also stood and grabbed the top, righting it before it could tip over.
She’d made it halfway to the front door when he called out.
“Wait. Ma’am, Bette, just hold on a sec, okay?” He hurried to catch up with her, his face flustered and embarrassed.
Bette glared at him.
“Let me take the information down. I can’t put it into the system for twenty-four hours, but there’s no reason for you to have to come back in. I can put a BOLA out to the guys on duty tonight. If anyone comes across her car, we’ll call you.”
Bette stood, arms rigid at her sides, her blood coursing in hot rapid gusts behind her eyes. She’d always had a short fuse, and instead of sadness tended towards anger when faced with a dilemma. Anger or panic.
She said nothing, but followed the officer back to his desk. She didn’t sit but stood above him as he wrote.
“A blue Volkswagen Bug. Anything distinctive about the car?”
“A blue VW bug is pretty distinctive, don’t you think?”
He smiled, but quickly wiped the look when he saw her expression.
“Sure, okay. Got it. Anything else suspicious? I only ask because you seem awfully upset about a woman who’s only been missing for three hours.”
Bette stuffed her hands in her pockets to stop their shaking.
She didn’t have Crystal’s insight, her ability to sense someone’s favorite candy or if a person might get in a fender bender that afternoon, but her body perceived something. It always had, though she’d spent most of her life writing the feelings off as anxiety or neurosis. Crystal never tuned any of it out, but Bette found the feelings unmanageable, a nuisance, really.
But the fear that left her arms and legs quaking was not paranoia, and she’d had it twice before. Once on the day of her mother’s death, and the second time when… no, she wouldn’t go there. She shook her head.
“I just know my sister. Okay? She calls if she’s going to be ten minutes late. She can be flakey about some things, but she’s punctual. Today is the anniversary of our mother’s death and we spend it together every year. It’s a big deal. Get it? She wouldn’t miss it; she wouldn’t be late. Not unless something drastic had happened. There’s something wrong, and you will be looking for her. This whole place will be looking for her.”
Bette wished she hadn’t said the words as she hurried into the warm summer evening.
The l
oud rattle-like call of katydids reverberated from the trees surrounding the parking lot.
Crystal loved katydids. She’d even named one of their cats after the loud insects, which at times had driven Bette to insomnia in the summer, when they were especially loud. She’d taken to wearing earmuffs to bed to drown out the sound.
She shivered and climbed into her car, heading for home.
4
Then
Crystal chose her usual table near the stone fireplace in Luna’s Cafe. The embers crackled and popped, and she gazed at the orange flames leaping into the dark cavern of the chimney. As she pulled off her coat, the door to the coffee shop opened, and Weston Meeks stepped inside.
A light dusting of snow coated his hair and the shoulders of his dark coat.
It was most likely the final snow of the winter. One of those freak storms that arrived at the end of March to remind them that Mother Nature always got the last word.
Crystal had been attending Meeks’ class since January, but she’d never run into him outside of class.
Weston leaned over and shook the snow from his hair. When he looked up, he saw her. She smiled and waved him over.
“Join me,” she told him, as he walked to her little table.
“Are you sure? I don’t want to interrupt your quiet evening.”
“If I wanted a quiet evening, I would have gone home,” she said, settling into her chair.
The waitress, a petite Goth girl with black lips and black hair, stopped at their table.
“Hi Polly,” Crystal said. She frequented Luna’s Cafe and was on a first name basis with all the staff.
“Hi Crystal, what can I get ya?”
Crystal smiled. “I’ll have a cafe au lait, and he’d like espresso straight up with two sugars.”
Weston gaped, glancing from her to the barista before nodding yes.
“How did you do that?” he asked.
“What?” She winked at him and picked up the menu, though she suddenly had no appetite.
Dark Omen: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel Page 2
