Dark Omen: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  Most people realized a threat was not imminent, and their nervous system acted accordingly, but Bette’s body had malfunctioned somewhere down the line. She’d been part of the gene pool whose nervous system couldn’t handle the constant release of adrenaline and noradrenaline.

  Eventually Bette found coping mechanisms. Diaphragmatic breathing, walks in nature, and meditation, but Bette didn’t do them regularly enough to ensure another attack wouldn’t come.

  Bette swallowed the last of her coffee and stood.

  “I’m going to lie down,” she told Homer.

  She walked upstairs and collapsed onto her bed, head aching and eyes grainy.

  She fell into a troubled sleep.

  Hours later, Bette woke to voices and leapt out of bed before she’d fully opened her eyes. The door to her bedroom was cracked open, light spilling in from the hallway.

  She ran from the room and pounded down the stairs, the light in the kitchen momentarily blinding her. For half a second she saw two figures, one a woman, and thought: Yes, please, Crystal is home. But as her eyes adjusted, she saw it was not Crystal at all.

  A tall woman with dark curly hair streaked with silver looked at Bette and then stepped into the hall, gathering her in an embrace.

  Bette hugged Lilith, their mother’s best friend, whom she hadn’t seen in nearly two years.

  Lilith had moved to Portland, Oregon five years after their mother had died where she opened a used bookstore. Crystal had cried like a child the day Lilith had departed. They’d always been closer, Crystal and Lilith, though Bette never doubted Lilith’s love for both of Joanna Child’s daughters.

  “Lil,” Bette cried, hugging Lilith fiercely. It wasn’t Crystal, but it the closest thing to a mother she’d known in a long time.

  “Shhh… Oh, Bette. How I’ve missed you girls. Oh, honey…” she murmured and smoothed Bette’s hair, tangled from sleep.

  * * *

  “How did you find out?” Bette asked Lilith after Homer retired to bed.

  Lilith sat on the living room floor, her legs crossed, a scattering of oracle cards spread on the cream carpet. Chai plopped on the floor and rolled across the cards, stretching her claws toward Lilith’s leg. Lilith scratched the fur of her neck before scooting her aside.

  “Your dad called me yesterday morning. I booked the first flight out. He’d waited to call. He said he kept hoping she would show up.”

  “Me too,” Bette admitted. She’d also thought of calling Lilith but hadn’t been able to make the dreaded call informing her of Crystal’s disappearance.

  “Can you talk about it?” Lilith asked.

  Bette gazed at the cards.

  They depicted colorful images of fairies and woodland creatures above words like Surrender, Regenerate, and Higher Power.

  “It’s so much worse than I ever thought it could be,” Bette admitted. “Crystal fell in love with one of her professors. I met him. He seemed too good to be true.”

  “And he was?”

  “He’s married. He’s been married for years. Crystal didn’t have a clue. He has a whole other life in Traverse City.”

  Lilith frowned and shuffled the cards before setting them aside. She leaned her back against the couch.

  “Crystal’s always been such a good judge of character. She didn’t have any sense that he was hiding something from her?” Lilith asked.

  Bette shook her head.

  “I don’t think so. She was just… over the moon for this guy, Lil. I’ve never seen her like it. She couldn’t see a flaw in him.”

  “Which is a sure sign of a fake,” Lilith said. “No one is flawless. We’re all human.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You think he hurt her?” Lilith asked.

  Bette scowled. “Yes. I mean, it makes sense, right? He’s married; he doesn’t want the wife to find out. Plus, Officer Hart said the wife has money. If Meeks lost his wife, he’d lose the money too.”

  “Money,” Lilith grumbled. “It’s a sick fantasy.”

  Lilith stood and grabbed her suitcase, pulling out a dark-purple gift bag. “My partner is rather witchy. She’s an herbalist. I brought you a few things.”

  Lilith handed Bette the bag.

  “Your partner?” Bette asked. “Did you and Heather break up?”

  Heather had been a chiropractor Lilith met soon after moving to Portland.

  Lilith waved her hand.

  “Ages ago. She didn’t like dogs. Hagar growled every time she came over,” Lilith told Bette. Her Dalmatian was named after the comic strip Hagar the Horrible.

  Bette smiled. “How is Hagar?”

  “Old.” Lilith sighed. “He’s gone blind in one eye. Irina, my new gal, has been treating him with turmeric and boswellia and other herbs. They seem to help with his arthritis but not much she can do at this point. Age gets us all if we make it that long.”

  Bette pulled two blue glass bottles out of the gift bag. Little red labels were attached to each bottle.

  “Peaceful Tranquility and Sound Sleep,” Lilith said, sitting beside Bette. “That Sound Sleep one saved my life after the store got broken into.”

  “Oh, wow, I forgot about that. Did they ever catch the guy?”

  Lilith’s store had been burglarized six months earlier, an especially scary event since she lived in an apartment above her shop.

  “No. And he didn’t get away with much. A few antique books and a hundred bucks, but I woke up to something rattling my doorknob. Somehow, I convinced myself it was the furnace kicking on. Turns out it was a guy trying to get in. I met Irina that week when I went into an herbal apothecary in town. It’s a New-Age store that sells all kinds of stuff, but she produces all their natural supplements and was dropping off stock. We got to chatting and…” Lilith held up her hands. “The rest is history.”

  Bette smiled and leaned her head on Lilith’s shoulder.

  “I’m happy for you, Lil.”

  “Thanks, honey. I brought a bag for Crystal too. I really hope…” She didn’t finish her statement.

  Bette’s eyelids grew heavy, and she allowed them to close. Nights of sleeplessness had begun to catch up with her.

  “Here, open your mouth,” Lilith said.

  Lilith unscrewed the cap on the Sound Sleep bottle. “Two drops, and you’ll be out like a light. Valerian root.”

  Bette opened her mouth, cringing as the cool liquid hit her tongue. It wasn’t unpleasant. The woody taste lingered in her mouth after she swallowed.

  “I’ll see you in the morning, honey,” Lilith told her, kissing her cheek as Bette stood on tired legs and walked upstairs to bed.

  * * *

  The following morning, Bette found Lilith in the kitchen, brewing tea and baking banana-nut muffins.

  Lilith had always been a baker. When their mother was dying, Lil set up shop in their kitchen and baked for days. The girls lived on oatmeal cookies and zucchini bread.

  Their mother, who struggled to eat as the cancer stole the last of her appetite, still managed a few bites each day of Lilith’s carrot-cake muffins.

  The memories had forever ruined carrot cake for Bette, but Crystal still loved it and bought a carrot cake on their mother’s birthday every year.

  Homer sat at the counter, drinking coffee and sifting through the previous day’s notes.

  “Smells good,” Bette said, yawning and stretching her arms overhead.

  “You slept in,” Homer said happily.

  Bette looked at the clock over the stovetop and squinted at the little black numbers.

  It was after nine o’clock.

  “Valerian root,” Lilith said, grinning. “Sit, have a muffin. They’re coming out hot right now.”

  Bette sat at the counter, feeling energized for the first time in days.

  Lilith pulled a pan from the oven and lifted a hot muffin onto a plate. She dropped a tablespoon of butter on top and slid it over to Bette, doing the same for Homer.

  “I brewed coffee too. Coff
ee or green tea?” Lilith asked.

  “Coffee all the way, Lil. Green tea tastes like seaweed,” Bette said.

  Lilith grinned and shook her head.

  “Seaweed that’s chock-full of antioxidants, young lady. I’ll make a convert of you one of these days.”

  Bette drank her coffee and leaned close to her dad.

  “Yesterday was a blur. What have you got?”

  He showed her his latest list, organized in neat bullet points.

  “I’ve sorted the most important points from the day. In particular, I think we need to focus on canvassing Weston’s neighborhood with fliers. We know she visited him two days before she disappeared, but who’s to say she didn’t go back the day of? Our best chance is to get eyes on this flier. I’m also curious about their trip to the UP. I’d like to know what the tour guide thought of them. If he saw any arguments.”

  Lilith looked at the page. “How about his wife? Has anyone talked to her?”

  “Officer Hart said they were going to, but I don’t have any news on that,” Bette said. “I’d like to talk to her myself. I want to talk to everyone who knows Wes - his parents, his ex-girlfriends, his buddies. Anyone that might know what he did with Crystal—”

  “Start with the tour guide at Michigan Mayhem,” Homer said. “I’m heading to Kinko’s in twenty minutes to print more fliers.”

  Bette remembered how Crystal had glowed when she returned from her weekend in the UP with Wes.

  “I am so fucking in love,” Crystal had shouted, telling Bette about the trip as they walked through an open-air farmer’s market. Several of the vendors had laughed, and one older man had shouted, “With me, I hope."

  Bette had cautioned her against falling too fast, but they both knew she’d surpassed that months earlier.

  “Did something happen on their trip?” Lilith asked.

  Bette shook her head.

  “Not that she told me, but I think you’re right, Dad. I’m going to go talk to the guide, but first I want to talk to Weston Fucking Meeks.”

  15

  Then

  “Wes, I’d like you to meet my sister Bette.” Crystal wrapped an arm around Bette’s waist and kissed her cheek through the sheet of dark hair that fell over her shoulder.

  Bette held out her hand.

  “So, you’re the poet?” Bette shook Wes’s hand.

  He smiled. “I teach poetry, yes.”

  “He lives poetry,” Crystal corrected, leaving Bette to wrap both arms around Wes’s neck and kiss him.

  The kiss was long and deep. The kind of passion that seeped from Crystal’s pores, and that Bette had always found alien and uncomfortable.

  “Don’t forget to give his tonsils a wash while you’re in there,” Bette told her.

  Crystal laughed and pulled away.

  “They’re squeaky clean,” she promised.

  Wes chuckled.

  “Well come on, let’s get out of this rain,” Bette urged, throwing the door wide and spilling light from the hallway onto the porch.

  She led them into the kitchen.

  After Bette had taken over the house, she’d painted the walls in every room white. She liked color, a splash here and there in the form of paintings, but preferred blank walls. Anything more seemed to overwhelm her.

  “I don’t cook,” Bette said over her shoulder. “But I picked up enchiladas from Vinnie’s.”

  “Vinnie’s? Sounds Italian,” Wes said, shrugging off his coat and hanging it on the rack.

  “He’s a rebel like you,” Crystal laughed. “His parents own a chain of Italian restaurants, so naturally he opened a Mexican restaurant down the street.”

  Bette eyed Wes. “You’re the rebel in your family? You and Crystal make a fine pair, then. Though my father favored her despite her wayward choices. Her rebellion backfired.”

  “Mine was not rebellion. I just like what I like,” Crystal insisted, slipping off her shoes and leaving them on the rubber shoe mat.

  “I’m not sure rebellion is what I did,” Wes offered. “Rebellion implies someone cared either way. I never had a mother prodding me to become a doctor, so the thought never even crossed my mind. But Crystal tells me you’re an anthropologist? That sounds interesting.”

  Bette smirked. “It’s not. To most people anyway. I can happily disappear into the black hole of studying genealogical records for days, but that would put Crystal to sleep in ten minutes.”

  Crystal yawned. “I’m like Pavlov’s dog,” she said. “As soon as Bette says ‘genealogical records,’ I doze off.”

  Bette grabbed a strand of Crystal’s long red hair and pulled.

  “It’s that humming bird brain,” Bette teased. “She can’t concentrate on anything for over five minutes, Wes. You’ve been warned."

  Wes didn’t respond but took Crystal’s hand and turned it over, lifting it to his mouth and kissing her palm.

  Bette felt a tug in her own heart, an unspoken wish for that same kind of intimacy, but she stuffed it down, heading for the stove.

  * * *

  While Bette finished warming the food, Crystal tugged Weston upstairs.

  “Welcome to the shrine,” Crystal said, pushing open a door.

  Wes stepped into the room.

  “The shrine?” he asked, looking around.

  “It all belonged to our mother. Over the years, we gradually moved it in here, Bette and I mostly, but sometimes my dad too. I’d come in here and sit in her chair, smell her clothes, touch the things she loved.”

  Wes walked to a high bookshelf cluttered with books, figurines and pictures.

  He picked up a glass pig wearing sunglasses.

  “I told you,” Crystal laughed. “Her mother collected pigs.”

  Wes smiled and put the pig back down.

  “She liked Poe?” he asked, trailing his fingers across several leather spines filled with the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

  “Loved him. She used to recite Dream within a Dream to us before we went to bed at night.”

  “I stand upon the shore…” Wes murmured the first line, continuing around the room.

  He picked up a silver photo of their mother laughing as she kissed Crystal’s cheek. Crystal was three and her mother held her balanced on a hip. A wooden spoon, covered in chocolate frosting, poked from her free hand. Bette was standing on tiptoe, trying to lick the frosting as their mother’s attention was on Crystal. They’d been baking a birthday cake for their father and all three girls had flour on their faces and in their hair.

  “You look like her,” Wes said.

  Crystal gazed at the picture. She had her mother’s coppery red hair. But Bette had her brown eyes.

  Nearly eleven years had passed since their mother’s death, and Crystal still felt a spasm of grief clutch her heart as she looked at the photograph.

  “I like this room,” Wes told her. “All I have left of my dad is an old pipe and a few pictures.”

  “What happened to all his stuff after he died?” she asked.

  Wes shrugged.

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Dinner,” Bette called from downstairs.

  “That’s our cue,” Weston told Crystal, taking her hand.

  * * *

  “You took him in mom’s room” Bette asked, when Wes disappeared into the bathroom.

  Crystal looked up to find her sister grumpily opening a packet of sour cream.

  “Sure, why not?” Crystal asked.

  “Because you barely know him.”

  Crystal shook her head. “Just the opposite, actually. I feel like I’ve known him my whole life. I feel like I’ve known him in lifetimes before.”

  “But you haven’t, Crystal. You’ve known him for two months,” Bette snapped.

  Crystal sighed, and moved closer to Bette, taking the sour cream packet from her hands and tearing along the perforated line. Their shoulders touched and Crystal pressed into her sister, leaning her head on Bette’s shoulder.

  “Thank you f
or always protecting me, Bette, for always protecting all of us. But you can trust him. I feel his goodness, just like I feel yours.”

  Crystal kissed her cheek and grabbed their plates, carrying them to the dining room table that Bette had cleared of books and paperwork for the first time in weeks.

  “Time to switch the month,” Crystal announced, pausing at Bette’s calendar and pulling it from the nail it hung on.

  She flipped it to June and returned it to the wall. It was a quirky cat calendar. June’s cat was a fluffy Himalayan lazing on a white stucco porch. A glittering Mediterranean city sloped toward the sea behind him.

  As she shifted her eyes to the grid of days, the black numbers began to ooze down the page. Crystal gasped and stepped back. The dark tendrils pooled on the floor and then snaked across the tile towards her bare feet.

  “Crystal?” Weston asked.

  She jumped and her hands shot out, pushing him roughly away.

  His eyes widened and he stumbled, bumping into the kitchen island.

  Crystal spun back to the calendar, but the days of the month had returned to normal. Nothing seeped down the page. The cat continued napping in the image above, oblivious to the woman in another world watching him on trembling legs.

  “Are you okay?” Weston asked, not touching her but clearly wanting to.

  Bette watched them both from the doorway of the living room.

  “What happened?” she asked, eyes shifting from Crystal to Weston.

  Crystal shook her head.

  “Nothing, I-” she gestured vaguely at the calendar. “I thought I saw a spider.”

  Bette looked unconvinced. “Since when are you afraid of spiders?”

  Crystal shook her head. “I’m not, it just startled me.”

  Weston smiled and pulled her against him.

  “My spider-fearing fire goddess.” He kissed the side of her head.

  Bette looked like she might roll her eyes, but contained herself.

  “Let’s eat,” Crystal announced. “I’m starving.”

  * * *

  “So, what did you think?” Crystal asked.