Dark Omen: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “Don’t give it a second thought,” Crystal insisted. “I’ve been in the same situation more times than I’d care to admit. I’m covering this,” she told Rick.

  “Sure. Thanks, Crystal.” He put the money in the register and handed her the change.

  The woman continued to blush, pushing the contents of her purse back into the leather bag.

  Crystal knelt and grabbed the copy of Rebecca from the floor.

  “This is one of my favorite books,” Crystal told her, handing her the book.

  “Really?” the woman’s face brightened. “Mine too. I’ve already read it, but that first line…” She sighed. “It gets me every time.”

  “‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again’,” Crystal quoted.

  The woman closed her eyes and nodded. “Such a great book.”

  “Would you like to join me?” Crystal asked, gesturing toward the table she’d been occupying near the window. The sun slanted through, casting a shining light on the metal chairs.

  “You don’t mind?” the woman asked, slinging her purse over one shoulder and picking up her sandwich and coffee. “I’m so embarrassed I forgot my money. This has been the day from hell for me.”

  “Tell me about it,” Crystal said, leading her to the table. “I’ve been working on an assignment for my Environmental History class and my brain is about to quit on me.”

  The woman sat across from her.

  She was older than Crystal, closer to thirty than twenty, with dark curls that looked odd against her pale face. Her eyes were light and her eyebrows too. Her hair should have been lighter, Crystal thought.

  “Are you studying at Michigan State?” the woman asked, sipping her coffee, which she drank black.

  Crystal nodded. “I’m majoring in English.”

  “To be a teacher?” the woman asked. “Or an MFA - something like that?”

  Crystal chuckled and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “I’m not sure yet. I love reading and writing. There are some wonderful poetry and creative writing instructors at Michigan State, and I’m inspired to follow in their footsteps. I love spending my days talking about the languages of love, the ways other people express themselves. It’s such a lost art, writing. I wish there was more of it,” Crystal admitted.

  “Like what? Writing letters to our lovers?” the woman cocked a sharp pale eyebrow.

  Crystal thought of Wes and her body grew warm.

  “Exactly. And parents too. I started writing letters to my mother when I was twelve, the year after she died. I wrote her a letter every month. I told her about my days in school, the boys I had crushes on. I wrote her poems. I cried onto the pages. There was something liberating about knowing she’d never hold the paper in her hands. I’d never have to look her in the eye after I told her my secrets.”

  Crystal paused, surprised at how much she’d revealed to this perfect stranger in a matter of minutes. “I’m sorry,” Crystal laughed. “Apparently, you’re repaying me for the sandwich by pretending to be my therapist.”

  The woman laughed, throwing her head back and revealing her long delicate throat.

  Crystal could see the sharp bones of her chest. She was beautiful in a cold, crystalline way, like a marble sculpture in a museum.

  “I’m Greta,” the woman told her, extending a hand.

  Her hands were cold, her fingers narrow and bony.

  “Crystal. I guess I should have at least introduced myself before I started revealing my deepest darkest secrets.”

  “Not at all,” Greta told her. “There’s no better person to divulge our secrets to than a stranger. My hair stylist knows more about me than my lovers ever will.”

  Crystal widened her eyes. “Well then. Pretend I’m her.”

  Greta laughed, took another swallow of her coffee, and leaned back in her chair.

  “Well, for starters, I side-swiped someone this morning, and I didn’t leave a note,” Greta confessed.

  “Yikes. That doesn’t sound like fun.”

  “The asshole deserved it,” Greta continued. “He blocked me into my parking spot at the pharmacy. I went into the store and looked for him, but he’d disappeared. I had to get out. I had to be to the bank by ten. I did my best, but unfortunately he paid for his carelessness with his passenger side mirror.”

  Crystal smiled and shook her head, lifting her own coffee and sipping the sweet milky drink. She’d never taken her coffee black. Everything is improved by milk and sugar, her mother used to say. Their father would sigh and moan about the milk and sugar added to tea, cereal, oatmeal, you name it. But Crystal and Bette lapped it up like kittens.

  “Karma,” Crystal told her. “Sometimes fate forgets and we’re forced to bring the balance ourselves.”

  The woman studied her with a curious expression and then she bobbed her head in agreement.

  Crystal sensed suddenly that Greta was angry, violently angry about the man who’d blocked her in, despite her good-natured explanation.

  “Karma, boy would I like to believe in that,” Greta said. “I have a handful of people waiting to get what’s coming to them.”

  Greta took a bite of her sandwich, shaking her head and swallowing. “Sorry, wow, now it’s me who’s going overboard. I don’t mean to unload my anger.” She replaced her scowl with a smile. “Like I said, I’ve had a day. I want to pay you back for the sandwich, though. Can you give me your address? I’ll pop a check in the mail.”

  Crystal shook her head. “It’s on me, okay? Maybe we can meet for lunch again sometime and you can pick up my sandwich. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds great,” Greta said.

  “Do you go to the school?” Crystal asked.

  Greta shook her head. “I’m a researcher. No specific title. I do research for a small publishing company. They work with writers who publish nonfiction and I’m in charge of collecting information, scouring newspapers, visiting old places — that kind of thing.”

  “That’s neat. What’s it like?”

  Greta shrugged.

  “Like any job. It has its ups and downs. It’s flexible and I get to travel a lot, which is good for me. I don’t enjoy working for other people.”

  “I get that,“ Crystal agreed. “I work for lots of other people, but I’d love a job with more freedom someday.”

  Greta finished her sandwich and stood up.

  “I’ve got to run. I’m meeting with an author in twenty minutes, but can I get your phone number, Crystal? I’ll call you for that lunch date.”

  Crystal wrote her phone number on a napkin and handed it to her.

  She watched the woman leave and realized her entire body had grown taut. Crystal took a deep breath and felt the tension slowly drain out.

  Crystal hadn’t picked up many little tidbits about the woman as she often did in first meetings. A May birthday, she thought, Taurus. What she most felt was the woman’s anger, a hot boiling anger that seemed to flow beneath her skin.

  26

  Now

  Bette sat down with the cardboard box Officer Hart had returned from Crystal’s car. She’d looked at it a dozen times since he’d brought it over, but had not brought herself to look inside a second time.

  “I can do this,” she told no one.

  She pulled out one of Crystal’s journals, a flimsy notebook covered in little silver spirals. Headbands, a few CDs, a half-eaten bag of cashews, and a purple rain jacket. There was also a gift box with a little card in a red envelope taped to the front.

  The envelope contained a card from Wes, which included a sappy love poem and more declarations of love. Bette trembled as she read it and tried not to rip it into a thousand pieces.

  Inside the box, wrapped carefully in tissue paper, she found a framed picture.

  It was a poem superimposed over a faded photograph. She leaned closer and realized it was a photograph of Bette and Crystal perched in their mother’s lap. It was the photo that sat beside Crystal’s bed. Thei
r mother had been sitting in the rocking chair that now stood on Bette’s porch. The sisters were young. Bette probably four and Crystal two.

  The poem over top of the image was Edgar Allen Poe’s, Dream Within a Dream.

  “What is it, honey?”

  Bette looked up to find Lilith standing on the porch.

  Bette held it out.

  Lilith took the frame and smiled sadly.

  “Your mother’s favorite poem.”

  Bette nodded.

  “Did Crystal make this for you?” Lilith asked.

  Bette shook her head. “Weston must have given it to Crystal as a gift.”

  Lilith frowned. “Hard to believe that he could love her so much and still…” Lilith didn’t finish the thought, but Bette did in her mind.

  Murder her. Love her so much and still murder her.

  They didn’t know if he’d murdered her.

  Bette continued to hang on to some shred of hope that he’d abducted her and hidden her somewhere, or she’d escaped but been injured and was hiding at some little cottage deep in the woods, where an old medicine man was nursing her back to health. Foolish fairy tales. Bette had never been keen on such stories, but now they were the only things keeping her going.

  Lilith sat down. “It’s strange that he kept the pregnancy test,” she said.

  Bette glanced at her profile. She still looked young, far younger than her sixty years, but her face had become drawn in the previous days.

  “Yeah,” Bette murmured. “I’ve wondered about that. Why didn’t he throw it away?”

  Wes had to know the police would search his house. Why on earth did he choose to keep the very item that would most implicate him in Crystal’s disappearance?

  “Maybe he didn’t hurt Crystal,” Lilith puzzled. “What if it’s not Weston at all, but some random guy who saw her pumping gas or buying a book and followed her?”

  Bette shook her head, her obsessions with Weston’s guilt churning rapidly in her head.

  “He did it. He built a world of lies and with the pregnancy, it was going to implode. I think he kept it because he believes he’s smarter than anyone else. He assumed they’d never get an actual warrant. I think they caught him off guard.” Bette spat the words out, but the picture in her hands told another story.

  Weston himself told another story.

  “But I don’t believe it,” Bette hissed.

  “Don’t believe what, honey?” Lilith asked.

  “Nothing, sorry,” Bette grumbled.

  The phone rang in the house.

  “I’ll get it,” Lilith said, standing and walking inside. A moment later, her head peeked out. “It’s for you, Bette.”

  Bette returned the picture to the box and walked in the house.

  “Law Offices of Henderson and Kissinger,” Lilith said, lifting an eyebrow and handing Bette the phone.

  “This is Bette,” she said, wondering why their father’s attorney would be calling.

  “Bette, hi, this is Marvin Kissinger. How are you?”

  “Not great. Crystal is missing. Have you heard?” she muttered.

  “Yes, actually that’s why I’m calling. Could you come to the office? I wanted to talk about a few things.”

  Bette frowned, watching as Lilith sprayed and cleaned the kitchen sink.

  “I’ll leave right now,” she said.

  * * *

  “Crystal didn’t have much, but she wanted to put it in order. She visited me four weeks ago, Bette,” Marvin explained.

  Bette sat in the stiff leather chair that faced his enormous desk. A gold placard displayed the lawyer’s name: Marvin Kissinger, LLM.

  Bette leaned forward in her chair, clutching her knees and studying the dizzying weave of red and blue carpet beneath her flats.

  “Wait, no. Crystal created a will four weeks ago?” she asked trying to look at him.

  He was older than their father, pushing seventy, but his lined face was tan and he still had a head of thick dark hair.

  Marvin nodded.

  “But why? Why would she do that?” Bette demanded.

  Bette’s thoughts spun in her head. Crystal was not a planner. If someone had asked, Bette would bet on her sister never putting a penny into a retirement account, never writing a will, never even signing up for health insurance.

  Their father had sometimes referred to her as the invisible girl when they were young because she floated through life seemingly unscathed. While Bette suffered broken bones, sobbed over failed tests and obsessed about college transcripts, Crystal drifted as if on a rainbow that always delivered her to the pot of gold, to the perfect man, school, job — whatever.

  “Did she say why, Marvin? Was Crystal sick?”

  Marvin shook his head.

  “She didn’t mention an illness. She just popped in one day, no appointment, and chatted with our secretary, Hollie, for a few minutes before coming back here and asking me to draw up a will. I did ask her why, and she just said she was trying to be more responsible. She didn’t offer more, and I didn’t ask. I wish now that I had.”

  “Have you told the police?” Bette asked.

  Marvin looked surprised.

  “No. For starters, the police haven’t visited me. But you understand Bette, I’d be obligated to share that information. And she mentioned a life insurance policy as well.”

  Bette felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her.

  “Life insurance?” she asked.

  “She’d set up a policy that morning. One hundred thousand payable to you.”

  Bette left the office on paper legs. She collapsed inside her car and rested her head on the steering wheel.

  She didn’t cry. Not yet, not in a public parking lot where people would see the red blotches on her cheeks and the snot rushing from her nose. And grief wasn’t there yet. Shock was.

  Why had her sister visited the office?

  Could it have been merely a coincidence?

  Crystal wasn’t suicidal. Her sister had never been depressed a day in her life; well, save for the three days leading up to her period. She hadn’t looked sick.

  The secrets were piling on, and Bette wasn’t sure how much more she could take.

  * * *

  Bette returned home to find her father on the phone.

  She waited in the kitchen, the news still swirling in her mind, making the world feel off-kilter. Her own house looked alien.

  Homer hung up.

  “Lilith went to the grocery store,” he explained. He nodded at the phone. “That was Crystal’s friend, Jenny. They graduated together. Calling to offer her assistance. Lot of good any of it does.” He frowned, studying Bette’s face. “What? Did you hear something?”

  “Crystal bought a life insurance policy. She created a will,” Bette told her father. “I just left Marvin Kissinger’s office.”

  Homer’s mouth turned down.

  “Crystal?” He shook his head as if he didn’t believe it. “A will? But why? What did Marvin say?”

  “He didn’t know why, Dad. She walked into his office four weeks ago and asked him to draft a will.”

  “That’s not like Crystal. She couldn’t have been ill. Right, Bette?”

  Bette wanted to say no. She and Crystal shared everything, their deepest secrets, their most troubling thoughts, but Crystal had created a will, bought life insurance. Crystal had been pregnant.

  Crystal had known something that Bette hadn’t, and she’d never said a word about it.

  27

  Then

  Crystal sat in the wicker chair by her window, willing herself to be lulled by the gentle swaying. It didn’t work its usual magic. She stared out the window as the daughter of another tenant in the apartment building ran around the courtyard, pulling a wooden duck whose mouth opened and closed with the revolutions of its wheels.

  “Long enough,” she whispered, standing and walking into the bathroom. Her hands tingled, and she rubbed them down her thighs as if that might calm the
m down.

  She stopped in the doorway and looked toward the little plastic stick balanced on the edge of the sink. It was an inconsequential object, cheap and flimsy. She could crush it beneath a tennis shoe, and it would cease to exist.

  Stepping into the bathroom, the tile cool against her bare feet, Crystal stared down at the pregnancy test.

  Parallel pink lines met her eyes. A harmless symbol if encountered anywhere else in the world, but there, on that white plastic stem, they held a Godlike power. The power of life and death. The power of a magnificent shift that the receiver was hopeless to avoid.

  Pregnant.

  Crystal’s hands shook as she picked up the test and held it closer to her face. People suffered from double vision all the time. If she were Bette, she’d march back to the store and buy two more to confirm, but she wasn’t.

  Her body had revealed its secret that morning when she’d risen slowly from the abyss of her dreams to find her hand resting on her belly and the unshakable sense that another being lived within it.

  Crystal studied her face in the mirror. No shadow lingered behind her, no gaunt face transformed her rosy cheeks, but the truth of her imminent death still hovered somewhere, somewhere in the space between body and spirit, where knowledge that the mind couldn’t access slithered and slipped at the corner of one’s eye.

  She grabbed her purse and tucked the pregnancy test inside, slid on her sandals, and left the apartment to meet Weston.

  * * *

  Crystal sat on the low brick wall at the Michigan State University campus and looked at the clock tower.

  She’d loved the structure since girlhood, when she’d visited the university with her parents. She and Bette would play in the bowl of grass at the base of the clock tower. Crystal would imagine racing up the stairs all the way to the room at the top. It would be filled with gears and dials, a room always in movement, tiny constant shifting and clicking, reminding the world that a second, now a minute, had elapsed. That moment was gone, this one was here, and now this one too had passed.