Dark Omen: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “A psychiatrist at the Northern Michigan Asylum,” Greta said. “He’s dead and gone now, but apparently he lived here before he moved up north onto the asylum grounds. He never sold this place, and after he died it just sat…”

  “He didn’t have children that wanted it?” Crystal wondered.

  Greta’s face was pressed into the camera, but she pulled it away.

  “They all died, right here, in fact. Murdered. Two daughters, a son, and his wife. Good old Ralph died at the asylum. He was nearly ninety when he passed, but a few of the doctors still went to him for advice.”

  Crystal stared at Greta horror-struck.

  “Who murdered them?”

  Greta took a photograph of the black mold. It looked like billions of tiny spiders scurrying up the walls.

  “Unsolved,” Greta said, and then laughed at Crystal’s expression. “I guess I should have mentioned that. This is research for a true crime writer. I’ve always been fascinated by old places, by the things that live in the rotted walls, the memories, the dark things.”

  “Dark things?” Crystal touched the bannister leading up the narrow staircase.

  “Oh, you know. What’s left behind. In murder houses, plague houses. They’re different. As if the house remembers.”

  Crystal blinked at the rotted floorboards of the staircase. The lowest board seemed to move, pulsing up and down. Crystal blinked at Greta, the room behind her tilting and then steadying again.

  “I don’t feel so well,” she murmured.

  “That’s how I met him, you know?” Greta muttered. “The love of my life. He was living in an abandoned building in Detroit. He and two musician buddies, all three so doped up on heroin they barely lifted their heads when I walked in. I still have the pictures. A little leverage if I ever need it, which I haven’t because he’s been completely devoted to me for…” —Greta shrugged— “going on ten years.”

  Crystal tried to follow her words. Doped up and leverage, but the room spun, a slow whirling like a carousel just starting up. The light bulbs would flash, and the ugly smiles of the painted horses would spin by.

  Crystal put a hand to the bannister to steady herself. The knobby top broke off, and she fell to one knee. The impact hurt, but seemed to occur in a body further away from her own, as if she, Crystal, had stepped through a veil into another dimension. She could sense herself there in the old house, but her conscious mind was walking away, retreating.

  Greta loomed in front of her. Her usually gray eyes were almost black, and her smile was hard and bitter.

  “Until you came along. He was totally devoted to me until you.”

  Crystal fell onto her hands and watched the floor fade to black.

  35

  1973

  The Northern Michigan Asylum

  Greta Claude

  Greta held her father’s hand as he hunched forward in his chair, eyes clenched shut. Every few minutes he’d lift his head slightly. His eyes darted around and then bulged. He closed his eyes and commenced to rocking back and forth.

  “It’s the man in the blue tuxedo,” he whispered. It’s him, he’s here.”

  “Shh…” Greta murmured, though she knew all the doctors and patients had heard Joseph Claude ranting about the man in the blue tuxedo, the man he’d murdered six months before.

  They didn’t know that part, of course.

  They didn’t know the man’s body lay in the unmarked graveyard deep in the woods, on a hill overlooking the secret chamber. There had been a raised mound of dirt in the days after the burial, but over time Joseph and Greta stamped the earth down and spread out the soil. The rain and wind did the rest.

  Days before, Greta had noticed flowers had popped up on the grave. Bright yellow dandelions.

  A nurse paused behind Joseph. She rested a hand on his shoulder.

  “Time for your medicine, Joseph,” the nurse told him kindly. “And how are you, Greta?” she asked.

  Greta blinked at the woman, at her sunny, maddening smile and her stiff gray hair clinging to her head like a helmet.

  “I’m fine,” Greta said, standing and walking from the room, Joseph’s mumbled words echoing behind her.

  36

  Now

  Bette didn’t have to look in the phone book for the number of someone connected to Matt Kelly.

  When Bette mentioned to the librarian that she wanted to speak to a family member of Matt Kelly, the woman pointed to a flier hanging from the large glass-covered bulletin board in the lobby of the library.

  “The number on that flier is for Matt’s sister, Lisa.”

  The librarian even offered to let Bette use the library telephone to call, a polite enough gesture, though Bette sensed the woman mostly wanted to eavesdrop on the call.

  “Hello, Lisa speaking.”

  “Lisa, my name’s Bette Childs. I’d like to speak to you about your brother, Matt.”

  “Matt?” The woman’s voice dropped lower. “Are you a journalist?”

  Lisa did not sound hostile. Instead, it was hope that tinged her voice.

  “No, I’m not. My sister is missing, but I’d prefer not to explain over the phone.”

  She felt the librarian stiffen behind her.

  “Can we meet in person?”

  “Okay, sure. Just come by my house.”

  Lisa rattled off her address and Bette wrote it down.

  * * *

  Bette climbed the porch and knocked on the front door.

  A petite woman with dark blond hair pulled into a ponytail answered the door. She was probably approaching thirty, though her size made her appear younger. She couldn’t have stood over five feet tall. She wore no make-up and a mismatched jogging suit with gray pants and a purple zip-up shirt.

  “Bette?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, hi. Thank you for meeting me.”

  “I’m happy to do it. Come on in.” Lisa opened the door wide.

  Bette stepped into a short hallway. Family photographs decorated the cornflower blue walls.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” she asked.

  “No, thanks. I had some on my drive up,” Bette explained, following her into a tidy living room with couches and chairs striped in blue and white. A corner of the room held a small kids’ table scattered with crayons and coloring books.

  Lisa sat on a couch and pulled a scruffy-looking stuffed bunny into her lap.

  “It belongs to my daughter,” she explained.

  Bette opted for a chair in a matching pattern.

  “You said on the phone you had questions about Matt and Greta Claude. I’ve always wondered what became of her,” Lisa murmured. “A part of me hoped she’d met some untimely and painful end.”

  Bette’s eyes widened, and Lisa laughed.

  “That sounds cruel,” Lisa said, though she didn’t take the words back.

  “Can you tell me why you’ve hoped for that?” Bette asked.

  Lisa crossed her legs and lit a cigarette.

  “Because Greta Claude murdered my brother.” Lisa didn’t blink as she said the words.

  “She murdered him?” Bette breathed, remembering one of the several newspaper headlines: Boy’s Throat Slashed.

  Lisa took a shaky breath. “Matt was my older brother. I just adored him. So did my younger brother, Gary. Matt was such a good person. I know everyone says that about their family, but in Matt’s case it was absolutely true. Matt used to bring home injured animals: birds, raccoons, an opossum once. My dad called him the bleeding heart.

  ”’Bring all the hurt animals home you want, just don’t vote Democrat’,” Lisa drawled in a deep, masculine voice.

  Bette laughed.

  “He probably would have voted Democrat,” Lisa murmured. “Shit, he could have voted for Scooby Doo for all I care. But he never made it to his eighteenth birthday.”

  She tapped the ash of her cigarette into a lumpy clay dish painted in shades of purple and pink.

  “My daughter made this.” The w
oman smiled. “She’s five and goes to this great pre-school. The owner has a kiln in her house, and once a month the kids get to make ashtrays or coffee mugs. It’s so sweet. Matt would have loved my little girl. I named her Matilda. If she’d been a boy, I would have named her Matt.”

  “Lisa, what makes you think Greta killed Matt?”

  Lisa looked out the window toward the wooden swing set in her backyard. A jumble of toys lay in the grass around the little play area.

  “Matt was stabbed to death in Bishop Park,” Lisa explained. “Back then, a lot of teens hung out there, in a spot with a circle of boulders and a firepit in the middle. They went out to smoke and drink, make bonfires. I never went. By the time I was old enough, Matt had been killed there, and the town had demolished the site. It took a lot of work, bulldozers and stuff. No one made an outcry like they normally would. Protect the trees and all that. Everyone wanted it gone. They removed those big boulders and threw them in Lake Superior. They ripped the trees down and leveled out the land. A woman’s group planted a garden but a few years later, they demolished the whole park and built a shopping center. Small towns have long memories. No one was sad to see that park go.”

  “That’s terrible,” Bette said. “Was there evidence that Greta did it?”

  Lisa shook her head and took a final drag on her cigarette before snuffing it out in the ashtray. She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Not really. No knife, no fingerprints. Matt didn’t put up much of a fight, but he didn’t have a chance. Someone walked up behind him and slit his throat while he was sitting on a rock. He bled to death. She stabbed him in the back thirty-two times. The cut to his throat would have killed him. But she kept on going.”

  Lisa’s story terrified Bette. Each new revelation made Bette heart shrivel and slip deeper into her body as if preparing for the inevitable blow that would soon come.

  Bette rubbed her eyes. The long day crept up on her. She yawned and covered her mouth. “Sorry, I haven’t slept well lately. I will take you up on that coffee.”

  Lisa offered a sympathetic smile and stood. She returned with two cups of coffee.

  “Milk or sugar?” she asked.

  “No, black is great. Thanks.”

  “Me too,” Lisa admitted, returning to her seat and automatically running a hand over the stuffed bunny. “I used to add globs of sugar and cream, but after I had Matilda, I could never shake the extra ten pounds. Out went the cream and the sugar.”

  “You look great,” Bette told her, though the compliment felt flat and irrelevant in the midst of Lisa’s story.

  “The police didn’t fail in their investigation,” Lisa went on. “They didn’t leave a stone unturned. The sheriff is the father of Matt’s best friend, Nate. That man was obsessed. Still is. He calls me a couple times a year with updates. Unfortunately, most of the tips dried up years ago. Every lead was a dead end.”

  “And Matt was dating Greta?”

  Lisa pursed her lips and nodded.

  “You didn’t like her?” Bette asked.

  “No, I didn’t. She was a bitch, and I have no problem saying that. It’s true. She was the exact opposite of Matt. I never understood what he saw in her. I couldn’t find a single redeeming quality in that girl. She was attractive. Slim and blonde, but she rarely smiled or laughed. She walked like she had a two-foot pole shoved in her ass.”

  “How did they meet?” Bette asked.

  Lisa shrugged. “At school. Greta was the new girl in town. She moved here in 1973 to live with her aunt and uncle out at this dingy trailer park east of town. The place was a dump! Matt took a liking to her. She had that stray-kitten-needs-to-be-saved look about her, and Matt loved to rescue strays.”

  “She wasn’t from here, then?”

  “Nope, she came from Traverse City. Matt told me she lived in an asylum down there. Creepy! But both her parents died and there was nobody to take her, so they shipped her up here. She was fifteen.”

  “She lived in a mental institution?” Bette shuddered.

  “On the property, I guess. Her father was the caretaker or something. No wonder she was nuts.”

  “Did the police ever officially name her as a suspect?”

  “Not publicly.” Lisa scowled. “But the sheriff started considering her and then one day, poof, some rich guy in a fancy car pulled into town and whisked Greta Claude away. Just like that, she was gone.”

  Bette widened her eyes. “So, wait. She lived up here in a trailer and then suddenly someone with money came and took her away?”

  Lisa nodded. “Pretty much. I spoke to the sheriff a few months after she left. He tried to track her down. He wanted her to take a polygraph test, but lawyers protected her; not a lawyer, but plural lawyers. He couldn’t get anywhere near her. She was still a minor, so that only complicated things more.”

  Bette frowned. “Why did the sheriff suspect her?”

  “More than a few of Matt’s friends mentioned her name. She isolated Matt. For a while, she had total control over him. He quit the football team, stopped hanging out with his friends. If she said jump, he asked how high.

  “But his senior year, he changed. He was graduating in the summer, and he’d gotten into Michigan State. My parents planned to take him to East Lansing early. We had an uncle who lived down there for him to stay with. My parents claimed they wanted him to have extra time to get acclimated, but you know what? They wanted to get him away from Greta. She was wicked and everyone knew it.

  “By the spring, he’d started to pull away from her. I heard them fighting on the phone a few times. She showed up at our house in the middle of the night more than once. They’d be screaming at each other on the lawn, and then they’d be in his car, windows all fogged up.”

  Lisa shook her head.

  “Talk about a dysfunctional relationship,” she continued. “It was an abusive relationship but the typical roles were reversed. Greta was the abuser. She held all the power, except she was losing it. He was leaving her. Two weeks before he was scheduled to move, she murdered him.”

  “What about Greta’s aunt and uncle? What are they like?” Bette asked.

  “Well, her uncle is dead. He died six months after Greta moved in with them.”

  “You’re kidding me. How?”

  “Fell off the cliffs at Presque Isle Park.”

  Bette gave a little start at the park’s name.

  “What?” Lisa asked.

  “My sister visited Presque Isle Park a few weeks ago. Just… odd coincidence I guess,” Bette murmured.

  “Greta’s uncle was a drunk,” Lisa went on. “Apparently, he went out there to fish and just fell right off the cliff. They didn’t find his body for a week. His wife called the police after he never came home. Later they spotted his truck at the trailhead for the Black Rock cliffs. One strange thing, the cops found his fishing gear in the bed of his pickup. He didn’t take any of it up there with him.”

  “Where was Greta?”

  Lisa shook her head. “No idea. I’m sure they questioned her, but everyone, cops included, assumed he fell. Peter wasn’t exactly a model citizen. He’d spent a few nights in jail for drunk and disordelies.”

  “Did Greta like him? Or her aunt?” Bette asked.

  “No, definitely not. She hated them, and she hated living in the trailer park. I’m pretty sure the aunt hated her too, though I don’t know for sure. I only heard one side of the story, when she’d complain to Matt about them.”

  “Two deaths in less than two years. That’s pretty crazy,” Bette said.

  “Yeah, tell me about it. You should talk to Sheriff Montgomery, Bette. He’s been working the case for the last seventeen years. I am curious, though, what does Matt’s death have to do with your sister’s disappearance?”

  Bette finished her coffee and set it on a magazine on the glass-topped side table.

  “My sister was having an affair with Greta Claude’s husband.”

  37

  1973

&nb
sp; Greta Claude

  Greta bit back a scream when the social worker slid the key into the padlock she’d placed in the old caretaker’s house.

  She felt her blood rushing hot into her ears, pulsing in her head and behind her eyes. She expected the trees to split open and black mist to roll from the forest and wrap around her. Surely the land would not let her go – would not allow Greta to simply climb into this stranger’s car and drive away.

  But no black fog arrived to claim her.

  Greta carried her hard little suitcase packed with her best clothes, her diary and the few personal items worth keeping, or so the woman said. Greta would get all new things when she moved in with her aunt and uncle. She’d get proper things and go to a proper school and become a proper young woman.

  As they drove from the grounds, the asylum faded behind them. She twisted around in her seat and watched the tall windows reflecting the midday sun. She wondered if her father watched the car disappear down the winding road.

  Greta’s aunt and uncle resided in a rusted double-wide trailer situated between equally dilapidated trailers in the Upper Peninsula. The metal porch was rusted, looking like the bolts might fall away at any moment and send the structure collapsing into the weedy yard.

  “Home sweet home,” her aunt said dryly.

  She parked the pickup truck in a patch of dirt and shoved her door open.

  Greta’s Uncle Peter, whom she’d only met once, walked onto the porch and watched the girl climb out of the truck.

  His eyes slid over her body in an appraising, sickly way that made Greta’s skin crawl beneath her stuffy cotton dress.

  “Wasn’t expectin’ no kids,” her aunt grumbled. “But I emptied half of my sewing room, and we put up a twin bed and dresser. It’ll have to do. In another year you can drive, and then you’re free to go if you want,” her aunt continued as she walked to the trailer, Greta close behind her.