Shop at the Orion Mercantile, a restored hotel that has been turned into a boutique shopping center, with cafés and a salon
Spend a spa day at the Artemis Spa & Wellness Center
Visit one of the town’s many breweries and wineries
For our more supernaturally inclined guests, enjoy the Orion Haunted Ghost Tour.
There were then several websites listed for the various activities, and directions for how to get to most locations. Drew smiled in appreciation; he would definitely be using this.
Most of the activities sounded interesting, and he was especially interested in visiting the dunes, which he had read about on the plane. Orion was situated just south of Turtle Dunes National Lakeshore, where the large sand dunes on the coast of Lake Michigan formed a shape that, according to Odawa legend, resembled a mother turtle building a nest. They were, according to the sites Drew had read, a great place to hike and provided a stunning view of the Lake.
The clothes he’d picked for the day weren’t appropriate for hiking, so he decided he would go into town. He wasn’t hungry, not yet, but the last item on the list caught his attention. A ghost tour? When Estelle had sent him, two days ago, a website about Orion, Michigan, he had seen something about hauntings, but he had mostly ignored them. Now, though, the idea of a ghost tour intrigued him, in a campy sort of way. He didn’t necessarily believe in ghosts, but he enjoyed a good horror movie. Maybe a ghost tour would be exactly the distraction he needed to stop thinking about the horror story that was his personal life.
—
Orion, Michigan, was an ideal little beach town. It looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, with well-built old structures painted in strong colors lining the wide streets, painted wood signs advertising businesses, and plenty of people sitting under awnings outside of cafés or coffee shops, enjoying the pleasant Michigan summer.
Rather than driving into town, Drew decided to walk. It was only a fifteen-minute stroll from his rented house to the town square, where there was a solid old white courthouse, with a bronze statue of a Native American chief in front of it.
He stopped at a coffee shop called Dune Grass Roasters, where he ordered an iced vanilla latte from a barista with blue hair and a nose ring. He discreetly slid a hundred-dollar bill into the tip jar. He had more money than he would ever need, and he liked doing little things like that. A hundred bucks wasn’t anything to him, but it would make someone else’s day.
When his coffee was ready, he took it and smiled at the barista. “Excuse me,” he said, “would you mind telling me where to find the ghost tour?”
The barista grinned at him. “Tourist?” they said.
“That obvious?” Drew said sheepishly.
They shrugged. “A little. Not many locals want to go on the ghost tour.” They pointed out the windows of the coffee shop. “If you want to take the commercial ghost tour, take a left and find the Society of Hauntings. They’ll take your money and take you for a spin around the town.” Then the barista’s smile deepened. “But if you want a tour from someone whoactuallyrespects the spiritual world, go around the courthouse, and you’ll see Our Mother’s Apothecary and Crystal shop.They’llgive you a good tour.”
“Thank you. Do you believe in the ghost stories, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Another shrug from the barista. “I think there’s a lot of shit in the world we don’t understand. Could there be ghosts? Sure. But do I also think capitalism is fucking up the truth and trying to make a dime off of some stories that were probably really tragic? That too.”
When Drew left, he slipped another hundred into the tip jar. He’d just found his new favorite coffee shop.
It was a beautiful day. The weather was in the mid-seventies, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and a pleasant breeze kept the humidity away. Drew enjoyed the weather while he crossed the town square, went around the courthouse, and found Our Mother’s Apothecary and Crystal Shop. He wasn’t interested in a fake ghost tour that just wanted his money. If there was something supernatural about this town, he wanted someone who smelled like patchouli and knew the difference between the Major and Minor Arcana to explain it to him.
The store’s exterior was painted wine red. There were window boxes full of flowers, and the windows themselves were crowded with interior displays of tchotchkes, Tarot decks, crystals, and herbs. The sign on the door said they were open, so he entered. Wind chimes signaled his entrance.
The store was dimly lit with lamps and smelled of frankincense, thyme, and marijuana. The shop was crowded with shelves and tables displaying everything from journals to Tarot decks to palm reading guides to boxes of tea to trays of crystals to cookbooks to Zodiac guides to jewelry to stickers to T-shirts to incense.
