It’s in Kyra’s room.
I wrap a hoodie around my shoulders and climb out of bed.
Outside, the wind picks up and hail pelts the windows. I consider switching on the main lights because the lamp on the nightstand barely illuminates the bed, but I don’t want to break the spell.
Corey. The voice sounds distant, twisted, as if we’re standing on opposite sides of the lake’s dark waters. The air is cold as ice.
I know, I know, the next time the door to the closet inches open, Kyra will step out. I draw in a breath and my hand edges toward the door.
I open the door and stare into darkness. The wooden planks that form the back of the closet are gone, but there is a doorway to Kyra’s room.
A chill settles into my bones. Kyra loved horror stories, but I do not. I’ll take good old rational science over horror any day. When the wind roars along the cabin, it’s all I can do to keep from screaming in fright. I snap on the lights before I can talk myself out of it again.
Science doesn’t explain why the passage to Kyra’s room is open. Why I’m crawling through it. As soon as Mr. Henderson finds out that Kyra’s room was breached, he’ll board it up again. This may be my only chance to get in.
The darkness feels oppressive. The silence even worse.
I grab my phone from my hoodie and toggle to the flashlight mode. My heart is beating out of control. The beam of light is both a comfort and a terror. I’m not prepared for what I’ll see—or for what lurks just beyond the light.
Someone laughs. Low and far away. Or maybe it’s the wind.
Slowly, I pan the light from one wall to the next. My hand trembles.
On my far left, the wall is covered with the very same drawings and paintings that decorate Kyra’s door. Superheroes and comic-book scenes among panoramas of Alaska. Another wall is covered with faces. Half-drawn portraits. Ink and paint and pencil. A hundred eyes decorate the wall, and they are all watching me.
We sat on this floor for hours, doing our homework.
I move the beam of light along Kyra’s bed. The covers are thrown across the mattress haphazardly, as if she just got up and could return any moment. Or as if someone or something is lying underneath them.
I hold my breath. I could crouch down and look under the bed, but my hands shake. My courage doesn’t extend that far. I can’t fight off monsters and nightmares. I never could.
I step back and settle the beam on Kyra’s desk. A bright red shirt hangs across the desk chair. It’s the same shirt she wore the last time I saw her. I take a measured step closer and run my hand over the fabric.
The light hits the curtain on the window over her desk. I gasp. The curtains have been cut to shreds—and they sway in a nonexistent breeze.
My cell phone light flickers. It takes everything I have not to turn and bolt. There must be an explanation for all this, although I can’t seem to think of one. Instead, I step closer to her desk, but what I see doesn’t make me feel any better. Shredded essays. Unfinished scripts and storyboards. Crumpled papers. A broken pen. A book soaked in paint.
I touch the paint. My fingertips come back pink.
I hold up the light to the bookshelves adjacent to the desk. Most of her books are gone. What’s left has been shredded too. Her entire collection of folktales and legends. Her treasured copies of the Edda, prose and poetry. The books her grandfather wrote. Her collection on the history of storytelling. All destroyed.
This isn’t right. Even in her darkest moments, Kyra would never be so careless. She wouldn’t be concerned about the curtains, but she was meticulous about her stories and her studies.
This isn’t right.
I edge forward and pick up one of the papers. When I brush the bookshelf, my fingers get coated thick with dust. Upon closer inspection, I see that the floor is covered in a layer of dust too. I can see my footprints behind me. If Kyra was alive a few days ago, she wasn’t here. Aside from the fresh paint, this room hasn’t been lived in for weeks, maybe months.
There might be more clues here, but the curtains move and the papers rustle again in some imaginary draft, and I’ve had enough.
Corey. A whisper tickles my ear.
I swirl. My phone nearly slips from my fingers. The beam of light streaks across the wall. Nothing. Emptiness.
This room used to be the safest place on earth. Not anymore. I beeline back to the passage and Kyra’s studio, locking the closet door behind me for good measure.
Only when I’m huddled in my bed, safely under the covers, do I look at the torn page that I hold, written in Kyra’s uneven hand.
Dear Corey,
I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared.
I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared.
I’m waiting.
Day Two
Astronomical Twilight
The cabin is dark and still when I wake from a restless sleep. The deep silence settles into my bones. Back at St. James’s, there would be the sound of fifteen girls getting up and starting their day, arguing over the bathrooms, sharing each other’s clothes. I miss the laughter. I miss the smell of freshly brewed coffee. I miss Eileen’s pen scratching in her notebook as she plots the next great Canadian novel, while the rest of us are barely awake enough to figure out breakfast.
I miss Kyra.
She would’ve liked Eileen and her stories. Eileen would’ve liked Kyra and her fascination with narrative.
I was going to introduce them when Kyra came to visit me over the summer, like we’d planned. Before…
She died.
Her loss hits me anew. I still can’t accept it. I want answers.
So I snuggle into my jeans and bunny boots and pull on a sweater with long sleeves I can hide my hands in. It’s early, and I’m sure Mrs. H will be preparing breakfast, but I don’t want to go inside the main house yet. If Mrs. H can’t give me answers, maybe Mrs. Morden, at the post office, will. Or Mrs. Robinson, who took to Kyra more than anyone else in town did.
I grab my parka and hat from my backpack, then wrap a scarf around my neck and pull on my mittens. It’s a quiet ritual, this creation of another layer of skin, and for the first time since I’ve been back, I feel Alaskan again.
At my desk, I grab Kyra’s letter and stare at it.
I’m waiting.
Where were you waiting, Kyr? If you weren’t here, where do I find you?
I stuff the letter into a pocket. It’s a tangible reminder of her. I want to keep it close.
Lights are on in the Hendersons’ kitchen as I slip through the garden. It’s almost eight, but I can just start to make out the difference between the trees and the sky. Back home, this is the time classes start.
Back home.
I shrug my parka higher. This is back home.
It’ll be another hour or two before the sun will tease the horizon. Real sunlight won’t happen until almost eleven, but Lost doesn’t shy away from the darkness.
When I make it to the town square, where Main Street intersects with two smaller roads, the fishermen have already left, but the handful of stores—the post office, the grocery store, the doctor’s office—are still closed. The street lights shine dimly. And the only sound is that of the wind whistling past the buildings. Lost looks like a ghost town.
Even in a small town like this, the quiet feels out of place. I pause at the corner where, one summer, Kyra decided to settle on one of the benches in front of the grocery store, a notebook in hand.
She told me she wanted to record the stories of Lost. The first day, people stared at her oddly. The second, most gave her only passing glances.
By the third day, everyone in Lost had passed her at least half a dozen times, and they seemed to have forgotten about her entirely. “It gives me a chance to look at Lost from a different perspective,” she said. “When people forget you, you hear—and see—all sorts of things.”