Fortunately, Darryl was not in their room. He drew the curtains across the horizontal windowpane and turned on the desk lamp, with a rare incandescent bulb that he had “liberated” from a tiny lounge area at the end of the hall. Then he kicked off his shoes and sweaty socks and dug his toes into the shag carpet. Work. He just needed to focus for a while on his work; he’d been letting it slide. He took the bottle of Scotch from the shelf in the closet and poured himself three fingers’ worth. With his laptop on the table, he started downloading the dozens of photographs he’d taken since first arriving at Point Adélie. There were shots of the Weddell seals, which had been whelping on the ice floes for the first few days there, and others of the birds—the snowy petrels and assorted scavengers—who frequented the base. His fingers hovered over the keyboard for a second as he wondered anew what had become of Ollie.
There were shots of the dive hut, and a couple of Darryl inside it, looking like one of Santa’s elves, in his full dry suit and his red hair wet and shining; in one, he was holding a speargun like a javelin over his shoulder. There were a bunch of pictures of Danzig and the dogs, some posed, and some that Michael had taken on the fly when the team was being exercised. And there was one with Kodiak licking the ice crystals from Danzig’s beard. Selecting a few of the best shots, he moved them to a separate file. Then he downloaded another batch and found himself looking straight into the face of Sleeping Beauty.
Or Eleanor Ames, as he now knew.
Her eyes were open, and she was gazing out through a thick film of the ice. He enlarged the photo, and her green eyes came into even greater relief. It was as if they were looking right at him, and he felt as if he were looking right back. As if he were looking across a chasm of time, and the gulf between life and death. He took another sip of the Scotch. Was that indeed what he’d been doing?
The wind came up another notch and battered the sides of the module. The curtains stirred; the window would have to be closed more tightly.
Michael sat back, staring at the photo and wondering what Eleanor was doing now. Was she sleeping? Or was she awake and terrified by her new captivity?
And then he thought he heard something—a lot like a human cry—mingled with the howling wind. Rising from his chair, he parted the curtains, hooded his eyes, and looked outside, but in the swirling snow he couldn’t see a thing. For that much, he was grateful. What could he have done, he wondered, if it had been Danzig…
He gave the window crank another turn.
But then he thought he heard the cry again, and this time he could have sworn it was a deep voice, wailing words that were indecipherable. But even after turning off the lamp, hooding his eyes and staring out again, he could see nothing.
Whoa, he thought, drawing the curtains firmly closed, that Scotch must be higher proof than I thought.
He plopped back into the chair, and after one more look at the photo of Eleanor, flicked open some shots he’d taken of the abandoned whaling station. The rusted hulk of the Albatros gaped on the beach, piles of bleached bones lay scattered among the rocks, gravestones leaned at crazy angles in the churchyard. The curtains stirred again, but he knew it wasn’t because of the window. The door at the end of the hallway must have been opened, and that always sent a draft blowing straight down the hall, all the way to the communal bathroom and sauna. It was probably Darryl, and Michael was already preparing what he would say—or not say, in respect to the discovery of Eleanor—as he listened to the sound of wet footsteps trudging down the hall. He closed the file on the computer just as they stopped outside. He waited to hear Darryl’s key enter the lock—locked dorm rooms had become the rule, according to Murphy—but instead he simply saw the doorknob turn. Just a little bit, before the lock kicked in.
He could see a shadow under the door, and he could hear breathing outside—labored breathing. The hair on the back of his neck suddenly prickled, and he got up, slowly, and tiptoed barefoot to the door. He took hold of the door handle, just as it was jiggled again; he held it firm, and put his ear to the door. It was thin plywood, and never in his life did he wish harder for a slab of solid oak. A trickle of icy water ran under the door and touched his toes.
The handle was tried again, the other way, but it still didn’t give. Michael tried not to breathe.
He heard a full exhalation, and the sound of rustling, frost-covered clothes. Michael pressed his ear tighter against the door and leaned his shoulder against it, too.
“Give…” the voice mumbled “…it…back.”
Michael’s blood froze in his veins, and he waited, ready to do anything to blockade the door, when he heard some laughing at the other end of the module—the bathroom end—and the snapping of a towel.
“Grow up!” someone shouted.
The jiggling abruptly stopped, and the shadow under the door disappeared. There was a rapid, squelching sound—wet boots on dry carpet—and a few seconds after Michael heard the outer door slam at the far end of the module, the bedroom door started to open. He was still holding the knob, and he heard Darryl mutter, “Fuck this key…”
Michael let go, and the knob turned. Darryl came in, in his bathrobe and flip-flops, with a towel wrapped around his neck. He looked startled to see Michael standing there behind the door.
“What are you, the doorman now?”
Michael ducked around him and stuck his head into the hall. “Did you see anybody out here?”
“What?” Darryl said, vigorously toweling his head. “Oh, yeah, I think somebody was just going out.” He tossed his key onto the dresser. “Why?”