Isabelle waves her fingers through the dust molecules floating in the everlasting light of day. Each leaves a broad wake as they cut through the sunlight, coming together, separating, doubling back. Four. Eight. Sixteen. Too many fingers. She looks unsuccessfully for the hand to which the additional finger might belong. A helping hand, perhaps.
There’s no one there. There’s no one anywhere. Just the sound of the wind. The crackle of burning aspen logs. An occasional raven’s call.
And that interminable, insufferable, intermittent POP.
She surveys the room. It’s still bright, still warm, still empty. The air grows viscous and tacky on her tongue. Her chest begins to buck. She heaves. Her breath stutters and snorts in her throat, forces its way out in a wheezing laugh. She cackles. Her eyes are dry from the fire still burning in the fireplace after…how long has it been? Her cheeks bunch up under expressionless ice-blue eyes. She laughs and chokes until her breath is gone. Until the tendons in her neck strain, stand out like the fingers of something trying to claw its way up and out of her. Her face grows hot as blood rushes to the surface of her pale skin. She hopes it is something clawing its way out. She hopes her tortured soul will finally climb free, float away, leave this shell of skin and bone slumped on the floor.
“Y’okay, babe?”
The sound forces her to inhale a long, stuttering breath. A shame, too; she had hoped breath wouldn’t return to her this time. It brings to mind the wind that had rushed passed them when they entered the inn some indiscernible amount of time before. They’d clung to each other as the room bulged. The walls moaned. The air whistled as it ripped through the cracks. It was as if the last person who’d left the inn had closed the door behind them, cutting off the inn’s air supply, never returning to open the airway again.
If the inn had been grateful to them, it hadn’t made mention. Isabelle can relate.
She searches the room for the voice. There is no one there. Just pinpricks and slivers of light scattered about. It’s like termites, the light. Always finding its way in. Cracks in the sealant around the doors. Cracks in the window frames. A threadbare spot in the curtains.
No one there. No one anywhere.
Where had he gone? Where had they all gone?
They had arrived in mid-June. Her husband, Graham—an anthropology major—wanted to collect stories for his doctoral research. Stories from the Iñupiat people of Utqiaġvik. His research. Always his research. He’d immersed himself in it. Burrowed deep into it until she could no longer reach him, leaving her to deal with the ever-too-recent loss of their son alone. He blamed her, she knew. But it wasn’t her fault. It was an accident.
Her friends had chided her for taking such a senseless trip. She had remained undeterred, convinced that this would be their chance to start anew. To reconnect. To eliminate the everyday distractions in one of the most stripped-down, solitary places on earth. To shed light on their shrouded pain and animosity in a place where the sun never sets, the light never fades.
They’d never even got the chance to begin.
The innkeeper hadn’t been there when they stumbled in from the cold. The air was motionless, stale, until that bitter wind rushed in past them—the inn sucking life back into its oxygen-starved lungs. Something about the desperation, the disappointment she sensed in that moment helped her realize that she couldn’t recall the details of a single face she’d seen since arriving. The recollection of the bustling airport felt more like an amalgamation of distant memories. The taxi ride was the silhouette of a daydream, like a scene for a book or a play that had fleshed itself out in her mind as she lay sleepless in bed at night, but was never captured on paper.
Had anyone ever been in this place? Why was she even here?
They had built a fire in the great stone fireplace in the common room and waited…again, how long?
She recalls the yellow twinkle of reflected flames in the black, unseeing eyes of the trophy heads of local game on the walls. They had stared down at her from their mounts, the fire casting shadows along the walls into the darkened corners of the abandoned inn.
She even remembers the vestiges of sleep encroaching on her when she first heard it.
POP.
It was a contained, hollow sound, somewhere in the distance. There was no echo. Isabelle hadn’t even been certain that it wasn’t confined to her own head. Graham noticed it too, though. He had barely glanced at her before he pulled on his heavy coat and headed for the door. He stopped there for a long time. Too long. Long enough to make Isabelle uneasy. She had opened her mouth to say something, but her voice caught in her throat when he cast a look at her over his shoulder. Half his face was covered by the faux fur lining standing out around the hood of his parka.
She remembers the fuzzy threads wafting against his breath when he said he’d be back.
He never came back.
The sound persisted.
POP.
Since she’d lost track of the hours (the days?) she began counting the space in between the recurring sound as some form of irrelevant measurement. She got to four hundred something before she lost count the first time. At the next instance, she started again. Seven hundred, sixty-six. That’s when she forgot what she was doing. She may have dozed.
She just wanted to sleep.
One hundred twelve.
POP.
Five hundred fifteen.
POP.
She reaches one thousand twelve when the little boy appears in the doorway. Blue pants and a shirt striped in red and blue and yellow. Snowflakes spotting his soft hair, clinging to long eyelashes above chestnut eyes. His hands are clasped behind his back.
Isabelle rushes to the door. She kneels in front of him. Her hands hover over his body, just short of contact. She wants to press her flesh against his dimpled cheek. Feel his warmth. His existence. She pulls her hand back, clenches her fingers into a tight fist. She asks him what he has there.
He swings his arm wide and stops it inches from her face. A firecracker.
POP.
She bolts upright on the sofa in front of the fire. Had she fallen asleep?
She wraps herself in the heavy blanket draped over the sofa and leaves the warmth of the inn. She walks the empty snow-covered streets, into the empty shops. She walks into empty homes, sits on empty couches. Peruses empty cupboards looking for food.
No stray dogs. No stray cats. Nothing. No one.
Until, The Man.
The Man stands in a doorway, jet-black against the persistent daylight that wraps around her mind the way the blanket wraps around her shoulders: heavy and stifling. He is a black hole in this brilliant world. The only part of the silhouette lacking razor-sharp edges are the tufts of fur from his hood. She wants to shed the blanket, wrap herself in him. She doesn’t know whether she craves the warmth or the darkness more. She’s five paces before him before she realizes she’d even approached him. His back is turned. The silhouette falls away. He turns and swings his arm out in a wide arc, bringing a silver revolver to the place between her eyes.
POP.
She is standing in the street. Her head is heavy, waterlogged. She isn’t seeing what she’s looking at. She’s seeing herself seeing what she’s looking at. Mirthless laughter, her own voice. She blinks lazily, looks around for the sound of her.
The Boy walks out from the doorway of a building. He’s walking too fast, too purposefully, rushing, flowing unstoppable. He’s going to crash right over her, swallow her up, drown her screams, carry her away. He stops, his arm swings wide, the firecracker goes
POP.
She screams as she springs from the carpet in front of the fire. The Man is in the doorway. It’s happening so relentlessly fast. She mutters no, no, no, as she kicks away from him. She picks up a piece of firewood and flings it at him or past him or through him. She springs to her feet. Her breath cracks, scrapes like a rusty piston. She sprints past him and out the door, gagging on his scent, body odor and burnt seal oil.
She bursts into the street, sprints away. She reaches the water’s edge. A pair of monolithic whale bones rise from the stones and create an arch—the Whale Bone Arch. The “Gateway to the Arctic.” She falls on her knees at the mouth of it. The tide has swallowed the snow. Rocks and sand embed her skin. She rolls over, looks back. Two figures move toward her. Her muscles scream with fatigue; nerve endings blazing, protesting every movement as she tries to clamber away. She cries. Tears burn like the smoke from the smoldering aspen in the fireplace that she now longs for.
She just wants to sleep.
She turns onto her stomach, faces the sea. A glassy haze of gray. Fog and water and sky. She can’t remember which way is up. She’s spinning. A raven glides along underwater, the glossy surface undisturbed by its rippling wings. The sky coils around her.
The footsteps stop. They’re on her now.
She looks up at them. The Boy extends his firecracker. The Man aims his gun.
POP.