Northern Lights

to flip the locks. Then he pulled off his parka, let it fall to the floor, dragged off his watch cap, dropped it. Unwound his scarf, dropped that. Unzipped his insulated vest and added it to the heap.
    Down to shirt, pants, thermal underwear and boots, he went to the table, picked up the soup, a spoon, and carried both to the dark windows.
    Three-thirty in the afternoon, according to the bedside clock—and dark as midnight.There were streetlights glowing, he noted as he spooned up soup, and he could make out the shapes of buildings. Christmas decorations in colored lights, in rooftop Santas and cartoon reindeers.
    But no people, no life, no movement.
    He ate mechanically, too tired, too hungry to notice the taste.
    There was nothing out that window but the movie set, he thought. The buildings might have been false fronts, the handful of people he'd met downstairs just characters in the illusion.
    Maybe this was all some elaborate hallucination, born out of depression, grief, anger—whatever ugly mix had sent him pinwheeling into the void.
    He'd wake up back in his own place in Baltimore and try to drum up the energy to go through the motions for another day.
    He got the sandwich, ate that standing at the window as well, looking out at the empty black-and-white world with its oddly celebrational lights.
    Maybe he'd walk out there, into that empty world. He'd become a character in the odd illusion. Then he'd fade to black, like the last reel of an old movie. And it would be over.
    As he stood, half thinking it could be over, half wishing it would be, a figure stepped into frame. It wore red—bright and bold—that seemed to leap out of that colorless scene and thrum movement into it.
    Those movements were definite and brisk. Life with a mission, movement with purpose. Quick, competent strides over the white that left the shadow of footprints in the snow.
    I was here. I'm alive and I was here.
    He couldn't tell if it was a man or woman, or a child, but there was something about the slash of color, the confidence of the gait, that caught his eye and interest.
    As if sensing observation, the figure stopped, looked up.
    Nate had the impression of white and black again. White face, black hair. But even that was blurred with the dark and the distance.
    There was a long moment of stillness, of silence. Then the figure began to walk again, striding toward The Lodge, and disappearing from view.
    Nate yanked the drapes over the glass, stepped away from the window.
    After a moment's debate, he dragged his cases off the bed, left them dumped, unpacked, on the floor. He stripped down, ignored the chill of the room against his naked skin, and crawled under the mountain of blankets the way a bear crawls into his winter cave.
    He lay there, a man of thirty-two with a thick, disordered mass of chestnut hair that waved around a long, thin face gone lax with exhaustion and a despair that blurred eyes of smoky gray. Under a day's worth of stubble, his skin was pale with the drag of fatigue. Though the food had eased the rawness in his belly, his system remained sluggish, like that of a man who couldn't quite shake off a debilitating flu.
    He wished Barbie—Charlene—had brought up a bottle instead of the coffee. He wasn't much of a drinker, which he figured is what had saved him from spiraling into alcoholism along with everything else. Still, a couple of good belts would help turn off his brain and let him sleep.
    He could hear the wind now. It hadn't been there before, but it was moaning at the windows. With it, he heard the building creak and the sound of his own breathing.
    Three lonely sounds only more lonely as a trio.
    Tune them out, he told himself. Tune them all out.
    He'd get a couple hours' sleep, he thought. Then he'd shower off the travel grime, pump himself full of coffee.
    After that, he'd decide what the hell he was going to do.
    He turned off the light so the room plunged into the dark. Within seconds, so did he.

 
     
     
    TWO
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    THE DARK SURROUNDED HIM, sucked at him like mud when the dream shoved him out of sleep. His breath whooshed out as he broke the surface, floundered his way to the air. His skin was clammy with sweat as he fought his way clear of blankets.
    The scent in the air was unfamiliar—cedar, stale coffee, some underlying tone of lemon. Then he remembered he wasn't in his Baltimore apartment.
    He'd gone crazy, and he was in Alaska.
    The luminous dial of the bedside clock