The Starless Sea

by Erin Morgenstern

  “We were friends,” I told them and it sounded wrong and right.

  They asked me if he was seeing anyone and I said I didn’t think so and then they seemed like they didn’t believe me about the friends thing anymore, because a friend would know. I almost told them I knew he had a lousy breakup with that MIT guy (he had a noun name, Bell or Bay or something) but I didn’t, because it was ages ago and I’m pretty sure it was mostly because of long-distance issues and it didn’t seem super relevant.

  They asked if I thought he would have done something—like jumped-off-a-bridge something—and I said I didn’t think so, but I also think most of us are two steps away from jumping off something most of the time and you never know if the next day is going to push you in one direction or another.

  They asked me for my number but they never called.

  I called and left messages a couple of times to see if they’d found out anything.

  No one ever called me back.

  THE SON OF THE FORTUNE-TELLER stands in a snow-covered field. More snow is lightly falling around him, clinging to his eyeglasses and hair. Surrounding the field there are trees, holding a dusting of flakes in their branches. The night sky is clouded but softly glowing as it hides the stars and the moon.

  Zachary turns and there is a door behind him, a rectangle standing freely in the middle of the field, opening into a crystal cavern. Firelight flickers far beyond it, reaching out toward the snow, but the torch that was in Zachary’s hand a moment ago has vanished along with his owl.

  The air in his lungs is crisp and bright and difficult to breathe.

  Everything feels too much. Too wide and too open. Too cold and too strange.

  In the distance there is a light and as Zachary walks toward it through the lightly falling snow it becomes many small lights strung along the facade of a very familiar building. A plume of smoke curls up from the chimney, winding its way through the snow and toward the stars.

  He was just here. Was it only weeks ago? Maybe. Maybe not. It looks the same, year after year.

  Zachary Ezra Rawlins walks past the indigo barn that looks black in the light and up the snow-covered stairs of his mother’s farmhouse. He stands on the back porch, cold and confused. There is a sword strapped to his back in an ancient leather scabbard. He is wearing an antique coat that has been lost in time and found again.

  He can’t believe Mirabel sent him home.

  But he’s here. He can feel the snow on his skin, the worn boards beneath his feet. There are twinkling lights strung around the railing and hung from the eaves. The porch is strewn with holly branches wrapped in silver ribbons and bowls left out for the faeries.

  Beneath the scent of the snow there is the fire burning in the fireplace and cinnamon from the cookies that have likely just emerged from the oven.

  The lights are on inside. The house is filled with people. Laughter. The clinking of glasses. Music that is unmistakably Vince Guaraldi.

  The windows are frosted over. The party is a haze of light and color broken into rectangles.

  Zachary looks out over the barn and the gardens. Cars are parked all along the driveway, some he recognizes and others he doesn’t.

  At the edge of the woods beyond the barn there is a stag, staring at him through the snow.

  “There you are,” a voice says behind him and Zachary goes warm and cold at the same time. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  The stag disappears into the woods. Zachary turns toward the voice.

  Dorian stands behind him on the porch. His hair has been cut shorter. He looks less tired. He’s wearing a sweater patterned with reindeer and snowflakes that manages to be both ironically festive and incredibly flattering. On his feet are striped wool socks and no shoes.

  There is a glass of scotch with star-shaped ice cubes in his hand.

  “What happened to your sweater?” Dorian asks him. “I thought keeping them on even after the winner of the ugly sweater contest was crowned was a rule?”

  Zachary stares at him mutely. His brain cannot comprehend the appearance of this familiar person in this very separate, equally familiar context.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Dorian asks.

  “How are you here?” Zachary asks when he finds his voice.

  “I was invited,” Dorian answers. “The invitation has arrived addressed to both of us for several years now, you know that.”

  Zachary looks back toward the door in the field and he cannot see it through the snow. It seems as though it was never there. As if all of it was a dream. An adventure he imagined for himself.

  He wonders if he’s dreaming now but he doesn’t remember falling asleep.

  “Where did we meet?” Zachary asks the man standing beside him. Dorian looks askance at the question but after a short pause he indulges him.

  “In Manhattan. At a party at the Algonquin Hotel. We took a walk in the snow afterward and ended up at one of those dimly lit speakeasy-style bars where we talked until dawn and then I walked you back to your hotel like a gentleman. Is this a test?”

  “When was that?”

  “Almost four years ago. Do you want to go back? We can do an anniversary thing if you’d like.”

  “What…what do you do for a living?”

  Dorian’s expression turns briefly from skeptical to concerned but then he replies, “Last time I checked I was a book editor, though now I’m regretting admitting that because if you’d forgotten I might have been able to trick you into finally showing me the project you’ve been toying with that you’re not sure if it’s a book or a game, the one with the pirate. Have I passed the test yet? It’s cold out here.”

  “This can’t be real.” Zachary reaches for the porch rail, too afraid to touch the person beside him. The rail is solid beneath his fingers, the snow melting against his skin, gently numbing.

  Everything here feels gently numbing.

  “Did you drink too much of that punch Kat made? She did hang a warning sign on it, that’s why I stuck to this.” Dorian lifts the glass in his hand.

  “What happened to Mirabel?” Zachary asks.

  “Who’s Mirabel?” Dorian takes a sip of his scotch.

  “I don’t know,” Zachary says and it’s true. He doesn’t know. Not entirely. Maybe he made her up. Conjured her from myth and hair dye. She would be here if she were real, his mom would like her.

  The concern returns to Dorian’s face, mostly in the eyebrows.

  “Are you having another episode?” he asks.

  “Am I what?”

  Dorian looks down into his glass and takes a too-long pause before he says anything. When he does every word is calm, his tone even and well-practiced.

  “In the past you’ve had some difficulty separating fantasy from reality,” he says. “Sometimes you have episodes where you don’t remember things, or you remember other things that never happened. You haven’t had one in a while. I’d thought your new meds were helping but maybe—”

  “I don’t have episodes,” Zachary protests but he can barely get the statement out. It’s getting harder to breathe, every breath is confusion and ice. His hands are shaking.

  “It’s always worse in the winter,” Dorian says. “We’ll get through it.”

  “I—” Zachary starts but cannot finish. He cannot steady himself. The ground no longer feels solid beneath his feet. He is having some difficulty separating reality from fantasy. “I don’t—”

  “Come back inside, love.” Dorian leans in to kiss him. The gesture is casual, comfortable. As though he has done this a thousand times before.

  “This is a story,” Zachary whispers against Dorian’s lips before they reach his own. “This is a story that I’m telling myself.”

  He raises a still-trembling hand to Dorian’s lips and pushes him gently away. He feels real. Real and so
lid and comfortable and familiar. This would be easier if he didn’t feel so real.

  The chatter and the music from the house fade, as though someone or something has turned down the background volume.

  “Are you wearing pajamas?” the idea of Dorian asks.

  Zachary looks up at the sky again. The clouds have parted. The snow has stopped.

  The moon looks down at him.

  “You’re not supposed to be here right now,” Zachary calls up to the moon. “I’m not supposed to be here right now,” he says to himself.

  Zachary turns back to this idea of Dorian dressed up as his date to his mother’s annual winter solstice extravaganza that delights him almost as much as it scares him and says, “I’m afraid I must be going.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dorian asks.

  “I’d like to be here,” Zachary says, and he means it. “Or maybe in a different version of here. And I think I might be in love with you but this isn’t actually happening right now so I have to leave.”

  Zachary turns and walks back the way he came.

  “Might be?” Dorian calls after him.

  Zachary resists the urge to look back. That’s not really Dorian, he reminds himself.

  He keeps walking, even though part of him wants to stay. He continues through the moonlit snow, moving away from the house even though it feels like moving backward. Maybe it was a test. Go backward to go forward.

  He walks toward the door in the field but as he gets closer he can see there is no door. Not anymore.

  There is only snow. Drifts of it that continue into the woods.

  Zachary remembers the map he opted not to include in his inventory. Two buildings surrounded by woods. But he cannot see the farmhouse anymore, he only knows the direction it should be in, if it is there at all. He tries to remember which way the arrow pointed on the map, which part of the woods it indicated, or even where the stag had been, but he cannot and he decides he doesn’t care.

  If this is a story he is telling himself, he can tell himself to go forward.

  Away from here.

  He looks up into a star-filled sky. The moon stares down at him.

  Zachary stares back.

  “We’re not supposed to be here,” Zachary yells up at the moon again.

  The moon says nothing.

  She only watches.

  Waiting to see what happens next.

  excerpt from the Secret Diary of Katrina Hawkins

  I gave the IT department a sob story about my missing friend and nonexistent e-mail I “accidentally” deleted and I had to resort to actual tears but they checked Z’s university e-mail for me, since the police didn’t bother. Nothing after the day he disappeared but, like, nothing before that either. Nothing in January at all, which is super weird. I was positive I played e-mail tag with him over something or other the first week and I forwarded him my J-term class schedule so he’d have it.

  I checked my own e-mail and there’s nothing from Z at all, not for months, and I *know* there should be.

  I checked his room. I waited until no one was on his floor. His lock was easy to pick, all the interior locks on campus are crap.

  His laptop was there and I booted it up but someone had reset it to factory default settings. It wasn’t even password-protected. His files are gone, his games are gone, that excellent Blade Runner wallpaper he had, poof. Standard-issue hi-def naturescape.

  That doesn’t seem normal.

  I looked for library books but didn’t find any, maybe he took them to NY. He always had a pile of library books.

  The one weird-ish thing I found was a little piece of paper under the bed. It was under a sock so it was easy to miss (Z must have done his laundry like every other day, even the floor clothes were clean) but it matched the notepad on the desk.

  It was covered in random scribbles, like he was taking notes while doing something else. Most of it is illegible but there’s a drawing in the middle. Well, three drawings.

  A bee, a key, and a sword.

  In a line down the middle.

  They’re in a rectangle that looks like it might be a door or it might be a rectangle, Z’s not the greatest artist. The bee looks more like a fly but it has stripes so I’m guessing it’s supposed to be a bee.

  It seemed like it might be important so I pocketed it.

  Then I stole his PS4.

  Bet they weren’t smart enough to wipe that.

  * * *

  —

  Z was apparently not clever enough to leave clues hidden in game saves on his PS4. Or he didn’t have the time or forethought or whatnot but still. Disappointed detective face.

  Nothing on PSN or anything.

  Maybe he had his own secret notebook somewhere. He probably has it if he did.

  I feel like fictional mysteries have more clues than this. Or, like, clues that actually lead to more clues. I wanted a trail and what I have is miscellaneous weird stuff that is not trail-shaped.

  I don’t know what I was expecting to find, maybe someone he’d messaged and told about his plans or something. If he had a plan. Maybe he didn’t.

  * * *

  —

  I found the charity that threw the party that Z went to—I’m working on the assumption that he did go to the party, I know he checked into the hotel because the police checked on that, so they’re not completely useless—but this charity is weird.

  They give/raise tons of money for all these literary things and a lot of them sound cool but when I tried to trace them to a source or even a person—a CEO or anything—it loops around again, one charity is part of another and that’s listed as a subsidiary of one of the others but they’re Möbius strip charities that never end on a person. It sounds like a money-laundering front but I called a few places and they all confirmed receiving donations but couldn’t give me any other info.

  So I kept digging. I found a bunch of addresses and tried a few phone numbers. One left me in recorded-message purgatory and another was disconnected.

  The closest address that was buried in a subpage of a subpage on one of the websites (one of the ones that wasn’t search-engineable, BTW, so buried that it seemed like it wasn’t supposed to be findable) was in Manhattan.

  I looked it up.

  It burned down like, two days after that party.

  That can’t be a coincidence.

  * * *

  —

  I’m in Manhattan.

  I took pictures of that building, it’s all blocked off. The shell of the building looks okay except the windows are toast and there’s a lot of smoke damage. It’s kind of a shame, it’s a pretty building.

  It has a sign that says Collector’s Club. A lady came out of one of the buildings across the street to walk her dog and I asked about it, she said it was an electrical fire and complained about electrical systems in old buildings while her pug (Balthazar) investigated my boots. I asked what kind of club it was and she said she thought it was one of those private-member clubs but wasn’t sure what type. Said she saw people going in and out but not very often. Said they got a lot of deliveries, but then seemed like she thought she shouldn’t have said that which makes sense because it is a spying-on-the-neighbors-out-the-window thing to say. Either that or she decided I was weird for asking so many (two!) questions about a burned building but she and her pug took off. Maybe she thought I was an arsonist in training.

  I looked up “Collector’s Club” but it’s too generic to be helpful. There’s a club for stamp collectors with the same name that’s only a few blocks away. Nothing online connects that name with that address, not that I can tell.

  I scoped out the alley behind the building and all its access points and managed to walk through it without looking lost. I kept my hood up and kept walking because there were cameras back there but I got a good l
ong glance at the back of the building. It wasn’t as deep as the rest on the block, with a fence and a snow-piled garden that looked pristine even though the back of the building had the same broken windows and the back doors were boarded up.

  The gate was a fancy iron thing and where the two gate halves came together in the middle of all the decorative swirls was a sword.

  I don’t think that’s a coincidence, either.

  I’m not sure I believe in coincidences anymore.

  * * *

  —

  I took a long walk afterward. I meandered down from midtown and ended up at the Strand. I weirdly kept thinking that I’d run into Z there. Like he’d lost track of time browsing through the stacks and hadn’t realized how many days had gone by already.

  I was in that musty-smelling basement level for a long time and I kept feeling like someone was watching me, or that something was close by that I was missing. This is dumb but I felt like the right book was there, somewhere, and if I closed my eyes and reached out to a shelf it would be there, right beneath my fingers.

  I tried it a couple of times but it didn’t work.

  All the books were just books.

  * * *

  —

  I went to Lantern’s Keep and after being a cocktail geek at my waiter (he asked if I was a bartender so I had to admit I just drink a lot) I used the not-my-hotel WiFi to do a dark net deep-dive and found this conspiracy-theory site that actually had some level-headed people on it (they debunked most of the stuff people posted about on their message board within, like, twenty minutes).