Wraith

by Gwenan Haines

  “Hunter, I’m afraid I’m going to have to bail. I just want to go home.”

  “That’s what I’m asking you, actually. Come home. With me. My dad will be there but he won’t get in our way. I’m not as good a cook as Liv but I can manage mac and cheese.”

  “Mac and cheese? Seriously?” I asked. “That’s the best you can offer me?”

  “Hey, it’s comfort food.”

  “I never got how fake neon orange cheese with a bunch of additives qualifies as comfort food.” I laughed, though it felt a little hollow. “You got anything else?”

  “Chinese take-out?”

  I walked over to my snowmobile and climbed on. “Done.”

  How Hunter had talked me down from my solitary cliff, I don’t know. But instead of heading home to beat myself up over the mess I’d made, I was heading to his house to beat myself up over the mess I’d made. Somehow I got the idea it would be a lot more fun doing that with Hunter.

  As he pulled ahead of me on his way to his dad’s house, I thought about what Gavin told me. I wasn’t happy about anything that had happened but if he watched Annie a little bit more closely maybe it would be worth it. Hard as it was, I’d rather lose Liv as a friend than see Annie taken.

  Unless I really was crazy and all this was only in my head. On that one, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be true. If I was making it all up then Annie would be safe. But what would it mean for me? How could I go on living the same way if I knew there was something seriously wrong with me?

  The only person who could help me answer that was my mother. I guess it was time to pay her a visit. I knew she’d be home the next morning, just like she always was.

  She was still waiting for my father.

  Chapter 5

  The paint on the front door to my mother’s house was faded and chipped. A long time ago it had been a bright shiny red, the same color as my first sled. I could still remember riding it down the hill the plow made while Miki toddled around the front yard in his snowsuit and his wolf hat. My mother always trailed behind, ready to scoop him up if he got too close to the road. We lived at the end of a dead end, the closest house to the sea, and didn’t get much traffic. But my mother worried all the same, the way mothers do.

  In the end it hadn’t done any good. All that worry only brought her the fate she’d tried so hard to avoid. Sometimes I wonder if she’d “seen” something too, like I had with Annie. Maybe she dreamed the kind of dreams that came true and hadn’t told me.

  The rest of the house was as run down as the door. The aluminum siding looked dirty, even next to the dingy layers of snow that covered the postage-stamp lawn.

  I lifted the knocker and rapped it against the wood. The sound echoed through the house. Nothing moved.

  After a few minutes I brought down the knocker again, harder this time, and called out to her.

  “Mom, are you there?” I yelled. “It’s me. Kira.”

  No response.

  “Mom, I know you’re in there. If you don’t come and open this door I’m going around back and getting the key from under the mat.” That wasn’t exactly a threat, at least not one I could carry through. I hadn’t been around back for years and had no idea if my mother still kept a spare under the mat. I didn’t even know if there was still a mat.

  Inside, a chair creaked. I peered through the tiny window above the knocker and saw my mother shuffling across the room. She wore a bathrobe and slippers, even though it was well past noon. She unlocked the bolt and pulled the door open.

  “I came to see you.” Talk about stating the obvious. But somehow that seemed preferable to telling her I’d come with her dead son’s hat so I could ask her if I was crazy.

  “Then come in.” She disappeared into the dimly lit interior, assuming I’d follow.

  I fought the urge to flee. These meetings with my mother were rare and painful. I think they were painful for her too. Even after all these years she couldn’t look at me without seeing Miki’s face. Probably my father’s as well. I had the same dark hair, the same broad cheekbones, the same smile. My father had been full Inuit, a fisherman who believed in the old ways. He’d met my mother when she was there to watch her brother in the Iditarod. She’d flown in all the way from Connecticut and rented a car at the airport. After the race she’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in Amarok on the way home. According to my mother, it had been love at first sight. “Like lightning,” she always said. “Just like in the movies.” The two of them were married within a month and I was born before their first anniversary.

  “I’ll make tea,” my mother called out from the kitchen. “There’s not much to eat. If you’d called first I could have gone to Yurovsky’s and picked something up.”

  “Tea’s fine.” I shut the door behind me. Even in the gloom I could see the place hadn’t changed since I’d moved out last summer. Pictures of my brother and father still cluttered the tables on either side of the sofa. I’d removed all the photos of myself back when I was in high school and my mother hadn’t replaced them with others. I hadn’t wanted my friends to see them if they came over. But somehow I never got around to asking them to the house. The TV was on mute. On screen, a meteorologist stood in front of a map of Alaska, gesturing animatedly. “Mind if I turn this up?” I asked.

  “If you want to watch TV I’m not going to stop you,” my mother called from the kitchen. I could hear her filling the kettle. After a minute she shut off the tap.

  “It looks like there’s going to be a storm,” I called back, grabbing the remote and unmuting the volume. “Sounds pretty serious.”

  “We’re in Alaska. Of course, it’s serious.”

  I sighed. And this, I thought, was why I’d moved out. I wasn’t sure whether my mother wanted me to join her in the kitchen or if she expected me to wait in the living room, where we usually had our visits. “Need any help?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Well if you do, let me know.”

  “It’s just tea, Kira. We’re not talking about flying a plane. I can handle it.”

  I didn’t bother answering her. There wasn’t any point. I sat down on the edge of the couch and cranked the volume up a few more notches. According to the meteorologist, we were in for at least a couple feet. The storm was due to start the following afternoon and once it hit it was going to hit hard. I calculated the time it would take to reach the bush village I was supposed to carry supplies to and decided I could make it if I left at some ungodly hour the next morning. It would be easier and safer to cancel but then the villagers would be out of luck during the storm. And I didn’t want to gain a reputation for cancelling. I was doing pretty well for myself and I didn’t want to screw that up.

  My mother appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, a tray of tea things in her hands. She set the tray down onto the coffee table and handed me one of the mugs. A plate of Triscuits lay at the center of the tray, along with a couple of spoons, a tiny pitcher of milk and a nearly empty bottle of Sue Bee honey.

  She sat in the reclining chair closest to the TV and stared at the screen. The meteorologist had been replaced by a Lexus commercial.

  “Aren’t you going to have any tea?”

  “Not just yet.”

  I held the bottle of honey over my tea and waited until a thin line of the amber liquid dribbled into my mug. I stirred the honey in and lifted the mug to my lips.

  My mother looked at me through half-closed lids. Her eyes were the same green as mine but they were like a bottomless lake. Their depths were immeasurable. “Why did you come?”

  Obviously, social skills—or lack thereof—ran in the family. There wasn’t much point in making small talk, anyway. My mother’s interest in my life had always been minimal, even when I lived at home.

  I took another sip of tea and set the mug down on a coaster. “I have his hat.”

  Her eyes fastened on mine. She didn’t speak.

  “I thought you might want to see it.” I reached into my
satchel and pulled out the hat, setting it on the table. “Do you remember this?”

  She stared at it as if it might attack her. Then she reached out her hand and laid it onto the hat, her fingertips spread wide. She closed her eyes and raised it to her chest, pressing it against her heart.

  “It is his. Isn’t it,” I said.

  She opened her eyes, still pressing the hat to her chest. “Where did you find this?”

  I hesitated. Should I tell her something that would only upset her?

  “I asked you where you found this,” she said, eyes sparking. “Tell me.”

  “In a cave outside of town. Hunter took me there yesterday. Whoever took Miki must have brought him there.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  “Just some signs people had camped there recently. Nothing else that looked like it belonged to Miki.”

  She nodded. “He wasn’t there long.”

  “Mom—” I reached out my hand and thought better of it. “What happened that night you left on Christmas Eve? Did you see him—did you see Miki?”

  “Don’t you say his name,” she said. “I thought I made that clear to you.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—it slipped out. I promise I won’t ever say it again but I want you to tell me what happened. I think I have that right. He was your son but he was my brother. Is my brother.”

  “You might think that but you don’t. You don’t need to know.”

  I grabbed the remote and turned off the TV. “Where did you go that night?”

  “Your brother’s dead. Nothing else matters.”

  “Did you see him die?” I pleaded, leaning closer to her and locking her in my gaze. “Is that how you know?”

  She turned her eyes away. “It doesn’t matter how I know.”

  “The reason I don’t believe he’s dead,” I began, keeping my voice as calm as I could, “is because I never dreamt of his wraith. In all these years I’ve never seen it in my visions, not once. If Miki were dead, I would have seen it.”

  She set the hat onto the table. “Take it.” She laid her head against the back of the recliner. “I don’t want it here. Not in this house.”

  “I know you believe me. Because you haven’t seen his wraith either.”

  She laughed then, softly, with her head turned away. “You’re right about one thing, Kira,” she said, resting her eyes on me without really seeing me. “I’ve never seen your brother’s wraith. But that doesn’t mean anything. There’s no such thing as wraiths. Or visions.”

  I’d been wrong about my mother. She didn’t have visions or dreams, not like I did. The disappointment hurt more than I’d thought it would. “There are such things, whether you can see them or not. They exist. And there are people who believe me, even if you don’t.”

  She raised her brows. “Who?”

  Why did her doubts infuriate me so much? “Hunter believes me.”

  This time the laughter was louder. If I didn’t know any better I would have thought she was enjoying herself.

  “Hunter believes you because he wants to get in your pants. Sleep with him and see how much he believes you after he gets what he’s after.”

  On the table my tea was getting cold but I didn’t care. I stood up and zipped my parka. “Thanks for the tea. It’s been a pleasure but I’ve got to be going. I have a job to do.”

  “Don’t forget the hat.”

  I stared down at her. “Just because you don’t have the gift doesn’t give you the right to treat me this way,” I said. “Yesterday when I was in the cave I had two visions. The first was of your son. My brother. He was there, in that cave, and then two men took him somewhere. The second was of the little girl whose parents run the Blue Moon Café. I know the visions are connected but I can’t figure out how. I thought if I could convince you to tell me what happened all those years ago I might be able to help that little girl.”

  My mother was rocking in the chair, just fast enough to make me uncomfortable. Her bathrobe fell open, exposing a worn nightgown. How long had it been since she’d left the house? Or even changed her clothes?

  I forced myself to stay focused. “She’s four, mom. Just like he was that day.”

  “I don’t care about helping some child I don’t know. How could I, when I wasn’t able to help my own?” she asked. “Five minutes. That’s how long I left him for. Ten at the most. He wanted a carrot to make a nose on the snowman. You were inside. You wanted to come out too. I said no but you cried until I changed my mind and got you dressed. When we walked outside the yard was empty.”

  “I remember.” I’d been watching Dragon Tales. I ignored the two of them when they went out because I’d wanted to see the rest of the show. Then the show ended. And I got bored. When my mother came back she didn’t want to get me dressed but she did. She’d pretended to be mad but she really hadn’t been. She’d laughed when I fell backward onto the floor because I had so much padding on. But then we walked out into the yard. She hadn’t laughed after that.

  “Do you?” she asked.

  Her voice wavered. The change in tone was so imperceptible I almost missed it. But it was there. I crossed to where she sat and knelt down before her, taking her hands in mine. “You were going to bring him back,” I whispered. “Weren’t you?”

  She nodded.

  I waited. This was the closest I’d ever gotten to learning what happened that Christmas Eve. I had the feeling that if I spoke the moment would disintegrate and she’d never mention these things again.

  Her rocking slowed then stopped altogether. “He wasn’t there. When I got there—” her voice caught but she went on speaking. “When I got there the man who contacted me was dead. There were others too, all dead, except for one. Your brother wasn’t there but I know he died too that night.” She lifted her hand and covered her eyes. “There was a lot of blood. So much blood.”

  Sobs wracked her body. She pushed me away and sat hunched over, crying out Miki’s name for the first time in sixteen years. After several minutes she stood up.

  “Did you get what you wanted?” she asked, her eyes narrow and bloodshot. “Did ripping open your mother’s wounds help you figure out a way to save the child?”

  I tried to speak but no sound came out.

  She scooped up the hat off the table and thrust it toward me. “I didn’t think so.” Her mouth curled into something that might have resembled a smile if it hadn’t been laced with bitterness. “Now get out.”

  ****

  By the time I got back from Red Dog Mine the next day it had already started snowing. My plane skidded to a stop on the ice and I climbed out to be greeted by Boris and Natasha. Three wolves stood at the edge of the pond and watched me silently. Their dark fur stood out against the snow, making them seem even more beautiful than usual. It took me another few minutes to get the plane into its hangar and when I walked back outside, they were still there.

  I gave them a wave as I shut the plane door and headed back to the cabin I rented from Sasha Yurovsky, the man who ran the general store. Yurovsky also dabbled in real estate and he’d come to me, not the other way around. Apparently the industrialist who bought the place had reconciled with his wife and wouldn’t be needing his man cave anymore. The décor was a bit macho but I wasn’t complaining. For the rent he charged, the place was a steal.

  Snowflakes fell thickly out of the sky, making it hard to see. I was glad I’d made my deliveries as scheduled but I had cut it a bit too close when it came to out-flying the storm. Another half hour and I would’ve been caught in the white out. I was a good pilot, but not good enough that I could fly through a blizzard.

  I unlocked the front door to the cabin and stepped inside, stomping my boots on the mat and shaking out my hair. The huskies trotted in after me. They weren’t about to get caught in a storm either. Much as they loved the outdoors, they’d rather spend the night curled up in front of the woodstove.

  I logged onto Spotify and cranked up the volume, wonderin
g how long it would be before I lost power. That was the biggest drawback about the cabin—no matter what, I always lost power. The industrialist hadn’t gotten around to installing a generator either. Unfortunately he and his wife worked out their differences after the bear rug but before the generator. I couldn’t complain though. I’d have the day off tomorrow and spending time buried in a book in front of a woodstove wasn’t all that bad. Even if the power did go out I had a whole cabinet full of kerosene lanterns and scented candles. And the woodstove would keep me and the dogs warm enough.

  I glanced at my phone for maybe the hundredth time that day. It wasn’t that I was waiting for Hunter to text me. Maybe I was. Things were still off between us—they had been ever since the kiss back in the cave. I wasn’t sorry it happened but I wished things would return to normal.

  You could text him, you know.

  I reached for my phone and typed a short message then erased it. I could always text him later. No need to seem desperate. Which I wasn’t. The other night at Hunter’s dad’s house had been fun and surprisingly routine. Hunter hadn’t tried to kiss me again, never mind anything else, even though his dad made some excuse about Skyping his Canadian girlfriend and disappeared upstairs for the rest of the night. His dad had asked about the hat—whether I thought it might be Miki’s and when I told him yes he asked if my mother would want a team to search the cave more thoroughly.

  What he was really asking me was did I want them to search for Miki’s bones.

  I’d told him no and I meant it. Searching for bones would only be a waste of time. Miki wasn’t in that cave, not anymore.

  After his dad left, Hunter and I camped out on the couch, eating chow mein from the box and watching Big Bang Theory. Hunter had been bugging me about The Walking Dead for two years, but somehow a show about zombies didn’t seem appropriate. Anything involving dead people just wasn’t working for me that night.

  It still wasn’t.

  I grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and stared out the window. According to the weather reports, the storm would last well into tomorrow. Outside, all was white. I couldn’t even see the pond anymore.