Defy the Dark (28 page)

Turning slowly, she searched for
the
hill with
the
trees. And it was there, past the run of the fence. Cold air swept over her; her nose burned when she breathed. And she could feel the snow starting to work its way into her boots. She should have gone inside. Instead, she squared her shoulders and headed for the trees.

Some things had to be real. The iridescent gleam on the snow, that was real. The dark, spindling arms of the trees silhouetted against the sky, those were real, too. And they opened to a clearing, a rough stone standing in the center. It was dark, smooth at the base, but rough at the top.

It looked ancient, like Viking ancient. Like seriously olden times and Thor for really real ancient. A glint of silver caught her eye, and she moved closer. Smoothing a gloved hand down the surface, she wiped haze from a bit of glass. It was a locket—no, a picture frame set into the stone.

The boy from her dream-hallucination-whatever looked back in black and white.

The picture was damaged, water creeping around the edges. It ate the detail in the background and left just his shoulder and his face. But it was him, unmistakably. It wasn't like Norwegians all looked alike. Her brain hadn't summoned some stock Scandinavian to play the part of Overactive Imagination Boy.

Dacey sank to her knees, shivering at the cold that closed around her. She didn't need a phrase book to understand a gravestone. Kristian Dahl, born 1895, died . . . never. There was no final date. He was young in the photo, maybe eighteen? Maybe twenty?

Kristian Dahl, it said. Born and never died. Dacey clasped a hand to her chest, pressure against the tightness there. She didn't believe in ghosts or vampires, so what was left? The words had probably been cut deep and angular once. Years of elements had softened the stone and the shape of his name.

Someone had left the stone. The photo. Someone had remembered him.

A dog's barking broke the quiet, and Dacey pushed herself up. Maybe she wasn't the first girl to spend a night in Kristian's cottage, alone but not really. If parapsychology wasn't an option, maybe physics were.

She knew there was a third dimension, space. And a fourth dimension, which was time. And somehow, they got together and caused gravity. . . . If that could happen, could they bend the past toward the future? Or the future toward the past? Or was that completely crackheaded? Dacey sighed and wished she'd paid more attention in class.

Hurrying back to the cottage, Dacey barely noticed the green-blue glow that bathed her. The northern lights flickered on, shaping the permanent-impermanent sky above.

 

B
ounding through the living room, Skadi—a Norwegian elkhound, according to Herr Velten—showed no sign of settling. She leapt and rolled, chasing a rubber ball with bells in it, and occasionally skidded past on the bare wood floors.

A streak of cream and black, she turned after every gambit, as if looking for Dacey's approval. When she got it, she started over again, filling the cottage with a rumble of motion.
Maybe Dad could start taking Zyrtec,
she mused, because having a dog
was
awesome.

As Dacey hooked the camera up to her computer, she smiled when Skadi dropped the ball by her chair.

“You want it?” Dacey asked. She shook the ball to make it jingle. With a cheery yip, Skadi rose on her hind legs, bouncing in excitement.

Considering that the hound was knee high and all muscle, Dacey hesitated to throw the toy very hard. She could only imagine the look on Herr Velten's face if she trashed his cabin playing with his dog. So she gave the ball a gentle toss, and Skadi lunged after it, curved tail wagging.

“Good girl,” Dacey said, turning to watch the upload bar on her computer grind toward 100 percent.

Skadi carried the ball back, holding it expectantly until Dacey threw it again. Back and forth they went, but when the pictures finished uploading and thumbnails filled the screen, both of them stopped. Dacey cursed under her breath and enlarged one of the images.

The streak was still there.

Paging through the next few pictures, Dacey's heart sank. It didn't make any sense. She'd cleaned the camera, she'd worn the scarf, she'd done everything she was supposed to do. Frustration washed over her in waves, tightening until it ached to sit there. Her head ached, too, and she wanted to cry. This trip was
not
going the way she planned and she was
so
tired.

When Skadi barked, it startled her. Dacey pushed her chair back and looked around as she buried a hand in Skadi's warm fur. “Shh, what's wrong, puppy?”

Skadi barked again and put her paws up on the table.

“It's just a computer,” Dacey told her. She stroked the dog's head, trying to soothe her, but Skadi barked again and again. The sound echoed in the cottage, ringing in Dacey's ears.

Moving to close the laptop, Dacey jumped when Skadi pushed her head beneath her arm and barked again. With a frown, Dacey looked back at the screen. All her warmth drained away because Skadi wasn't barking at the computer. She was barking at the
pictures
.

The streak was gone, replaced with the lean, long shape of a boy in suspenders. The boy. Kristian Dahl, born 1895, died never.

“Okay, that's it!” Dacey clapped the laptop closed and threw herself at the couch. It was crazy. The whole trip was crazy. She hadn't slept enough to drive away the hallucinations. She must have seen Kristian's picture somewhere before. Online. In a catalog. Somewhere.

Or! Or the
camera
was bad. Kristian's face in the pictures was just pattern recognition. Brains liked to make pictures out of clouds and stars and haze on pictures. That's all it was. It had to be.

Pulling an afghan over herself, Dacey patted the cushion next to her until the dog hopped up. It would be morning soon. She just had to get to morning.

She wrapped her arms around Skadi's neck. “I'll go into town for the day. To the library! Or the festival! And tomorrow night, new cottage. Put this all behind me. You know what? It'll be fine. It's all good. We're so good, aren't we, Skadi?”

In response, Skadi barked at nothing. Leaping down from the couch, she barked again, then stopped. Her head tipped quizzically. Then, she moved—purposefully. Dacey shivered, because it was unmistakable. Skadi
saw
something. And whatever it was didn't scare her.

Curling her toes into the couch, Dacey watched Skadi pad after an unseen guest. The dog sniffed along the baseboards, then dropped to lie in front of the window seat. Whining, she pawed at the rosemaled panels, then nosed at them.

Suddenly, one of them popped open, which startled Dacey and Skadi both. The dog bounded away, then back, barking at the open panel.

“Shh,” Dacey said. “It's not going to hurt you, shh.”

But Skadi had hunting in her blood, and she'd flushed out something for Dacey to claim. Slowly, Dacey lowered her feet to the floor, then crept to the window seat. It was a thankfully uneventful walk—no ghostly voices, no sudden cups of tea from the ether—which made it easier to kneel down and open a dark cubby. Skadi barked, bowing on her front paws before springing up again.

Inside the cubby was a small package, and she gingerly reached inside to claim it. Covered in thick dust, it was barely bigger than a deck of playing cards. The brown wrapping paper flecked away, aged and soft as ash. The twine was a little hardier, still tied tight, now around a small, leather-bound book.

Sitting back, Dacey carefully slid the string off and opened the first page. The sharp scent of paper turning acid assaulted her, but the pages still felt smooth beneath her fingers. Fading ink sloped across the page, but Dacey couldn't read it. Her Norwegian was pretty much limited to
“Snakker de Engelsk?”

But she didn't have to speak another language to understand the drawings. Page after page showed ornate rose blossoms, the same designs that surrounded her now. There were building plans for the cupboard, for this window seat.

The cottage had started as careful ink drawings—the fence that surrounded it, the design laid into the hardwood floors. Even the bedroom, with its expensive glass wall, he'd planned it that way all along.

It wasn't a story told over breakfast anymore. And it wasn't a dream or a fantasy; emotion stirred in her chest and flooded her veins. She was right there, in that moment, with a real boy who'd selected the wood and hammered it together, piece by piece, to create this place. He'd loved every inch of the cottage, put thought, and sweat, and love into it.

Running her fingers over now-faded ink, Dacey stilled. Whatever the explanation, she definitely believed in Kristian. He'd pulled a dream into reality. He'd existed, and somehow, she'd seen him. Glimpses of the past come to life, right here in his cottage. When she turned the last page, she caught her breath. No more cottage plans or roses, the last page was a portrait.

Of her.

It captured the crooked bow of her mouth, and the way one of her eyebrows arched higher than the other. Kristian had spent a lot of time here, shading her dark hair and dark eyes with ink, shaping her round face with delicate care. It didn't just resemble her. It
was
her, down to the half-moon chicken pox scar on her chin.

Underneath, he'd scrawled a signature and a date:
25 Januar 1913
.

Dacey didn't have to check her phone to be sure. All the pictures she'd taken had time stamps—today was January 24. Tomorrow, she'd be gone. And now instead of anticipating it, she was dreading it. There was too much to figure out, too little she knew.

How could she pack up and go, now that she knew Kristian had disappeared into the polar night, waiting . . . for
her
?

Dropping her head in Dacey's lap, Skadi seemed to speak for both of them when she took a deep breath, then sighed.

 

J
ust as the midday twilight ended, Dacey woke up.

Smearing a hand across her face, she stretched, then apologized when Skadi leapt down at her sudden movement. It took a moment for her senses to sharpen. Suddenly, everything was crisp and new—she
woke up
! She'd fallen asleep!

Almost giddy, Dacey hopped out of bed, then dropped to bounce on it again. Slept, she'd slept! And now she moved in fast-forward. With a whimsical slide down the hallway toward the kitchen, she actually laughed. Skadi chased her the entire way, orbiting her with every step. She skidded to a stop at the kitchen door, clutching the frame.

The rest of the tea set, the one that matched the single cup Kristian had left behind, sat on the counter. Steam swirled from the pot's spout, and the air smelled fresh with loose-leaved tea. Skadi barked, then bounded past Dacey to sit and stare at an empty spot next to the stove.

Because it was still dark, on top of jet lag, on top of insomnia, time had lost all real meaning for Dacey. She could count breakfasts and pictures to try to sort it out, but the truth was she had no idea
when
she was. But the cool, tight prickle of awareness streamed across her body again.

She'd fallen asleep on the couch. She'd woken up in bed.

And now a century-old tea service sat on her counter, brand-new and full of water she hadn't boiled. Her borrowed dog sat happily, basking in unseen attention. None of it made sense, unless all of it did.

“Kristian?” she asked.

No one answered. Dacey walked toward the stove, ran her hand through the spot that held Skadi's attention so completely. It was cooler there. The hair stood up on the back of her neck, and her mouth tingled, like tasting the wind just before the lightning came.

Fixing herself in place, Dacey asked the air, “Can you see me?”

Still no answer. There was a connection, but she didn't know how to make it. She poured tea, two cups, and even took a sip. Nothing. She darted to the living room and returned with the camera. Shooting off a rapid succession of pictures, she checked the display. Nothing. Not a streak, not a face—just a handful of ordinary pictures of an ordinary kitchen.

“Look,” Dacey said, putting the camera aside. “I'm not taking another sleeping pill so you can sneak up on me. Just say something. Do something. Anything.”

Just then, she was struck by an idea. Reaching into her robe pocket, she pulled the small sketchbook out. It was his, and personal. She felt like she knew him, just a little, from the shape of the words she couldn't read, and the delicate precision of the sketches she couldn't stop looking at. This was her connection to him, not the ghost or the dream or the hallucination.

She held the book out—not sure what to expect.

The slightest spark filled the air, and the ink in the book darkened, sketches filling in until they looked freshly drawn. The leather cover grew brighter, until it shone. A sizzling sound raced around them, the rosemaling waking, repainting itself. The cabinets making themselves brand-new.

From nothing, Kristian reached out to take the book. His shape filled in, as if someone only had to pour details into him. Transparent, then translucent, he
became
. His gray woolen pants and cream linen shirt slowly took texture. His hair, which had seemed blue with snow and moonlight behind it, came in a pale gold. And his startlingly green eyes widened and swept over Dacey's shape.

She wondered if he saw her the same way she saw him, insubstantial, but slowly brightening to real.

“I put this away so long ago,” he said, thumbing through the pages.

“About a hundred years,” Dacey said. “Give or take.”

Closing the book, Kristian put it aside and approached her. “Something's not quite right, is it? I'm standing here, and everything looks old. All the paint is faded.”

Dacey held out a hand. “Right now, it looks brand-new to me.”

For a long moment, Kristian considered her. He took her hand and turned it in his. Trailing his fingers across her palm, he mapped every inch of it. There was no chill in his touch, and the last hints of transparency faded. “Are you a ghost?”