“Vittles would change everything,” said la Grande Dame.

  Vittles? It sounded like a word the Baron would use.

  “We should leave the body outside,” suggested Kevin. “It’s too hot in here.”

  Striker found his use of the word body odd. “But we just managed to bring her in,” she said.

  “Anyway,” said la Grande Dame, “we saw it on Paulet. Our friends the skua are relentless.”

  Striker hadn’t considered that. The thought of the birds with their hooked beaks made her queasy. The disgust in Kevin’s face also signaled that yeah, inside was better.

  Carefully they arranged Taylor on the floor furthest from the vent. Kevin took a moment to rummage through his wife’s pockets. He came away with a small key, the kind used for luggage. He made a show of kissing her on the forehead.

  “Back soon, my love,” he said before pulling a ratty blanket up over her face.

  The three of them went back outside to what was beginning to feel like the roof of the world. Down below the penguins were still living their best lives. It was absolutely bonkers, Striker thought, that an unsophisticated little bird could survive in one of the world’s most punishing terrains but the odds were fifty-fifty for the species with the opposable thumbs. Riley would’ve said that was why she wasn’t against dating short men. Striker could hear her friend’s voice, Riley taking her to church. Sometimes God packs a lot in a little.

  Before Kevin and the Dame headed back down to the beach, Striker decided to take one last stab at it. While it’s fresh in our minds, she thought. She figured it couldn’t hurt.

  “I told you,” said Kevin. “We were walking. It was slippery. She fell. Boom. Like dead weight. Didn’t hold out her hand or anything. Just boom. Down.”

  “She fell or she slipped?”

  “What’s the difference?” He was getting suspicious, closing himself off.

  “I’m trying to picture it, is all. It must have been awful for you.”

  “It was,” he said. After a few moments, he added, “She slipped. Yeah, slipped. That’s the right word. Her feet shot out from under her.”

  “I thought you said you were in the lead.” Was the Dame also having a hard time imagining Taylor following her husband anywhere?

  “I didn’t actually see what happened, but she must have slipped. I heard it. I turned around. I saw her lying there twitching. The snow already—” He stood searching for the right word. “Reddening.”

  “We found a loose rock nearby. It had hair on it.”

  “So? The rocks were icy.”

  “It’s kinda weird. The rock wasn’t in the spot where she fell. It was a few feet away.”

  “I dunno. I moved her, so maybe the snow stopped the bleeding and stuff?”

  “There were definitely gobs of—” She caught herself. “There was a lot of trauma on the snow. Just not on the rocks where you said she fell.”

  “I don’t know!” he shouted. Striker thought if she’d been a man, he would’ve taken a swing at her. It was possible he still would. “My wife is dead! You happy?”

  “No, are you?”

  Overhead, a skua was circling on the winds. After a few turns it came down and landed on a rock. Striker noticed it had only one eye. The remaining eye locked on her like a scope.

  Kevin and la Grande Dame were also staring. Had she really just asked if he was happy his wife was dead? Sometimes you need other people to help you regulate yourself. When other people shut down or don’t engage or start to act crazy, you can’t tell when you yourself are out of line. When you’ve said something you shouldn’t have said. When you’ve done something you can never walk back.

  The skua began preening its feathers, its missing eye red like a coil on a stove. You and me both, honey, it seemed to say. You and me both.

  Kevin used the silence to turn the tables. “You gonna be okay up here?” he asked, twirling the key he’d lifted off his wife’s body. Striker could hear it in the timbre of his voice, his words pitched wide and innocent to demonstrate no hard feelings.

  Don’t be trifling, Riley would’ve said. Nobody knows mind games better than us. It was clear Kevin was trying to plant a seed, implying that all alone up there with a dead body, Striker would be anything but okay. Losing your highly successful wife who was a giant in her industry was proving to be a helluva boner. Since coming ashore, the guy had grown several inches, his chest newly puffed out like a silverback gorilla.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Striker said. She aimed her arrow low. “Just make sure you stay upright out there on the slopes.”

  La Grande Dame’s eyes lit up full tilt. “I’ll make sure he makes it down and back intact,” she said. The way the old girl held the word. The three of them knew it was an allusion to his manly bits. “Toodles,” said the Dame, scratching the air with her fingers, a rich woman’s wave goodbye. She turned and set off down the slope. For an instant Kevin scowled at Striker before storming off.

  This isn’t over.

  Promises promises.

  Striker watched them disappear down the volcano. Back inside the cabin, she left the door wide open, but even with the radiance shooting up out of the earth, it felt darker than she would’ve liked.

  Okay. Tidy up and take stock. See if there’s anything useful. Avoid the corner with the thing laid out under the ratty blanket. Don’t even look at it.

  It was clear the hut had been around more than ten decades. She could tell from the stamp on the crate containing the Victrola. 1908. Percy had said the First World War marked the close of the golden age of polar exploration, which had started before the turn of the century. That put this place anywhere from 120 to 140 years old. What else had Percy told them? There had been whalers further north on South Georgia going back to the time of the Civil War, the whalers destroying that island’s fur seal colonies before moving on. It was possible some of those men could have sailed further south, some even becoming stranded in the very room where she was standing.

  Luckily there were no signs of decay. The cabin was sturdy, any gaps in the wooden boards covered with ticking. From the look of things entire walls had been transported from the crew’s foundering ship, the panels dark, blackened by the oily smoke of fatty marine animals. The space was crammed with the comforts of home, the ship fully scavenged before it was abandoned and left to be crushed in the ice. On the wall opposite the chimney was a huge cast-iron stove. It probably weighed a ton. That the men had wrestled it all the way up the volcano was beyond amazing. Even after more than a century, there was no doubt in Striker’s mind it would heat up the instant someone stuffed it full of wood and tossed in a match.

  In the corner closest to the chimney, two mattresses sat on iron bed stands, one of them probably the captain’s. A handful of hammocks hung from nearby hooks. During one of the lectures onboard the Yegorov, a historian had explained that any given expedition might number upwards of fifty men though the sailors would often be left for the season at the whaling stations on the northernmost islands while the explorers headed further south into the ice.

  Large wooden crates sat heaped on the floor, their stamps faded but legible. Tate and Lyle, Day and Martin Shoe Polish, Spratt’s Dog Biscuits, Keiller’s Orange Marmalade, Bovril, Superior Chocolate Powder. Several crates still contained their contents. She bent down and pulled out a packet. The biscuits were practically calcified. Same for the coffee and sugar. A little hot water might soften them up. Nothing had gone bad, just hardened.

  In the far corner leaned a series of shelves loaded with baskets full of utensils, early twentieth century kitchenware, much of it tin. There were buckets and jugs, towels and rags, everything one would need to set up house, even a microscope sitting on a wooden case, a glass slide wedged under the lens. She wondered how the men had stayed busy tucked up on the side of a volcano. How many winters they had fought to remain upbeat in the face of the interminable Antarctic night. The Yegorov’s onboard historian had mentioned that the doomed Franklin expedition had carried three thousand books with them during their arctic journey in search of the Northwest Passage. She imagined some poor soul’s reading glasses breaking just days into his trip like in that Twilight Zone episode starring Burgess Meredith.

  Striker gave the room a last long look. There was zero chance a person with a uterus could’ve kept herself hidden in such close quarters. And if, by the skin of her teeth, some lovesick woman had managed to pull off the unimaginable, her relationship with her lover would have rapidly deteriorated. There was no privacy, nowhere to sneak off to. The woman would’ve been just another one of the dirty, smelly, starving boys. Where was the fun in that?

  Something lay tossed under a chair, maybe a rag. Striker wouldn’t have given it a second thought except that crumpled up in the fabric were two strange pebbles that glinted in the weak light. Even without knowing what it was, it looked like nothing she wanted to touch. She grabbed a fork from one of the baskets and speared it with the tines.

  It was a mask, the leather thin and still pliable. Someone had painstakingly glued a sparse path of red hair around the chin. Slits were cut for the eyes and nose though their narrowness gave the mask a sinister look. Striker poked at the mouth hole with her finger. Shizer. What she had thought were pebbles were actual teeth. Two yellow incisors sewn into the leather with twine and jutting out of the mouth like small tusks. The mask was heavily soiled. The stains didn’t seem dark enough to be soot, the spots more rust colored. She felt her stomach tense.

  She had seen a mask like this before on the set of that turgid period flick she had scouted in Scotland about Charles I. The people who wore them were called Covenanters. They were Scotsmen who refused to bow to the English Catholic Church. Covenanter priests would hold secret outdoor masses for those who dared to attend upon pain of death. The ones who were caught were killed in gruesome ways that often involved the exposing of their entrails. Some of the outlaw priests traveled from town to town incognito, their faces obscured by elaborate masks adorned with human features. To Striker, none of it made sense. If anything, the strange masks only rendered the wearer more conspicuous.

  There had been a brief talk on the Yegerov about the kind of clothing the early explorers wore. Most were made of wool and furs, some canvas. It all sounded pretty miserable. Striker wondered if maybe the men had also worn leather masks to protect their faces from the elements. The lecturer had mentioned that the Inuit often shielded their eyes by cutting slits in slats of wood that they would then peer through.

  Personally I’d rather be burnt to a crisp than wear that thing.

  Even on the end of a fork, the mask evinced a dark power. The eye slits staring from beyond time. Striker followed its gaze across the room to a small ax leaning upright in the corner. She tossed the mask aside and went to see if the blade had dulled. The cabin didn’t have any discernible armory. It was probably just as easy to use a knife or a club to do your killing, a gun’s firing mechanism unreliable in extreme cold. She reached down and picked up the ax by the—

  Instantly she jumped back as though she’d brushed a live wire.

  That wasn’t real, she told herself. It couldn’t be. She stood panting in the quiet, waiting for her heart to slow.

  In a flash she had seen the room in the glow of lantern light. The floorboards and walls, even the ceiling spattered with blood. There had been a terrible smell, something on the cusp of death, the sound of men openly vomiting.

  Her heart was pounding but she had to know. A higher power was pulling the strings. She watched as her hand reached down and picked up the ax again—

  << Striker is shouting orders, her voice thick with a Highland brogue. Something clings to her face, the object clammy like a second skin, her vision lessened as if peering at the world from between two fingers. A terrible sourness fills her mouth but she disregards it as she addresses the room, instructing those assembled that the saw has been lost in the grotto and the matter is urgent, aye, we need tae get it aff noo, lads. A body lies screaming on the table. Shouting it’s just my three fingers, but she counters the deadness might weel be ower the three. The man on the table fights with every ounce of his strength until he is hit on the head with a mallet and the gruesome surgery begins, some of the men holding the patient down, others gripping the arm, three of the man’s fingertips the color of ash, skin black as charcoal, the hand itself also a bloodless yellow, the flesh no longer spongy but flaccid like unrisen dough, and the smell in the room is beyond sickening, a smell of dead flesh and burning animal fat and unwashed bodies pushed to their limits and Striker never falters as she raises the blade overhead, God’s commandant here on earth, the ax coming down on the patient’s wrist but it’s not quite through, the blood spurting in the greasy air like syrup as she soldiers on steadfast and righteous, naked I came frae o’ ma mither’s belly, an’ naked I’ll go bak thare, the stout blade rising for a second >>

  Striker let go, the ax clattering on the floor.

  Her doctors suspected it was a type of migraine. They said it was possible to experience the aura that precedes the event without encountering the subsequent pain. For most migraine sufferers, the aura involved sensitivity to light and sound, flashing circles dancing in the air, sometimes smells. From the darkness of her walled anchorage, the thirteenth century mystic Hildegard von Bingen had described seeing a shining city on a hill followed by hours of stabbing pain. The doctors told Striker she should consider herself lucky. Debilitating headache wasn’t one of her symptoms. Instead, she would be strolling around minding her own business when, without warning, she’d smell rotten food mixed with the greasy smell of shit. Then time would pass without her perceiving it and she’d come back to herself in a different location.

  In New York it was easy enough to manage. She didn’t drive, and every time it happened, what she called “Dark Striker” (it’s me but without the lights on) carried on perfectly fine, never stepping into traffic or off a subway platform into the path of a screaming train. Dark Striker was mostly just disconcerting. Like the time she’d landed in bed with a Broadway dancer—she could tell the brother had moves! The two of them were just at the start of the festivities when the smell of rotten food filled the sheets, and the next thing she knew he was lying beside her, his hand rubbing her shoulder as he fell into a happy sleep.

  The first inklings of her heightened sensitivity started in childhood that first summer on Zinnia Trace. She was six when Trish and Doug called the fire department after Striker blacked out and came to twenty feet up a tree. What happened, she later asked. Trish’s eyes filled with tears. It wasn’t unusual for Trish to cry. She’d been crying all summer. But this time she seemed truly hopeless. “I dunno,” Trish said. “You just went dark.”

  And now along with the blackouts she was having visions. Moments when she would touch some unassuming object and its story would spool into her. Out of her army of doctors, Striker only told her gynecologist a simplified version of what was happening. “You’re a woman on the cusp of forty and perimenopausal,” the woman had said. “It’s possible your symptoms have shifted.” The other doctors would have looked for darker reasons, recommended upping her meds.

  The first vision hit in the subway a week after Labor Day. A silk scarf lay on the platform, the fabric a beautiful burnt orange. She had picked it up, thinking a woman heading for the stairs had dropped it. Instantly she was standing in a room, low music on in the background. A man was walking toward her in his boxers, pulling her into his arms. Playfully she was running the scarf over his face. Then the man was laying her down on the bed. Striker could sense an inner reluctance, a pang of fear as the woman handed over control, but she felt the woman push beyond it, a soft baby, yes playing on her lips, the fear slowly morphing into the thrill of the unknown, the adrenaline rush that comes with arousal, the man pulling her arms over her head, tying her hands to the bedpost with the scarf, the woman’s heart thundering as he—

  Striker had never told the doctors about the things she heard, afraid that such symptoms would tip their diagnosis from the realm of the relatively benign over into the hell of crazy. She could never predict when it would happen, but some days she would hear a baby howling, its cries muffled as if coming through a wall. At other times her head filled with the breathy notes of an organ playing holiday music or the percussive thump of a beating heart. Through the years, she had simply done as women do. She had learned to live with it.

  The ax lay on the floor. It was only an ax. There was no severed hand growing cold on the table like a leftover piece of meat. Striker gave herself another minute to reacclimate.

  Something scurried out of the chimney.

  “Not again,” she whispered. She couldn’t believe it moved so fast. She tried to recall what the onboard ornithologist had said. Everyone knew penguins ate fish, but were they also scavengers, eaters of the dead?

  Striker knew it was up to her to protect the thing lying in the corner under the blanket. The merciful act would be to track down the invader and put it out of its misery once and for all. She could practically hear Percy telling her where to aim and not to close her eyes at the last second or she’d miss. As she reached for a fire poker, the sound changed.

  Striker froze.

  Something was crying. The noise small and soft and human.

  It was everywhere at once, like the song a seashell makes when you hold it to your ear, its music filling your head, only now there was no distance between her and the sound of an infant crying, the baby no longer in the room next door. It was right there in the cabin. A presence rising like water in the dark. She could feel it, the sense that someone was standing over her shoulder, their breath cold on her neck. She knew if she stood there any longer, a hand would reach out and touch her arm.