PROLOGUE
Katrina Nielsen
Emergency lights glowed cobalt blue in the grainy atmosphere of the corridor. I crept toward a closed door. On the clouded glass, a freshly-painted name appeared below the familiar ones – an unexpected name, an undeserving name. My name.
Hunched over his work, a dark-suited figure stood with his back to me, scraping letters from the translucent pane with a flat-headed screwdriver.
Hruskh-rhuskh.
Hruskh-rhuskh.
Curls of auburn pigment lifted off the surface and splinters of glass rained down. Whole letters disappeared; already only “NIELS” remained. I mustn’t let him expunge that name. But for what seemed like years, I was frozen.
The large man gouged harder, put his weight behind the scraper. Glass squealed under the pressure of cruel metal. Wincing, I buried fingers in my ears, but felt no relief, for the keening was inside me.
Finally I lashed out, striking the man’s shoulder. He turned and I gasped, recoiling from the veined and contorted face. There was something familiar familiar about it– but it couldn’t be. My father was dead, seven years dead.
The figure tried to speak, but only a gurgle and a rivulet of crimson escaped the lips before the mouth and cheeks and throat began to swell. His skin turned an anoxic purple, as if he was suffocating in his Grandad collar. Pointing to his chest, he wanted me to undo the button – but when I looked down, I saw that inside his shirt, all was hollow and oozing blood.
I screamed and felt hands on me, patting me awake. Shushing me, Richard snapped on the reading light. As his face materialized, scattered snorts and grumbles emerged from the delicate sleepers of Club Class, then subsided along with my cries.
He asked me what was wrong. I closed my eyes and tried to cling to the details of the dream. But the sharp images melted and blurred. The pieces eluded me, slipping like snowflakes through my fingers, falling like snow into the void below us, into the vast darkness above the North Atlantic.
