Heading North

Koia has a motion-activated alarm system that we enable overnight. Several times recently, it has gone off for no obvious reason.

Behind the bar, we have a hinged paper towel dispenser. No matter what we do to keep it closed, it is always swinging open.

Today, when the dispenser fell open, I put two and two together. It wasn’t until later in the evening, after I had closed, that this realization scared me to death.

…

It has been warm and sunny here the past two weeks. I have been looking forward to the lunar eclipse that is happening tonight, hardly considering the fact that a lunar eclipse is often regarded as a bad omen.

This morning, however, I woke up to new snow, and the skies were overcast all day. By nightfall, the clouds had sunk to become a thick fog blowing in with force and noticeably lowering the temperature on the mountain. It was the kind of fog that made me feel like I was in a movie.

…

I closed Koia by myself tonight and told Lars that I would be staying late to upgrade the sound system. Our amplifier is on a high shelf above the paper towel dispenser; so after the usual cleaning routine, I was standing on a crate changing some cables when it first happened – a noise I hadn’t heard before – somewhere I couldn’t see. It could have been something falling off the wall, it could have been someone knocking to get in, or it could have been something blown over by the wind. Whatever it was, I looked for it, but found everything on the walls, no one outside, and my heart rate up just a bit. So I went back to work, alternating between the amplifier and the speakers outside to check their output and adjust the volume. Outside – in the fog and the wind and the cold.

Then it happened again. This time louder. This time definitely inside. And after frantically searching through and around the entire building, still no sign of what could have caused it, until I was frozen in my tracks. I thought of the paper towel dispenser, not because the noise could possibly have been the paper towel dispenser, for the noise was far too loud. I was petrified by something else I remembered:

Three hundred fifty years ago, long before the building was “Koia,” a girl who lived there was killed. In fact, she was suspected to have been slain at the exact location of the paper towel dispenser, directly below the amplifier and beside the panel for the alarm system. She was killed precisely where I was standing.

…

The last thing I do before I leave Koia at night is turn on the alarm, which has a short pre-delay. I do this immediately after I turn off all the lights. As soon as I engage the alarm – before it goes off – I have to walk to the front door on the opposite side of the building. In the dark.

Spooked, I finished my work as fast as possible and, after turning on the alarm, headed as calmly as I could for the door. Halfway there, I realized I had left my hat and gloves in the back. I knew I might have just enough time to retrieve them before the alarm would sound, so I turned around, reached blindly into the back room, raced for the door, and SLAM! The door shut behind me. I had already locked it before realizing that one of my gloves had fallen to the step below and that my hat was no longer in my hand or on the ground.

It was on the floor inside. And it still is. I was not going back for it, no matter how cold my ears might get on the five minute walk to my car. The dark, cold, foggy, windy, frighteningly endless walk back.

Once I finally made it, I peed in the parking lot. I had to, but it was foggy, and nobody was watching.

Nobody, except her.