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Ever since Maya moved back into the old farm, she's felt uneasy.
Is it because she's alone, her parents too busy signing the last papers in Jorvik City? Is it because it's been hard to get a hold of Alex? Or because there's this unexplainable cold spot on the second floor, right by the stairs leading to the attic?
The moving van all but dumped their belongings in the courtyard, one of the Summers brothers behind the wheel, unrecognizable without a cap on his head. Late summer means thunderstorms on Jorvik, so Maya had to haul the boxes inside, or else they’d get rained on.
The buildings are mere skeletons; the bones are holding up but the insides are all scrambled up. The kitchen is a moldy sink and the phantom of a stone oven. Her bedroom feels smaller than it used to be. The outdated wallpaper peels away, and a window is missing its glass. In the living room where the stained floorboard creaks and whines, the cardboard boxes climb the walls and graze the ceiling.
Her job for the time being is simple: clean what can be saved and rip apart what cannot. It’s long and tiring, and she’s slower than expected. She sweeps dust, debris, and forgotten memories, empty room after empty room, as she tries not to look too closely at the cracks in the walls.
By the time she clears enough of a path through the piles of boxes, summer is well put behind. Leaves torch up the trees, and the sun sets earlier than ever.
Maya sweeps and sweeps, follows a leaking pipe by sound alone, a busted-up joint somewhere between the living room and the kitchen. The shut-off valve she is looking for is nowhere to be seen, but surely, there's tape in the attic, she decides. In case the leak's a bigger issue than it seems, she turns off the power, and rust taints her fingertips.
She props her broom against the banister and climbs the stairs. All the doors are locked except hers, wide-open, with very little light filtering in the hallway. She turns twice, left then right, and there it is, the last threshold to cross.
But before she can reach the end of the hallway, something stops her dead in her tracks.
A puff of cold air that ruffles the hem of her pants.
She squints her eyes in the darkness, patting her pockets for a flashlight or a phone. Empty.
It’s just another hole in the wall, she whispers to no one but herself. Another hole she'll have to find and close up. Her list of things to do seems interminable.
She wants to take another step, but there's fear growing in the pit of her stomach. While her foot wavers between floorboard and ceiling, a space where time stands still, her dirty fingertips feel full of static. It can't be a good sign.
The breeze snakes around her ankles, up her calves. The rabbit-kick of her pulse thumps loud in her ears. She's alone, she's sure of it, nothing moves, and the door to the attic is firmly closed. If she were to look back, she would only see the angle of the hallway, but she doesn't.
After what seems like hours, her foot hits the floor, and then she walks away, never once turning her back on the attic door, her gut churning with every step she takes away from the door.
Maya isn't skittish by nature, even less since she began dating Alex and hanging out with the rest of the Soul Riders. Magic, monsters, and whatnot. Who would have thought? But that cold spot… She can't explain it, really, tries to wrap her head around it. There must be a hole in the wall, in the attic, that would explain it, but she can't find it in her to grab the doorknob, to even reach the end of the hallway.
Luckily, her bedroom is on the other side of the house, above the front door, where the small cracked window she had to block out with tape and pages from an old Jorvik Gazette overlooks the silos and the sea. Every night, the picture taken at the 2019 Potato Festival hides the starry sky, Marley all smiles beside his fields.
Since Maya has discovered the spot, she has ditched her duties inside the house. She weeds the pastures, the orchard, picks up garbage around the lighthouse, another door locked whose key is probably waiting inside one of the cardboard boxes still piled up in the living room.
And she's all alone.
Eli's back at the farm, the other one, guarding the sheep and cows, while the Goldspurs come and feed them. Her parents are still in Jorvik City, probably held back by some meticulous real estate agent. She’s tried calling Alex several times and left countless voicemails, sounding increasingly desperate. The Soul Riders must be on a world-saving mission, Maya tries to reassure herself. The Soul Riders are saving the world once again, and she's being paranoid over a cold gust of wind in an old house with more rodents than working faucets.
She's all alone, and overgrown weeds growing in twists around the weathered fences are Maya’s only roommates that don't cause a ruckus.
So she starts spending her evenings at the Wolf Hall Inn for hot food and some company, even though Ed Field is everything but good company. Better than nothing, Maya muses as she slurps the soup of the week, turnips and potatoes, the dining area deserted except for two clients picking at their bowls with disgust. City dwellers in search of authentic, countryside experiences, judging by their squeaky clean hiking shoes.
Maya tries to stay at the inn until her eyelids droop as the sun sets over the Northern Mountain Range and Mario's observatory.
The leak isn't getting any better, and she hasn't touched the water and electricity valves since she turned them off. Her supply of candles is wasting away, Ed's face twists every time she plugs her phone at the inn, and she's tired of eating cold, soggy sandwiches at every lunch.
Maya feels like she's going crazy. Fixing the tractor that looks worse for wear, left behind years ago alongside harvesting tools still lined up against the wall, seems more feasible than fixing the situation at hand.
Each time she takes a step too far down the hallway, it sends uncomfortable shivers down her spine that she swears she's felt before. This oppressing, menacing presence seemingly growing bigger and bigger inside the narrow hallway, a disruptive force emerging from a millennium-long slumber. It slithers along the walls, slips under the planks, presses down the pipes.
But that can't be right. The Soul Riders are the fighters, not her. She helps them the best she can and then dips when it gets too dangerous. Besides, how did it take root in such an inconspicuous place? No one would suspect the Harvest Counties, not even Maya. The next time she calls Alex, munching on a slice of lukewarm chicken pot pie, it sends her straight to voicemail.
A bridge between the Summer Camp and the farm is under construction, or so she's heard, but there are no vehicles, no yells. It's way too calm over there, behind the slope. She can barely reach the top where the unmaintained grass conceals strange rocks that shine as bright as the lighthouse at night. They sound hollow when she knocks on them, but she can barely lift them from the ground. Really, she'd do anything but climb upstairs.
The menu at the inn cycles every two weeks. Maya knows it. The turnips and potatoes soup is back, its starchy taste leaving a weird thick layer at the back of her throat, and she's the only client tonight. It's too cold to dine outside, and it means her only distraction is to count how many mismatched wallpapers cover the walls while her phone charges outside.
The harsh mid-autumn wind batters the weather-beaten signs of the inn, creak, creak, just like the floorboards at night, right outside her bedroom door, just like the pipe somewhere between the living room and the unused kitchen. Her next call to Alex informs her the voicemail is full.