The House Above the Sea

24.

Even when she knows he isn't dead, even when she knows he's but a brief bike ride away, it still feels sacrilegious.

Elsie stands just before Kit's bedroom door: four-paneled, cracking white paint, a blue and white polka dot C for Christopher hanging from a nail at the top. It's a hazy Sunday morning, earlier than early, the hall encased in the faintest gold-orange sheen of sunrise. Her parents will be up in about half an hour. If she wants to avoid any explanations—and she does—she'll need to be out of here by then.

Still. There's something she has to check.

It's not like this will change anything. She's seen Kit with her own eyes, talked to him—as if she needs any more evidence that this tiny thread of hope she'd been clutching all these years wasn't so pointless after all. She's just being thorough. That's what it is. Just checking off all the boxes.

She stops one more second to listen for any noise that may suggest either of her parents have roused, and when there's nothing but silence, she cracks the door and steps inside.

It's like walking backwards through time. Nothing about the room has changed since Kit last inhabited it. Not the walls, painted a dark blue, the corners behind his bookshelves and his dressers sprawling with handmade, vibrant mandalas; not the stack of juvenile chapter books on his desk, one of them left half open as if he'd be back to it in just a second; not his multicolored lego tower, tall enough that it nearly brushes the dormant ceiling fan.

The backs of Elsie's eyes burn, but she fights the tears back, reminding herself that not everything is truly lost. As soon as they find Maeve, she'll tell them how. She'll tell them how to fix this mess. She has to.

Wary of her waning time, Elsie sets to work. The camera she's looking for would've been brought to Kit's room after the memorial, likely by one of her parents. Where would they have put it?

She checks the desk, careful not to move anything, as if each unfinished water bottle and wrinkled sheet of paper is a precious artifact she can't afford to disturb. She throws open the desk drawers, checks under the bed, combs the bookshelves. When she finally finds it, sitting neatly atop the window sill, she wonders how she even missed it.

It's dated, of course. An old video camera from 2006 or earlier, with a crack in the monitor and a missing lens cap. Elsie drops to a seat right there on the dusty wood floors, crossing her legs, and mutters a quiet prayer that the busted thing will still work. She powers it on—the screen sputters, goes dark for a moment, and starts up.

Thank God.

Kit was recording that night. She's sure of it. Whatever unpleasant, traumatic haze that entire incident is in the back of her mind now, she remembers that with distinct clarity—remembers him setting up the tripod, then turning to her with a jubilant thumbs up. "Let's do this," he said. It was the last time, she realizes, she ever heard him speak.

The most recent footage is from eight years before.

It's unquenchable curiosity; it's the hope that she's forgetting something that could solve all their problems; it's the memory of Kit's voice, clear, honeyed, likely a bit higher than it would be now. All of these things and more drive Elsie to hit play.

In blurry night vision, Elsie watches her ten-year-old self finish drawing a circle of salt in the middle of the old house's living room floor, struggling a bit under the bag's weight. She drops it to the ground with a thud, and Kit grabs her arm, yanking her back.

The sound is muffled, staticky, but she can hear herself calling out something, asking if the ghost was there. The static cuts out, abruptly, into silence. Then a bright flash of white roars up before the lens, the static rising again in a thunderous crescendo. Her heart pounding, Elsie lowers the volume, and brings the camera closer to her face. The screen is still white—she can't see a thing. Impatient, she fast forwards, and keeps fast forwarding, until the screen goes dark again.