Page 6 of Atlas of Unknowable Things

“We just don’t know what happened. One moment she was here, the next she was gone.

To understand Isabelle, you’d really have to understand this place.

It’s more than just a college; it’s a community, and during the summers, those of us that stay on campus form bonds that go beyond just being colleagues.

In some ways, Isabelle was the epicenter of those bonds. ”

He went on for some time, describing the card games, the soirees, the shared meals.

To hear him tell it, it was hard to imagine how any of them ever got any work done.

It sounded like carousing with Jazz Age artists and intellectuals.

One could practically hear Zelda Fitzgerald throwing a jealous fit on some champagne-soaked terrace.

At one point, he disappeared down the hall and returned holding a single photo.

In it, Dorian stood smiling between a man and woman, both in their late twenties.

They looked positively joyous—bright smiles and outstretched arms. You could almost hear the echoes of distant laughter, the festive music that must have filled the air, and immediately I was gripped by an uncanny ache for a life I’d never had.

“That’s Finn Jeon,” Dorian said, pointing to the man in the photo.

Asian, with attractively tousled hair and a chin line like cut glass, he was smoking a cigarette with so much aplomb that I found myself momentarily wishing the habit would come back in style.

“He’s in systems science. And that’s Aspen Thomas, our director of horticulture.

If you’re interested in herbology, you will want to talk to her. ”

Aspen was Black with a nose piercing and Clara Bow lips, and she seemed to be in the midst of a flapper dance, her right leg kicked out to the side to reveal knee-high boots and sparkling tights.

The general air was one of very glamorous, fun people cutting loose with wild abandon.

They were a lot cooler and looked like a lot more fun than the academics in my department, and I felt a twinge of jealousy, or perhaps it was a vestigial longing for acceptance.

I suddenly wondered if they might be hiring a historian anytime soon.

Taking a closer look at the photo, I noticed a blond woman standing a few feet behind the others, her face just out of the frame.

“Who’s that? It’s not Professor Casimir, is it?”

“No, Isabelle was taking the photo, if I remember correctly. That’s Lexi Duarte. She’s our behavioral psychologist. She’s actually a distant cousin of mine. I think you’ll like her.”

“Is she here this summer?”

“Yes. Aspen and Finn are as well.”

Conversation wound down after that, and once my dinner was finished, he took the tray and bid me good night.

After pulling on my obscenely soft pajamas, I turned out the lights and sat on the spacious windowsill a while, staring out at the purple sky.

My attention was drawn down to the woods momentarily when I thought I saw a flash of a brilliant white light issuing from the tree line.

Focusing in on the area, I waited to see if it happened again, but it didn’t, so I opened the window, took a deep breath, and once again was lost in the ache that rose up when I was alone.

I was better now, but when things went south with Charles, I was truly an abject mess.

My mom used to say that usually when I thought I was mad, I was actually just hurt.

And I was hurt—deeply hurt—but when it came to Charles, couldn’t I be both?

We used to go to this Russian bar on the Lower East Side that served flavored vodka in little crystal decanters.

We’d sit inside for hours, the lighting soft and warm on winter nights, and we’d talk.

On those glorious evenings, time seemed to expand, as if the world around us had stopped and there was nothing but laughter and a deeply joyous calm.

In the aftermath of the rupture, I was sick with the loss of that friendship.

It sounds cliché, but it genuinely felt like losing a part of myself.

You read about heartache, when people say they can’t sleep or eat, and I always thought, Yeah yeah yeah, but you still eat, like, breakfast and snacks and stuff, right?

You still sleep, like, at least five hours, right?

But it turns out clichés are clichés for a reason.

Food repulsed me. I cried so much and so fiercely that I didn’t have the energy to get out of bed some days.

And the nights were somehow even worse. When I closed my eyes, all I saw were the happy times, the person I used to know, the sense of being whatever the opposite of alone is.

But here I was again, alone. Perhaps that was just my fate.

As I sat in the windowsill, I poked at those emotional wounds like a tongue running over an aching tooth, and no doubt I would have gone on like that for hours, but then I saw that light again.

Out in the woods, it flashed unmistakably, a series of beats.

Morse code? I was just leaning out to get a closer look when a single terrible howl rose up, a monstrous pained growl that drifted out over the trees and up toward the pale moon. I pulled away from the window, stunned.

My mind immediately went to werewolves, though I knew that was ridiculous.

My research was getting to me. It was a dog, that was all, and I had gotten way too used to the city.

I closed the window and drew the curtains.

Climbing into bed, I turned out the light, and before I could even take in a breath, it was as though the room suddenly dimmed.

Confused, I tried to reach for the light, but to my utter horror, I could no longer move my limbs.

Inside my body, I stretched and strained, but outwardly, I remained totally immobile.

I couldn’t move a muscle. Trying not to panic, I did my best to take deep, steady breaths.

I’d read about this state—sleep paralysis.

It was a common phenomenon, no more than a parasomnia in which waking states and REM states overlapped, resulting in the cognizance of wakefulness with the normal muscle paralysis associated with deep sleep.

It would pass eventually. I just needed to ride it out.

However, as I lay there, unable to control any part of my body—except for my eyelids, which, curiously, I was able to open and close at will—it soon became clear that understanding the science behind the disorder did nothing to relieve the visceral terror of actually experiencing it.

No wonder people throughout history equated it with demon possession.

It really felt like there was some demonic force holding sway over me.

It truly was unnerving. I didn’t believe in witches or demons, but if I had grown up in a culture that gave credence to such things, I would have been close to losing my mind with fear.

The truth was, there was something about the experience that simply felt wrong. It felt malevolent.

I was doing my best to stay calm when once again that terrible howl rose up. It was deafening and I closed my eyes against it.

When I opened them again, I was outside.

Cool evening air brushed against my cheek as I stared around in horror.

With a cold shock I realized I had no idea where I was or how I’d gotten there.

Just a moment before, I had been in bed dreaming, but now I was fully awake, standing outside on a garden path in the dead of night.

Trying to get my bearings, I realized I was on a brick walkway on Hildegard’s grounds, not far from the main house.

How I had gotten down here, though, was anyone’s guess.

In front of me stood a blue-and-white cabana, the blues turned to shadow by the waxing gibbous moon.

The sign above the door read: DR. ISABELLE CASIMIR.

Around me the night seemed to beat, a thick blackness that throbbed despite the clarity of the starlit sky above.

I stared straight ahead at that door, feeling a terrible compulsion to go toward it.

My heart raced and my brow was sprinkled with sweat.

As if moved by some unseen force, I walked toward it and turned the handle, but it jarred, the door firmly locked.

Somewhere far off, an owl screeched and terror shot through me.

I knew with every fiber of my being that I had to get out of there.

I bolted up the path back toward the house, where I found a set of French doors standing wide open.

Apparently this was how I’d gotten outside, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember opening them.

I hurried inside, careful to lock up behind me, and then crept upstairs as quietly as I could.

Once inside my room, I locked the door and got back in bed.

Had I seriously started sleepwalking? How was that possible?

To sleepwalk, one must fall asleep, and I was absolutely certain I hadn’t fallen asleep.

The room had seemed to dim, but I’d never lost consciousness.

I’d been awake the whole time. Hadn’t I?

I’m not sure when I drifted off, and although I must have dreamed, it seemed instead that I was consumed by a velvety darkness.

From within that darkness, I was aware of an onslaught of strange noises as if something large were moving just beneath my window—heavy legs, labored grunts—but when I awoke just after dawn, I found the terrace completely empty, save for a pair of blue swallowtail butterflies that landed on the balustrade momentarily before flitting away again.