The Starless Sea

Kat wrote in her journal because she no longer trusted the internet. She took all her notes off her laptop. “They” erased her phone and the notes on it, so she tried put in what she remembered of them. Although she questioned whether she would be able to read her handwriting later, she hoped that “wherever this all leads it’s worth it” (401).

Without overt evidence of foul play, no one seemed interested in investigating Zachary’s disappearance. When the police asked how well she knew him, she just said “friends.” They asked if he might have done something, hinting at suicide, and she answered that she did not think so, but she also thought that most people were not too far away from that and life could unexpectedly shove a person in that direction. The police took her number but never called. She left messages, but they did not respond.

Inside the cavern, Zachary Ezra Rawlins finds himself in the snow, standing in front of his mother’s farmhouse during a holiday party. He sees a stag in the woods, but it quickly disappears. Zachary is confused when someone who looks like Dorian appears, asking about his lack of an ugly Christmas sweater.