Part III: The Window That Never Closes
Hours had bled into each other since Leila’s last message. Adam sat tethered to his computer screen, his gaze fixed, as if a single blink might cost him a fleeting notification. Outside his window in Kiruna, the night still held the sky captive, and the snow piled up like a silent, white fortress.
Finally… a new message flickered from Leila. It was brief, and the tone had shifted: “Adam, I’m back to writing now… I couldn’t reply earlier. The back window… it was open.”
Adam’s heart skipped a beat. He typed back frantically: “Open? Did you open it yourself?”
Her reply was instantaneous: “No. I’m certain of it. I heard the sound of it sliding open, but when I reached the room, no one was there.”
A window opening on its own in the dead of night, while the snow accumulated on the ledge remained undisturbed—no footprints of man, nor beast. Leila wrote: “The snow was soft, untouched. It’s impossible, Adam… how could a window open without leaving a single trace?”
Adam grasped for a logical explanation, trying to anchor her fears: “Perhaps the wind forced it… maybe the latch wasn’t secure.”
But Leila’s next message made his hands tremble: “The wind doesn’t lock the window afterward, Adam… I found it tightly shut when I returned minutes later.”
Adam suggested a simple precaution, and she agreed at once: “Place something heavy in front of it. A chair or a wooden crate. At least if it moves, you’ll know.”
She did so, sending him a photo of the crate in its place. That was the last exchange of the night—or so he thought.
Just as Adam prepared to find a moment’s rest… a new notification appeared. It wasn’t from Leila this time, but a system alert: “Warning: Last login detected from Boden at 03:27 AM.”
But Leila had told him she had logged off just minutes ago…
Before Adam could close the page, one final message surfaced from Leila’s account… but the phrasing was alien, unlike anything she would ever write: “Adam… can you come to Boden?”
The message remained without a ‘read’ receipt… Meaning, it wasn’t sent from her device.
To be continued…
