“The Ghosts of Northwind: A Pilot’s Journey Home”
Anna Mitchell had always felt the pull of the old towns, the abandoned streets where her grandparents once walked.
She grew up in Alaska, among snow-dusted peaks and endless tundra, listening to the stories of elders who spoke of places where time had stopped.
But those towns were fading.
Slowly.
Year by year, as the elders passed, the villages became ghostly echoes in the wind.
Anna became a pilot not to deliver cargo or passengers, but to give the elders something that money could never buy: a final journey home.
She flew two, sometimes three elders each month, across miles of frozen rivers and jagged mountains, to towns abandoned for decades.
She never charged them.
Her mission was simple: bring the memories back.
On a gray morning in early November, Anna prepared for a flight she knew would be unlike any other.
Her passenger was Mr.Harold Jenkins, a spry 93-year-old man with eyes that seemed to hold the entire history of a place Anna had only heard of in fragments.
He had been born in Northwind, a small village on the northern edge of Alaska, abandoned in 1974 when the river froze and the families slowly drifted away.
Anna’s twin-engine plane cut through the mist as she flew north.
She glanced at Jenkins, who stared out the window with a faraway look, his lips moving as though he were whispering to someone invisible.
“You’re excited, aren’t you?” Anna asked lightly.
Jenkins turned to her, a faint smile tracing his weathered face.
“Excited? No. Nervous, maybe. It’s been… forty-nine years since I last set foot there.”
Anna nodded.
She understood the feeling—of returning to a place where every step would stir memories both sweet and painful.
When the plane finally descended toward Northwind, Anna’s stomach tightened.
From above, the village looked like a skeleton of its former self.
Roofs had collapsed.
Trees and shrubs overtook the streets.
The frozen river gleamed faintly under the gray sky, a thin silver ribbon snaking through the town.
Jenkins was silent as they landed.
He stepped onto the ice-crusted airstrip and paused, taking in the scene.
His hand trembled slightly.
“This is… it,” he whispered.
“I can’t believe it’s still here.”
The two of them walked through the village.
Anna stayed a few steps behind, giving Jenkins space to remember.
Every corner brought a new recollection: the old church where his father had taught him hymns, the frozen river where he had first fished, the long-abandoned schoolhouse with its splintered benches.
But as the sun dipped lower, casting long shadows across the empty streets, Jenkins stopped abruptly.
“Anna… do you see that?”
Anna followed his gaze to the far end of the village, where a building—once a small trading post—stood partly intact.
A shadow moved behind the broken windows.
“It’s probably an animal,” she said, though unease curled in her stomach.
Jenkins shook his head.
“No… it’s… someone. Or something. I remember… something being here, long ago. I thought it was just a story.”
Anna felt a chill.
She had flown many elders to abandoned villages, but none had spoken of… presences.
Not in the way Jenkins did.
They continued walking, but the feeling of being watched didn’t fade.
Occasionally, she thought she saw shapes moving between the trees, though whenever she blinked, they were gone.
Hours passed, and Jenkins recounted story after story, each tied to a precise location.
“This is where we hunted caribou,” he said, pointing to the frozen tundra.
“This is where I met my wife, Mary. And over there, where the old well is, my brother fell in one winter.”
Anna listened, fascinated.
She had never heard anyone so vividly recall a place abandoned for decades.
Then, Jenkins paused.
His gaze fixed on the trading post again.
“I can’t explain it,” he murmured.
“But… I feel like someone—or something—is trying to speak to me. To us.”
Anna frowned.
The light was fading fast.
She had to get them back before nightfall.
Yet something about the air was… wrong.
As they prepared to return to the plane, Jenkins froze again, pointing to the shadows near the trading post.
“You have to see this,” he said urgently.
Anna followed, but nothing was visible.
Then a door creaked.
Slowly.
And a figure stepped out.
Not an animal.
Not entirely human.
A woman, pale, clothed in tattered furs, eyes reflecting something ancient and unreadable.
Anna’s hand went to her radio.
“Jenkins… we need to go. Now.”
But Jenkins didn’t move.
Instead, he stepped toward the figure, arms outstretched.
“Mary?” he whispered.
The figure vanished before Anna could react, as if swallowed by the shadows themselves.
Jenkins fell to his knees, shaking.
Anna helped him up.
“We’re leaving. Now.”
They ran back to the plane, adrenaline pulsing through Anna’s veins.
As they lifted off, she glanced down at the village one last time.
It looked normal again, almost peaceful—but the trading post, that mysterious building, seemed… different.
Older.
Darker.
Jenkins remained silent for the rest of the flight.
When they finally landed back at her airstrip, she expected relief, gratitude—but instead he turned to her, eyes wide.
“Anna… we didn’t see everything today. There’s more. Something hidden. Something waiting.”
Before she could respond, her radio crackled with static.
A voice, unfamiliar, whispered:
“Anna… come back. Don’t forget Northwind. Don’t forget what sleeps there.”
Anna’s heart pounded.
She looked at Jenkins.
He nodded grimly, as if confirming what she already feared.
The journey was far from over.
As she shut down the engines, a piece of paper fluttered against the wind, landing at her feet.
Written in a shaky hand was a single sentence:
“The village remembers you, Anna Mitchell. And it never forgets.”
She picked it up, staring at the words.
The sun dipped below the horizon, and the shadows of the mountains stretched long across the frozen ground.
Somewhere in the distance, Northwind waited—silent, abandoned, but alive.
And Anna knew she would return.
