Northern Frights

by Arthur Slade

  Brand gently touched my shoulder. "You should probably tell her about how cold you've been."

  "Cold?" Althea was looking at me. "Is this true?"

  "Yes." I shivered. "I just can't seem to warm up. And ... I forgot to mention ... this morning I ... uh ... saw an image of Grandpa."

  "What kind of image?"

  "Well it was more like a feeling that he was buried."

  "Hmm," she said. "Hmm. This is all making sense. I should have told you from the beginning. Yes, I should have." She stood up. "Just wait here. There are a few things I want to show all of you."

  Then she disappeared into the house.

  17.

  "What's she doing?" Angie asked.

  We could hear Althea banging around inside, closing and opening doors, dropping things.

  "It sounds like she's remodeling the living room," Michael said.

  "My guess is Grandma's setting something up for us." Brand was sipping from his iced tea. "I'm not sure if I want to know what it is."

  I sat back, the sun's rays couldn't even warm the top layer of my skin. I wanted to find a parka, a pile of blankets or a roaring fire, but I knew none of these things would be enough to heat me up.

  "We talked to Mom and Dad," Michael said to me.

  "What did they say?"

  "They want us to get home at once—Angie is supposed to come all the way to Missouri since her parents are still in Europe. Dad was quite upset that we couldn't take another bus today."

  "Were they upset about Grandpa too?"

  Michael nodded. "Yeah, really shaken up. Mom started crying. Dad was asking me all these questions—and I didn't have any answers. Dad's going to fly out here but he can't get away until tomorrow."

  "Well, why don't we wait till he gets here?"

  Michael shook his head. "No. He made me promise I would go home tomorrow. That all of us would go."

  I sat back. So we would have to leave in the morning, no doubts about it. Had I run away just to delay something that was going to happen anyway?

  "Hey," Michael said suddenly, "did you know Dad speaks Icelandic?"

  "A little. I didn't think he knew too much, though."

  "He and Althea talked for at least five minutes in Icelandic ... I don't think she wanted us to know what they were talking about."

  "Did you understand anything they said?" I asked.

  "I heard them mention Thursten once," Angie answered.

  "Me too," Michael said, "and another name ... Kormak or something. But other than that it was all noise. I couldn't make any sense of it, other than it sounded serious."

  "I'll tell you what it was about." Althea was standing at the door. "But not right now. Come into the house. I have a few things to show you."

  I stood up, shaky. I was beginning to feel like I had just finished a marathon. We all made our way through the sliding door into the living room. The coffee table had three old books on it, I recognized them as the ones I had glanced at in the morning. There was also a metal vial and a huge heavy looking iron cross. Beside them was a pot of tea and five cups.

  "Have a seat," Althea motioned and we sat down; me on the couch beside Brand, Angie and Michael in separate chairs. I shivered. Now that I was out of the sun, I felt even colder. "All of you should drink some of that tea. Especially you, Sarah. It'll warm you up."

  I doubted this. I poured myself a cup, sipped it. It had a sharp taste, a tangy lemony scent. I can't say it was good, but I felt it burst against my tongue, down my throat and spread throughout my body as if it were entering my bloodstream and heating it up. I took another sip. "It works," I said, astonished.

  "Yes. But don't drink more than one cup." Althea was sitting across from all of us, near the tea table. "It'll burn some of your inner energy."

  She paused. Moved the cross, held it in her right hand.

  "I guess I'll start at the very beginning." Her tone was solemn. She wasn't looking at us, but at the cross. Her face seemed more wrinkled as if just the act of telling this story was draining her. "I'll start with the death of Eric Bardarson. I remember when it happened ... I was in my early twenties. I was one of his teachers at the time. He was in grade two, if I remember correctly, and he was really a gentle, lovable kid. Always dreaming. Always happy. It was a pleasure to teach him."

  "It had been a very wet spring. There were heavy snows all winter, and the moment it started to warm up enough to melt, the sky darkened and the rain fell. And it kept pouring for weeks on end, so much rain and cloudy weather you could feel it in your bones. It made everyone upset, less likely to say good morning. Some of the older people just gave up—the winter and a hard spring was too much. Needless to say, we all wanted a break."

  "It came somewhere in the middle of May. The sun was out one morning and stayed all day, burning away the water. Everyone wandered outside to look, to laugh, to smile. Some of the kids even wore shorts to school, which was against the rules, but we teachers didn't care."

  "When the weekend arrived, the earth was getting dry and a lot of families headed out along the lake or up to Camp Morton to have picnics and play games and visit all their friends whom they hadn't seen all winter. The Bardarson's were one of these families. But unlike everyone else, they went into the woods. You had to walk a long ways to get to Thor's Shoulder, a clearing on a giant hill. You could look down on all of Gimli and see the lake. It really was quite beautiful."

  "And I guess they had a wonderful picnic. Besides Eric, the Bardarsons also had a boy and a girl a grade or two ahead of Eric. They spent the whole day with each other. Eating and playing games. They let the kids wander around as long as they didn't go too far."

  "When it came time for them to leave, Eric had disappeared. His brother and sister said he was right behind them, but when they turned he was gone. The family frantically searched for him for hours, but there was no trace. It was growing dark so the father sent his wife and children to get help and he stayed there calling out Eric's name. He finally grew tired and leaned against a tree. He lit a fire hoping to attract his son. He said he heard many strange sounds that night, howling and voices, but saw nothing of Eric."

  "The next morning, and for days after, the search party tramped around the area. They couldn't even turn up a scrap of clothing. It was decided the heavy rains had softened the earth so much that the boy must have fallen into a bog and smothered to death. Others said wolves may have gotten him, but this seemed unlikely because even wolves leave remains."

  "There was only one person who lived in that area—old man Kormak. He had a cabin and he survived by trapping animals for his own food and gathering berries and edible plants from the brush. The police did ask him if he knew anything, but they could make no sense of what he said. The rumor was that all the rain pounding on his cabin had driven him insane. I only saw Kormak three times while he was alive. And each time he looked the same: he was a big-boned man, with wild hair and a thick beard. He wore animal skins with the heads still attached. And he never bathed."

  "There were rumors that he had something to do with Eric's disappearance. People also whispered that Kormak liked to spend time at graveyards and such ... but no one could prove anything. Finally, the search was given up. Every couple of years there's something in the paper about the boy—it's one of the biggest tragedies to hit Gimli."

  Althea paused. He reached slowly down to her cup of tea, grasped it and took a sip.

  "What happened to this Kormak guy?" Angie asked.

  Althea set down her cup. "He died about five years later."

  "Well, " I said. "If this boy and Eric are the same person—then why? I mean what was he doing out there?"

  "Let me begin by saying that I've seen him too."

  "You have?" Michael asked.

  "Yes." Althea nodded. "About four years ago this summer I was on my way north to a reading of a writer friend of mine. I had agreed to set up a display of his work. It was late and I was driving not too far from where you three were walking. Al
l of a sudden there was this little glowing figure on the road—he just appeared out of nowhere. I slammed on my brakes, swerved to miss him and he vanished. At the same time I came over the rise of a hill and a deer was in the middle of the highway, staring at me. I would have never been able to stop in time. I got out and looked for the boy but he had disappeared."

  "You mean he warned you?" Brand asked.

  "Yes. I think so. I don't know exactly how he died, but I think his spirit is here as an omen of sorts—a good omen. I know Eric is more likely to appear in the early summer.—it's near the anniversary of his death. Powerful things happen around the anniversary of anyone's death, sometimes good or bad. I have met a few other people who've seen him. One was a woman hiker who would have fallen into an old well if he hadn't attracted her attention. I think he's there to try and stop more bad things from happening."

  "That's awful," Angie said.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  She looked a little sad. "That this poor boy has to wander around, warning people. Never doing whatever little boys get to do in heaven."

  Althea nodded. "It does seem unfair, doesn't it? But we don't know what happens next. I don't think time is the same to him. Maybe he drifts from here to a better place and back. Who knows."

  "It doesn't sound like much of an afterlife." Angie was frowning now.

  "It's not for us to judge," Althea said finally.

  I sat back. "What do you think the boy was warning us about?"

  "I can't really say for sure. Just that something bad was going to happen. And obviously it did."

  "Was he—" I swallowed. "Was he warning us about a draugr?"

  Althea laughed, so loudly and forcefully that I was shocked. "Heavens no! Thursten's been filling your head full of stories. I'll tell you what I believe happened last night. It's exactly what I told the police."

  18.

  Althea reached for the largest of the books on the table, a tattered and stained journal. It looked like it had been through the wringer a hundred times over. I remembered that it had scribbled handwriting inside.

  Althea opened the cover carefully. "Last winter I found a large brown package waiting for me at the post office—it was this book. It had been sent to me by members of Kormak's family. They still own the land he dwelled on and one of them had made the journey to the cabin and found this. They kept it at their home in Iceland for a few years, unopened. Then they heard I was writing a history of Gimli, so they sent it to me. It's Kormak's old journals."

  "What does a man who died years ago have to do with Grandpa?" Michael asked.

  "I'll get to that. Just give me a second." She flipped through a few pages, read a bit to herself, then flipped ahead some more. All the paper was yellow and the book looked like it would fall apart. "Ah, here's something." She pointed at the page. "`And I can feel the hatred boil up, a living thing inside me. Every time I see his face, hear his voice ... I know he is my born enemy. I loathed his father ... I loath him. This Thursten from the valley, son of Thorgeir.' Then Kormak writes blóth about twenty times in a row."

  "What's that mean?" I asked.

  "Blood. He seemed pretty obsessed with blood."

  "Was it Grandpa he hated so much?" Angie had her arms crossed.

  "Yes," Althea answered. "It was. About the time this was written, your grandfather had just arrived here from the old country. By talking to him and by doing research on my own, I discovered Kormak was one of the Grotsons, a family that had a long standing grievance with the Asmundsons, your family. He had moved here and brought the feud with him."

  "What was the feud over?" I asked.

  "Well about seventy years ago Kormak's father accused your great grandfather of stealing one of his cows. It even went through the courts and Thorgeir was declared innocent. But there was a rumor that the old farmer actually was in love with your great grandmother ... though she'd never had anything to do with him. Apparently he passed this hatred down to Kormak."

  "Did he ever do anything to Grandpa?" Angie asked.

  Althea shook her head. "No. Just wrote in this book. Kormak was a little bit bothered in the head. Pretty well everyone whom he had cross words with—and that was a lot of people for a hermit—ended up in this journal. But most of the entries were about Thursten."

  "Okay," Michael said, "So this Kormak guy didn't like Grandpa, and he wrote a bunch of mean stuff, then he kicked off. What's this have to do with today?"

  "Well ... " Althea flipped ahead a few pages. "Right here is Kormak's last entry, presumably written only a few hours before he died. It says, `Revenge will be mine after night, after death, after everything. The light will not claim me.' It's dated the same day he collapsed in his front yard with a failed heart: June 30th, 1945."

  Althea flipped ahead another page or two. "And right here the strangest thing happens. There are new entries written after Kormak's death. With dates sometime in the last five years, if they can be believed."

  My heart had skipped a beat. "New entries?"

  "Yes, written in a similar hand as before ... but forty five years later. Here, I'll read you one." She ran her finger down the page, stopped. "`Darkness and fog and cold creep through my bones. I have had dreams and heard crowing voices, twice now the wolves and rats and all the dark creatures have come knocking at the door. The third time will be the last.'"

  "It doesn't make any sense," Brand said.

  "No," Althea answered. "Not at first. But when you read more it starts to make a certain crazy semblance of sense. Here's another one. `And I feel the hatred wrap around my flesh and sink its fangs into my heart. It is eating at me like the snake Jormungand who bites his own tail. It is an old, old hatred passed down through my flesh, my spirit, my bones—from father to son to son. A hatred for one man, one name: Thursten.' This entry is dated only three years ago."

  "I'll read you the very last one. It's the worst. `Blood. Dead. Flesh. I am returned from the dirt, up from the ground. Draugr ... Draugr ... Draugr ... '"

  "Did Kormak write this?" I asked.

  "No. Kormak was long, long dead and buried. His son wrote it."

  "Son?" I had finished the last of my tea and was beginning to feel the coldness creep into my system once again. "His son?"

  Althea nodded. "Well, I did a little research on this—I don't think his family read all the book. They just saw it was old and sent it to me—I'm good friends with Kormak's first cousin. I got the impression they weren't too proud about Kormak's branch of their family tree—but they did find him interesting."

  "Anyway, after I read the journal I wrote to the Grotsons about the new entries. They sent back a letter saying they didn't know anything about them. But they included a piece of information that made me think quite a bit. They said Kormak had married only a year or so before he left for Gimli. His wife was quite young and many believed it was an ill match and that he had somehow bewitched her. Anyway, he left her with child and vanished to Canada. He apparently never saw his first and only offspring—a boy."

  "They told me his son was rotinn—rotten inside. His mother had a hard time raising him, it took years from her life. Apparently her hair went grey and her skin wrinkled up by the time she was twenty five. He fought with everyone, was kicked out of school and spent time in jail. But all this time his mother told him what a great father he'd had. She died, presumably of exhaustion when she was thirty-four. Some of the relatives tried to care for the boy, but within six months he had disappeared. No one heard about him again for years. He just wandered around Iceland and Norway, wherever he could find trouble"

  "What was his name?" Michael asked.

  "Kar. About five or six years ago, people who knew of him, thought they had seen him passing through Gimli. He looks just like his father, sallow sunken eyes and heavy cheekbones. The people who saw him went to church that night to pray for the town. They said looking into his eyes was like looking into the burning orbs of the Devil."

  "A few days later I was dow
n having coffee at a restaurant and I heard that hunters had seen lights in Kormak's cabin. Of course, no one dared to go near it. Even fifty years later no one wants to have anything to do with Kormak."

  "So you think this Kar wrote in the journal?" I was starting to understand what Althea was getting at.

  "Yes, he might have stayed at the cabin and later his family members, not knowing he had lived there or was still there, took this from the table. I think Kar read it then started to hate your grandfather just like his father did. His side of the Grotson family is known to be a little ... mad. And the stories of people coming back from the dead are pretty common in the old land. He probably made himself believe he was actually undead. And he's been planning his revenge for years. This is what I told the police and they're looking for him now."

  "But he couldn't have done all the damage to the house," I said, "one man couldn't have."

  Althea narrowed her eyes. "I haven't seen the cabin in daylight yet, but I do know that it was dark and all of you were in a state of fear and worry, and sometimes your imagination makes your memories bigger than what you actually saw."

  "But—" I started.

  "You would also be surprised how much destruction a deranged Icelandic man can do."

  I fell silent. I wasn't sure what was right. Maybe it only was a few broken windows and boards magnified by my frightened mind.

  "There's one more thing you should know." Althea looked seriously at us all. "Your grandfather and I traced your family lines back. And this Kar is actually related to you—a third cousin."

  "We're related to this crazy guy!" Michael exclaimed. "Great gene pool we come from."

  Althea spoke slowly. "This is what I believe happened. You're old enough that I can tell you the truth. I think Kar has probably dragged Thursten away and buried him ... but kept him alive. Draugrs were known to do this to their victims as a sort of slow revenge. That means your grandfather is most likely still alive."

  "For now," Michael whispered.

  We were silent.