Ghost

by Louise Welsh

  ELIAS AND THE DRAUG

  Jonas…

  Jonas Lie (1833–1908) was born in Eiker, near Drammen, in southern Norway. His family moved to the Arctic town of Tromsø when he was five years old. The Arctic’s seasonal extremes – dreadful storms in winter, permanent daylight in summer – had a lasting influence on Lie’s writing. He graduated in law in 1857 and practised in the town of Kongsvinger on the Swedish border. In 1874, he was granted an artist salary by the Norwegian Parliament.

  On Kvalholmen down in Helgeland there once lived a poor fisherman, by name Elias, and his wife, Karen, who before her marriage had worked in the parsonage at Alstadhaug. They lived in a little hut, which they had built, and Elias hired out by the day in the Lofoten fisheries.

  Kvalholmen was a lonely island, and there were signs at times that it was haunted. Sometimes when her husband was away from home, the good wife heard all sorts of unearthly noises and cries, which surely boded no good.

  Each year there came a child; when they had been married seven years there were six children in the home. But they were both steady and hard working people, and by the time the last arrived, Elias had managed to put aside something and felt that he could afford a sixern, and thereafter do his Lofoten fishing as master in his own boat.

  One day, as he was walking with a halibut harpoon in one hand, thinking about this, he suddenly came upon a huge seal, sunning itself in the lee of a rock near the shore, and apparently quite as much taken by surprise as he was.

  Elias meanwhile was not slow. From the rocky ledge, on which he was standing, he plunged the long, heavy harpoon into its back just behind the neck. But then – oh, what a struggle! Instantly the seal reared itself up, stood erect on its tail, tall as the mast of a boat, and glowered at him with a pair of bloodshot eyes, at the same time showing its teeth in a grin so fiendish and venomous that Elias almost lost his wits from fright. Then suddenly it plunged into the sea and vanished in a spray of mingled blood and water.

  That was the last Elias saw of it; but that very afternoon the harpoon, broken just below the iron barb, came drifting ashore near the boat landing not far from his house.

  Elias had soon forgotten all about it. He bought his sixern that same autumn, and housed it in a little boat shed he had built during the summer.

  One night, as he lay thinking about his new sixern, it occurred to him that perhaps, in order to safeguard it properly, he ought to put another shore on either side underneath it. He was so absurdly fond of the boat that he thought it only fun to get up and light his lantern and go down to look it over*

  As he held up his lantern to see better, he suddenly glimpsed, on a tangle of nets in one corner, a face that resembled exactly the features of the seal. It grimaced for a moment angrily towards him and the light. Its mouth seemed to open wider and wider, and before he was aware of anything further, he saw a bulky man-form vanish out the door of the boat house, not so fast however but that he managed to make out, with the aid of his lantern, a long iron prong projecting from its back.

  Elias now began to put two and two together. But even so he was more concerned for the safety of his boat than he was for his own life.

  On the morning, early in January, when he set out for the fishing banks, with two men in the boat beside himself, he heard a voice call to him in the darkness from a skerry directly opposite the mouth of the cove. He thought that it laughed derisively.

  “Better beware, Elias, when you get your femböring!”

  It was a long time, however, before Elias saw his way clear to get a femböring – not until his eldest son was seventeen years old.

  It was In the fall of the year that Ellas embarked with his whole family and went to Ranen to trade in his sixern for a femböring. At home they left only a little Lapp girl, but newly confirmed, whom they had taken into their home some years before. There was one femböring in particular which he had his eye on, a little four man boat, which the best shipwright thereabout had finished and tarred that very fall. For this boat he traded in his own sixern, paying the difference in coin.

  Elias thereupon began to think of sailing home. He first stopped at the village store and laid in a supply for Christmas for himself and his family, among other things a little keg of brandy. It may be that, pleased as they were with the day’s bargaining, both he and his wife had one drop too many before they left, and Bernt, their son, was given a taste too.

  Whereupon they set sail for home in the new femböring. Other ballast than himself, his wife and children, and his Christmas supplies he had none. His son Bernt sat at the stem; his wife, with the assistance of the second son, managed the halyard; Elias himself sat at the tiller, while the two younger sons, twelve and fourteen respectively, were to alternate at the bailing.

  They had fifty odd miles of sea before them, and they had no sooner reached the open than it was apparent that the femböring would be put to the test the very first time It was in use. A storm blew up before long, and soon white-crested waves began dashing themselves into spray. Then Ellas saw what kind of a boat he had. It rode the waves like a sea gull, without so much as taking in one single drop, and he was ready to swear that he would not even have to single-reef, as any ordinary femböring would have been compelled to do in such weather.

  As the day drew on, he noticed not far away another femböring, completely manned, speeding along, just as he was then, with four reefs in the sail. It seemed to follow the same course, and he thought it strange that he had not noticed it before. It seemed to want to race with him, and when Elias realized this, he could not resist letting out a reef again.

  So they raced along at a terrific speed past headlands and islands and skerries. To Elias it seemed that he had never before sailed so gloriously, and the femböring proved to be every whit that had been claimed – the best boat in Ranen.

  Meanwhile the sea had risen, and already several huge waves had rolled over them, breaking against the stem up forward, where Bernt sat, and sweeping out to leeward near the stern.

  Ever since dusk had settled over the sea, the other boat had kept very close to them, and they were now so near each other that they could have thrown a balling-dipper, one to the other, had they wished. And so they sailed on, side by side, all the evening, in an ever-increasing sea.

  That last reef, Ellas began to think, ought really to be taken in again, but he was loath to give up the race, and made up his mind to wait as long as possible, until the other boat saw fit to reef in, for it was quite as hard pressed as he. And since they now had to fight both the cold and the wet, the brandy bottle was now and then brought forth and passed around.

  The phosphorescent light, which played on the dark sea near his own boat, flashed eerily in the white crests around the stranger, which appeared to be plowing a furrow of light and throwing a fiery foam to either side. In the reflection of this light he could even distinguish the rope ends In the other boat. He could also make out the crew on board in their oilskin caps, but inasmuch as they were on the leeward side of him, they kept their backs turned and were almost hid behind the lofty gunwale, as it rose with the seas.

  Of a sudden a gigantic breaker, whose white crest Elias had for some time seen in the darkness, crashed against the prow of the boat, where Bernt sat. For a moment the whole femböring seemed to come to a stop, the timbers creaked and jarred under the strain, and then the boat, which for half a second had balanced uncertainly, righted itself and sped forward, while the wave rolled out again to leeward.

  All the while this was happening Elias thought he heard fiendish cries issuing from the other boat.

  But when it was over, his wife, who sat at the halyard, cried out in a voice that cut him to the very soul, “My God, Elias, that sea took Marthe and Nils!”

  These were their two youngest children, the former nine, the latter seven years old, who had been sitting forward close to Bernt.

  “Hold fast to the halyard, Karen, or you may lose more!” was all that Elias answered.

>   It was necessary now to take in the fourth reef, and Elias had no sooner done so than he thought it advisable to reef in the fifth, for the sea was steadily rising. On the other hand, if he hoped to sail his boat clear of the ever mounting waves, he dared not lessen his sail more than was absolutely necessary.

  It turned out, however, to be difficult going even with the sail thus diminished. The sea raged furiously, and deluged them with spray after spray. Finally Bernt and Anton, the next oldest, who had helped his mother at the halyard, had to take hold of the yardarm, something one resorts to only when a boat is hard pressed even with the last reef – in this case the fifth.

  The rival boat, which in the meantime had disappeared from sight, bobbed up alongside them again with exactly the same amount of sail that he was carrying.

  Elias now began rather to dislike the crew over there. The two men who stood holding the yardarm, and whose faces he could glimpse underneath their oilskin caps, appeared to him in the weird reflections from the spray more like specters than human beings. They spoke ne’er a word.

  A little to leeward he spied the foaming ridge of another breaker rising before him in the dark, and he prepared himself to meet it. He turned the prow slantwise towards it, and let out as much sail as he dared, to give the boat speed enough to cleave its way through.

  The sea struck them with the roar of a torrent. For a moment the boat again careened uncertainly. When it was all over, and the vessel had righted itself once more, his wife no longer sat at the halyard, nor was Anton at the yardarm – they had both been washed asea.

  This time, too, he thought he made out the same fiendish voices above the storm, but mingled with them he also heard his wife’s agonizing cries as she called him by name. When he realized that she had been swept overboard, he muttered to himself, “In Jesus’s name!” and said no more.

  He felt vaguely that he would have preferred to follow her, but he realized at the same time that it was up to him to save the other three he had on board, Bernt and the two younger sons, the one twelve, the other fourteen, who for a while had been doing the bailing, but whom he had later placed in the stern behind him.

  Bernt was now left to manage the yardarm alone, and the two, father and son, had to help each other as best they could. The tiller Elias did not dare let go; he held on to it with a hand of iron, long since numb from the strain.

  After a while the companion boat bobbed up again; as before it had been momentarily lost to view. He now saw more clearly than before the bulky form that sat aft, much as he was sitting, and controlled the tiller. Projecting from his neck whenever he turned his back, just below the oilskin cap, Elias could clearly discern some four inches or so of an iron prong, which he had seen before.

  At that he was convinced in his innermost soul of two things: One was that it was none other than the Draug himself who sat steering his half-boat alongside his and who had lured him on to destruction, and the other was that he was fated no doubt this night to sail the sea for the last time. For he who sees the Draug at sea Is a marked man. He said nothing to the others, in order not to discourage them, but he commended his soul in silence to the Lord.

  He had found it necessary, during the last hours, to bear away from his course because of the storm, and when furthermore it took to snowing heavily, he realized that he would no doubt have to postpone any attempt to land until dawn.

  Meanwhile they sailed on as before.

  Now and again the boys aft complained of freezing, but there was nothing to do about that, wet as they were, and furthermore Elias sat preoccupied with his own thoughts.

  He had been seized with an insatiable desire to avenge himself. What he would have liked to do, had he not had the lives of his three remaining children to safeguard, was suddenly to veer about in an attempt to ram and sink the cursed boat, which still as if to mock him ran ever alongside him, and whose fiendish purpose he now fully comprehended. If the halibut harpoon had once taken effect, why might not now a knife or a gaff do likewise? He felt he would willingly give his life to deal one good blow to this monster, who had so unmercifully robbed him of all that was dearest to him on earth, and who still seemed insatiate and demanded more.

  About three or four o’clock in the morning they again spied rolling towards them in the darkness the white crest of a wave, so huge that Elias for a moment surely thought they were just off shore somewhere in the neighborhood of breakers. It was not long, however, before he understood that it really was only a colossal wave.

  Then he thought he clearly heard some one laugh and cry out In the other boat.

  “There goes your femböring, Elias!”

  Elias, who foresaw the catastrophe, repeated loudly “In Jesus’s name!” commanded his sons to hold fast, and told them if the boat went down to grasp the osier bands in the oarlocks, and not to let go till it had come afloat again. He let the elder of the two boys go forward to Bernt; the younger he kept close to himself, caressing his cheeks furtively once or twice, and assuring himself that the child had a tight hold.

  The boat was literally buried beneath the towering comber, and was then pitched up on end, its stem high above the wave, before it finally went under. When it came afloat again, its keel now in the air, Elias, Bernt, and the twelve-year-old Martin appeared too, still clinging to the osier bands. But the third of the brothers had disappeared.

  It was a matter of life and death now, first of all, to get the rigging cut away on one side, that they might be rid of the mast, which would otherwise rock the boat from beneath, and then to crawl up onto the hull and let the Imprisoned air out, which would otherwise have kept the boat too high afloat and prevented it riding the waves safely. After considerable difficulty they succeeded in so doing, and Elias, who had been the first to clamber up, assisted the other two to safety.

  Thus they sat the long winter night through, desperately clinging with cramped hands and numb knees to the hull, as one wave after another swept over them..

  After a few hours, Martin, whom the father had supported all this time as best he could, died of exhaustion and slipped into the sea.

  They had several times attempted to call for help, but realizing that it was of no avail, they finally gave it up.

  As the two, thus left alone, sat on the hull of the boat, Elias told Bernt he knew that he himself was fated soon to “follow mother” but he had a firm hope that Bernt would be saved in the end, if only he stuck it out like a man. And then he told him all about the Draug how he had wounded him in the neck with the halibut harpoon, and how the Draug was now taking his revenge and would surely not give in until they were quits.

  It was towards nine o’clock in the morning before the day finally began to dawn. Elias then handed over to Bernt, who sat at his side, his silver watch with the brass chain, which he had broken in pulling it out from underneath his close-buttoned vests.

  He still sat on a while longer, but as it grew lighter, Bernt saw that his father’s face was ghastly pale. The hair on his head had parted in several places, as it often does just before death, and the skin on his hands was worn off from his efforts to hang on to the keel. Bernt realized that his father was near the end. He tried, as well as the pitching of the boat permitted, to edge over to him and support him. But when Elias noticed it, he waved him back.

  “You stay where you are, Bernt, and hold fast! I’m going to mother! In Jesus’s name!”

  And so saying he threw himself backward down from the hull.

  When the sea had got its own, it quieted down for a while, as every one knows who has straddled a hull. It became easier for Bernt to maintain his hold, and with the coming of daylight new hope kindled in him. The storm moderated, and in the full light of day he thought he recognized his surroundings – that he was, in fact, drifting directly off shore from his own home, Kvalholmen.

  He began crying for help again, but he really had greater faith in a tide he knew bore landward, just beyond a projection of the island, which checked the fury of the
sea.

  He drifted nearer and nearer shore, and finally came so close to one of the skerries that the mast, which still floated alongside the boat, grated on the rocks with the rising and falling of the surf. Stiff as his muscles and joints were from his sitting so long and holding fast to the hull, he managed with a great effort to transfer himself to the skerry, after which he hauled in the mast and finally moored the femböring.

  The little Lapp girl, who was home alone, for two whole hours thought she heard cries for help, and when they persisted she mounted the hilltop to look out to sea. There she saw Bernt on the skerry, and the upturned femböring beating up and down against it. She ran instantly down to the boat house, pushed out the old rowboat, and rowed It out to the skerry, hugging the shore round the island.

  Bernt lay ill, under her care, the whole winter long, and did not take part in the fishing that year. People used to say that ever after he seemed now and again a little queer. To sea he would never go again; he had come to fear it.

  He married the Lapp girl, and moved up to Malingen, where he broke new ground and cleared himself a home. There he is still living and doing well.

  ANGELINE, OR THE HAUNTED HOUSE

  Émile Zola

  Born in Paris Émile Zola (1840–1902) is best known for his celebrated Les Rougon-Macquart series: twenty novels exploring the lives of an extended family during the second empire. An early exponent of naturalism, Zola believed that the novel is a result of experimentation and evidence gathering. The novelist ‘collects the facts, sets the point of departure, establishes the solid ground on which the characters will walk and the phenomena be developed.’ Émile Zola made a courageous intervention in the Dreyfus Affair with his essay, J’Accuse.

  1

  Nearly two years ago, I bicycling along a deserted road near Orgeval, just above Poissy, when the sudden appearance of an estate by the roadside surprised me so much that I jumped off my machine to get a better look at it. Under the November sky stood a brick house, of no great distinction, in the middle of a vast garden planted with ancient trees. The cold wind played havoc among the dead leaves. What made the place extraordinary and invested it with a wild atmosphere that gripped one’s heart was the frightful state of decay into which it had fallen. Since one of the rain-beaten shutters that barred the garden had torn loose, as if to announce that the property was for sale, I yielded to a curiosity compounded of sorrow and uneasiness and entered the garden.