Dark Matter

by Michelle Paver

  So if it isn’t that, then what? Am I trying to perform some kind of exorcism? Can you do that by writing things down?

  After the War, Father suffered the most dreadful nightmares. In fact we all suffered, as his screams used to wake the whole house. One night, matters came to a head (almost literally). While sleepwalking, Father grabbed his service revolver from under his pillow and shot a German officer who – he told us afterwards – he distinctly saw standing at the foot of the bed. The bullet passed clean through the bedroom wall and six inches over my head as I lay asleep in the next room. The following day, Mother took the gun and ‘disposed of it’ (I’ve no idea how), and made Father see a nerve doctor. The doctor told him to write an account of his experiences in the trenches – ‘to exorcise his demons’. Of course he didn’t. And the nightmares didn’t last. He was already ill with the TB which killed him two months later.

  But is that, I wonder, what I’m trying to do now? Exorcise my demons?

  Again, there’s an inconsistency. I want to exorcise the haunting by writing about it, but I don’t want to mention it out loud, for fear of invoking it.

  And how can I exorcise it, when I don’t know what it is?

  Later

  That was a digression, but it did help clarify my thoughts.

  I know that Gruhuken is haunted. I know this. Some angry spirit walks this place. It is not an echo. It has intent. It wishes me ill.

  And I don’t know how to appease it, or exorcise it, because I don’t know who – what – it is. Or what it wants.

  Bjørvik knows something. I’m sure of it. I have to make him tell me. And I can’t put it off any longer. Soon he’ll leave. He’s been away nearly a week; he has to check his traps.

  I’ve thought about going with him. But we couldn’t take the dogs; they’d scare away the foxes and ruin his livelihood. And I can’t leave them, I can’t shoot them, I can’t let the expedition fail. Same old arguments. Besides, it’s only a matter of days before Gus and Algie get back.

  I can’t put it off any longer. I have to talk to Bjørvik.

  He has to tell me what he knows.

  14

  16th November

  Bjørvik is leaving tomorrow. He asked me to go with him.

  It was after supper; we were on our second mugs of coffee. ‘Mister Yack. When I go, you come too, ja? You bring the dogs. You stay with me.’

  It touched me deeply that he offered to take the dogs as well, but I also found it alarming. What danger does he think I’m in that he’d risk his livelihood to help me?

  For one crazy moment, I nearly said yes. But I can’t do that to him. And I can’t break faith with Algie and Gus. All right, to hell with Algie, I can’t break faith with Gus. JACK YOU’RE AMAZING! EXPEDITION SCUPPERED WITHOUT YOU! That’s what it comes down to.

  I keep picturing what it’ll be like when he gets back. His blue eyes shining with gratitude and admiration. You did it, Jack. I didn’t think anyone could, but you pulled it off!

  That’s ridiculous, I know, and writing it makes me cringe, but that doesn’t stop me playing it over and over in my head.

  Which is why, when Bjørvik asked me to go with him, I said no.

  As I was trying to explain my reasons, it suddenly occurred to me that this was the third time I’ve refused an offer to leave Gruhuken. First Eriksson, then Gus, now Bjørvik. There’s a horrible symmetry to that. In fairy tales, don’t things always come in threes? And in the Bible? Three times before the cock crows . . . It’s as if I’ve been fated to be here on my own since the beginning.

  After I’d finished, Bjørvik said simply, ‘But Mister Yack. Your friends. How long till they come?’

  ‘Not long. They’re setting out soon, they’ll be here in three days at the most. They’re wiring me tomorrow morning to finalise things.’

  He didn’t reply.

  I fetched the coffee pot and refilled our mugs. I spilt some on the table. I sat down and met his eyes. I said, ‘Gruhuken is haunted.’

  His gaze never left my face. ‘Ja.’

  Isn’t talking about things supposed to make them better? Well it didn’t. I felt as if I’d opened the window and let something in.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Tell me what haunts this place.’

  He took a pull at his coffee and set down his mug. ‘Is not good to talk of this.’

  ‘But we must.’

  ‘Mister Yack. There are things in the world we don’t understand. Is best to leave it like this.’

  ‘Mister Bjørvik. Please. I have to know.’

  He was silent for a long time, staring into the stove’s red heart. ‘Nobody knew his name,’ he said. ‘A trapper. Men called him bad names. He never seemed to hear.’

  I stared at him. ‘You – knew him?’

  ‘Nobody knew him. Once when I was young, I saw him. In Longyearbyen, twenty-six, twenty-seven year ago.’ He grimaced. ‘When he was alive.’

  I swallowed. ‘So this was – 1910, or thereabouts. Before the War.’

  ‘Ja. It all happen before the War.’

  What he told me then came out in fits and starts, with long silences in between. He hated telling me, but I was relentless. Nobody knew where the trapper had come from. The wilds of north Norway. Somewhere poor. He worked his way to Spitsbergen on a whaling ship. He was ugly, and he had that abject manner which brings out the worst in people, particularly men. They gave him the filthiest, most degrading tasks. That was all it took: nothing more than an abject manner and ill-favoured looks. Bjørvik called him something in Norwegian; I think it means God-forgotten. One of life’s rejects.

  At Longyearbyen he tried to get a place in the mines, but he wasn’t strong enough, so they wouldn’t take him. He tried selling fossils to tourists, but his appearence affronted them. Somehow he got work on a sealer, and found his way to an isolated bay in the north. There he built a driftwood hut and took to fur trapping.

  For a few years he lived there on his own. Every summer, he would turn up in Longyearbyen to sell his skins and pick up supplies. He couldn’t read and he’d never handled money, so people cheated him. After a few days he was gone again, back to the one place where no one set the dogs on him and called him names.

  Gruhuken.

  A mining syndicate took it from him. In this whole vast wilderness they had to have this one lonely bay. They’d found coal here. They staked their claim and threw him out.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘We found their claim sign. The – Edinburgh Prospecting Company, something like that, but it was dated 1905. Wasn’t that before he got here?’

  ‘Ja, for sure. But Mister Yack, those signs, they say what they want.’

  ‘You mean – they backdated their claim? Wasn’t that illegal?’

  He snorted. ‘This was no-man’s-land! No law! They do what they like!’

  ‘So although he was here first . . .’

  ‘He was one, they were many. They throw him out.’ ‘And then?’

  He chewed his moustache. ‘He came back . . . They say they sent him on his way. They say they never saw him again.’

  ‘ ‘‘They say’’. You mean it wasn’t like that?’

  His gaze slid to the fire. ‘I don’t know. After that, nobody saw him. Alive.’

  ‘But – you know something. Don’t you?’

  He shifted uncomfortably. ‘When miners have money, Mister Yack, they drink. When they drink, they talk. In those days, I drink too. One night I am in the bar in Longyear . . .’ He broke off.

  ‘And they were there? The miners from Gruhuken?’

  ‘. . . One only. By then the others were dead.’

  ‘And this miner, he told you what happened?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But he talked and you overheard?’

  He glared at me. ‘He was drinking himself to death. He made no sense.’

  ‘But you guessed. What did they do to him, the trapper of Gruhuken?’

  Suddenly he sprang to his feet, overturning hi
s chair. ‘As God is my witness,’ he bellowed, ‘I don’t know!’

  A shocked silence.

  Slowly, Bjørvik righted his chair, and sat down, and scowled at the floor.

  I got up and walked to the window, then returned to my seat. ‘I’m sorry. But – even if you don’t know,I think you guessed something. Tell me what you think happened.’

  He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘I think – I think when he came back – they were angry. I think at first they want just to beat him. Then it turn into something else.’ He swallowed. ‘Men like that – when they know they won’t be found out – they will do anything.’

  Glancing down, I saw that my hands were clenched. I thought of the blotchy stains on the bear post. I felt sick.

  After that, there wasn’t much to tell. The mine limped on for another year, but it was dogged by misfortune. A cable severed a man’s leg and he bled to death. A boat overturned, drowning two men within sight of the shore. Finally, a rockslide destroyed the cabins, and the surviving miners left. The following year, the prospecting company decided that the deposit wasn’t rich enough after all, and abandoned the mine.

  Gruhuken stood deserted. It swiftly gained a bad reputation. People who camped here met with accidents. Fire. Drowning. A Swedish trapper shot his companion and then himself. The note on the body said he’d done it to escape the gengånger – ‘the one who walks again’.

  There Bjørvik’s account ended. But I know the rest of the story. For over two decades, Gruhuken remained deserted. Then in 1935, topographers from Oxford University surveyed this stretch of coast and mentioned this bay as a likely site for future expeditions. Shortly afterwards, Gus Balfour read their report and put Gruhuken at the top of his list.

  The lamp had burned out. I refilled it and replaced it on the table. The smell of paraffin made me sick.

  Bjørvik sat with his hands on his knees, staring at the floor.

  I’d intended to tell him what I’ve experienced here, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And he didn’t want to know.

  I asked if he’d ever been to Gruhuken before now, and he said no, he’s never hunted within ten miles of the bay. I asked if he’d experienced anything untoward while he’s been here. He said his dreams have been ‘bad’. Only his dreams? I envy him that.

  Again I went to the window. I couldn’t see the moon. A wind was blowing from the east, sending fingers of snow across the shore. I turned back to Bjørvik. ‘What does it want?’

  He spread his hands.

  I understood.

  It wants Gruhuken.

  And I’m in the way.

  17th November

  I should have gone with him.

  But I was so sure that Gus and Algie would be back in a day or so. Convinced that I could hold out until then.

  My hands are sweating. My fingers keep slipping on the pen. Why didn’t I go with him?

  He left nearly three hours ago, just after breakfast. Although the moon is in its last quarter, the Northern Lights were bright, and he said he’d have plenty of light for skiing. He didn’t repeat his offer to take me in, and I knew that since we’d spoken of the haunting, he couldn’t wait to leave. I was right about that; talking has brought it closer.

  I wanted him to give me some wise advice, or a talisman for repelling ghosts, as garlic is supposed to repel vampires. Even a Bible would have been a comfort. I don’t believe in God, but I would’ve regarded it as a superior kind of amulet. I told him this – not about the amulet, but about the Bible; I tried to make a joke of it – but he shook his head. A Bible wouldn’t help.

  I gave him a parting gift: as much bacon as he can carry, a packet of our best Virginia tobacco, and the four Edgar Wallaces he hasn’t yet read. He was pleased. So at least I got that right.

  The last thing he said before he left was to be sure and keep the dogs close.

  At first I didn’t feel too bad about being on my own again. Then an hour later I ‘spoke’ to Algie.

  I’d expected it to be Gus. I’d been looking forward to it. But it turns out that Gus has had some kind of ‘setback’. Algie swears he’s not in danger, and I don’t think he’d lie about that. But it means they can’t set out yet. SORRY JACK A WEEK TILL WE CAN LEAVE SORRY STOP

  I was in shock. I couldn’t take it in. Numbly, I sent back an acknowledgement. THAT’S OK STOP TELL GUS GET BETTER SOON STOP

  OK? How is it OK? A week till they leave means maybe nine days before they get here. That’s nearly December. How can I hope that the coast will be clear of ice? I could be stuck here till spring. I’ll never make it.

  When I got the transmission, I thought about going after Bjørvik. To hell with everything, just strap on your skis and get out of here.

  But by then he’d had two hours’ start on me. And I don’t know where his camp is. It isn’t on the map. All I know is that it’s somewhere on the far side of Wijdefjord, which is vast.

  I even thought of tracking him. But the wind has obliterated his trail.

  My wristwatch has stopped, but according to Gus’ alarm clock, it’s eleven in the ‘morning’. Another hour till I have to go outside and do the readings.

  Yes, we’re back to that again. Back to bolstering your courage with whisky and cigarettes. Back to bribing the dogs with sweets to keep them with you. Back to watching the sky for the least trace of cloud.

  I keep wondering what they did to him, the trapper of Gruhuken. I think of that miner I saw at Long-yearbyen. Men like that – when they know they won’t be found out – they will do anything.

  I remember the malevolence of that figure in front of the cabin. The endless black inhuman rage.

  How can I hold out for another week?

  Later

  I had a massive drink and a stiff talk with myself, and I feel a little steadier.

  What you’ve got to remember, Jack, is that it can’t do anything to you. That’s what I keep coming back to. That’s why I still cling to the hope that I can hang on here until the others arrive.

  Because what haunts this place is merely spirit.It is not matter. Not as I am matter, not as this pen and notebook and table are matter.

  It can’t hurt me. All it can do is frighten.

  15

  18th November

  I knew things would change, but I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly, and I never thought it would involve the dogs.

  While Bjørvik was here, I couldn’t really imagine what it would be like when he left. A day later and it’s as if his visit never took place. The moon has waned. It’s just a slit in the sky. The dark is back.

  Once, I thought fear of the dark was the oldest fear of all. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s not the dark that people fear, but what comes in the dark. What exists in it.

  I’m prevaricating. The dogs.

  Yesterday after Bjørvik left, I made a titanic effort to absorb the shock about Gus and Algie. I mustered my courage and did my work. I prepared food and forced it down.

  As I went about my duties, I experienced nothing untoward. No presence. No dread. Only a shrinking inside me: the apprehension of what might come.

  By half past six I’d fed the dogs and was facing my first evening alone. I wasn’t hungry, and although I was tired, I knew I wouldn’t sleep, so I did what I’ve never done before and won’t do again: I knocked myself out with morphine.

  I slept for twelve hours, and woke ten minutes before the seven a.m. readings. I made it by a whisker.

  I was on the bicycle generator, about to start transmitting, when I remembered I hadn’t let out the dogs – or rather, they reminded me with indignant complaints from the doghouse. As I was already late for Bear Island, I shouted to them to wait, and set to work. At one point I think I was aware that their howls became louder, then abruptly ceased. Or maybe that’s my imagination, adding details in retrospect. When I got outside, the doghouse door was open and they were gone.

  I waved my lantern. ‘Isaak! Kiawak! Upik! Jens! Eli! Svarten! Pakomi! Anadark
! Isaak!’

  Nothing.

  It’s not like them. They’ve never strayed, not even into the next bay. Huskies don’t. At least, ours don’t. And they always come when I call, as they know that I mean food.

  That was twelve hours ago.

  How did they get out? What were they trying to escape? What happened to them?

  I’ve left food for them in front of the cabin, and wedged open the doghouse door, with more food inside. I know that risks attracting bears, but I don’t care. I’ll do anything to get them back.

  And they will come back, won’t they, when they’re hungry? And since they’re always hungry, they’ll come back soon.

  But what if they don’t?

  19th November

  Two days since Bjørvik left. One since the dogs disappeared.

  I walk bent over, as if there were a tumour in my gut. I miss the dogs. Without them, there’s nothing between me and what haunts this place.

  It can come at any time. It can stay away for days, as it did when Bjørvik was here. But always I sense it waiting. That’s the worst of it. Not knowing when it will come. Only that it will.

  A few years ago, I read a speech in the paper by the American President; he said, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.

  I’ve tried to pity the trapper of Gruhuken. He had a miserable life and a terrible death. But I can’t. All I feel is dread.

  And knowing who he was doesn’t help me, because I can’t do anything to appease him. It doesn’t matter that I’m innocent. It isn’t only the guilty who suffer.

  Besides, I am guilty. Because I’m here.

  20th November