Sea Serpents

by Gardner Dozois

  "I was so struck by his appearance, even though he was smiling gently, that I almost forgot what had happened to me. Suddenly I remembered though, and gave a convulsive start and tried to get up. As I did so, I turned to look at the water, and there was the cove, calm and serene, with no trace of that thing, or anything else.

  "My new acquaintance tightened his grip on my shoulders and pulled me down to a sitting position, speaking as he did so.

  "'Be calm, my friend. You have been through a bad time, but it is gone now. You are safe.'

  "The minute I heard his voice, I knew it was he who had shouted as I was being pulled under. The same timbre was in his speech now, so that every word rang like a bell, with a concealed purring under the words.

  "I noticed more about him now. His clothes were soaked to the waist, and on one powerful hand he wore an immense ring set with a green seal stone, a crest. Obviously he had pulled me out of the water, and equally obviously, he was no ordinary person.

  " 'What was it,' I gasped finally, 'and how did you get me loose from it?'

  "His answer was surprising. 'Did you get a good look at it?' He spoke in pure, unaccented 'British' English, I might add.

  "'I did,' I said with feeling. 'It was the most frightful, bloody thing I ever saw, and people ought to be warned about this coast! When I get to a phone, every paper in Sweden and abroad will hear about it. They ought to fish this area with dynamite!'

  "His answer was a deep sigh. Then he spoke. 'Face-to-face, you have seen one of Jormungandir's Children,' he said, 'and that is more than I or any of my family have done for generations.' He turned to face me directly and continued, 'And I must add, my friend, that if you tell a living soul of what you have seen, I will unhesitatingly pronounce you a liar or a lunatic. Further, I will say I found you alone, having a seeming fit in this little bay, and saved you from what appeared to me to be a vigorous attempt at suicide.'

  "Having given me this belly-punch, he lapsed into a brooding silence, staring out over the blue water, while I was struck dumb by what I had heard. I began to feel I had been saved from a deadly sea monster only to be captured by an apparent madman.

  "Then he turned back to me, smiling again. 'I am called Baron Nyderstrom,' he said, 'and my house is just a bit down the road. Suppose we go and have a drink, change our clothes and have a bit of a chat.'

  "I could only stammer, 'But your aunt said you were away, away for more than a week. I came to see you because I have a letter to you.' I fumbled in my bathing suit, and then lurched over to my clothes under the trees. I finally found the letter, but when I gave it to him, he stuck it in his pocket. 'In fact I was just coming from your house when I decided to have a swim here. I'd had a sick spell as I was leaving your gate, and I thought the cool water would help.'

  "'As you were leaving my gate?' he said sharply, helping me to get into my clothes. 'What do you mean "a sick spell," and what was that about my aunt?'

  "As he assisted me, I saw for the first time a small, blue sports car, of a type unfamiliar to me, parked on the road at the head of the beach. It was in this, then, my rescuer had appeared. Half carrying, half leading me up the gentle slope, he continued his questioning, while I tried to answer him as best I could. I had just mentioned the lorry and the furniture as he got me into the left-hand bucket seat, having detailed in snatches my fainting and belief that I had had a mild stroke or heart spasm, when he got really stirred up.

  "He levered his great body, and he must have been six foot five, behind the wheel like lightning, and we shot off in a screech of gears and spitting of gravel. The staccato exhaust told me why I thought I had heard a machine gun while fighting that incredible thing in the water.

  "Well, we tore back up the road, into and up his driveway, and without a word, he slammed on the brakes and rushed into the house as if all the demons of hell were at his heels. I was left sitting stupefied in the car. I was not only physically exhausted and sick, but baffled and beginning again to be terrified. As I looked around the pleasant green lawn, the tall trees and the rest of the sunny landscape, do you know I wondered if through some error in dimensions, I had fallen out of my own proper space and landed in a world of monsters and lunatics!

  "It could only have been a moment when the immense figure of my host appeared in the doorway. On his fascinating face was an expression which I can only describe as being mingled half sorrow, half anger. Without a word, he strode down his front steps and over to the car where, reaching in, he picked me up in his arms as easily as if I had been a doll instead of 175 pounds of British subaltern.

  "He carried me up the steps and as he walked, I could hear him murmuring to himself in Swedish. It sounded to me like gibberish, with several phrases I could just make out being repeated over and over. 'What could they do, what else could they do! She would not be warned. What else could they do?'

  "We passed through a vast dark hall, with great beams high overhead, until we came to the back of the house, and into a large sunlit room, overlooking the sea, which could only be the library or study. There were endless shelves of books, a huge desk, several chairs, and a long, low padded window seat on which the baron laid me down gently.

  "Going over to a closet in the corner, he got out a bottle of aquavit and two glasses, and handed me a full one, taking a more modest portion for himself. When I had downed it—and I never needed a drink more—he pulled up a straight-backed chair and set it down next to my head. Seating himself, he asked my name in the most serious way possible, and when I gave it, he looked out of the window a moment.

  "'My friend,' he said finally, 'I am the last of the Nyderstroms. I mean that quite literally. Several rooms away, the woman you met earlier today is dead, as dead as you yourself would be, had I not appeared on the road, and from the same, or at least a similar cause. The only difference is that she brought this fate on herself, while you, a stranger, were almost killed by accident, and simply because you were present at the wrong time.' He paused and then continued with the oddest sentence, although, God knows, I was baffled already. 'You see,' he said, 'I am a kind of game warden and some of my charges are loose.'

  "With that, he told me to lie quiet and started to leave the room. Remembering something, however, he came back and asked if I could remember the name of the firm which owned the mover's lorry I had seen. Fortunately I could, for as I told you earlier, it was seared on my brain by the strange attack I had suffered while watching it go up the road. When I gave it to him, he told me again not to move and left the room for another, from which I could hear him faintly using a telephone. He was gone a long time, perhaps half an hour, and by the time he came back, I was standing looking at his books. Despite the series of shocks I had gone through, I now felt fairly strong, but it was more than that. This strange man, despite his odd threat, had saved my life, and I was sure that I was safe from him at least. Also, he was obviously enmeshed in both sorrow and some danger, and I felt strongly moved to try and give him a hand.

  "As he came back into the room, he looked hard at me, and I think he read what I was thinking, because he smiled, displaying a fine set of teeth.

  "'So—once again you are yourself. If your nerves are strong, I wish you to look on my late aunt. The police have been summoned and I need your help.'

  "Just like that! A dead woman in the house and he needed my help!

  "Well, if he was going to get rid of me, why call the police? Anyway, I felt safe as I told you, and you'd have to see the man, us I did, to know why.

  "At any rate, we went down the great hall to another room, much smaller, and then through that again until we found ourselves in a little sewing room, full of women's stuff and small hits of fancy furniture. There in the middle of the room lay the lady whom I had seen earlier telling the movers to go away. She certainly appeared limp, but I knelt and felt her wrist because she was lying face down. Sure enough, no pulse at all and quite cold. But when I started to turn her over, a huge hand clamped on my shoulder and the ba
ron spoke. 'I don't advise it,' he said warningly. 'Her face isn't fit to look at. She was frightened to death, you see.'

  "I simply told him I had to, and he just shrugged his shoulders and stepped back. I got my hands under one shoulder and started to turn the lady, but my God, as the profile came into view, I dropped her and stood up like a shot. From the little I saw, her mouth was drawn back like an animal's, showing every tooth, and her eye was wide open and glaring in a ghastly manner. That was enough for me.

  "Baron Nyderstrom led me from the room and back into the library, where we each had another aquavit in silence.

  "I started to speak, but he held up his hand in a kind of command, and started talking.

  "'I shall tell the police that I passed you bathing on the beach, stopped to chat, and then brought you back for a drink. We found my aunt dead of heart failure and called the police. Now sir, I like you, but if you will not attest to this same story, I shall have to repeat what I told you I would say at the beach, and I am well known in these parts. Also, the servants are away on holiday, and I think you can see that it would look ugly for you.'

  "I don't like threats, and it must have showed, because although it would have looked bad as all hell, still I wasn't going to be a party to any murders, no matter how well planned. I told him so, bluntly, and he looked sad and reflective, but not particularly worried.

  "'Very well,' he said at length, 'I can't really blame you, because you are in a very odd position.' His striking head turned toward the window in brief thought, and then he turned back to face me directly and spoke.

  "'I will make a bargain with you. Attest my statement to the police, and then let me have the rest of the day to talk to you. If, at the end of the day, I have not satisfied you about my aunt's death, you have my word, solemnly given, that I will go to the police station and attest your story, the fact that I have been lying and anything else you choose to say.'

  "His words were delivered with great gravity, and it never for one instant occurred to me to doubt them. I can't give you any stronger statement to show you how the man impressed me. I agreed straightaway.

  "In about ten minutes the police arrived, and an ambulance came with them. They were efficient enough, and very quick, but there was one thing that showed through the whole of the proceedings, and it was that the Baron Nyderstrom was somebody! All he did was state that his aunt had died of a heart attack and that was that! I don't mean the police were serfs, or crooks either for that matter. But there was an attitude of deference very far removed from servility or politeness. I doubt if royalty gets any more nowadays, even in England. When he had told me earlier that his name was 'known in these parts,' it was obviously the understatement of the decade.

  "Well, the police took the body away in the ambulance, and the baron made arrangements for a funeral parlor and a church with local people over the telephone. All this took a while, and it must have been 4:30 when we were alone again.

  "We went back into the library. I should mention that he had gotten some cold meat, bread and beer from a back pantry, just after the police left, and so now we sat down and made ourselves some sandwiches. I was ravenous, but he ate quite lightly for a man of his size, in fact only about a third of what I did.

  "When I felt full, I poured another glass of an excellent beer, lit a cigarette, sat back and waited. With this man, there was no need of unnecessary speech.

  "He was sitting behind his big desk facing me, and once again that singularly attractive smile broke through.

  "'You are waiting for your story, my friend, if I may call you so. You shall have it, but I ask your word as a man of honor that it not be for repetition.' He paused briefly. 'I know it is yet a further condition, but if you do not give it, there is no recourse except the police station and jail for me. If you do, you will hear a story and perhaps—perhaps, I say, because I make no promises—see and hear something which no man has seen or heard for many, many centuries, save only for my family and not many of them. What do you say?'

  "I never hesitated for a second. I said 'yes,' and I should add that I've never regretted it. No, never."

  Ffellowes' thoughts seemed far away, as he paused and stared out into the murky New York night, dimly lit by shrouded street lumps, and the fog lights on passing cars. No one spoke, and no sound broke the silence of the room but a muffled cough. He continued.

  "Nyderstrom next asked me if I knew anything about Norse mythology. Now this question threw me for an absolute loss. What did a dangerous animal and an awful death have to do with Norse mythology, to say nothing of a possible murder?

  "However, I answered I'd read of Odin, Thor, and a few other gods as a child in school, the Valkyries, of course, and that was about it.

  "'Odin, Thor, the Valkyries, and a few others?' My host smiled, 'You must understand that they are rather late Norse and even late German adaptations of something much older. Much, much older, something with its roots in the dawn of the world.

  "'Listen,' he went on, speaking quietly but firmly, 'and when I have finished we will wait for that movers' truck to return. I was able to intercept it, and what it took, because of that very foolish woman, must be returned.'

  "He paused as if at a loss how to begin, and then went on. His bell-like voice remained muted, but perfectly audible, while he detailed one of the damnedest stories I've ever heard. If I hadn't been through what I had that day, and if he hadn't been what he was, I could have thought I was listening to the Grand Master of all the lunatics I've ever met.

  "'Long ago,' he said, 'my family came from inner Asia. they were some of the people the later comers called Aesir, the gods of Valhalla, but there were not gods, only a race of wandering conquerors. They settled here, on this spot, despite warnings from the few local inhabitants, a small, dark shore-dwelling folk. This house is built on the foundations of a fortress, a very old one, dating at the very least back to the second century b.c. It was destroyed later in the wars of the sixteenth century, but that is modern history.

  "'At any rate, my remote ancestors began soon to lose people. Women bathing, boys fishing, even full-grown warriors out hunting, they would vanish and never return. Children had to be guarded and so did the livestock, which had a way of disappearing also, although that of course was preferable to the children.

  "'Finally, for no trace of the mysterious marauders could be found, the chief of my family decided to move away. He had prayed to his gods and searched zealously, but the reign of silent, stealthy terror never ceased, and no human or other foe could be found.

  "'But before he gave up, the chief had an idea. He sent presents and a summons to the shaman, the local priest, not of our own people, but of the few, furtive, little shore folk, the strand people, who had been there when we came. We despised and avoided them, but we had never harmed them. And the bent little shaman came and answered the chief's questions.

  "'What he said amounted to this. We, that is my people, had settled on the land made sacred in the remote past to Jormungandir. Now Jormungandir in the standard Norse sagas and myths is the great, world-circling sea serpent, the son of the renegade Aesir Loki and a giantess. He is a monster who on the day of Ragnarok will arise to assault Asgard. But actually, these myths are based on something quite, quite different. The ancient Jormungandir was a god of the sea all right, but he was here before any Norsemen, and he had children, who were semi-mortal and very, very dangerous. All the Asgard business was invented later, by people who did not remember the reality, which was both unpleasant and a literal, living menace to ancient men.

  "'My ancestor, the first of our race to rule here, asked what he could do to abate the menace. Nothing, said the shaman, except go away. Unless, if the chief were brave enough, he, the shaman, could summon the Children of the God, and the chief could ask them how they felt!

  "'Well, my people were anything but Christians in those days, and they had some rather nasty gods of their own. Also, the old chief, my ancestor, was on his mettle, and he liked
the land he and his tribe had settled. So—he agreed, and although his counselors tried to prevent him, he went alone at night to the shore with the old shaman of the shore people. And what is more, he returned.

  "'From that day to this we have always lived here on this stretch of shore. There is a vault below the deepest cellar where certain things are kept and a ceremony through which the eldest son of the house of Nyderstrom must pass. I will not tell you more about it save to say that it involves an oath, one we have never broken, and that the other parties to the oath would not be good for men to see. You should know, for you have seen one!'

  "I had sat spellbound while this rigmarole went on, and some of the disbelief must have showed in my eyes, because he spoke rather sharply all at once.

  "'What do you think the Watcher in the Sea was, the "animal" that seized you? If it had been anyone else in that car but myself—!'

  "I nodded, because after recalling my experience on my swim, I was less ready to dismiss his story, and I had been in danger of forgetting my adventure. I also apologized and he went on talking.

  "'The woman you spoke to was my father's much younger sister, a vain and arrogant woman of no brainpower at all. She lived a life in what is now thought of as society, in Stockholm, on a generous allowance from me, and I have never liked her. Somewhere, perhaps as a child, she learned more than she should about the family secret, which is ordinarily never revealed to our women.

  "'She wished me to marry and tried ceaselessly to entrap me with female idiots of good family whom she had selected.

  "'It is true that I must someday marry, but my aunt irritated me beyond measure, and I finally ordered her out of the house and told her that her allowance would cease if she did not stop troubling me. She was always using the place for house parties for her vapid friends, until I put a stop to it.