Dark Light Book Two

by Rob Shepherd

  Technical details about the functioning of his invention were as follows: as the shutter inside the camera was completely covering the film gate, the strips were moved a step further by two iron cogs which made the film advance by engaging it through the perforations. The scientist had set by himself the requirements for film take-up, intermittent motion and rack positioning, while the exposure control was activated by means of an aperture in the upper part. Unfortunately, there were still many shortcomings and imperfections, although Sigurður had tried his best to minimize those.

  That evening, he had dinner at a family restaurant in downtown, owned by another friend of his, whose name was Örn that he was used to visiting at least once a week. The real reason for being there was his friend’s sister, named Ylfur, who had some rare, wondrous black hair and was very kind and beautiful. She was probably a bit short in comparison with the women of her age who lived in that city, but her cooking was always delicious indeed. He didn’t have much free time during the day, so the best moment to meet each other was at dinner or even at lunchtime – during the few times the man wasn’t busy attending to his weird research. The scientist was dreaming of a future with her, actually, but his unusual occupation and all the unending experiments he attempted didn’t make it likely that it would happen anytime soon. That was the same thing Ylfur thought, at least according to Sigurður’s impressions, anyway.

  The salmon was cooked exquisitely and grilled just to the point of toasting the skin exactly as he liked it. This was the best fish he had eaten in a long time, served in a rich, dark, wine-bolstered sauce. The beer was good, too, and the taste of it appeased his senses and made him think about his present work for a while.

  After dinner and some happy conversation, Sigurður walked the short distance from restaurant to home and from there to the bay. Reykjavik was a beautiful town at night, busy but not rowdy, more similar to a small village rather than the main city on the whole island. There was an area covering about ten streets in downtown where all the restaurants, bars and cafés were situated, but he tended to move away from all that in order to stay calm and free his mind for a while, by looking out to sea. The sun was still pleasant and the sky looked very clear and blue. The incredibly long days and short nights were a peculiar feature of Iceland in the summer, and perhaps partially explained the sense of strangeness experienced by foreigners while staying there, especially those from the southern European countries.

  Of course he was used to the difference in the number of daylight hours, as it had always been a part of his life and he considered the lack of encroaching darkness as evening progressed very liberating and relaxing. But today he seemed to be a bit gloomy, more unsatisfied than usual. About twenty minutes later he was still there, pondering some things and seemingly lost in his many thoughts. His efforts were coming to a standstill, again…

  The island where he lived was not very populated, and the people who lived there were spread across the countryside, with some coastal villages only having ten or twenty citizens and a few towns ranging from 700 to 1,000 inhabitants. He would have liked so much to discuss his inventions and trials in real time with other scientists who were working on their own projects on the eastern side of the countryside, but that was simply not possible.

  For example, another old friend of his who lived in a village on the northeastern coast was presently testing a new long-range airship that was reported to be capable of sailing through the sky using gigantic rotors. It didn’t function yet, but he was sure it was only a matter of time, after all… Even though such a thing might look strange, the scientist thought the creator could make it work, sooner or later, by any means. Many of his neighbors would think that such a project looked like something sprung out of the mind of a mad Professor, sure thing, but they were wrong. He would have taken the chance to talk to him about that. But it had been over a year since they had met somewhere, as Sigurður wasn’t used to traveling much and his friend, too, didn’t love to wander from his precious laboratory, which he had built next to his gray house. It was certainly true that the abundant population and the high density of urbanization throughout the British Empire, the Republic of France, or even the German Imperium — far away from their island — were of greater help in this regard and made easier communication possible. He also missed having open exchanges of opinions and comments about the new trends, all the modern applications, and the latest inventions in the field.

  In Iceland things moved more slowly and the news, too, didn’t reach them as fast as on the mainland to the south, of course. So, the scientist simply considered that his efforts were going a long way before getting a real result or some appreciable acknowledgment in the end, given the fact he worked almost alone and with no many contacts outside his country. As for now, it was better to focus on the footage he had to shoot the next morning in the city park, as a part of his daily experiments.

  Everything changed, as sometimes happens, because of an accident that occurred one evening. Sigurður had worked hard all day long in his laboratory, and had just positioned his device on his desk. It had been almost entirely upgraded with all the modifications he had thought of and applied over the course of the last week. He worked on it in the dark chamber he stayed in when handling the ‘Movingphotographic’ camera so he could open it, then had extracted the sheet film with all the footage he had shot the same day, using his leather-gloved hands. He placed it on a piece of furniture previously devised for exactly this use, so that the film could dangle to the floor, whence the man was capable of having a close look at every single step filmed. Maybe it was because of his excessive hurry while moving the machine, or simply because it had to happen, but after stepping away for a moment he returned to the table in the chamber and inadvertently hit the reinforced steel tube containing the vapor he had taken from the Great Geyser some days before during his daytrip.

  Wherever else should he have placed it? Just there - as that was the most secluded and protected area in the whole laboratory. He had placed it there in order to be able to examine and study it over the course of the next several days, with more calmness and enough attention. And yet it was in there that it broke suddenly, by falling to the ground as a consequence of his stupid, unpredictable gesture!

  The man cursed himself once, twice, as the vapor began filling the entire chamber that was almost completely enveloped in darkness. Then the vapor’s terrible smell reached his nostrils and eyes, and he had to get out as fast as he could, fearing the room might explode in flames. At that moment he didn’t even think of saving the film or the other important, delicate devices left inside, but just kept running until he got to the other side of his laboratory. He opened the door wide and let the vapor escape completely, and then he remembered the precious filmstrips he had left in the chamber and went back inside in order to check the possible damage done to them or the effect of those vapors on the film.

  Sigurður was greatly surprised when he discovered that the film didn’t show any sign or visible deterioration, apart from the damage caused by the light coming from the other room. Some other papers and mechanisms he had down there weren’t so lucky, on the other hand. But it was when he looked slowly at every step of the film in his hands that the man had a glimpse of something really unexpected…

  Along with the sights of the city park, the people coming and going across the scene and the trees, all in black and white, something else could be spotted in the distance: a sort of tall figure, very strange and with an incredible shape. It looked as if it was coming out of the plants and approaching a little boy accompanied by two adults, probably his parents, going along for a stroll that day.

  What the hell…How was that possible? The man himself had shot that footage and was on the site when he began the filming, he didn’t remember seeing anything like that! He would clearly have remembered such a figure, of course - how could he ever forget that unusual, incredibly tall presence in the area?

  The scientist thought that he ha
d shot almost identical footage just two days before, in the same place, and nothing like that had appeared on the film he previously checked. So, what had changed since then? He hadn’t modified anything about the regulation of his invention, the shutter was the usual one and the type of film was the same… Maybe the unknown figure — which, by putting his eyes closer seemed to have a big, incredible face and something that could resemble tails or long protuberances, how strange! Wasn’t there two days ago. But the other film proved it had been walking across the city park the last time he had been filming there as well.

  On the other hand, the man was sure it hadn’t been there today, and he was very attentive when filming an area or a scene. Or maybe, even though this could be a weird explanation, Sigurður hadn’t noticed that thing just because his eyes couldn’t look at it directly, but maybe the movie camera could. If that was really true, what was the reason for such an occurrence? The film was the same and the area was identical, so…or better, the man considered again, was the film really the same? What could have affected it, providing the footage with some new, unprecedented properties? The long treatment in a series of developer baths, some old substances, a few mechanisms available in his chamber or something else?

  Maybe it was just the vapor! The suggestion came to his mind suddenly, unexpectedly, and made him think about everything under a different light. Maybe he was right, and if it was really so…Oh my! What if such a vapor had added something to the film itself? What if that had made it capable of shooting — or simply revealing — things that no human could see? Figures or beings that were around them but they were unable to observe or look at?

  These were some interesting questions, but that wasn’t all. What had he filmed there before? Whatever this otherworldly creature was, why was he in that place?

  But the most immediate worry was: how could he film like that again? Or better, how could he see if such a being would appear on another film shoot the next time he took pictures? He needed some more vapor, certainly, to be added to the film itself in order to make it possible.

  It was another long daytrip out of town, but it seemed to be worth a try. So, the next day he decided to go in search of some more vapor coming out of the Great Geyser.

  Once he had accomplished his task and was back in Reykjavík again, he went to the city park again, positioning his device in the same place and just started filming the scenery. While doing his experiment, the man considered that, even though he might prove capable of getting another glimpse of such a creature, or discover where he had walked past, he was still incapable of looking at that being in real time. The photographic processing took too long and was time-consuming. By the time he had finally discovered the images in his footage, once the vapor had been added to the filmstrips back in his laboratory, the creature could already be very far away. It was not possible to follow that being, or keep track of his movements while on site.

  Anyway, maybe, there was another means of doing that. He could act differently: instead of adding some of that substance to his film to be able to look at the strange creature possibly captured on it, he could use a transparent still, or a ball with some vapor in it taken from the emissions of the Great Geyser, and put that container directly in front of his eyes in order to look at what lay on the other side, ahead of him!

  The examining of the new footage confirmed that the figure shot in the old strips wasn’t just some damage done during filming, nor was it just common people walking in the foreground messing up the footage. And there was more than one of those things; at least two of them were visible this time, with another figure at the border of the field. So, they were real! Weird creatures going around freely, and he had to discover what they really were and what they wanted.

  The next morning, Sigurður headed for the park again, his heavy ‘Movingphotographic’ device over his shoulders. He positioned the equipment, sat on a bench and started filming the surroundings. A feeble mist, along with its humidity, still covered the area, but it wasn’t annoying. A few passers-by proceeded slowly along the path, greeted him quickly, but didn’t pay too much attention to his activity as they were already used to the young scientist’s strange device and his weird experiments, of course.

  For a while the filming went on, with no particular problem until the man remembered the ball with the vapor inside that he had brought with him, the one laying inside his bag. It was possible that everything seemed quiet and calm around, but in reality some of those figures could already be there, sure thing. The fact was that he wasn’t able to directly watch the footage as it was being shot - so, why shouldn’t he have a look around, as previously planned?

  The scientist reached his bag, then opened it and grabbed the transparent object. As soon as he put that before his eyes, everything changed forever!

  Suddenly, one of those horrible creatures came out of the trees, approaching a young couple with an uneven gait. The mother held her child’s hand and was probably accompanying him to school, when the creature stopped not far from them and elongated one of her many terrifying, pointed tails (oh my, they were really tails, each apparently endowed with its own life!) and pierced directly through the mouth of the young boy, reaching into his chest as a giant, horrible crawler which was going to insert one of those scary protuberances inside his stomach. This caused the boy to cry and suffer clearly, as the child soon burst into tears.

  The father, wearing a brownish coat and a russet slouch hat, slowed his pace and looked at him for a while with a severe expression on his face. Then the mother, dressed in a white blouse and a rose twill bustle walking skirt, came nearer and told her son not to have tantrums, as there was no way he could stay home today and not go to school. So the two forced the boy to go on and soon they were out of the park, proceeding towards the city center, still enveloped in the foggy weather.

  While all that was taking place, the creature, possessing a strange nose, two wild eyeballs and some rubbery skin, was continuing her incredible action. She pushed her tail further into the abdomen of the young boy, right into his stomach, undeterred by the son’s grimacing in pain or his overwhelming feelings of nausea.

  The truth was that those parents could never have imagined what was going on right in front of them. The scientist himself would never have believed it if he hadn’t used the ball-shaped object he had brought with him, full of that incredible vapor which was surely endowed with some miraculous properties.

  Finally, the painful tail was extracted out of the mouth of the poor child, leaping up and making the boy have the hiccups. Then the man noticed some gastric juice along with some remnants of food, biscuits and bread on the tail’s end.

  Could it be the breakfast the young boy had just eaten that morning, before leaving home? Was all that some incredible, painful means of feeding that the creature used, completely disdainful towards human beings, clearly unmoved by their suffering and even the young age involved?

  After that morning, the man was sure about two things: the creatures did really exist: they were not simple dim figures on some film strips, other than that they did play people up! And nobody else seemed to able to look at those things or even ascertain their presence on earth.

  Sigurður would never have supposed that the monster could damage common people at will, unless he had seen it for himself. That same day another creature appeared within the city park, not far from the first one. She headed for another woman walking along with her young daughter, who soon becomes her target!

  So, these beings only attacked children, according to what the ball had showed him so far, because no adult individual had been approached or damaged. Then he considered: had he, too, been prey to these creatures in the past, when he came there to play as a child on Sunday mornings? Even just thinking about it gave him a bad feeling.

  He didn’t remember having to cross that city park when younger, but who knows? Perhaps he simply didn’t remember that happening and his parents, unfortunately, had passed away long ago. />
  But was that place the monsters’ only hunting grounds? Or was it only their favorite - as that zone lay between the residential area and the school in the center of town? Certainly many couples had to pass through there with their children in order to take them to the teaching sessions…but there were many other locations that children frequented in town, was it possible that…? He had just to check it out thoroughly, sure thing!

  But most of all, the main question still remained on the ground: what the hell were such monsters really?

  These living things looked like some weird beings from legends or fairy tales. Perhaps some historical research could prove useful in the end… Would he be able to find some hints about these creatures in old books or ancient stories?

  As soon as the man was back home, he began reading and closely examining all the historical texts and books from the past he had, starting with the old sagas, of course. The sagas were a significant part of the Icelandic heritage and appeared to be stories set on the island during its settlement. The most famous of those included Njáls saga, Egils saga and Gísla saga, notable and popular throughout the whole country, indeed. But it was the Sturlunga Saga which proved much more interesting, actually.

  Sigurður also found a few stories about some similar creatures, from Northern Sweden, called Vittra, who lived underground and were invisible most of the time. They were reputed to be able to make your life horrific or even dangerous, as many said that they did whatever it took to drive you away, also arrange accidents that wounded or even killed you. In tales told in the north of Sweden, Vittra often took the place that Trolls held usually in other parts of the country or abroad.

  Other than that, early in history, the Icelandic Grýla creatures had already been characterized as terrible female monsters, at least according to a passage inside a text on his old wooden bookcase. The Sturlunga Saga, in a way, mentioned their real appearance, just as the rhyme said: