by Kim Wilkins
Love, Mum
I didn’t know whether I was more amused or annoyed that my mother trusted somebody named Bathsheba. What Mum had failed to clarify was whether or not she was wearing the little enamel “V” around her neck that Aunty Clementine had bought her when I was born. I put the letter aside, wondering if Bathsheba had given her another useless batch of lottery numbers or advised her that she would meet the love of her life in June. I’m sure that at least two of my mother’s failed marriages were encouraged by psychics.
I loved my mum, of course, but she had made such a mess of her life. She was born into disadvantage and stayed there. I had watched her ramble unsuspectingly from failure to failure—men, jobs, diets—always complaining about a lack of money, brains or luck, but never realizing that what she really lacked was the ability to manage her own life. I was different. I wanted to escape where I came from, from the welfare rolls, from the overcrowded schools, from having the phone cut off every second month. When I took the job at Kirkja, I was running from it so hard that the momentum kept me awake at night. I didn’t want to be swallowed alive by circumstance. I didn’t want to be like Mum, spending so much time predicting what fate had in store for her that it hadn’t occurred to her that her future was for herself to make.
There are dark psychic forces gathering around Victoria.
Mum wanted me home, and she would say anything to get me there. I didn’t know if it was because she missed me or because she felt that my successes proved her choices in life wrong, but she had elected to use precisely the worst method of persuasion. As I had told Gunnar, I didn’t scare easy.
Not back then, anyway. That was all still ahead of me.
I showed up at the control room for my first solo shift that evening. The late shift was eight until four, hours that I was already intimately acquainted with from my sleepless nights. Alex handed over to me, and I spent the first few hours going through my list of tasks, launching the balloon, filling the blanks in the database. After 1:00 A.M., I had less to occupy me. I turned off the bright fluorescent lights so that the space was only lit by the glow of three computer screens. The room was punctuated all around with floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside the sky was cloudy, stained by the inky black of treetops. I had a training manual to read, but I put it aside to sit on the long couch near the staircase, lying back and enjoying the solitude. I lay there a long time, letting my mind drift. Every ten seconds, the transmitter sounded a gentle beep. The heating whirred softly. The printer hummed. Dark and still.
I didn’t notice that my eyelids had fallen closed.
The sound of my breathing. The door from the observation deck opening wide. A cool breeze on my skin. Struggling to sit up, to look around. Paralyzed in my own body. A hot rush of fear. There was someone in the room.
Brrring.
I sat up with a start. The phone. I reached for it, glancing around. No, the door was closed. I was still alone.
“Hello?”
“Vicky? It’s Gunnar.”
I checked the clock above me. “Gunnar, it’s two in the morning.”
“It’s three in Amsterdam,” he said cheerily. “I just got back to the hotel. I remembered you were working your first night shift tonight, so I thought I’d call and see how it’s going.”
I could hear other male voices in the background, calling out to Gunnar in Norwegian. I didn’t know what they were saying, but their voices betrayed that juvenile tone peculiar to men in small groups who suspect one of their number is trying to score. That and the fact that Gunnar had bothered to remember my first night shift told me that he was still sweet on me.
“It’s going fine, thank you.”
“You sounded anxious when you picked up the phone.”
“I’d dozed off. I was having a bad dream.”
“Oh? The one about the old woman who comes in and sits on your chest?”
“I . . . no. I dreamed that someone had opened the door to the observation deck—”
“That’s her. The hag.”
“Gunnar, is this more of your supernatural shite?”
He chuckled. “No. Alex and Josef have both dreamed of her while dozing on the night shift. They thought it was spooky until Josef did some research and found out it was a very common sleep disorder, especially at that time and under those circumstances.”
Common sleep disorders. That’s what I liked to hear. Perhaps my encounter with the bundle of twigs that talked was explainable in this way too. “Tell me more.”
“It’s called isolated sleep paralysis, occurs most often at the onset of sleep, and is usually accompanied by hypnagogic hallucinations of a presence in the room.”
“Isolated sleep paralysis.”
“I like the other name. The hag.”
“How about imagining you see someone outside your window with twigs for hair and he offers you advice? Is that a common sleep disorder?”
“No, haven’t heard of that one.”
Damn. “You would have laughed your head off, Gunnar. I screamed like a girl.”
“You are a girl.”
“A little girl.”
“What did he say?”
“Who?”
“The thing with twigs for hair.”
“Oh. Something about not swimming in the lake because of the draugr, whatever the hell that is.”
A brief silence on the line. Then Gunnar’s voice, cautious. “Really?”
“Yes, really. Why?”
His voice returned to normal. “When you knock off, go to my cabin. There’s a book on my desk about mythological creatures. You’ll find it interesting reading.”
“Why? What’s a draugr?” I’d assumed it was a nonsense word that my addled brain had invented.
Noisy voices broke out behind him. “You’ll see. I’ve got to go, we’re heading back out.”
“At 3:00 A.M.?”
“It’s Amsterdam. My key’s in the dead pot plant at the back door of the cabin.”
“Gunnar, just tell me what—”
“Gotta go. Bye.”
The phone clicked. The room was growing cold, so I turned up the heating. I filled the rest of my shift and changed over with Gordon at 4:00 A.M.
First I went back to my own cabin to shower and put my pajamas on. I was fooling myself that going to Gunnar’s cabin and finding that book was not so important to me, that I didn’t really care what a draugr was or where I’d picked up the word—because I’d clearly picked it up from somewhere, some movie or book or conversation. But as dawn broke and I still wasn’t asleep, I decided that I simply had to know. I pulled my anorak on over my pajamas and left my cabin. Gunnar’s back door was about ten yards from my front door, screened by the six-foot-high wooden lattices that stood between all the cabins in a miserable bid to provide privacy. I found my way around the lattice and to the dead pot plant he had spoken of. The key was hidden inside. I opened his back door and let myself in.
Gunnar’s cabin had the same faint musty scent as his clothes. Probably because his clothes were strewn all over the floor of his bedroom, bathroom and lounge room. I was astonished at how messy he was. My mother always said that men, left on their own, will eventually revert to savagery. I found his computer set up at a desk in a corner of the lounge room. The walls around it were decorated with sketches—not particularly good ones—of Viking warriors and mythic beasts. A fake sword was hung on the wall, and a photograph was pinned to the corkboard: Gunnar and some male friends, dressed in costume. Long tunics, pants with leather straps crisscrossed around the ankles, spears and shields. I felt dimly embarrassed for him, though not sure why. His desk was overflowing with papers and dirty cups and glasses. I found the book he had mentioned, cleared a space on the sofa, and looked up “draugr.”
draugr (plural: draugar) The undead spirit of a drowning victim, often a fisherman, usually residing in a body of water. The draugr is bloated and discolored with contusions, his eyes shine faintly and he is often covered with algae and weeds. H
is goal is to drown others so that he may have them for company. A draugr can only be destroyed by cutting off his head.
I read it a few times, turning the problem over in my mind. Where had I heard this before? I had no recollection of reading any Scandinavian folklore. Perhaps I had learned it in school, when we were told about the old gods and the days of the week, which were named for them.
I returned the book, put back the key, and went to my own cabin. The sky was streaked with pink clouds and I needed to sleep.
After a week of night shifts, Magnus considered me sufficiently trained in meteorology for the moment, and pulled me off forecasting to assist him with his climatology research. This was far more stimulating work, and his research about carbon sequestration in boreal forest climates was related to my own work for my thesis.
One morning, a few days before they were all due to leave for the meteorology conference, he came to collect me to help him set up some recording instruments in the forest.
“Good morning, Victoria. Did you sleep well?” he asked, as I locked my cabin door and pocketed the key.
“Yes, thanks. I think I’m still catching up from the night shifts.”
“Ah, yes. It can be difficult for your body to return to its natural rhythm. Here.” He handed me a rattling plastic box with a lid. It was heavy and he carried nothing. “Follow me.”
He led me into the trees for a few silent minutes. As Kirkja receded, he called to me over his shoulder, “What do you think of Maryanne?”
“Maryanne? She’s nice enough. She makes a wicked shepherd’s pie.”
“But do you think she’s pretty?”
How utterly baffling. “Um . . .”
He fell back so we were walking side by side. His expression was boyish. “Do you think she’d be a good match for a man like me?”
I didn’t know whether to be appalled or embarrassed. His frankness was almost charming, but the fact that he had waited until he was alone with me to ask was undeniably creepy. “I don’t know how to answer that,” I said, squirming, hoping he would leave it at that.
“I think she likes me,” he said confidently. “What do you think?”
I considered the ravenous look in Maryanne’s eyes every time she spoke with Magnus. “Um . . . maybe.”
Rain started to fall and he pulled his hood up. My hands were full, so I couldn’t do the same.
“I don’t think we’d be good together, though,” he continued. “I’m really a man who needs someone smarter. That was the problem with both my ex-wives. They were pretty enough, but not clever enough.”
I didn’t point out that they were clever enough, in the end, to become ex-wives. I remained silent and hoped that it would encourage him to do the same.
“There’s a large clearing with a big anvil-shaped rock that I’ve marked out for an instrument field,” he said. “We’ll be stopping there.”
We trudged through the forest. The rain lightened to drizzle. Magnus broke a shoelace and stopped to fix it. I told him I’d meet him at the site, rather than wait with him and chance another uncomfortable conversation. I had just arrived at the clearing and was setting down the box when he ran up, panting, behind me.
“Did Gunnar bring you here?” he asked.
“Sorry?”
“I didn’t tell you where the clearing was.”
I must have stared at him for a full ten seconds without speaking.
“Victoria? Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” I said. “Gunnar brought me here.” This was entirely untrue, but it was all I could say because I couldn’t otherwise explain how I had found the place without Magnus’s help.
As we set up the instruments, I rewound the journey in my head. Magnus had described a clearing, an anvil-shaped rock. I had been preoccupied with his creepiness. But if I concentrated hard, I could remember knowing where to go the instant he described it. So how had I known? Gunnar had certainly not brought me here. We were at least half a mile south of the route Gunnar had shown me to the beach.
I stood up for a moment and looked around. Sensations washed over me: familiarity, fear, longing. Dizziness rushed down my body. I heard Magnus’s voice. A moment later, he caught me under my elbow and lowered me to the ground.
“Put your head between your knees,” he was saying.
I did as he instructed and the blood throbbed in my temples, my thoughts sharpened and became clear again.
“Are you feeling better?” Magnus asked.
“Ah . . . yes. Thank you.”
“Did you eat this morning?”
“No.”
“Make sure you always eat something before you come out to do fieldwork.”
“Yes, I will in future.”
He crouched on the forest floor next to me, watching me closely. “Your color’s coming back, but I think you should go to your cabin and rest. Carsten should have scheduled you another day to recover from those late shifts. It can be hard on the system at the beginning.”
I nodded, but didn’t venture to say anything. I had an overwhelming urge to cry.
“Here, let me show you something. It will cheer you up,” Magnus said with his boyish smile. He opened his palm and a dirty fragment of metal sat on it.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I found it just now while making a hole for a transpiration sensor. It’s a piece of the past.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” An inexplicable feeling of dread stole over me as I considered the object.
“Forged iron doesn’t just show up spontaneously in forests, Victoria. This is part of something left here by previous residents, maybe a thousand years ago.” He considered the fragment carefully. “It might be a pot or a piece of jewelry.”
It’s not a pot; it’s not jewelry. I said nothing, watching Magnus, wondering what bizarre mental illness had gripped me.
“I’ll keep it for Gunnar.” He slipped it into the pocket of his anorak and stood, reaching down to help me up. “He collects old bits of rubbish like this.”
“I’m fine,” I said, as he put his arm around my waist.
“No, let me take you back to your cabin.”
We left the forest behind. I had read that the feeling of déjà vu was caused by a misfiring in the part of the brain responsible for recognition, causing a sensation of memory that was not genuine. I wondered if the sudden change my life had taken, accompanied by sleep deprivation and anxiety, had caused a similar misfiring in my brain. I had never been there before. It felt astonishingly familiar, but I had never been there before. How had I found the clearing? Simple. Magnus had been tending in that direction; I simply kept heading southeast and the clearing was there.
And the cold fear I felt looking at Magnus’s “piece of the past”? Some kind of projected fear, which produced an uncanny certainty that I knew what that metal fragment was. A piece of a murderer’s axe.
On the Tuesday before the island became my own, I had difficulty falling asleep. I dutifully climbed into bed at nine o’clock and closed my eyes, relaxed my body and tried to clear my mind. But my concentration flickered from topic to topic, the way a dirty CD skips over snatches of music. I breathed deeply, but the sound of my own breath irritated me. My body felt awkward no matter which position I lay in.
The empty hours of the night were upon me before I drifted off. Consciousness receded down sleep’s dim thoroughfares. Dark blue enveloped me. A chill wind touched my skin; somewhere a pale blue light. Inky shadows surrounded me.
I started; I was outside my cabin window, looking into the forest. Confused, I turned to the window, only to see my own blond hair spread across the pillow inside, my own body breathing deep and low under the covers. My heart jumped into my throat and bright fear hissed along my veins. I turned back to the trees. The wind was harsh in the treetops, bending them and making them groan in their hard, flat voices. Overhead, a quarter moon pierced the dark. Slivers of streaming cloud made the light from the moon flutter and dim. I was co
ld and afraid. Branches stood out like bony fingers against the moon-washed sky. A skittering noise emerged from among the dark trees. I turned to prise open the window to my cabin and climb back into my body, but my fingers skidded over the painted sill as though I were made of vapor.
“Victoria.”
I didn’t want to turn and see who was talking to me in that rasping, childlike voice. “Victoria, I’m only trying to help.”
I shot a glance over my shoulder and yelped. The twig creature. He was dressed in rags, his hair stood up above his pointed face, pale and rough like a collection of old birch twigs. He reached out a hand to me and his fingers appeared long and sharp in the sickly moonlight. He stood only a few feet from me, wary, swaying rhythmically.
“I’m sorry to come into your dream,” he said, “but I want to help you.”
“What are you?”
“My name is Skripi. I’m a wight, sent from Asgard. I know my appearance frightens you, but I have a kind heart. You must be careful. The others on the island don’t have kind hearts.”
“The others?”
“The draugr, the hag.” He took a step toward me and I screamed, turned back to the window and hammered on the pane. This time there was a sound.
An instant later I woke up in my bed, whole. A thumping had roused me. I sat up with a start and my eyes flicked to the window. Was that a glimpse of my ghostlike self? Or just a shadow cast by a branch in the moonlight?
I breathed, letting my body relax. It had simply been a nightmare. And what a nightmare. My pajamas were damp with sweat. I tried to settle under the covers once more, but the moist patch under my back grew cold and uncomfortable. I got out of bed and turned on a light, chasing shadows away. My sheets, on close inspection, were soaked. I quickly stripped off my pajamas and put on dry ones, and pulled the sheets off the bed. How could I have sweated so much on a cold night? Outside, shivery blue light fluttered in the trees, and a chill ran over me. I wrapped myself up in my bedspread and went to the lounge room, turned on the heater and lay down on the sofa.