It was no coincidence that the gate was there. There was power in this place, an energy that Garún felt, but could not name. If the heart of the city was somewhere to be found, it was here. As Garún walked up to the statue she wondered if something had been there before the students built the cairn. Perhaps a monument had always been erected here, since Reykjavík was founded. Perhaps predating it.
The clock struck midnight. Garún started walking anticlockwise around the statue. She counted the steps carefully and made sure to complete the first lap on the fourth stroke, the second one on the eighth. On the twelfth stroke she stopped in front of the statue and faced it, striking its concrete foundation with a flat palm.
As soon as her hand touched the rough rock her feet were swept from underneath her. The sky fell into itself, forming a black sun. A sharp, freezing wind tore into Garún, trying to drag her up into the roaring abyss. Above her was no longer the starlit darkness of cold autumn nights, but something else. Something behind the darkness. Something that was waiting.
All this happened in an instant, the moment between two beats of a heart. Garún collapsed. She was shivering and her vision vibrated. It only grew worse if she shut her eyes. She gave herself a few minutes to recover slightly before looking up.
She was in Reykjavík, but at the same time she wasn’t in Reykjavík. There was no church behind her, no buildings in sight. No moon or stars or clouds in the sky. At her feet was an irregular pile of rocks where the statue had stood just a moment before. They looked ancient. The city centre, where the streets were lit up by electric lamps, was now dark and vacant. A broad dirt road led down the hill on the same spot as Skólavörðustígur was in Reykjavík. It was always foggy here, and in the distance lonely hrævareldar lit the streets. The electronic music had transformed as soon as she passed through. A vague threat was hiding in the tune and the beat became irregular and paranoid. Static surged in the background.
The Forgotten Downtown. What Reykjavík once was, or could have been. A dream from another world. Rökkurvík.
Garún walked down the hill of Skólavörðuholt. Unlike Reykjavík, here the houses were low and simply constructed, with large, wide gaps between them. The corrugated iron was rusted, the shell sand panelling had cracked and crumbled. Trees spread their leafless branches over gardens overgrown and filled with rubbish. The trees were all dead, but still standing.
The Forgotten Downtown was like a faded photograph, blurred and vague. A disappearing memory. Its existence was not officially acknowledged, but it was irrefutably still a part of the city. Some research into the place had taken place when the Crown had just come to Hrímland with foreign technologies and knowledge, but it had very quickly been stopped and all traffic in between strictly forbidden. There was not a soul who knew for sure where the Forgotten Downtown was: if it was in another country, another planet or another dimension. Some thought it to be a part of the ruins of the hulduheimar, or a side effect of that apocalypse, but there was no way of determining it.
Here Lækjargata was a muddy track alongside the stream running from a marshland lake. The stream looked filthy and it ran deceptively deep in the ditch, separating the central city into two parts. Garún crossed the brook using a makeshift plank bridge.
She followed the instructions of Viður’s rough map down a path that she called Tryggvagata in her head, but there were no streets marked here. She walked briskly past the bar Gómorra and tried to lie low. There were not many people about and those that were passed each other with hunched shoulders, avoiding one another, their mere presence here a severe taboo. The music in her headphones picked up when she passed it, alerting her to possible danger, but Garún knew the beat and knew that she’d be safe as long as she didn’t stick around.
She recognised some of the derelict houses as they had an identical twin in Reykjavík. These were only phantoms of their counterparts in the real Ránargata. There was not a single unbroken window and every door had been nailed shut. These were the dwellings of shadows. Blue-tinted hrævareldar floated aimlessly down the streets, their eerie flames sputtering in the air, the only street lighting to be found in this dark and sombre place. Garún was careful not to look directly at one, in fear of being led to her doom.
Finally she came to the place that Viður had described. It was a two-storey house, with a deteriorated shell sand finish. The windows were dark and she couldn’t spot any movement inside. It looked as if the house had been abandoned for decades. She went through the overgrown garden on a paved pathway that was cracked and ruined. It led her behind the house to the basement. Two dead trees slanted precariously over the yard, which was filled with rubbish. A rusted tricycle lay upside down, the thick grass slowly engulfing it. She wondered if children had ever lived here, or if this was just a phantom of the past like everything else. A thing from nowhere, made of nothing and used by no one.
Garún stepped carefully down the crumbled stone stairway and knocked on the cellar door. There was no light inside, but the glass in the door was unbroken. There was no response. Nothing moved inside. She knocked again. She had turned back and was heading up the stairs when someone opened the door.
* * *
An intensely focused eye measured her through the crack in the doorway. They both stood completely still, measuring each other up. Garún didn’t like the sound of the music buzzing in her headphones and slid them off her ears.
“Feigur?’
No response. The eye didn’t even blink.
“Viður sent me. I need … Well, I need delýsíð.”
The crack widened, the person inside moved away. Garún hesitated, gathering courage before she went in. The door clicked shut behind her.
The foyer was shut off from the rest of the house by black sheets hanging in the doorway. Feigur went through them without speaking to her. She followed him into the living room.
Windows were boarded up, curtained or simply painted black. There was hardly any furniture in the living room. The yellowed walls were bare and on the floor was a filthy mattress, the rest of it covered with empty bottles and junk. Torn rags and piles of garbage were in the corners of the room. A low coffee table sat in the middle, covered with full ashtrays, dirty plates and scratched vinyl records. There was no record player in sight. A pungent stench of decomposed food permeated the air. Feigur sat on the mattress by the table and stared at Garún. She pushed a few bottles out of the way with her foot and sat on the floor opposite him.
The huldumaður was gaunt and withered, his pale skin stretched over his skull like canvas. His long hair was thin and the beard unkempt and wispy, as if it was glued on. He was wearing a torn leather coat that barely hung on his frame. They remained silent for a while. He stared and said nothing. Finally, she couldn’t take it any longer.
“Viður said you were selling delýsíð.” He didn’t respond. “I need some. Liquid, not powder.”
Feigur sat still for a long while before he replied.
“Are you Garún?’
“Uh. Yes, that’s right.”
She was a bit taken aback by his knowing her name. Viður must have contacted him somehow.
“I’ve got delýsíð. Liquid. Unmixed. Pure. But it doesn’t come cheap.”
His voice was brittle and cracked like branches snapping underfoot.
Pure delýsíð. She’d never got close to anything like it before. Usually it was weak and thinned out. This meant she would have to approach the chemical in a completely different manner. She could mix it into the paint as usual, or use it instead of linseed oil on a painting, or spray a clear finish over a graffiti after it was done. She might as well skip using colours altogether and paint with a clear finish. The effects could be completely different. Maybe stronger, maybe more subversive. Her heart raced.
“All right.” She forced her voice to keep calm. “How much?’
“Ten millilitres go for five thousand. Fifty you can get for twenty, seventy-five would be—”
She stopp
ed him, holding up her hand. These were preposterous amounts.
“You’ve got nothing mixed, nothing cheaper?’
“No.”
“Why not? You could just mix it, right?’
No response. Right.
“Do you accept any trades?’ she ventured.
“That depends on what you have to offer.”
She started listing paintings, jewellery, but he shook his head.
“No, not objects. Memories.”
A shiver ran down her back. He was one of them. She should have been able to tell: the noisefiend screaming at her through the audioskull that this was not safe in the slightest.
The huldumaður sitting opposite her collected memories. Or rather, he fed upon them. Consumed them like little morsels. The experience was said to be an unfiltered ecstasy, incredibly clear and sensual. He was obviously an addict. It was probably the only thing keeping his body going. Without memories to feed on, he would soon become nothing but dust and a worn leather coat.
The delýsíð was integral to their plans. Without it the protest could fall short. She had to come through.
“What kind of memories?’
She immediately regretted asking. She was not sure if this was something she really wanted to know.
“Childhood memories. Sweet. Painful. Rare.”
“In turn for what?’
“If it’s good – one hundred millilitres. Otherwise … perhaps a minimum of fifty.”
“How do I know if you will like it?’
“There’s no way of knowing until after the fact.”
He tilted his head and she felt him reaching out, feeling for her emotions. It felt disgusting, invasive. She endured it for a while, then blocked him off.
“Hmm. Seventy-five minimum. Hundred max. Deal?’
She felt nauseous.
“Deal.”
Stealing memories was something that huldufólk had done in great excess, centuries ago when the gateways into hulduheimar still existed. When they were a shining empire, wealthy and powerful. They arrived like beautiful demons and robbed people of who they were. Garún felt sick at the thought of playing a part in that dark inheritance. This was deeply wrong. But she didn’t have a choice.
Feigur stood up and went for a moment into a back room. After a while he came back with two small soda bottles made from glass, sealed with ceramic stoppers. In them was a clear liquid. One was just above half-empty, the other had only a bottom fill. He put the bottles on the table. Garún flicked the ceramic plug off one of them and smelled the contents carefully from a distance, making sure not to breathe too heavily. She felt dizzy. It was without a doubt delýsíð. Very pure. She’d never seen anything like it.
Without saying another word she lay down on the mattress. Garún had heard enough horror stories to know how this happened.
“Can you choose what memory you take?’
“Sort of. Sometimes.”
Feigur sat next to her, almost as rigid and tense from excitement as she was from dread. He leaned in and she felt an odd, sour odour emitting from him.
“Will I know what you take?’ she asked with his grim face looming over her.
“No,” he responded.
“Good,” she managed to mutter before everything went dark.
* * *
Feigur slammed the door behind her. Garún stood shivering outside the cellar door. The lock clicked. She stared uncomprehendingly at the bottle of delýsíð in her hand. It was full to the brim. One hundred and fifty millilitres. She placed the bottle in her backpack, as if in a trance.
She went up the stairs and out into the backyard – the same way she’d came, but she didn’t quite remember what she was going to do next. It took her a while to recall how to get back. She checked Viður’s instructions on the crumpled note, just to be sure. She found herself staring at the rusty tricycle covered in wild grass and scattered sticks. Fallen branches from the dead trees littered the ground. It reminded her of something, but she didn’t know what.
Garún put on the headphones and started walking. She just wanted to get the hell away from that place. The music calmed something inside her and she walked aimlessly through the streets of the Forgotten Downtown, not caring what the tiny demon trapped in the skull was trying to tell her, just glad that someone was looking out for her, telling her to take care. It made her feel as if she wasn’t completely alone.
She was walking in circles. No, that couldn’t be. Garún stopped, looked around. She was at the same spot, almost in front of Feigur’s house again. She’d gone too far, crossed the boundaries in her thoughtlessness. Near the borders of Rökkurvík the streets circled in on themselves, deceiving and turning careless walkers around endlessly. No matter how far you walked you would never get anywhere. There was nothing outside of the Forgotten Downtown.
Garún felt sick and claustrophobic, as though she were a prisoner in a maze. She wanted out.
A blue hrævareldur floated nearby. Before she could stop herself she looked right into it. Her feet led her towards its warm and inviting flame. It floated further away and she followed. It knew where she was going. The fire would lead her home to safety.
Garún managed to stop herself with her toes just off the edge. Below her, black waves beat against the concrete harbour. The hrævareldur floated above the water, just out of reach. The sea was deathly cold. From the faint light cast by the hrævareldur something could be seen moving in the deep – something pale and massive under the surface. Tremors shook her body. This had been too close.
It was an arduous task to find the place described in Viður’s instructions. The house was weathered, even though there was no weather or sunlight in the Forgotten Downtown. There was no floor inside, wooden scraps and rusted debris covered the earthen foundation. The doorways were empty. Scraps of wallpaper hung on the walls. A rough, concrete staircase led to the upper floor.
Upstairs was bare concrete, open doorways, windows boarded shut. It was even colder here than downstairs. Only one room set itself apart. Iron pipes jutted out from the floor, thick and solid, in place for a bathroom, most likely. Someone had sprayed a galdrastafur on the middle of the wall. Garún sensed it before she saw it and realised she’d been heading towards it subconsciously from the moment she stepped inside the ruined building.
The sigil was an arcane shape, an esoteric form that spoke directly to the subconscious. The spray shimmered wetly, as if it had only been painted an hour ago. Its shape was of long arms stretching out in a curved, overlapping circle from the centre of the stave. A vortex, a black hole that devoured everything. Garún placed her palm on the centre of the galdrastafur.
The world crashed into her, and Garún felt as if her breath had been punched out of her lungs. Immediately the music exploded in her years.
The police.
* * *
She found herself inside a bathroom stall. Her hand rested on cold tiles, scribbled with illegible tags and lewd messages. The guiding symbol was not there. Loud dance music overwhelmed the deafening warning from her headphones. The noisefiend was going berserk. The police were close, accompanied by something worse. There was danger everywhere.
Garún barged out of the booth, still wobbly from the physical trauma that came with the shift in reality. The cramped bathroom was filled with men, reeking of alcohol, cigarettes and sweat. They laughed and cheered when she limped out of the stall, obviously thinking that she was with someone in there, and wasted by the look of it.
“Well, well, a blendingur! You’ve still to do one of those, Jói,” said a man dressed in a suit, pissing into a urinal.
“Jemmgh,” Jói slurred, and tried not to piss too much on the floor.
“How much do you charge, love? Or do you come free?’
“Where – am I?’ Garún finally managed to grunt. It was hard to breathe.
“Haha! The whore doesn’t even know where she is!’
A middle-aged man came up next to Garún and leaned in. He stan
k of cigars and brennivín.
“What’s a half-breed like you doing here? Go and whore yourself somewhere else!’
He tried to grab her, but Garún pushed him back as hard as he could. She spat in his face as he stumbled backwards and fell.
“Go fuck yourself, you fucking pig!’
She shoved her way past the men and out.
The club was packed to the doors. Modern spotlights cast multicoloured light over the crowd and tried its hardest to turn a regular living room floor into a dance floor. Garún looked around, bewildered. She didn’t recognise this place. Downtown clubs didn’t usually let huldufólk in, much less blendingar. She still knew that this wasn’t the same house she’d come from in the Forgotten Downtown. She’d shifted somewhere else. She made her way to a window and looked outside. She wasn’t on Hverfisgata, she was on Laugavegur. She wanted to vomit. This felt wrong. She didn’t know you could leap this far between places.
The noisefiend screamed in her headphones. People stared at her and even though she couldn’t hear what they were shouting she knew it wasn’t good. She had to get out before things got worse.
Then she saw them. They were not in uniform and almost indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd. But to her they were like jesters at a funeral. The police scanned the crowd for a face that didn’t belong. A safe gate, right. That idiot Viður. And she was a bigger idiot for trusting him.
One of the police guarded the door while the other two made their way through the dance floor. Garún kept low and retreated towards the stairway leading to the upper floor.
She looked back just before she was out of sight. That was when her eyes accidentally met one of them. Their gazes locked. He knew. Some drunkard stumbling down the stairs knocked into her and broke the deadlock. She dashed up the stairs as fast as she could, leaving behind a trail of outraged people with splashes of beer on their expensive shirts and dresses.
Upstairs, people sat on worn couches by tables sticky from spilled beer, smoking and drinking. She rushed past looking for an exit, a balcony, anything. The windows were of a decent size and she managed to tear one open. She reached into her backpack and fetched her last can of delýsíð paint. The humans stared on, bewildered, as she sprayed an arcane symbol on the middle of the floor before hoisting herself out of the window. Drunken men tried to grab Garún but were too late – she was out.
Shadows of the Short Days Page 11