Draugar

Scientists credited the abnormality to human behavior, namely global warming. Men in white coats filled up TV screens, wagging their fingers and expressing their disappointment in our collective efforts to preserve the planet.

I of course,

knew better. I am a man of science, not white coat material but a learned man,

nonetheless. But in my thirty-four years of existence, I have come to know of

realities that might perhaps push the frontiers of human existence as we know

it.

I could still

see the sun when the pavement received its first thin film of the strange

summer snow. I had inspected it, a scoopful in my palm. It was ordinary as was winter

snow. Unremarkable as it was, the phenomenon was not. There were some in the

scientific community who postulated at a possible return of the ice age.

These postulations were of no interest to me. I found the answer in my study. It was a clutter of a room, cramped impossibly with boxes and metal cabinets crowded with papers and notes. Perhaps to the eyes of an outsider, it would appear the chamber of a madman, but I couldn’t be bothered less by hypotheticals. Amongst the tireless collection was information that I no doubt believe contained the answer to the absurd occurrence. The snowfall was a symptom of a much bigger problem.

In the endless heap of notes, I fished out a volume, intricately bound. The pages were yellow with age and risked falling apart. The text contained within it were written in an irregular hand. Confident, slow, and fleshed out in certain places and urgent and sloppy in other places. It would appear to have changed many hands, but I knew for certain that this book was penned by a single gent; my great-great grandfather. How I came into possession of his volumes is irrelevant but what isn’t was the content.

He had been a sailor, a captain during the golden age of exploration. And much like any other sailor, he too thirsted after riches and glory. The promise of discovering a new land and stabbing it with the color of his nation was far too enticing an endeavor to pass up. His dreams were not ill founded for he knew sailing since he was a little rascal. He grew up to be a fine navigator but most importantly a sailor and captain of repute. The Crown of course had heard of the prodigious talent within their borders and after a mutually satisfying discussion agreed to fund a royal expedition to find the much-rumored southern continent. If it truly did exist, it would bring unending gold, riches and glory to their great nation and if it were to fail—as most expeditions in that were doomed to—then him and the crew would be remembered as heroes or better yet martyrs.

They set sail from the Port of Colombo, sailing through the treacherous deep waters of the south. The voyage was a perilous one, rife with raging storms and disease that claimed over half the crew. The writing sloped here. After umpteen days, lying on deck, weary and deathlike, he noticed a silhouette of a titanic avian species gliding just above the storm clouds, briefly visible during flashes of lightning.

He had at first dismissed it as hallucinations of a withering mind. Several months later the vessel would reach arrive at an unknown island somewhere south of Madagascar. Battered and splintered from the rough seas, the vessel would strike an unseen underwater structure, splitting the hull open. The ship began dipping into the icy waters and the captain steered the broken vessel towards the visible coastline as best as he could. Luck would soon fill their sails with puffing southward wind and guide them toward the narrow strip of a coastline.

The ship moored on the coast. Few of the surviving Ceylon sailors were claimed by the freezing depth of the sea. An unnatural tide yanked the moored vessel back and into the bottomless depth of the freezing sea. Of the fifty men who had set out only five remained. My great-great grandpa mentioned the peculiar landscape of the unclaimed island. The rocky terrain was carpeted with lichen and moss. A volcano poked out into the sky at a distance. There was not a single beast to be seen or heard. Even the blasted nocturnal cretins of the other continents seemed to be missing. Trekking through the island, they discovered weird patches of cabbage that though edible, resembled nothing like the vegetable they got back home. A stream sliced through the greenage, emerging from an unseen glacier. The stream quenched the sawing thirst of the sailors, but it was noticed to bear an eerie green hue. The color however did not alter the flavor.

The first few weeks saw the men erect rude structures afforded by their surrounding to keep out the chilly night wind. But it was when winter finally arrived, he writes hurriedly that the brief reprieve came to a chilling end. Mist and snow and frost descended upon the island. Icy winds whooshed down the ice bitten hills and whistled through the sparse foliage. So great was its velocity that their shelters were blown clean off into the misty unknown. Their little reservoir of the weird cabbages too was not spared. All streams slicing the island were frozen still. Without food and shelter, the men decided to make for the volcano. Perhaps it’s heat would stave off the ravenous chill of a devilish winter.

The men struggled to progress through the waist deep snow. It demanded extraordinary effort to power through the unfurling stretch of infinite snow. Great-great gramps had begun hearing voices in the numbing cold. Snow and frost settled upon, further burdening him and the others on their suicidal quest. He could barely peer a few feet ahead of him at a time. But something in him sensed another presence about them. After several days of grueling yomping, they arrived at the foothill.

He had forgotten how many men in total had set out on this quest, but he had no doubt that at least one had succumbed to frostbite while another Ceylon sailor seemed on the cusp of no return. His long captain’s cloak had helped him brave the storm until now but hunger clawing at his stomach walls and thirst sawing at his throat.

Here my great-great grandpa writes the word Draugar over and over and his hand slopes abruptly as if gripped by the tendrils of madness.

Just as they are to set on their final march, a tremor rocks the earth knocking the blizzard clear. Bits of snow frost and ice are unsettled at first but then snowball into an inescapable avalanche. The men attempt a futile escape but are swiftly swept under several feet of snow.

When he came to, it had to have been at least a day before he dug himself out of the claustrophobic mound around him. He breathed the winter air and looked heavenward. The skies were still overcast. He could no longer tell day from night. Reality only exerted itself in the form of survival instinct. With the mist lifting, he noticed streams of scarlet. He followed the jagged trail till he discovered the corpse of a crewmate, half eaten, mutilated. It appeared from the wounds that the seaman had been bitten, not by the fangs of a beast but rather human ones. Dull pangs of fear set into his cold bones.

A crew member had turned cannibal. He treaded carefully and it was not long before he stumbled upon more corpses. The older ones had entrails spilling out into the snow, all snow crusted. Jerked by a moment of vitality, he managed to evade a fatal blow from the sneaky cannibal. He had watched his every move, carefully waiting to pick his moment. His eyes he wrote bore a chilling lopsided sheen. He wore no expression but played a word on his colorless lips.

“Draugar.”

Over and over he spilled the name, another tremor rocked the earth, a deep split sounded somewhere, and a deafening roar filled the air. The volcano had erupted. Glowing lava snaked down the face of the mountain, hissing like a snake as it met snow. Glowing bits of volcanic rock were tossed several hundred feet into the air. Great-great gramps had taken a fatal knock and was stretched out on his back. His strength slipped away and with death only moments away, the cannibal was struck in the head by a shower of volcanic rocks.

The odor of Sulphur drew nearer, and he felt the prickle of swelling heat approaching rapidly. He closed his eyes expecting the end but instead he was seduced awake by a soothing warm voice.

Someone stood several paces away looking down at him. His hand slopes again but this time the strokes and lines are thicker, indicating a considerable strain of hand and mind. The man if he could be called that stood just gazing down at him. He appeared to be a shadow of a man. A silhouette in clear day, moving of its own will. But more striking were the protuberant glowing red eyes.

In those eyes he wrote, I tasted fear that consumed even my fear of death.

It is here that his writing ceases.

I learnt from my own father that great-great grandpa had somehow made it back home from the island that nobody has been able to find since. The old man was declared a lunatic and a murderer. The location of the island could never be ascertained despite countless voyages to the confirmed coordinates.

I understand that great-great grandpa lived the rest of his short life barely hinged to sanity. He would often talk to himself and spoke of strange and curious visions which only could be contained within a shade of delirium. Nobody since knows for sure what happened on that island, but I do.

How am I so certain?

Because I too hear a voice in my dreams, one that is not my own. I sense a presence in the shifting shadows of my home and in the chequered shades of the park I frequent. It began the day I dared open this accursed volume. I hear the tinkling of cutlery in the kitchen when I’m in my study. Dogs both domesticated and stray keep away from my home. My home feels oddly cold at times. I woke up to see the wretched name carved into my flesh and yet I have no recollection of the night before. And now I see snow in the thick of summer. I am not so far removed from reality that I would fail to notice these oddities. Whatever it was that drove great-great grandpa into the embrace of lunacy is here with me at this moment.

I fear great-great grandpa and his crew may have discovered a diabolical entity on the island. But I may have unleashed it into the human world. Because when I lean forward to look out the window, I can see the lines of the titanic avian soaring through the sky.

Winter is here to stay.