Because of the cliffs, we couldn’t see much. We saw the sky turn bloody and inflamed as the sun struggled to rise. We saw a sliver of fire. An abortive dawn. The sun sank back, defeated.
Gone.
I shut my eyes and it was still there, blazing behind my eyelids. I opened them. Gone. All that remained was a crimson glow.
‘So that’s that,’ Gus said quietly.
Four months without the sun. It doesn’t seem real.
In the doghouse, the dogs began to howl. ‘They feel it too,’ said Gus.
I forced a smile. ‘Gus, I think they’re just hungry.’
His mouth twisted. ‘Well, they’ll have to wait a few hours. Are you coming in?’
‘In a bit.’ I still had time before I was due to
transmit the readings. I didn’t want to lose any of that crimson glow.
Listening to the diminishing crunch of Gus’ boots, I watched it fade behind the cliffs, like embers growing cold. The moon wasn’t yet up, but there was still enough light to see by. No wind. The dogs had stopped howling.
Out of nowhere, for no reason, I was afraid. Not merely apprehensive. This was deep, visceral, pounding dread. My skin prickled. My heart thudded in my throat. My senses were stretched taut. My body knew before I did that I was not alone.
Thirty yards away on the rocks, something moved.
I tried to cry out. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
It crouched at the edge of the rocks. It was streaming wet. It had just hauled itself from the sea. And yet the stillness was absolute. No sound of droplets pattering on snow. No creak of waterproofs as it rose. Slowly. Awkwardly.
It stood. It faced me. Dark, dark against the sea. I saw its arms hanging at its sides. I saw that one shoulder was higher than the other. I saw its wet round head.
I knew at once that it wasn’t some trapper from a nearby camp, or a polar mirage, or that hoary excuse, ‘a trick of the light’. The mind does not suggest
explanations which don’t fit the facts, only to reject them a moment later. I knew what it was. I knew, with some ancient part of me, that it wasn’t alive.
Behind me the cabin door creaked open. Yellow light spilled on to the snow.
‘Jack?’ called Gus. ‘It’s nearly twelve thirty. The transmission . . .’
I tried to reply. I couldn’t.
The rocks were empty. It was gone.
I stood breathing through my mouth. I stammered an answer to Gus; I said I was fine, told him I was coming in soon.
He shut the door and the light blinked out.
I’ve never felt such reluctance as I felt then, but I made myself – I
willed myself
– to take my electric torch from my pocket and walk down the beach and on to those rocks.
The snow crust was brittle as glass beneath my boots. Pristine. No tracks. No marks of a man hauling himself out of the sea. I’d known that there wouldn’t be. But I’d needed to see for myself.
I stood with my hands at my sides, hearing the slap of waves and the clink of ice.
The dread had drained away, leaving bewilderment. My thoughts whirled. It can’t be. But I saw it. It can’t be. But I did see it.
And I know, although I can’t say
how
I know, that
what I saw on those rocks was the same figure I saw at the bear post, two months ago at first dark.
It’s real. I saw it.
It isn’t alive.
All day I’ve been trying to get it straight in my mind. What did I see? Should I tell the others?
When I got back to the cabin, it was 12.29, and I had to scramble to do the transmissions. I was two people. One was a wireless operator pedalling the bicyle generator; clipboard in his left hand, tapping the key with his right. The other was a man who’d just seen a ghost rise out of the sea.
I can’t remember what I did after that. But I remember looking around me at the cabin. The orange glow of lamplight, the socks and dishcloths on the line above the stove. Gus and Algie tucking into Paterson’s Oat Cakes and Golden Syrup. I didn’t feel part of it. They were on one side, I was on the other. I thought, how can all this exist in the same world as
that?
Somehow, I got through the rest of the day. And oddly enough, I slept like a log.
It was Algie’s turn to do the readings today, thank God. I was on kitchen duty. I clung to it the way they say a drowning man clings to straws.
For breakfast I made what Algie calls ‘boardinghouse kedgeree’. I told myself,
this
is reality. The smell of coffee. The buttery taste of salt cod and hard-boiled egg.
I didn’t set foot outside the cabin, except to go to the outhouse. I scrubbed the kitchen and washed clothes. Made cheese scones and seal meat hash for lunch. Tried to read one of the professor’s periodicals. Saw to the transmissions.
For dinner I made my pemmican stew. Pemmican is a mix of lean and fat beef, dried and compressed into blocks with albumen. You break it into lumps and boil it with water. Too much water and you’ve got a slimy sludge; too little and it’s disgusting. I usually get it about right. I add potatoes, dried vegetables, and my secret ingredient – Oxo – for a salty, filling stew.
Concealment is hard work. I was almost too exhausted to eat. Algie, too, seemed tired, and Gus was out of sorts and picked at his food. None of us suggested the wireless, and we turned in early.
I’m writing this in my bunk. Behind my head, scuffles are coming from the doghouse. Tomorrow it’s
my turn to do the readings. I’m dreading it. I’m going to take Isaak.
I can’t face telling the others, not yet. I wish I could believe that what I saw on the rocks was all in my mind, because then it wouldn’t be real. But I know that’s not true. I felt that dread. I saw what I saw.
Gruhuken is haunted.
There. I’ve said it. That’s why Eriksson didn’t want to bring us here. That’s why the crew always slept on the ship, and were so anxious to leave before first dark.
But what does it mean, ‘haunted’?
I looked it up in Gus’ dictionary.
To haunt: 1. To visit (a person or place) in the form of a ghost. 2. To recur (memory, thoughts, etc.), e.g. he was haunted by the fear of insanity. 3. To visit frequently. [From ON heimta,to bring home, OE hamettan, to give a home to.]
I wish I hadn’t read that. To think that something so horrible should have its roots in something so – well, homely.
But what
is
it?
It’s an echo, that’s what it is. An echo from the past. I’ve read about that; it’s called ‘place memory’, a well-known idea, been around since the Victorians. If something happens in a place – something intensely emotional or violent – it imprints itself on that place; maybe by altering the atmosphere, like radio waves, or by affecting matter, so that rocks, for example, become
in some way charged with what occurred. Then if a receptive person comes along, the place plays back the event, or snatches of it. You simply need to be there to pick it up. And who better to do that than a wireless operator? Ha ha ha.
Yes, this has to be it. I don’t think I’m clutching at straws. What else could it be? It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.
And it means, too, that what I saw on the rocks doesn’t actually exist. It did once, but it doesn’t now. That’s what I’ve got to hold on to.
What I saw was only an echo.
But an echo of what?
It’s five in the morning and I’ve got to sort this out before I do the seven o’clock reading.
An echo of what?
It has to be something that happened here. Something bad. I know it was bad, because of the dread.
I’ve flicked through my books on Spitsbergen, but I didn’t find any mention of Gruhuken. And I’ve been over this journal and reread what I wrote about the men who were here before us. There isn’t much, and I’m not sure how accurate it is, because at the time, I
wasn’t interested. I didn’t think it was important. First there were trappers, then miners, that’s what Eriksson said. All those bones, and the mining ruins, and that tangle of wire on the beach. The claim signs. The hut.
That hut. The desolation when I crawled inside. Did some trapper or miner do away with himself in there? Is that what this is about?
I need to know. It’s a compulsion, a dreadful curiosity. The same curiosity, I suppose, which made me stop on the Embankment that night, and watch them pull that body from the Thames.
Time to get dressed and see to those bloody readings. I’m definitely taking Isaak.
Should I tell the others what I saw?
Three days since I saw it, and nothing. No problems yesterday doing the readings. Isaak wasn’t the slightest bit uneasy. He tried to dig a hole under the Stevenson screen.
That gave me courage, so I took him with me to look over the beach and the mining ruins for clues. Of course I didn’t find anything. Not in the dark, with everything covered in snow. And to be honest, I couldn’t bring myself to stay out there for long. To
make myself feel less of a coward, I went to the bear post and cut down Algie’s ‘flag’: that dead fulmar which has been dangling there for weeks. I thought it would have rotted, but of course it’s been too cold. Isaak demolished it in minutes.
Three days without incident, and I’m feeling a little better.
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
She was right, old Marie Curie. I was frightened because I didn’t understand what I saw. Now that I do – or at least have a working hypothesis – I can deal with it.
I’ll probably have to tell the others at some point, but not yet. Talking about it would make it real.
That makes me think of Mother. She was a great one for not talking about things. She always refused to discuss what was wrong with Father. She used to say, no, Jack, it’ll only make it real. That used to infuriate me. I’d say, but it is real. And she’d say, well, more real, then. And she was right.
This afternoon, out of the blue, Algie asked if I wanted to come dog-sledging, and suddenly I did, very much. It’s exactly what I need: hard physical work. To hell with everything else. I’ve been feeling a bit sorry for Algie. He’s not a complete fool, he knows he’s been getting on our nerves, and he knows that Gus prefers me. And I think he feels bad about that
business with the seal, and the dogs’ teeth. Maybe asking me to go sledging was his way of building bridges.
The sledge was behind the outhouse, where it had frozen fast, so we had to hack it free. Then we had to harness the dogs and clip them to their traces. They knew at once what was up, and went wild, because they
love
to run. And Isaak must have told the others that I’m OK, because they were actually quite well behaved with me.
The sledge is hardwood with steel-shod runners, and virtually indestructible: it runs on snow, ice, even naked rock. Algie and I stood on the back, and as soon as he unhooked the brake, we were off: the dogs running silently and in earnest, in Eskimo fantail formation, which looks chaotic compared to the European twoby-two, but turns out to be strangely effective.
God, it was exhilarating. We jolted and shook so violently that I was nearly flung clear. Didn’t bother with headlamps; you see more without them, as your eyes adjust to starlight and snow glow. We rattled west, over the thick pebbly ice of the stream, then past the rocks. No time to be scared. Not with the patter of paws and the scrape of the sledge, the dogs’ tails curling to right or left; and now and then the sharp smell as one of them defecated. It was fast and intense, vividly alive.
Algie doesn’t use a whip, he just calls
ille-ille
for right, or
yuk-yuk
for left, and they turn. We ran south over snow-covered shingle, along the edge of the Wijdefjord. Isaak, at the far right of the fantail, kept glancing round at me. Once, he decided he’d had enough, and doubled back and jumped on to the sledge. I couldn’t help laughing as I shoved him off. ‘No hitching a lift, you lazy brute!’
Algie halted to rest the team, turning the sledge on its side so they couldn’t run off with it. Upik and Svarten, the most experienced, lay down sedately and cooled their bellies, while the others rolled in the snow or chewed it, or stood panting, their long tongues lolling.
Algie went to help Jens and Anadark, who’d got tangled up, and I ambled over to say hello to Isaak. His back was sprinkled with snow, but his fur is so thick that it didn’t melt. Nosing my thigh, he leaned against me. No jumping up, he’s not that sort of dog.
To the south, the fjord thrust deep into the mountains. Somewhere on the other side was the hut of that trapper friend of Eriksson’s, but I couldn’t see any lights. The mountains were deep charcoal, streaked with grey snow. The sea was black.
I thought of the way home, past the rocks, and shivered.
Until then, I’d assumed that if I told anyone, it
would be Gus. But now, as I watched Algie bending over the dogs, I had a sudden urge to blurt it out to him.
The oddest thing happened to me the other day on the rocks
. . .
My next thought was, what if he thinks I’m losing my nerve? He’ll tell Gus. What if they start to wonder whether they can rely on me?