Dark Matter (19 page)

Soon after I got back inside, Isaak became restless. Not playful or hungry or wanting to go out, not looking for a place to squat. He moved about, panting, but ignoring the bowl of snow in the bunkroom. His ears were back and his head was low. His eyes were glassy. He was afraid.

‘Isaak?’

He ignored me.

I grabbed a lantern and a torch and stood in the middle of the room.

Isaak stopped a few feet from the north window. His hackles rose.

I held my breath, listening. My eyes darted from window to window.

Suddenly, Isaak shook himself. Then he turned to me and faintly wagged his tail.

I breathed out.

After that I couldn’t face going outside, so I skipped the five o’clock readings and wired another excuse to Bear Island. I feel bad about that. I don’t like to think that the rot is setting in. Tomorrow I’ll get back to my routine.

My routine. I cling to it. It’s all I’ve got. But I’m beginning to worry about time – that is, about being able to keep track of it. My wristwatch still won’t work, and today I discovered that the Stevenson’s self-timer has broken. This means that all I’ve got left to mark the time is Gus’ alarm clock. Tomorrow when I go outside, I’ll take it with me in my pocket, wrapped in a muffler to protect it from the cold. For now, it sits on the table in the main room.

It’s the only thing I’ve got left to tell me that the days are going by. There’s no longer any twilight at
midday, and the moon has dwindled to a lightless sliver. Tomorrow it will be gone.

Tomorrow it’s the dark of the moon.

Last night I learned what Bjørvik couldn’t tell me. I learned what happened to the trapper of Gruhuken.

I sat up late, writing and talking to Isaak. Around eleven, I let him out, and when he came back inside I put a bowl of snow for him in the bunkroom and we settled down to sleep.

Cold outside, twenty-five below. Inside, our breath crusted the bunkroom walls with hoar frost. I couldn’t get warm. I coaxed Isaak on to the bunk, but he soon jumped down. He curled up on the floor, but not for long. I couldn’t tell if he’d caught the restlessness from me, or if he was sensing something.

Despite two sleeping bags and the remaining reindeer hides, I couldn’t stop shivering. Eventually I went into the hall and unearthed our portable paraffin stove from beneath the dog harnesses, and set it up in
the bunkroom. Because of Isaak, this meant dragging the packing cases from the opposite wall and positioning the stove on top, where he couldn’t knock it down.

Much better.

I dream I’m in a rowing boat with Gus. The swell rocks us gently. It’s wonderfully peaceful. Together we peer over the side and watch the kelp swaying in the clear water.

The boat tilts slightly backwards, and I glance over my shoulder. A hand has risen from the sea to grasp the gunwale. I’m not frightened, merely determined. I won’t let that thing haul itself out.

I’m holding a large knife, and with a grimace of distaste I start sawing at the fingers. My blade snags in the flesh. I yank it free. I keep trying. It’s like cutting up a chicken when you’ve missed the joint and have to saw through the bone. I’m faintly disgusted, but I also find it satisfying.

The dream shifts. Now I’m in the sea, deep down in blackness. Again I’m not frightened, only disgusted. A drowned thing is clasping me in its arms. Together we roll in the slippery kelp. I can’t see its face, but I feel its cheek pressed against mine, cold and soft as mouldering leather.

Now I’m tied to the bear post. Now I’m afraid. I can’t see. I can’t speak. I have no tongue. I smell
paraffin. I hear the crackle of flames. I know that someone nearby is holding a torch.

Now I hear the clink of metal dragged over rocks. Dread squeezes my heart. It’s coming closer. I can’t get away. I’m bound hand and foot. Clink. Clink. Closer. The terror is overwhelming. It’s coming for me. I can’t move I can’t
move
. . .

With a cry I woke up.

Isaak nosed my face, his whiskers brushing my cheek. I lay gasping and shuddering, my heart pounding so hard that it hurt.

I was cold. My sleeping bag was damp. Putting out a hand, I felt the wall. Wet. It took me a moment to realise what had happened. The stove had melted the hoar frost.

The dream was still with me. I knew that the terror I had felt had not been my own. I thought of the blotchy stains on the bear post. The sound of metal dragged over rocks.

That’s when I remembered what I’d forgotten before: the rusty relics which we found when we first came to Gruhuken. We buried them to make the place safe for the dogs. Wire. Gaffs. Knives. Big, rusty knives: the sort that you use once you’ve gaffed your seal and dragged it ashore.

Flensing knives.

I didn’t make it to the slop pail. I vomited in the doorway till my belly ached.

Isaak padded after me and lapped up the sick.

Shaky as an old man, I hobbled to the kitchen. I filled Isaak’s bowl and set it down. I watched him sniff it. I scooped water into a mug and tried to drink. My teeth were chattering. I couldn’t swallow. I kept seeing flashes from the dream.

Flensing knives.

When men know they won’t be found out, they will do anything.

When I was eight, I saw some older boys torture a dog. At first they only kicked it. Then one of them took out his penknife and slit its eyes. I remember watching it stagger down the street. I was desperate for its suffering to end; please please let it be run over. But the creature blundered across the road and round the corner, and when I got there it was gone. For weeks I prayed that it had died quickly. But young as I was, I suspected that a God who allows such cruelty wouldn’t have cared about bringing it to an end.

I don’t want to think about what they did to the trapper of Gruhuken. I can still hear the clink of metal as they dragged the gaffs over the stones; as they threw down the knives and got to work.

And after they’d finished with the knives, that’s
when the paraffin came in, and the torches. I wish I could believe that he was dead by then, but I don’t think he was.

I don’t want this in my head. I wish I could scour my mind clean.

It’s two in the morning but I dread going back to sleep. If the dream came again . . .

So instead, I’m going to deal with this hoar frost. Bjørvik told me a trick about that. You nail blankets to the walls and ceiling, and somehow that stops it collecting.

There. I’ve done it. I’ve lined the bunkroom with blankets. Having to concentrate on hammering in the nails has steadied me a bit.

Even though it’s just occurred to me that what I’ve created is a padded cell.

I thought it wanted me gone, but now I know better.

I must have fallen asleep, because I woke huddled in my bunk. The window was a faint charcoal oblong in the dark. Isaak stood in the middle of the room. His hackles were up, his ears flat back.

Outside, near my head, a step on the boardwalk. A heavy, wet, irregular tread.

Sweat chilled my skin. I lay frozen, listening to the footsteps pass slowly down the boardwalk towards the front of the cabin. I groped in the bedclothes for my torch. Isaak came and leaned, shivering, against my bunk. I found my torch but didn’t switch it on. I watched something dark move past the bunkroom window.

Clutching my torch like a talisman, I swung my legs over the side of the bunk. I stumbled into the main room. Isaak followed.

I dreaded to hear the steps halt at the porch, but they continued past as if it didn’t exist. Feeling my way, I shuffled towards the north window. Nothing. I turned to the west window. There. Half seen at the edge. Something dark.

The steps on the boardwalk ceased.

I waited. Isaak stood behind me, panting with fear. My breath smoked. I began to shiver. Still I waited.

At last I couldn’t stand it any longer, and went and huddled in my sleeping bag. Isaak crawled under my bunk.

I listened for an hour. It didn’t come back.

For Isaak’s sake, I decided to create a semblance of normality. I got up and pulled on some clothes, and lit the stove in the main room, and the lamps, and made the cabin as bright and warm as I could. I opened a tin of pemmican and emptied it on to one of the Royal Doulton plates, and watched him gulp it down,
rattling the plate across the floor as he licked it clean. To my surprise, I found that I was hungry too, so I scrambled four eider-duck eggs with half a pound of cheese. But once it was ready, I couldn’t eat, so I gave it to Isaak.

By then he’d stopped trembling, although he stayed close at my heels. That’s how it happened. I’d washed up and was putting things on the shelves when I turned and he couldn’t get out of the way and I fell over. I crashed against the table and sent the alarm clock flying.

It broke. Something inside me broke, too.

‘Stupid fucking
stupid
dog!’ I shouted. ‘Stupid! Stupid!’ I went on shouting, kicking and lashing out with my fists. He didn’t try to get away; he cowered with his tail between his legs, not understanding what he’d done, only knowing that he was in the wrong because he’s a dog and must take his beating.

Suddenly I realised what I was doing. I fell to my knees, I flung my arms around him and started to cry. Big jerky heaving sobs. I cried till I was exhausted. By this time, Isaak had extricated himself and retreated to a safe distance. I think my crying scared him more than anything.

Drained, I got up and went to the kitchen and washed my face. I didn’t recognise myself in the
shaving mirror. Who is this haggard, hairy man with the wild eyes and the grimy furrows down his cheeks?

That’s when I knew I couldn’t do this any more.

‘All
right
,’ I said out loud. ‘You’ve won. Gruhuken is yours. I’ve had enough. I’m beaten. I’m getting out.’

At this time in the morning, Ohlsen on Bear Island would be asleep, but there might be someone awake at the Longyearbyen wireless station. As soon as they received my Mayday, they’d wake Gus and Algie, who would wake Eriksson, and the
Isbjørn
would set off . . .

I’d forgotten about the hoar frost. It wasn’t only in the bunkroom. Why should it be? And I’d done a good job of warming up the cabin. The Eddystone was beaded with moisture. So was the Gambrell and the Austin, and all my spare valves. Wet. Ruined. Useless.

That was a while ago – although of course I don’t know exactly how long, because I haven’t got a clock. I’ve mopped up as best I can, and hung the towels over the stove to dry. I don’t know why I did this. Except that I’m the wireless operator, and I don’t like leaving my equipment in a mess.

When Bear Island receives no transmissions for two days, they’ll wire Longyearbyen to send help. Even if a ship can still get through, it’ll take another two days. So that’s four days at the earliest. Four days.

I try to believe that I can hold out till then. Come
on, Jack, you’ve made it this far, just a little longer. But things are different now. There’s no moon.

Four days. It’ll be over by then.

I feel worst for Isaak. That makes me really angry. It’s not his fault. He didn’t ask to be brought here. It’s not his
fault.

My writing on the page is a deranged scrawl, but I know that I’m not mad. This is not a delusion. It’s not some nerve storm brought on by solitude and dark. Something made Gus and Algie experience what they did. Something gave Bjørvik nightmares and opened the door of the doghouse and frightened the huskies away. Something terrified Isaak and trod the board walk outside.

Another thing just occurred to me as I was feeding logs to the stove. The trapper’s hut. When we tore it down, we chopped it up and added the logs to the woodpile. By now, I must have brought some of them inside.

And those times in the storm, when the wind blew the smoke down the stovepipe and out into the room. That black smoke griming the walls, making me cough. The trapper’s hut. I’ve breathed it in.

It’s inside me.

The stillness is back. The dead cold windless dark.
That’s
the truth. The dark. We’re the anomaly. Little flickering sparks on the crust of this spinning planet – and around it the dark.

Just now, I looked back to the start of this journal.I don’t recognise the man who wrote it. Did he really spend a whole summer in endless light? Was he really so eager to reach Gruhuken? That strikes me as horrible.

Once he wrote that in the Arctic he would be able to see clearly,
right through to the heart of things.
Well you got what you wanted, didn’t you, you poor fool? This is the truth: what walks here in the dark.

Some people think of death as a door into a better place.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face
. . . What if it’s not like that? What if there is no enlightenment, and it’s all just dark? What if the dead know no more than we?

Once when I was a boy I asked Father about ghosts, and he said, Jack, if they existed,
don’t
you think Flanders would be full of them? And I said, do you mean they don’t exist? And he said, maybe. Or maybe we just can’t hear them.