The Berserker

Peter had spent another alcohol fuelled evening in the Duck and Goose, leering over a surprise visit from Audrey Bond in her low cut dress, while she cried over something about her chickens being decimated by a wolf, and he had woken with a hangover so severe that he wanted to hide in a dark room with a gallon of black coffee. Also at the pub was Bruce Walker, who was complaining that a pack of foxes had killed his dead wife’s dog, and Robin Hallsall, who had just got back from the hospital after spending the day with his wife because she was suffering panic attacks after her 3 cats were mutilated by, what must have been, an escaped tiger from a nearby safari park.

“The darndest thing,” he had said, “Was that there was lipstick on the cat’s fur.”

The bang on the back door was not the thing he wanted hear as he rested his head on the kitchen table, so all he could muster was a grunt to answer.

“Pete.”

He opened his eyes and groaned as he realised that Pete was him and whoever had just called it through the letterbox would want him to respond, or even open the door for them.

“Pete, you in there.”

He closed his eyes and sucked the drool that was trying to make its way from his mouth, wondering if he ignored the world, he would no longer be part of it.

Another bang on the door forced another groan, but this time he lifted his head from the table and stood up, keeping his eyes closed as he shuffled to the door.

“If this isn’t a blonde coming to offer me some fun, you better have a gun,” he said as he turned the key.

Marcus rushed through the door, followed by Wilson and then Aimee-Lou.

“You left the key in the door Pete,” he said, annoyed. “And why aren’t you at work?”

“Why aren’t you at school?” he responded, still not opening his eyes.

“’orrible Owen is dead,” Marcus said from the sink as he filled the kettle.

Peter opened his eyes and looked across to the sink. He thought about what was said, and then wondered why Marcus was filling the kettle as he didn’t like anything with hot water.

“And Bob the bog,” Aimee-Lou added.

“Bob the bog is dead?” Pete asked disbelievingly.

“Killed by an axe apparently.”

Wilson looked at Aimee-Lou angrily and shook his head.

“It was a Berserker,” Marcus said from across the kitchen, as he spooned sugar into a mug.

Pete moved back to the table and sat back down as the kettle began to whistle on the stove. He rested his head on his arms and closed his eyes against the world, only opening them when the clink of a glass on the table disturbed him.

Marcus had placed a shot of orange juice and 2 paracetamol on the table in front of Pete, and then walked back to the mug and stirred it continuously by flicking the spoon on the inside of it. He returned to the table and placed the mug in front of Peter without saying a word, and then grabbed a chair and sat opposite him.

Pete picked up the tablets and threw them into the back of his mouth, picking up the orange juice and swilling the mouthful down, paracetamol’s and all, and then turned the glass upside down and slammed it onto the table.

“What?” he said, as he turned the mug so the handle faced him.

Wilson grabbed another chair and also sat opposite Pete, while Aimee-Lou chose the chair at the end of the wooden dining table.

“We arrived at school today to find the police swarming all over it with paramedics and forensics,” Marcus said. “We tried to get in but they said that there had been an incident and the school was not opening today. When we asked them what the incident was, Mr Crown, he’s the head teacher.”

Peter nodded, knowingly.

“I knew that,” he said.

“Well, he said that Bob the bog had been in an accident whilst he was cleaning the history class, and ‘orrible Owen had also had an accident in the same class.”

Peter swigged the coffee and closed his eyes as the sweetness caressed his tongue and throat. He placed the mug down and looked at his brother.

“And you three are guessing that this was a Berserker, right?” he asked him. “Just because it’s coming up to the total eclipse, you think that Berserker’s are invading the mainland again and ravaging humans.” He shook his head and laughed lightly. “It’s just a myth guys, a legend that no-one even knows is true.”

“It’s not exactly like that,” Aimee-Lou piped in quietly. “Mr Owen knew it was true.”

Peter laughed again, louder this time.

“’orrible Owen would tell you girls anything to get you in that janitors cupboard in his class,” he said. “That is why he never moved from that room, so he could take the year 11’s in there and have his wicked way with them.”

Pete continued to laugh as he gestured poking a circle with his finger. He stopped laughing when Marcus spoke up.

“Aimee-Lou and Lana Booth went to Holy Island on their own and found a baby troll that they brought back and were keeping in the treehouse. We decided to take it to Mr Owen, as he knows about Norse mythology, and he said he would keep it in the school with him.” Peter swigged the coffee without interrupting. “We watched him make up a bed in the janitors cupboard for Clive, and then we...,”

“Who the hell is Clive?” Peter asked, with a severely creased forehead.

Marcus looked at Aimee-Lou sheepishly and then back to Pete.

“They named the troll Clive,” he said.

“Jesus Christ,” Pete said under his breath, “Did they dye its hair green too?”

Marcus looked at Wilson, who shook his head in a, best you don’t tell him that bit, way.

“So we broke in to the class today to get Cli, the troll, back, and he was gone from the cupboard.”

“We also saw a footprint like the ones that were at the island,” Wilson added. “And a lot of blood.”

Peter looked at them all individually as he patiently waited for the headache to pass, or at least subside, and he stewed over the story Marcus had just said as he thought about the legends that he had heard when he was growing up, and his own incident at Blaise Pool.

“You never go to Holy Island around the total eclipse,” his grandpa would say, “The Berserker’s would have you.”

He thought about all the random things his grandpa would say about the trolls, as though he had had first-hand experience when it came to dealing with them.

“The local pets and wildlife would be picked off one by one, herd by herd,” he had told him. “And when the pets and livestock were gone, they would start on the humans. They would grow bigger with each kill, a little a first, as the blood of the animals would fill their systems, and bigger and stronger as the human blood would run through their veins. Only they can stop them.” His grandfather paused and smiled. “Either that or the wheel of heaven,” he added.

“Do they ever get smaller grandpa,” Pete had asked him, “You know, if they didn’t get more blood.”

“Only they can make them go back to normal, young Peter,” his grandfather said, with a bony pointed finger, “But they will decrease in size over time, until the next time.”

“We should go to the island and see if it has returned there,” Pete suggested calmly. “We need to find out if the legend is true.”

Pete flicked his eyes away as though there was something he wasn’t telling them.

“We shouldn’t go back,” Aimee-Lou said as she stood up. “Mr Owen said we shouldn’t go back.”

Wilson stood up and put his hand out to Aimee-Lou.

“It’s okay Aims, just calm down,” he said, as he turned to Pete. “If we go, we all stay together, and I mean at arm’s length together.” He stared at Peter, waiting for a response, holding an attitude about him to say that this request was not going to be up for negotiation or overrule by age. “Mr Owen told us a few things about the trolls, and about his encounter with them when he was a kid, so there are things that we know that are true.” Wilson put on his best vice of sincerity. “We need your help Pete, but it is all of us in this together, and you need to do as we say sometimes, not just what you think is better because we are a couple of dumb kids.”

Peter looked at Wilson as he gave his little speech, with no emotion at all. He took the words in to his jumbled mind and let them stir around while he thought of his reply.

“Okay,” he said as he walked towards the staircase.

Wilson looked at Marcus with his mouth agape.

“Well that was accepted easier than I thought it would be,” he said, half laughing in shock.

“Definitely,” Marcus agreed as he nodded his head.

Pete came back down the stairs dressed in jeans and a thick jumper, and he had a pair of heavy duty walking boots that clomped on the floorboards as he entered the kitchen. He grabbed his keys from the hook next to the American style fridge freezer, and then pointed at Aimee-Lou.

“Where’s your friend?” he asked her randomly. “Maybe she should come if you went there together.”

“Lana had to go to see her grandmother today, but she said she would meet me later on at the treehouse.”

Aimee-Lou blushed as she spoke softly to Peter, as she had a huge crush on him, as it wasn’t often he actually acknowledged she existed.

“Fair answer,” he said with a smile, which caused her to blush even more.

Pete spotted the second blush, and knew instantly that she fancied him.

“Ready?” he asked Marcus and Wilson.

“Were did your hangover go?” Wilson asked him as they walked to the door.

“Miracle pills,” he answered.

“So you believe us?” Marcus asked him suspiciously.

He had seen it before with Pete when he just went along with something to see where it took him, and he was thinking that this was one of those times.

Peter stopped and lifted his thick jumper and t-shirt up to reveal his belly. There were three parallel scars that stretched from his belly button to the top of his ribs, and they were white against his olive coloured skin.

“What the hell,” Marcus said as he got in closer to look. “Do mum and dad know?”

Peter lowered his clothing and opened the door.

“They know about the scars,” he told him. “But they think it was barbed wire.”

They all climbed in to the RAV4 and clicked the seatbelts into place as Pete turned to look at Aimee-Lou in the back. He pointed at her left cheek and the line that was healing.

“When I saw that, I knew you were telling the truth,” he said.

“What happened?” Aimee-Lou asked him, shyly.

Pete started the RAV4 and accelerated toward Holy Island.

“When I was 11, me and Mickey Davis broke every rule that we had ever been told about Holy Island,” he said as he shifted the gear stick roughly. “Don't go there in the wintertime, and don’t go there in the dark were the obvious ones, but we also broke the ones that told us to not wear bright colours, always be quiet and absolutely do not leave the boat on the island side of the water. I remember it was December 21^st, because it was the day that we broke up from school, and we decided to ride our bikes to Blaise Pool as we had been talking about the Norse mythology in ‘orrible Owen’s history class that morning. He had told the class to keep away from the island as there were bad things that could happen there if we didn’t follow the rules. Mikey asked him what the bad things were, but all he said was that he had first-hand experience and that we should all follow his instructions. So we got to the pool and we used the dingy to row across to the island. Now we were a couple of bone heads who thought we knew everything, and we decided to wear the brightest colours we had in our wardrobes, which for me was a bright blue and yellow Hawaiian shirt and a pair of red shorts,”

“Shorts in December,” Wilson commented.

“Bloody freezing too,” Pete added. “And Mickey had an orange flame t-shirt with a pair of rainbow Bermuda shorts.” They all laughed at the sight Mickey must have been. “When we got to the island on the boat we saw the footprints that were in the mud, and decided that we would try to see if ‘orrible Owen had been telling us BS. Mickey had a fog horn that he had stolen from his dad’s shed, and he pressed the button to release the gas. The noise was immense, echoing off the bare trees in the middle of the island and quaking the walls of crumbled church. We ran around like the kids in Lord of the Flies, just causing as much noise and disturbance as we could, thinking that the legends were just that.

Pete stopped talking and slightly bowed his head,

“What is it?” Marcus asked.

He thought he could see a slight welling of tears in his big brother’s eyes, and he felt uncomfortable at the thought that he might burst into tears.

“What happened, Pete?” Wilson asked from the backseat. “Something happened to Mickey didn’t it?”

Pete nodded as he stared back at the road.

“I didn’t hear anything because of the noise I was making,” he said, clearing his throat and trying to control himself. “I just thought he was pissing around, as he always did, until I saw the blood seep through his ridiculous rainbow shirt. He tried to call my name, but the Berserker had sliced through is vocal cords.”

He paused again, and this time there was a tear that dropped from his eye.

“What did you do?” Wilson asked him, fascinated and sad.

“I ran at that ugly freak,” he said with gritted teeth. “I ran and I jumped on him with my fists pounding into his face and chest. I remember screaming Mickey’s name as I hit the troll over and over, until fluids started to spurt from it. I pounded and pounded until a noise filled the darkened skies, and I had to place my hands over my ears to stop my drums from rupturing.”

“What happened to Mickey?” Marcus asked.

Peter was crying now, something that Marcus had never actually seen happen before, and he struggled to talk as he gulped back his emotion.

“I grabbed him and I dived into the freezing waters, holding him by the collar of the stained red shirt as I waded out as far as I could until my feet no longer touched the lake bed. I attempted to swim with him, trying to use one arm like they had shown us in swimming time at school, but the cold started to freeze my joints and organs, stopping me from moving anything, and we both started to sink.”

“How did you get across?” Aimee-Lou asked, herself with tears falling.

“I woke in hospital two days later,” he said. “I remember looking down and seeing my whole body was pretty much wrapped in a bandage, and when I touched it with my hands, I saw that the ends of my fingers were black and had blisters on them.” He wiped his cheeks and sniffed deeply. “They said that a farmer was manuring the field behind the pool and he had heard the wailing noise so he came to investigate. He pulled me from the water and massaged my chest on the bank until I came back. He said that I tried to say Mickey’s name so he went into the water to find him, but there was no sign. The police divers pulled his body from the pool on Christmas day.”

“Oh no,” Aimee-Lou said as she put her hands over her mouth.

“Maybe if I hadn’t dragged him into the water, he would still be here.”

“How do you know he wasn’t dead before you did?” Wilson said. “That isn’t your fault Pete, no fricking way.”

“Where was I?” Marcus asked, slightly confused that he knew nothing of what his brother had gone through.

“Remember the Christmas you spent with Aunt Julia when our house flooded?”

“Yeah sure,” he said, “I had sausage and mash for Christmas dinner.”

“Did you ever see the flood? Was the furniture any different, or the carpets?”

Marcus drifted off into his memory.

“Come to think of it, you're right,” he said, as a look of realisation came across his face.

“I know I am,” he confirmed.

“And you didn’t feel it slash you?” Wilson asked.

“Not a thing,” Pete said as he shook his head. “The doctors said that the only thing that saved me, apart from the farmer, was the freezing water. It slowed my metabolism down so I didn’t lose much blood.”

“The black on your fingers was frostbite, wasn’t it?” Aimee-Lou asked him.

“So they said, yeah.”

Marcus was still searching his memory when something occurred to him.

“How did they get the boat back?”

“Do you remember the fox attacks on the local pets that Christmas?”

“Vaguely,” he answered.

“Well there was talk at the time that the trolls had used the boat to get to the mainland and feed on them.”

Aimee-Lou caught her breath in the back.

“What is it?” Wilson asked his sister.

“I haven’t checked or fed Flo since Sunday,” she said, horrified.

Marcus turned quickly around from the front seat and looked at Wilson, whose eyes were wide.

Wilson shook his head slowly so Marcus could pick up on his thoughts, and he kept his stare from Aimee-Lou.

“We’re here,” Pete said as he pulled on the handbrake, and Wilson breathed a sigh of relief.

Telling her about her rabbit was something he would need to do, but now was not the time.

The boat trip to the island was fairly quiet as everyone thought about Peter’s story, apart from Marcus saying how he couldn’t believe he knew nothing about it until now.

Pete jumped from the boat and pulled on the mooring rope to drag the front end out of the water, and then offered his hand to help Aimee-Lou out.

“Thank you kind sir,” she said with a smile.

He smiled back and released her hand to turn and look at the island. This had been the first time since the incident that he had been back.

As he walked to the spot of the attack Marcus and Wilson were on high alert, as this was the first time they had ever been here. There were looking around the old church walls with trepidation and excitement, jumping at every noise or bush movement as they inspected the multiple footprints in the sandy mud.

“Where did you find him Aims?” Pete asked her, and she flushed as she pointed to the bush by the crumbling wall.

They all made a line for the bush, but stopped when the sound of moving rocks bounced off of the wall nearest the bush.

“Careful,” Wilson said with his arms extended. “Within arm’s length,” he reminded them.

The group closed together as another clatter of rocks caused a tinny echo through the bare trees.

It was Marcus who spotted them first, and he squeaked out Wilson’s name in time for his friend to turn around and see what he had seen.

“Frick,” Wilson said as he made eye contact.

Pete turned next and froze as the beady eyes of something he had seen before met with his. He felt the heat of fury creep up his spine and the weight of fear fall through his stomach.

“It’s the elder,” he said quietly.

The troll walked around the ruin of the old church with pounding steps that left deep impressions in the ground. Its huge nose bounced onto its top lip with each step, and its ears slapped the side of his head, causing a dull thud. There was a brown mop of hair that was matted with mud and the same colour hair was covering the underside of its chin. The sheepskin it had over its shoulders had different colours of paint drawn in lines on it, and it had circles of red that Pete thought was congealed blood. Its feet were exposed, with three toes on each, and it had the same bound cowhide on its ankles that Aimee-Lou had seen on Clive when she first found him. The elder was hunched over slightly as it shuffle walked towards them, but it was still 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide across its chest area. The bare skin that they could see was a mud brown colour that had scratches and scars randomly spread across it, and there were mounds of black that had thick hair growing from them. Its beady eyes shone a colour that was neither blue nor green, but somewhere between the two, and they were almost hidden by the height of its cheekbones. In its left hand was a thick stick that looked as though it had been carved from the trunk of a tree, and Pete could see notches going down one side, each one marking something significant, he thought.

The elder stood in front of them, towering above them all, and it focused on Peter.

“You return,” it said in a deep, gravelly voice that rasped in its throat and erupted with spray of thick spittle.

Pete felt the rage rise again, as Mickey’s dying face flashed into his brain, but a touch from Aimee-Lou on his arm made him turn and smile at her. He turned back to the troll and looked at him emotionless.

“There is one of your kind on the mainland,” he said. “It has been causing destruction to the locals.”

Wilson looked at Marcus and shrugged his shoulders, to which Marcus responded by shaking his head and pulling a face of total confusion.

“That, human, is your problem.”

The elder spoke in slow precise words, as though it had to think of each word individually before it spoke.

“It has taken the blood of a human,” he said, metronomically. “It will be stopped by its own blood being spilled.”

“Then we will respond when the wheel of heaven has burned its last flame,” it bellowed. “We will wreak havoc to the mainland if there is troll blood spilled.”

The elder stood upright from it hunch and looked as though it had grown to seven feet tall.

“This will end badly for...”

The elder interrupted Peter as it stood forward and spoke into his face, covering him with the thick saliva that seemed to spray every time he spoke.

“The humans banished us once, so they can do it again.”

Peter turned his back on the elder troll and indicated to the others that they should walk to the boat.

“But Pete,” Marcus complained.

“Just go,” he ordered him, “And don’t look back at it.”

Marcus complied, as did the others, and they climbed into the boat without looking back.

There was silence as Pete rowed back across the water to the mainland, with all of them eager to speak but not knowing what quite to say.

Wilson moored the boat to the thick stump on the bank of Blaise Pool and then looked across to the island, not totally sure if what he had experienced actually happened. He jogged to the car and climbed in the back, looking suspiciously at Peter as he did.

“What the frick?” he asked him in slow, deliberate words.

Marcus was also looking at Peter with suspicion.

“Do you mind telling us what the hell just happened?” he asked his brother, who was gripping the steering wheel tightly.

“You spoke to that thing as though you knew each other,” Wilson said. “We deserve to...”

“Okay,” Peter interrupted, raising his hands in the air. “I will tell you.”

He started the car and did his usual wheel spin away, breathing heavily in relief more than anything else.

“I maybe didn’t say the whole story about when we were on that island,” he said, and gulped a mouthful of air. “Gramps told me a few stories about that island from when he was a kid, and one of them was when he was fishing with ‘orrible Owen on the night he took a picture of a troll trying to attack them.”

Marcus and Wilson shared more than a glance this time, and they both attempted to get there words out at the same time.

“One at a time,” Pete said with his hand up to silence them.

“We saw that photo,” Wilson said first. “Mr Owen showed us it when we asked him about the trolls.”

“We said he was with someone, didn’t we, Marcus, didn’t we,” Wilson said excitedly as he pushed his friends head from behind.

“Yep,” he said, “And all the time it was my gramps.”

“Well you were both right,” Pete complimented them. “But gramps also told me that they had spoken to the troll, and it had warned them that it would find them.”

Marcus, Wilson and Aimee-Lou all gasped at the same time.

“You mean Clive killed Mr Owen for some kind of revenge?” Aimee-Lou asked.

“Did you not think that it was a coincidence that you just happened to find a troll sat in a bush when you visited the island?” Pete said in the mirror to her. “They wanted you to find it because they knew you would bring it back to the mainland, and it would seek out those who have seen them.”

Then why did it kill Bob the bog?” Wilson asked. “He isn’t from around here so he would never have seen them.”

“Remember you asked me about the Berserker, Wils?”

“Yeah,” Wilson replied.

“Well, Bob the bog was a result of that myth.”

“They all had a look of dread as the situation they were in finally dawned on them.

“Frick,” Wilson said urgently.

Peter looked in the mirror at him again, and answered the question in his head.

“They must be after you?” he said.

“And you,” Marcus said to Pete.

“And you,” Wilson said to Marcus.

“And me,” Aimee-Lou said.

“And Lana,” Pete said to them all with concern, and accelerated the RAV4 toward the treehouse.