The Berserker

Jonathon Day was watching with fascination as the presenter on his television was describing the scenes across southern England as the sky was darkening toward an early night.

“The birds in the sky will silence and then sing their beautiful dawn chorus, as the mid-morning light gives way to mid-morning dusk. The nocturnal animals will wake from their sleep and will call into the night for partners as the sky takes on an eerie twilight as the Sun’s bright face is replaced by the disc of the Moon. The splendour of the diamond will give way to the rebirth of the Sun as she grows from the ashes of totality, and every man and woman should stand in wonder as the reality of just how little and insignificant we are in the cogs of time should make us strive to be better to each other.”

Jonathon left his kitchen and poked his head out of the back door to listen to the birds as the presenter had suggested, surprised to hear the chirping had become silent. The dullness of the sky made sound echo against it and then stop almost immediately, as though there was an invisible proofing that absorbed everything. Everything, that was, except the sound of his pigeons, that he could hear flapping frantically, desperate to escape the cat that must have got into their loft.

“Well that is odd,” he said to himself as he stood onto the back step.

Jonathon was a well-spoken man who had spent his entire working life as the sorting clerk at Blaise postal office, retiring two weeks previous to his 66 birthday. He had lived alone in the converted barn that his parents had left him after they had passed during the great floods of the 1980’s, and he relished in the sanctuary he had built for himself.

His passing words to the congregated work colleagues were that he could waste his time fancying his pigeons, and that was exactly what he had been doing.

The aviary he had built over time measured 15 feet long and 10 feet wide and had a shed attached to it to give his birds a home to roost in at night, and as the air was darkening, he expected them to be roosting.

“Hmmmm,” he said to himself, as he pondered whether he should go see what was causing the commotion to his birds.

A loud wailing, that sounded like a baby screaming in hunger, made his mind up for him, and he rushed to put on his shoes that sat neatly in the rack next to the door.

“I shall be there imminently,” he said, loudly enough for whoever, or whatever, was disturbing his birds, and he almost ran to the bottom of his garden.

The Berserker was sat in the middle of the loft with his back blocking the hole that he had torn into the wood and mesh, and he was attempting to catch the pigeons as they flew around him.

Jonathon rounded the shed to be faced with the back of what he first thought was a hairless brown bear.

The creature was sat down, but was still half the size of the loft, and it was wailing at the pigeons every time it missed them with a swish of its hand, that was so large it looked like the paw of a bear as it tried to catch salmon that were leaping up a waterfall.

The hair stood up on the back of Jonathon’s neck as one of the claws that protruded from the paw caught a pigeon, sending it spinning to the floor, where the Berserker speared it with the same claw and then placed it in between his lips and slide it off of the claw. He crunched it loudly and then burped out the loose feathers, which fell to the floor like bluey grey snowflakes, and Jonathon clenched his teeth together in anger.

The run back to the kitchen was a quick one for him, as every second was an extra second to save his birds, and he reached into the larder unit in his kitchen, fumbling around above the door until the cold metal gripped into his hand.

He had always kept the Browning A-5 with a round in the chamber, just in case he ever had company that was uninvited.

The shotgun had been a present to himself that he had bought in late 1997 after he had been burgled for the only time in his life, and he had never fired it in practice, or anger, in all the years since.

He checked the chamber as he ran back down the garden, and he raided the butt to his shoulder as the Berserker came back into view.

“Stop,” he shouted, as another pigeon was stripped from his claw.

The Berserker stopped chewing and straightened his neck, looking around the loft with its blood red beady eyes, wondering where the voice had come from.

“Get out of there,” he yelled at the huge beast. “Get away from my birds.”

The Berserker turned its head as much as it could, which was just about a quarter turn toward its neck, and spotted Jonathon, and the shotgun that he had pointed at his head. He bared his spiky teeth and sniffed the air, causing the eruption of saliva from between his teeth.

Jonathon moved as the Berserker lifted himself from the floor of the loft, shattering it apart with his monstrous frame, and turned to face him, his face filled with anger as the pigeons that were left flew upwards and away from the Berserker, flapping so rapidly that the tips of their wings sounded as though they were clapping.

The shotgun went off without Jonathon being in control of it, so it missed its original aim of the Berserker’s head and lodged the shot into its shoulder, making a hole that was the size of a softball.

The cry that came from the Berserker’s mouth resonated from blanket of dark that was ever increasing, travelling through the bare trees and finding its way to the island on Blaise Pool.

“What the frick was that?” Wilson said to the others in the dinghy.

“Sounded like something has been shot,” Pete said as he continued to row.

“Something big,” Marcus added.

“Oh no,” Aimee-Lou said, as she clutched her shoulder in pain.

“What is Aims?” Wilson asked, as the bottom of the boat hit the bank of the island.

“Clive’s been shot,” she said with a frown.

Wilson was about to ask her how she knew when Pete interrupted.

“Be aware,” he said, ignoring Aimee-Lou’s concerns about Clive. “This is it.”

The Berserker fell backwards as it screamed in pain from the shotgun wound, and Jonathon fumbled in his pocket for another shell before the beast had managed to rise again. He pointed the weapon and squeezed the trigger again, falling backwards himself with the recoil, and falling into the collection of plant pots that sat in height order behind him.

A stream of green goo splurged from the wound that had appeared in the mid rift of the Berserker, and it screamed out again with the same wail that vibrated along the fields of Blaise towards Holy Island, causing a ripple on the mirrored water.

Aimee-Lou turned to the noise again and fell slightly to the side, grabbing at her stomach.

She was held up by Pete’s strength as he held onto her invention to stop it falling to the floor with her.

“What is it?” he asked her as he caught a sight of the elder appearing from behind the crumbling wall. “Are you ill?”

“Clive is in trouble,” she said, this time with a shortness of breath.

He pulled her up by her arm as the Sun light began its final journey behind the Moon, and he forced the wheel of fortune into her hand.

“You need to fight whatever it id that is affecting you,” he said quietly, with a comforting smile. “Can you do that Aims?” he asked her. She stood up straight and nodded her head, still grimacing against the feeling in her stomach. “Good girl,” he said as he handed her the box of matches.

He checked his watch to see that it was 10.58am.

The elder troll stood in front of its family of five, with its back slouched over and its beady eyes watching Peter closely as he walked to meet it face to face.

“Where is the wheel of heaven, human,” it growled with anger. “You were warned of the consequences if you did not deliver. You and however many others you bring.”

Aimee-Lou held the skiing pole and the stuffed football up into the near black sky as though it was a sacrificial animal that she was offering to a God.

“We have your request,” he said as he pointed at Aimee-Lou’s offering. “But you must grant ours if we are to hand it over.”

The elder looked at the football that she was holding, and then looked back to Pete.

“Do you think you can fool us, human?“ The troll behind the elder shouted. “This is not the wheel of heaven, this is...”

Pete looked at his watch as the alarm beeped, stopping the troll in mid-sentence.

“Now Aims,” he shouted.

Aimee-Lou lit the match that she had held next to the skiing pole, by striking it against the piece of sandpaper that she had torn from the matchbox, and the paraffin soaked string that was wound around the metal shaft burst into flames and crept upwards in a spiral.

The light of the Sun vanished in a spectacular, two million degree, solar corona that jets out from the shadows of the Moon as the land fell silent, with the halo around the Moon seemingly spitting scorching wisps of plasma into the dark reaches of space.

The peat packed football, which Marcus had covered in the paraffin oil in the boat, burst into flames as the Sun vanished from view and created a ball of flames that made the family of trolls take a step back in awe.

“Here is your wheel of heaven,” he shouted at them. “Now you must grant our request.”

Pete knew that he needed to rush the elder on, as he only had a few minutes until the bluff was exposed.

The elder moved to grab the pole that Aimee-Lou was holding higher than before, but Pete stood in the way to stop him.

“Our request first,” he said.

The elder looked at the family and then back to Pete.

“Very well,” it said, in its deep, rasping voice. “Name the request.”

Pete looked around to the others and smiled.

“You must not seek revenge on anyone who has seen your kind,” he said sternly.

The elder looked at the burning ball as it flicked its multi-coloured flames into the darkness. Its mouth was streaming saliva as the odour of the humans was sucked into its nostrils.

“Your request is granted,” the elder said as it stared at the ball.

“Ever,” Pete added.

The licking flames of orange and yellow, mixed with the purple of the paraffin oil, had hypnotised the family of trolls, and the elder repeated himself in a low voice that was not as raspy.

“Your request is granted.”

A shout of yes from behind Pete made him smile, and he turned to take the wheel of heaven from Aimee-Lou.

“Go to the boat,” he said to them. “Get it ready to go.” Marcus was about to complain, but Pete put his hand up to stop him. “Go now, I am right behind you.”

They reluctantly turned and walked to the shore as he had instructed, and they climbed into the dingy while Pete turned back to the elder.

“Call off the Berserker,” he said he glanced at his watch. “Call it off and you can have the wheel of heaven.”

He was trying to remain calm, but this was getting too close.

The elder reached into its woollen throw with the red circles that it had around its neck and pulled an object out that was shaped as a dragon’s head. It placed the head into his mouth and blew heavily into it, making a noise that was audible for a second and then rose to such a pitch that none of the humans could hear it.

Aimee-Lou, Marcus and Wilson were watching from the boat.

“What was that?” Wilson asked as he saw the elder put the object to its mouth by the light of the ball of fire.

“It looks like a dragon’s head,” Aimee-Lou answered him. “The Vikings would use it to frighten away sea monsters and spirits. The trolls have adapted it to call off the effects of the berserk, like calling the berserk spirit out of the troll that’s affected and return it to its usual form.”

The beeping of Pete’s watch stopped the elder blowing and it looked at him, suspiciously.

“It is done,” the elder said.

Pete lifted the burning ball to the elder, and it grabbed at it with urgency.

“Remember,” Pete said, “Another will grow in its place.”

The elder looked at Pete and did something that he was really not expecting. It offered out it stubbly hand to him, holding it out for Pete to grab.

He shook the hand of the elder as the diamond ring exploded from behind the Moon, filling the land with a light that seemed brighter than they had ever seen before.

“Be gone, human,” the elder said, and Pete released its enormous hand and ran to the boat.

“Go,” Pete said as he pushed the dingy out into the water, jumping into it as Wilson began rowing.

The elder walked the wheel of heaven into the cave as grunts of wonder came from them, while the four humans escaped the island.

Jonathon Day knelt next to the shrunken Berserker as the green goo continued to fall from the large hole that was visible in its stomach, and he placed his hand under its head as its eyes clouded over and its breathing shallowed and vanished.

The green hair and red lipstick stood out strikingly as the colour faded from the skin of Clive, and in the dingy that was being rowed across the lake, Aimee-Lou began to cry.