Draugr by Arthur Slade Page A

it up. I took another sip. “It works,” I said, astonished.
    â€œYes. But don’t drink more than one cup.” Althea was sitting across from all of us, near the tea table. “It’ll burn some of your inner energy.”
    She paused. Moved the cross, held it in her right hand.
    â€œI guess I’ll start at the very beginning.” Her tone was solemn. She wasn’t looking at us, but at the cross. Her face seemed more wrinkled, as if just the act of telling this story was draining her. “I’ll start with the death of Eric Bardarson. I remember when it happened . . . I was in my early twenties. I was one of his teachers at the time. He was in grade two, if I remember correctly, and he was really a gentle, lovable kid. Always dreaming. Always happy. It was a pleasure to teach him.
    â€œIt had been a very wet spring. There were heavy snows all winter, and the moment it started to warm up enough to melt, the sky darkened and the rain fell. And it kept pouring for weeks on end, so much rain and cloudy weather you could feel it in your bones. It made everyone upset, less likely to say good morning. Some of the older people just gave up—the winter and a hard spring was too much. Needless to say, we all wanted a break.
    â€œIt came somewhere in the middle of May. The sun was out one morning and stayed all day, burning away the water. Everyone wandered outside to look, to laugh, to smile. Some of the kids even wore shorts to school, which was against the rules, but we teachers didn’t care.
    â€œWhen the weekend arrived, the earth was getting dry and a lot of families headed out along the lake or up to Camp Morton to have picnics and play games and visit all their friends whom they hadn’t seen all winter. The Bardarsons were one of these families. But unlike everyone else, they went into the woods. You had to walk a long way to get to Thor’s Shoulder, a clearing on a giant hill. You could look down on all of Gimli and see the lake. It really was quite beautiful.
    â€œAnd I guess they had a wonderful picnic. Besides Eric, the Bardarsons also had a boy and a girl a grade or two ahead of Eric. They spent the whole day with each other. Eating and playing games. They let the kids wander around as long as they didn’t go too far.
    â€œWhen it came time for them to leave, Eric had disappeared. His brother and sister said he was right behind them, but when they turned he was gone. The family frantically searched for him for hours, but there was no trace. It was growing dark so the father sent his wife and children to get help and he stayed there calling out Eric’s name. He finally grew tired and leaned against a tree. He lit a fire hoping to attract his son. He said he heard many strange sounds that night, howling and voices, but saw nothing of Eric.
    â€œThe next morning, and for days after, the search party tramped around the area. They couldn’t even turn up a scrap of clothing. It was decided the heavy rains had softened the earth so much that the boy must have fallen into a bog and smothered to death. Others said wolves may have gotten him, but this seemed unlikely because even wolves leave remains.
    â€œThere was only one person who lived in that area—old man Kormak. He had a cabin and he survived by trapping animals for his own food and gathering berries and edible plants from the brush. The police did ask him if he knew anything, but they could make no sense of what he said. The rumor was that all the rain pounding on his cabin had driven him insane. I only saw Kormak three times while he was alive. And each time he looked the same: he was a big-boned man, with wild hair and a thick beard. He wore animal skins with the heads still attached. And he never bathed.
    â€œThere were rumors that he had something to do with Eric’s disappearance. People also whispered that Kormak liked to spend time at graveyards and such . . . but no one