Available Dark: A Crime Novel (Cass Neary) (22 page)

He laughed, set the phone back on the cairn, and walked off. I replaced the scalpel beside it, then saw something protruding from between the stones—a small white knob, like an ivory tuning key. It was wedged in tight, so I tugged until it slithered free, then dropped it, startled, catching it before it could hit the floor.

It was a skeletal hand, the slender finger bones mottled like tortoiseshell, five cold spindles. Unlike Suri, whomever this belonged to had died long ago. I placed it beside the ancient scalpel and noticed a slab of crystal beside the cairn, the size and shape of a piece of old-fashioned block ice, with a hardcover book on top of it. The book was open, its pages displaying Icelandic text that faced an English translation.

… blood from a man whose death was not mourned and inscribe first upon one’s own right hand and then upon the tombstone these staves in blood. You must do this on the fourth day of the fourth week of summer, when the earth is yet fresh. The dead man will awaken, and you must take care the earth thrown up by his awakening does not touch your feet, else you will walk the same path he does. You must ask him, Who mourns you? And if he names a man or woman or child, you must cast the staves upon him and depart. But if he is silent, you must observe when the corpse-froth begins to spill from his mouth and nostrils, being certain to lick it from them before he …

“That does not work.” I cringed at the rumble of Galdur’s voice, but he only took the book from my hand and set it aside. “This, however, does.”

He picked up the block of crystal. It had been roughly polished, and I could see striations within it, like threads spun from the rock. “This is a sunstone. Iceland spar—they mine it in the east. In ancient days the Vikings used it to navigate. It is a naturally polarizing lens; you hold it to the sky when clouds hide the sun, and it changes color, so you can determine the sun’s location. Come, I’ll show you.”

We walked outside. Pétur was behind the building, bent over something that looked like a lawn mower. The sun had been swallowed by clouds the color of the lava fields near Keflavik. It was difficult to tell where the sky ended and mountains began.

Galdur looked at me. “Which way is north?”

I shrugged. “Damned if I know.”

He held the crystal in front of his face as though it were a pair of binoculars, scanned the sky, and handed the stone to me. “There—see?”

I looked through the crystal and saw a brilliant, cyanic flare in its heart. “That’s amazing.” The radiance faded as I turned in the opposite direction. “Does it work at night?”

“Only to confuse you, if you were trying to navigate by the stars. Look at Pétur there.”

I did. “Holy shit—it doubles everything.”

“It’s called birefringence. Double refraction. The crystal splits the light in two, and each beam travels at a different speed. So even though they look the same, they are different. One is an ordinary ray. The other is an extraordinary ray.”

“That’s fucking amazing.” I turned the crystal on Galdur and saw his face doubled. “Can anyone tell the difference between the two rays?”

“No.” He took the crystal from me. “‘Anyone’ cannot. But I can. For years no one believed our ancestors could have used these to steer by. Then, very recently, scientists proved that what I have always known is true. When the power grid fails, and all of those satellites have fallen from the sky, I will still be able to find true north.”

He smiled, but I couldn’t tell if he was joking. A roar split the silence and I jumped.

“The generator,” Galdur shouted as Pétur walked toward us. “Go in and take a shower while you can.”

I did, in scalding water, and kept a close eye on the stall door, then dressed in my own clothes, now dry. I still didn’t know if Galdur’s sudden conversational flashes were meant to be reassuring or if he was just biding his time to work me over with an Iron Age scalpel. I thought of my camera, in Einar’s Range Rover or tossed somewhere in the ice desert, along with my passport and Ilkka’s photos, all save the one picture hidden in my jacket lining. I stuck my hand into my pocket, but there was no envelope of crank there, no Focalin or anything else that might tweak my brain chemistry enough that I could keep myself from imagining all the ways I could die. I pulled on my boots, ran my finger across one steel-tipped toe, and returned to the main room.

With the generator on, several electric lights had blazed to life. Galdur had set the sunstone back upon the altar, upright so that it resembled a piece of contemporary sculpture. I heard the anodyne hum of an amp. Galdur stood tuning his guitar as Pétur settled behind the drum kit and threw out some one-handed rolls. I crossed my arms and watched, nodding as Pétur grinned.

“You’re good,” I said.

“Yeah, I know.” He shook his hair from his face, and they began to play.

Pétur was great. And he was fast, his sticks ricocheting between skins and snare in a blur.

But Galdur was incredible. He had that trademark black metal sound down cold—tremolo picking, when you pluck the same string repeatedly to produce a single note. You hear the same effect in traditional Irish music, where it’s usually done on a mandolin. But the most famous exemplar is probably Dick Dale’s work on “Misirlou,” which he first did live, on a bet that he couldn’t play an entire song using only one string. You might think it’s a long way from the King of the Surf Guitar to Norwegian black metal, but music makes these cosmic leaps all the time. “Misirlou” originated in Smyrna: Dick Dale had seen his Lebanese uncle play it using only a single string on an oud. Every electric guitar chord roaring down the last fifty years, from Hendrix to Buckethead, is an echo of that tremolo, and I’d kick the chair out from under anyone who claims there’s a better guitarist than Dick Dale.

Galdur came pretty fucking close. From the wrist up, his arm was completely motionless; only his fingers moved, digits on a disembodied hand. I moved close enough to get a better look at his ax, an original 1957 Strat, maple neck, alder body with that two-tone sunburst finish. A guitar worth fifty grand; an original pickguard for one will cost you four thousand bucks on eBay, if you’re lucky. This one still had all its white Bakelite pickup covers and knobs; the vinyl ones they started using as replacements turned yellow after a few years. Galdur was shredding it in a homemade Quonset hut with an amp powered by a gas generator, for an audience of one, backed up by a kid who looked like he’d been air-dropped in from an Icelandic Gap advertisement.

It was maybe the greatest musical experience of my life. Tremolo done right can sound like two guitars, not one: When I closed my eyes, I could imagine an entire band filling the room in front of me. After a few minutes, Galdur let the last few notes drain off into reverb. He adjusted the amp; Pétur dropped his sticks and started to drum with his fingertips, now and then tapping the edge of the cymbal so it rang softly, like a distant bell echoing through steady rain. I could hear the generator’s muted drone above a sudden rush of wind and feel the Quonset hut tremble slightly, as though it, too, were a bell that had been struck.

After a minute Galdur joined in with a single plucked note and then a repeated minor chord. He’d turned the volume low, so it took a while for me to recognize the same insinuating strains I’d heard first on Quinn’s turntable and then in Einar’s Range Rover. He played with his head bent over the guitar neck, tawny hair obscuring his face. Pétur nodded and after some time picked up his sticks again. The guitar chords thundered into a crackle of feedback as Galdur edged back to nudge the volume knob with his foot.

He began to sing, a resonant baritone that bore no trace of the choked snarls I’d heard on the albums at Quinn’s stall. I couldn’t understand the Icelandic words, but he sang in such a low voice I could hardly hear him anyway. Pétur mouthed the words along with him, eyes squeezed shut. Without warning, the electric lights went out, and the amp. Outside, the generator fell silent.

Pétur looked at Galdur. The only sign that Galdur had noticed was that he stepped closer to the drum kit, and Pétur quickly picked up the beat again. Instead of growing softer, the unamplified Strat actually sounded louder: I could feel that maple slab board resonating in my bones. Before, the kerosene lamps seemed to give everything a bright, varnished gloss. Now their glow seemed dulled, as though the glass chimneys were choked with ash. Pétur’s shadow flowed into that of the drum kit, looming against the wall behind him, like the mountains etched against the winter sky.

Galdur’s shadow leapt like a flame, only to disappear when he lifted his head, eyes closed, and cried out a string of words—a list of names. He looked anguished, as though he struggled to tear something from the Strat’s neck, and the guitar fought back.

I’ve seen a million guitarists work this angle onstage, and they always look like idiots. Galdur looked terrifying. If someone distracted him from whatever internal battle he fought with the music, he’d lunge for the interloper’s throat. I froze, afraid to draw attention to myself. The music rose and fell, Galdur’s guitar quickening with the howling wind outside. The sound grew monotonous, hypnotic; more than once my eyes began to close.

To distract myself, I stared at the ceiling, first at the photographs that comprised Ursa Major, and then at the only other constellation I recognized, Orion. Small photos of the stars represented his flexed bow and raised sword; a separate photograph of three stars formed Orion’s belt. These stars were much brighter than the rest and also much larger.

It took a moment to realize they weren’t stars that made up this constellation, but faces. Galdur, much younger but still glowering, his pale eyes an uncanny, bleached white. Ilkka, his dark hair long and straight, eyes invisible behind glasses splintered silver from a camera’s flash. The third face didn’t belong to a living man at all. It was a skull, cupped in their upraised hands like a trophy. Tufts of black hair protruded from desiccated skin, and a string of tendon stretched between its jaws. Something that resembled a rind of dried fruit clung to one side, with a bright spar dangling from it—a silver earring.

A wall of black water hit me, the ozone stench of damage. My ears rang, a chime that bled into the tremolo flutter of a guitar. Galdur raised his head, hair swept back from a face streaked with sweat. His topaz eyes flared, his mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. A note welled inside me as though I had become a sounding board. The kerosene lamp behind him swayed, and I saw that its base was not rusted metal but the pitted globe of a skull, liver colored and banded with leather. The drums fell silent.

“Now, that’s what they call an evil chord.” Pétur stared at me, head cocked. “You okay?” He turned to Galdur. “She looks sick.”

Galdur slapped the Strat’s neck. A guitar string snapped as the chord flattened into a metallic
thunk.
Frowning, he glanced at me, then crouched over the instrument, removing a string winder from the guitar case. After a minute he stood, wound the broken string into a shining coil, and slipped it into his jeans pocket. He set the guitar against the wall, switched off the powerless amp, and stepped toward me.

“What did you see?” he asked.

I shook my head, and he grabbed my chin. “You saw something—don’t lie to me.”

I twisted to point at the ceiling. Galdur looked up, then back at me, his face torn between rage and fear.

“How do you know this?” He grabbed my arm. “How do you know
Seiðhr,
our ways?”

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” I shouted, and pulled away.

For a moment I thought he’d strike me. Instead he turned and strode across the room. The bedroom door slammed. I walked shakily to where the guitar leaned beneath the skull lantern and stared at the lamp’s lunar-white flame, a pulsing blue heart. Pétur came up behind me.

“What does that mean?” I asked without looking at him. “‘Saythe’—what he called me.”

“
Seiðhr
. It is what I spoke of before—sorcery.” He touched the lantern’s base. “I mean, if you believe in it.”

“You don’t.”

I turned to him, and he shrugged. “I believe that he believes in it. He didn’t make it up: You read about it in the sagas.
Seiðhr
means ‘sorcery.’ But it is,
hmm,
more like seeing things, you know?”

“Like clairvoyance?”

“Yes, I think so. It is like a kind of seeing, or a kind of singing, that makes the forms of things unseen visible. It is usually women’s magic, but sometimes powerful men practice it too. Like Galdur.”

“So you’re another one majoring in paganism?”

“God, no. I’m studying business and Chinese. But we talk about it a lot. Well, Galdur talks, and I listen. Mostly I just want to play the drums. Some of it makes me uncomfortable. It’s misogynistic, a bit. And other things. In black metal, a lot of the people are homophobes.” I snorted. “Yes, I know. Galdur is a complicated person.”

“No shit.”

“He’s changed a lot.” Pétur sighed. “People who knew him back then—in Oslo—the things they’ve told me, I can’t believe.”

“Like almost beating a rock journalist to death?”

“That guy should have known better.” Pétur’s blue eyes glittered. ”He should not have come here.”

“Yeah, sure. Guy was just asking for it, right?”

My irony didn’t translate: Pétur nodded in agreement. “Sure. But that was a long time ago. Galdur spends all his time now studying or looking at his telescope.”

I ran a finger across the skull’s rounded base. “I assume this is real—someone you know?”

“It’s from Gotland, Sweden. It’s very ancient. From a burial.”

“Very tasteful. I can see a whole line of these at Barneys.”

“He collects things like that. Viking artifacts. He showed you the sunstone.” Pétur shook his head. “I’m surprised, you know? That he’s speaking to you at all.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t deck me. And you know, he’s not speaking much at the moment.” I checked to make sure the bedroom door was still closed. “Listen—I’ve really, really got to get to the city. I have to catch my flight back to New York. Can you give me a lift or something? I’ll pay you.” I patted my empty pocket and tried to look ingratiating, then pointed at his drum kit. “You can tell me how you got into this whole death metal trip.”