pt 5
One of my more frequent chores was to go out and make sure the Ord Vägg's posts were still secure in the ground, of the many things that my grandfather was methodical about keeping just right, the Word Wall came second only to our food stores. This mainly involved going out and giving them a solid shove, if there was any shift I needed to hammer them in and pack the snow tighter around the bottom until I could no longer get it to move.
Anyway, that night he insisted that we go over all of them again before going to sleep and so we went out after finishing our dinner (mostly deer, you'd be surprised how long a single deer can last). He took one end of the yard and I the other. It was getting blistering cold out, where any bare skin started to sting, a cloud cover had swept over the land, there were no stars and no moon tonight and the sun had dipped below the horizon leaving everything an inky black and grey. It was quiet again, like on our hike up here, where every little movement you made sounded like an earthquake
A little ways off I could hear my grandfather working, the shifting of his coat and the snow being pressed underfoot. I was about three posts down when I found one that was a little loose, I straightened it out and picked up the sledge hammer we used for driving them back into the ground.
As I lifted it up and got ready to bring it down on the post, cringing because I knew that in the suffocating silence of the forest this would be VERY loud, but as I was about to swing it I heard something, like a quiet hissing mumble.
Reflexively I swung around while I was bringing the hammer down and hit the post with a glancing blow, knocking it off center. Spinning around I tried to listen for it again, thinking maybe it was my imagination, the woods will often make you think you're hearing things that you aren't.
After a few seconds of nothing and figuring that it was either just me imagining it or overhearing Dana saying something to himself I turned to start fixing the post again but just as I put my back to the trees I heard it again. It seemed so quiet that I couldn't make out what was being said but I am sure that it was someone whispering, quickly and in a whistle-like tone.
I really starting to freak out now, I slowly began walking towards the cabin, my back to it and the cliff face as I scanned the trees looking for where it was coming from. O The noise didn't seem like it had a direction to it, it was like it was everywhere at once, still quiet and indiscernible but very much there.
While in panic mode, combined with being tired and cold, I got it in my head that if I threw something into the woods it might scare off whoever was there. Reaching the woodpile we had outside I picked up a small log and threw it into the treeline and started shouting about how whoever was there needed to come out.
My grandfather comes running over
> "(my name) what the fuck are you doing!?"
I told him I heard someone talking nearby and before he can say anything the trees near where I threw the log start to shake and I could hear snapping branches.
> "Get inside right now!"
He said, not taking his eyes off the trees and so the two of us back peddled into the cabin, by the time we closed the door most of the trees had started shaking, the once oppressive stillness of the woods replaced with something akin to a hurricane.
That night neither of us slept, we just sort of stared at the door, my grandfather holding his hunting knife. Throughout the night the sound didn't die down, it was so loud and violent I thought the trees must have been snapped in half.
Periodically we heard things hitting the cabin wall, crunches and ripping noises from every direction. I told myself that it was just branches and the like hitting the wall, that it was just a bad storm.
Around an hour before dawn things started to settle down and soon enough my grandfather got up and went outside. I heard him start to swear and curse so I hurried out after him and saw what had been done.
The outside walls of the cabin had been covered, every inch from top to bottom, with words, violently slashed into the wood. Chunks had been ripped out of the corners and the door, the fence was in ruins, some of the barbed wire having being thrown into the treetops and many of the posts smashed into splinters. After a string of curses that I could barely even understand he started to calm down
>"Never do anything like that again, ever. Come on, we need to get the fence fixed before nightfall."
And like that he set off to start gathering up the broken fences. At this point I had gone from thinking my grandfather was a little unhinged and had started to take his native folklore to heart, right up to thinking he was the sanest man on Earth.
I helped him pick up the scattered remains of the fence, ever so often we would find little bits of fabric or hair stuck in the barbs, I didn't want to ask why.
We were making good time on having the barbed wire fixed but I was still worried, most of the posts that made up the Word Wall had been broken or were missing. When I asked about this he said that they won't like it but hopefully they just did this as a warning, tomorrow we'll go hunting and bring them back something, a thank you for not killing us last night.
Just as the sun started to set again (at this point in the year there was only about six hours of daylight making it difficult to do much) we had managed to get the barbed wire back into a rough semi-circle around the cabin. Given the damage that had been done the night before I asked how much good the barbed wire actually was and he told me that it didn't stop them but is slowed them down since their beards and hats would get tangled in it and they had a hard time getting free.
I couldn't tell if that was a joke or not but at this point I
was about ready to believe anything. Little did I know I
hadn't seen anything yet,
PrevNext