The Draugr by Robert Campbell

Hannah walked the island’s length each day before breakfast to greet any early risers,
and would do it with the smile of someone with not much left to lose. She knew she was
ninety-something (but had stopped counting), and that she became more tiny and sticklike each year, as if she might easily snap. If she’d shrunk a bit, though, it was only in
pace with the island itself. The fishermen’s huts that once lined the machair were now
beneath the sea, which crept in from all points to one day meet in the middle. There
were few fish these days so the men had grown old early, over their whisky; those
young enough had left for the city.

Hannah’s husband had been dragged down with his nets before things became even
tougher than they had always been. Her sons had left the moment they could. One did
something in media, the other in money, and she could understand if she tried, but
secretly didn’t care that much. There’d been a turning point, during a rare visit by both
boys and their young wives, when they’d wrinkled their noses in the living room and
pretended to like her paintings. They’re sweet, one of the girls told her. From the
kitchen, over the boil of the kettle, she’d then heard the girl make the others laugh by
saying ‘your mum is a bit witchy’. This, from a girl who dressed for her one visit to the
island wearing what looked like just her bra on top and, below, tight white spotless
jeans with plimsolls (they’re Converses, she’d said).

Hannah had worn the same sweater of indeterminate colour for the past quarter
century, with baggy moleskin trousers that looked as if they might be home to actual
moles. Her wellies were never in fashion nor out and just kept going: rubber, she’d
heard, lasts for decades until it starts cracking. A bit like herself, but these things
happen, and one day they’ll happen to that girl, too.

Back to now, though, and the sound of visitors coming ashore by the jetty. Most weeks,
it was serious birdwatchers, with a few islanders returning from jobs or, increasingly,
from hospital appointments. Today they sounded different: there was a twittering,
almost like birds, brought on the breeze up the rocks upon which Hannah’s cottage sat.
As Hannah reached her porch a policeman was waiting. Not any old policeman but
Seamus, whose father Hannah had taught to read. On the rare occasion Hannah had met
a proper police officer she had found them strong and exciting, from the way they could
hold a gaze. Not Seamus, not today, anyway. He kept looking at the ground, sometimes
down the path to the woodshed, and was more flushed than one might expect from his
hike up the rocks.

You’ll be needing to lock your door and pull your curtains, he said.
Is it the draugr? Hannah said, allowing herself a chuckle, wondering if it was a crime to
laugh at a policeman.
Of course not, said Seamus, smiling now. It’s people looking for the draugr, or more
accurately looking for you because word’s got around, you know.
What words have got around Seamus? said Hannah
That you’re some kind of mystic, he said, or whatever they call it, a seer, and are in touch
with the draugr.
What utter bollocks, said Hannah. She swore once or twice a year, out of mischief,
usually at people who thought a little old lady could not swear. In the spring she’d told a
birdwatcher to fuck off when he wandered onto her croft, and he’d nearly fallen down
the rock as he ran away. Last year, she’d called the visiting vicar a cunt when he kept
asking if she needed spiritual succour.

Witchy? She collected sea shells, used wild herbs, could identify scurvy grass, had some
old books on mythology, smoked a daily roll-up, and didn’t have a mobile phone
because the island didn’t have a signal. It didn’t feel like enough to have someone
thrown in a pond to see if they’d float.

The draugr, though, she understood. The islanders had first grown unnaturally fretful in
the autumn, when some days the birds would lay expiring on the beach: gannets
panting, splayed like crosses; puffins blinking, out of puff. In the winter, of course,
nothing happened because it never did. It just gets dark, snows, and nobody comes
except on a boat if someone starts dying.

Spring had always cured all, especially when the sheep emerged from their sheds. But
this spring the sheep got stuck on their backs, skinny legs dancing like cockroaches in
long deaths. Magnus, who’d farmed the north end forever, was out on his quad bike
most days standing his animals back up again. I’ve never seen it, he said, when he’d come
across Hannah as she went out for Sorrel, in these sorts of numbers. Their guts get
tangled, the ewes abort. I’ll be cutting my losses, getting out. Hannah had heard that his
lamb was worth next to nothing anyway, because everyone was buying New Zealand.

Then, early summer, some dead brown people in deflated lifejackets bashed against the
cliffs like rag dolls, for half a day, before retreating with the tide and returning to be
bashed some more. Eventually a police launch came out with boathooks, and a week
later the swell lifted a baggy rubber boat high onto the beach.

Mid-summer, and Freya, the shopkeeper’s girl, was found face down in the bog. She
must have stumbled while out playing, Seamus concluded, and knocked herself out then
drowned. Gossips said her face was a mess, on account of the size of that season’s rats.
Freya’s family imagined she’d been fiddled with by a birder, then talked about a new
start far away. Their shop was busy, but mostly with holidaymakers who’d filled up on
the mainland and only bought odd bits at the shop so they could hang around cooing
about the idyll.

Eventually, word must have got out about the hard and strange times, because a waxedjacket reporter arrived, tripping over granite. Hannah had found him by the croft and
told him to stick his camera up his fat English arse, which was an unplanned addition to
her tally of swearing. The Isle of Doom, said the headline when she went to the shop for
gaffer tape and a dozen sausages. She bought the Saturday paper for the puzzles, and for
the footballers’ legs on the sports pages. Makes you think, said the shopkeeper, red-eyed
about his daughter, and you got that smell up your way?

The island had been whiffy for the past year. Once it would have been the smell of
prosperity, from fish drying on the beach. Now, something necrotic traversed the island
in its winds, and on calm days settled under one’s nose. Some reckoned it was Magnus
burying his sheep in a shallow hole rather than wasting his time shipping them out.
Others that it was the hotel, run by greedy ufls (up from Londons, and the only funny
thing that girl in the bra had said) who added four rooms without planning permission
or an extra septic tank. Or it was the knotted wrack festering on hot low tides because
Hannah was now the only one who took it and she didn’t need a beachful for her garden.
Some thought the odour was Hannah herself, because she didn’t see the need to wash so
often. All agreed that on bad days you could taste the smell and the taste was of decay.

Hannah had cause to read about the draugr in one of her old books. She’d guessed,
anyway, but it was a mythical Norse creature, and the islanders spoke a branch of Norse
only a few centuries ago when the place was more Viking than Scots. The draugr was a
ravenous and restless revenant, a blue-black and bloated member of the undead, a
roarer and a clawer, a bringer of baroque misfortunes. It was lonely and it stank.

On her next trip to the shop, for disinfectant and further sausages, the paper’s headlines
said Cursed Island. The reporter must have read the same book as Hannah, because they
mentioned the draugr, but only for a laugh, like they did with Bigfoot and the Beast of
Bodmin. Makes you think, said the shopkeeper again, and I was going to cancel the
paper. More sausages then.

Hannah had drifted off. Past and present writhed, moments coiling into days, seasons
flipping across the centuries. She remembered she was on her porch, and that Seamus
was nodding down the rock towards the racket of voices.
These people, said Seamus, from the boat. They’ll be here soon.
Who or what are they, asked Hannah, arms crossed.
Influencers, said Seamus.
We don’t need influenza here, said Hannah. We’re old crocks, coughing and aching. We
don’t even eat properly any more. If we got influenza we wouldn’t even make it to the boat.
Influencers, Seamus said, more slowly.
I don’t need influencing, said Hannah.
They won’t influence you, said Seamus, they influence other people, on their phones.
Their phones won’t work, said Hannah.
They wouldn’t listen, said Seamus. They want to take pictures. Of you. You’ll be all over
social media. You will go viral.
Like influenza then, said Hannah.
I suppose so, said Seamus. I’m up to warn Magnus. Just stay indoors and don’t engage.
They’ll do their worst, then they’ll leave on the evening boat. I’ll be seeing them off.

Hannah remained on her porch, listening to the chatter coming close, seeing the first of
the gaggle rise towards her. They were clothed as colourfully as parrots, and were never
still: laughing, talking, twirling. Now and then one would stop, arm extended, and take
photos of themselves being photographed by the others. They reached the knee-high
granite wall that had for centuries made the border of her croft, and stepped
over, saying hi with their phones thrust out in front. A girl squashed one of Hannah’s
lettuces and squawked like a stuck gull yo grandma we’re gonna make you famous. A boy
in pink dungarees and make-up pushed in front and promised to make Hannah a tiktok
sensation. Where’s the draugr, shouted one of them at the back. We want the draugr, said
another, and it became a chant. Show us your broomstick, tried another, but that didn’t
catch on. They were spinning, filming themselves and each other and Hannah. One was
unpacking a drone from a backpack – Hannah had seen a birder do that, and his drone
vanish on a seawards gust.

Hannah held her arm upright like she used to with an unruly class when she was still
teaching. Nothing happened for a while, it never did, but then one by one they hushed.
What’s she doing, they whispered.

Would you like a tray of teas and coffees, asked Hannah, smiling, or some milk?
We’re dairy free, said one, jumping up and down. Decaf? asked another.

Hannah kept smiling as she went down the path beside her home, pulling her jumper up
over her nose.

She could hear a weight shifting within the woodshed as she sliced the tape around the
door and let the odour escape on the breeze. Scent, she thought, must travel both ways,
because there was now a hungry heaving against the door. She wouldn’t bother
releasing the locks. Wouldn’t even have time. There was the crackle of splinters, above a
bass lament that would become a roar, and Hannah stepped aside as it crashed out.
Black-gummed, teeth bared, nose to the air; sadness, snot and sausage fat. It loped.
Claws curled, it reached the croft’s wall and saw the little crowd gathered there, and
was seen, and influenced them.