Arctic folk horror: "Mine Seven" by Elana Gomel

Elana Gomel's story "Mine Seven'' has a similar geographic setting to Michelle Paver's spectral tale of 1930s Arctic explorers, Dark Matter. But it takes place ninety years later, which makes all the difference. Gone are isolated cabins, dogs, and paraffin lamps. Gomel gives the reader U.S. tourists eager for a look at the Aurora borealis. 

....Tomorrow was a relative term. In mid-January in Svalbard the sun never rose above the horizon. Darkness was the same whether one was asleep or awake; in the middle of breakfast or having a nightcap. It was like being in a fever dream. The sluggishness of time thickened Lena's blood. She was perpetually cold, her body repelling the generous warmth of the hotel's blazing radiator heaters.

Lena, of Chukchi descent, and her husband Bill are enjoying the climate-controlled amenities of Longyearbyen's Funken Lodge. 

Until the lights go out, and an entity literally embodying the region's dead toilers descends upon their cozy enclave.

     

     Her hesitation lasted only a couple of heartbeats, but it cost Nigel his life. He was down in the entryway when the door burst open in an explosion of glass fragments and an arm reached for him. It was an arm, not a paw, wrapped up in tatters of padded parka fabric. It was as thick as Lena's waist and its rough skin was peppered with black hair and dotted with crudely done tattoos: blue hearts, and vodka bottles, and crossed shovels, and red stars. The black-rimmed fingernails, each the size of a postal envelope, tore into Nigel's throat as he choked on his own blood, and pulled him through the hole in the door, his screams dying into a liquid gurgle.

      Lena did not remember running down but here she was, the icy blast from the outside lacerating her face, as she picked up Nigel's cellphone and focused its light on the figure that still waited outside, standing there silently as if it wanted to be seen by her – as perhaps it did.

      The creature – the kelet, the forgotten name of the Siberian evil spirit popping up in her head uninvited – was so tall that its head disappeared into the gloom and she could not see its face. But she could see the faces that grew out of its broad chest like clusters of grapes: faces of men, hard and frostbitten, ravaged by weather and smoke; men who had laboured in the black bowels of the island for the hidden light. Men who had been crushed when a coal seam collapsed or suffocated when methane flooded the tunnels. Men of Mine Seven.

"Mine Seven" is a brief story, slingshotting scenes in a way supremely unnerving to the reader.  The examination of a social milieu facing the first hours of crisis, usually the meat of an upstairs-downstairs doomsday story - whether supernatural or not - is elided, contributing to an atmosphere of disorientation and crisis. 

"Mine Seven" is an excellent story of characters in a situation of final extremity.

_______

"Mine Seven" can be found in Mark Morris' anthology After Sundown. 

Jay

11 November 2021

The spectral Arctic: Michelle Paver's Dark Matter

    In one of my periodicals, there's a paper by someone who's worked out that what we know of the universe is only a tiny percentage of what actually exists. He says what's left can't be seen or detected, but it's there; he calls it 'dark matter'. Of course, no one believes him; but I find the idea unsettling. Or rather, not the idea itself, that's merely an odd notion about outer space. What I don't like is the feeling I sometimes get that other things might exist around us, of which we know nothing.

     In a month, on the 16th of October, we'll see the sun for the last time. According to the books, there'll still be some light for a few weeks after that, because at noon, the sun won't be all that far below the horizon. They call it the 'midday dawn'. After that, nothing.

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver (2010) 

Wonderful story, beautifully told. This should be a must-read for those who want more tales like Blackwood's "The Wendigo" or Quiller-Couch's "The Seventh Man."

❖

30th October

      I read that chapter on folklore. I wish I hadn't.

     Most of it wasn't even about Spitsbergen, not specifically. It was just a rather dreary account of Scandinavian beliefs, some of which I recognise from old English customs. The idea that seabirds bring good luck when you're out fishing. And scattering salt to ward off witches; Mother used to do that when she ate a boiled egg, a pinch of salt over her shoulder. I'd forgotten.

     It says that 'some places in Spitsbergen' – it doesn't say which – are haunted by draugs.A draug is the unquiet spirit of a drowned man who lurks in the shallows, waiting to drag the unwary to their doom. When a corpse is washed up, there is always a dilemma. If you bury it, are you cheating the sea of its due? If you do not, will you be haunted by the draug?

     I like the 'when'. How often is a corpse washed up here, anyway?

     And then there's this. Those who know the islands maintain that the beginning of the polar night is a time for particular care. Some say that seven weeks before Yule, the graves of Spitsbergen open.

     Seven weeks from Christmas. That's October the 31st. Hallowe'en.

     But Jack, so what?

     When I was a boy, Father gave me a book called Folk Tales from the North. Most of the stories were about witches and trolls and ghosts playing havoc on All Hallows' Eve – which, when you think about it, is completely understandable, a natural response to living in the north. Of course you'd believe in things like that when you're facing a long dark winter, and the whole world feels dead.

     But what you've got to remember is that there's nothing new in any of this. Nothing you didn't already know.

     The 31st of October is tomorrow.

Jay

9 November 2021