Vargen

A child of Swedish immigrants living in northwestern Dakota Territory in the 1880s becomes convinced that a dreadful entity from whispered tales stalks the hills near their homestead.

***Content warning: This episode deals with themes of racism toward Indigenous peoples, familial loss, child mortality, depression, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.***

Thank you for listening! If you have any feedback or inquiries regarding the show, please feel free to drop me a line at darkerpasturespodcast@gmail.com.

Transcript

[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro]

NARRATOR

Perhaps humanity’s ugliest quality is greed. But could that endless hunger be older than humankind, a primordial evil that infects our species, but resided first in the callous brutality of nature, in the uncaring vastness of the breathless blue sky and the deep, dark oceans? For the very earth is eternally hungry, eager to swallow not only heaven’s rain, but any offering of sweat and blood, flesh and bone. And the immortal eyes above look down forever, watching, but offering neither pity nor succor.

Or did the transmission flow in the other direction, with humanity pouring so much of its malice and sordid yearning into the world that it permeated the land, water, and sky—a spiritual virulence?

There are hungers that can never be sated, mysteries that can never be resolved. Pray that you never encounter them in the darker pastures of the world.

[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro - Continues]

NARRATOR

Holiday Special: Vargen.

(Sounds of blustery wind)

NARRATOR

The December wind blows sharply, biting at Matteus’s flesh through his shirt and jacket. His arms, heavily burdened with firewood, are already stiff with that particular ache that comes of exertion in the cold. Stumbling through the deep snow toward the little timber house, he looks forward to the warm glow of the stove, to the simple supper of boiled potatoes, salted pork, and preserved vegetables that awaits.

He opens the door to find his parents and siblings at the table, along with his old uncle Jesper. Jesper’s wife and child had died of cholera in the old country, during the last great famine. The loss of his family forever changed Jesper, who, always thoughtful and literate, has ever since been often gloomy and strange. Sometimes, Matteus’s mother refers to him in soft tones she thinks Jesper can’t hear as an “old heathen”. Jesper, whose ears are clearly sharper than Astrid believes, never seems particularly bothered by the epithet.

Matteus, for his part, rather likes Jesper’s company. The older man, tall and thin and somewhat frail, often talks at length about the things he has read and retained with his keen and absorbent mind: history, science, philosophy, mythology, linguistics. He also has a deep interest in the morbid and the occult, which is no doubt why Astrid refers to him as a heathen. Matteus knows better than to let on to his siblings or parents, but he also finds a certain fascination in these things, and often prods at his uncle for them when they find moments away from the others.

Tonight, though, there is no chance for such conversation. His father, Nils, and his brothers Stefan and Peter, dominate the dinner table talk with discussions of the farm, of the extension of the barn that they plan to begin in the spring. Astrid and his sister Inga are more concerned with the upcoming Sunday gathering at the Methodist Church in town, the last before Christmas.

Matteus is bored by both conversations, as is Jesper, he thinks. The boy looks forward to the gifts of Christmas Day, delivered in the night by the jultomte upon his goat, but does not care for the rest of the holiday, finds the time in church unbearably tedious.

But again, he knows better than to voice these feelings, knows the stern look that would come from Nils, the sharp words from Astrid. So he sits and eats and thinks, and hopes that perhaps Jesper will go out after dinner for a short walk, as he sometimes does.

This wish is gratified, and after asking his father for permission, he joins his uncle in the night, trying not to notice the disapproving eyes of his mother following him out.

His uncle will not walk far, becoming easily tired in the cold, but they will have enough time, Matteus thinks, for a talk. The moon has risen and glitters upon the fresh snow, in a way that looks almost unreal to Matteus, and as he catches up to Jesper he remarks how pretty it is. Jesper agrees softly, says that it looks like the frozen tears of angels, or of elves.

Matteus, repeating a familiar and beloved ritual, asks Jesper to tell him about the elves, and Jesper smiles and complies. He doesn’t stop at describing the elves, but continues to tell him of all the manner of creatures that their long-ago ancestors believed dwelt in the world, dwarfs and trolls, giants and gods and magical beasts.

Matteus asks cautiously if that isn’t blasphemy. Jesper gives a low laugh at that, and says that he guesses it must be. He says that so many things are blasphemy, whether they are true or false, ugly or beautiful.

His voice becomes sadder as he speaks, and after he has finished, a silence stretches between them. The snow crunches crisply under their feet, a thin crust of ice having formed over the top, and Matteus gradually realizes that they have walked farther than he had expected. They have left the farmhouse far behind, having almost reached the trees that mark the little river, beyond which hills and buttes rise like the burial mounds of long-dead heroes from the old tales for which his uncle harbors such fondness.

A long, keening sounds rises on the frigid air, and it is a moment before Matteus recognizes it as the howl of a wolf, a sound he has never heard before, has only ever heard described. Wolves are very rare in that country, venturing there only occasionally from the timberlands to the north and the east. Jesper goes very still at the sound, and stares up at the moon, his eyes gleaming in its reflected light.

He begins to speak, slowly and more deeply than usual, of ancient legendry: about a monstrous chained wolf whose mouth drips poison and whose attempts to break his bonds shake the very earth, who’s destined to devour gods and men and bring about the end of both, about other great wolves that forever chase the sun and moon across the sky, eager to swallow them up and leave the world in endless darkness. Matteus shivers as he listens, and it is not entirely due to the sharpness of the winter’s night. The howl is repeated, seeming a little closer this time, and the boy feels that awful prickle between the shoulder blades that comes with feeling that one is being watched, or stealthily approached.

He asks his uncle if there is in any truth in such things. Jesper does not answer at once, but stands, staring into the distant hills in the direction from which the howl seemed to emanate. After a long while in which the sound is not repeated, he seems to slump slightly in what Matteus can only think of as disappointment.

Finally, he says dreamily that there is some truth in every legend and story, hidden and buried. There is a pause, and then Jesper goes on, saying that the wolf is ever hungry, his belly never full no matter how much he gorges himself. And that such insatiable appetites are the truest evil in the world, that they can devour the very souls of men and nations.

He turns then back toward the house, and Matteus follows him, both of them quiet now. A cloud passes over the moon, and the snow become a dark blue, very faintly glowing under the velvet black sky. Turning his uncle’s words over in his head, Matteus feels that there is some important lesson in them, some deep meaning that he cannot quite grasp.

All the way back, the boy keeps his ears pricked for any sign of that voice in the darkness, and once, he thinks he perhaps hears it, but cannot be certain it is not merely the wind.

(Short pause)

Over chores the next day, his gaze keeps drifting toward the hills. Under the sun, he cannot help but perceive something in them that he had never before noticed: their outline reminds him of pictures he has seen in woodcut illustrations, of the stuffed and mounted skin on display in the general store in town, the one that has always so unsettled him. It looks like a titanic, crouching wolf.

After chores, as he and his siblings undertake the two-mile walk to the abandoned homestead shanty that now serves as the local schoolhouse, Matteus keeps looking over his shoulder at the shape in the hills. He cannot shake the impression that it is watching him, patiently malevolent, implacable. All through the day’s lessons, he keeps glancing out the window toward the hills, dreading each time that there will be some sinister change in the view, but too preoccupied not to look.

It's only after the schoolmarm slaps his table and tells him to mind her that he stops, but he can feel an unpleasant tugging sensation in his stomach that will not relent. So when the break at noon comes, and the other children play or eat their lunches, he stands in the sun and stares at the hills, the snow melting and pooling around his feet.

Inga asks him what is wrong, if he’s sick. Matteus shakes his head, but offers no explanation, not daring to let word be carried back to his parents of his imaginings, or of the previous night’s conversation. He knows that they will blame Jesper, and he doesn’t want to make trouble for his uncle.

Inga shrugs and tells him that he is an odd duck—an expression she has picked up from one of the other students and of which she is overly fond—and leaves him to his morbid vigil. As the nooning hour comes to a close, he pulls out the cloth-wrapped slices of bread and cheese that his mother packed for his lunch, nibbles at them, but finds his appetite is spoiled.

When they walk home in the midafternoon, the dusk already fast approaching, he cannot escape the view. With shadows deepening in the hollows, contrasting sharply with a few lingering patches of snow, the visual impression is even starker than it was in the morning.

And, he thinks, it looks like the wolf is grinning at him now.

(Short pause)

Saturday morning greets them with a thick blanket of fresh snow, more than half a foot deep. When the children have finished their daily chores, their parents allow them a few hours of play in the afternoon, requiring only that they be home before dark. Inga and the older boys all decide that they want to take the sled into the hills and play, an idea which Matteus protests feebly, and soon realizes that it is futile.

As they trudge through the snow, Peter dragging the sled behind them, Matteus strains for any sound out of place, but once more, can discern nothing beneath the moaning howl of the cold wind. Despite their warm clothes, the children all begin to sniffle, their cheeks and noses reddened by the chill.

Halfway to the hills, Inga begins to complain that she is frozen. Opportunistically, Matteus agrees with her, and again says they should go back and find another way to spend the afternoon, arguing that the hills are too far away and that making the walk there will only shorten their all-too-rare time for play.

Stefan and Peter begin to mock him in a sing-song voice, calling him a delicate flower, and then a little rabbit, scared of every shadow. Even Inga joins in, and finally, Matteus says that he doesn’t want to play with them anyway, and begins to walk home alone. The jeers of his siblings ring in his ears all the way back, long after they have been swallowed by the wind.

His mother frowns when he walks through the door, asks him why he isn’t with the other children. Not wanting to explain, he lies and says he isn’t feeling too well, says that he just wants to go to bed. His mother makes him drink something hot and vile-tasting, which she says will stave off illness, and then tucks him in fretfully.

After she has gone, Matteus almost feels guilty for his deception. And then, watching the day fade through the single, small window in the cramped bedroom he shares with his siblings, he grows bored and restless, and regrets his rashness.

A half-hour later when he hears the door smash open and Inga’s breathless cry that Peter is hurt, he sits upright, his heart thundering in his chest.

And then, through the small glass panes, he hears the throaty song he has so long dreaded.

(Short pause)

As they lay Peter in the frore earth, all of them dressed in the somber, colorless clothes they usually only wear to church, Matteus can only think that he is alone in understanding. All the others believe that Peter’s death was a mere accident, his neck broken when the sled veered into a small stand of aspens near the bottom of the hill.

But Matteus is certain he knows the truth.

That first night, none of them had slept. Inga and Astrid sat around the fire, trying to warm the body that they yet hoped might move again, while Stefan had fetched blankets and water. Jesper and Nils had left, bound for town and for the doctor’s house.

All the while, Matteus had simply stood in his bedroom doorway, staring in disbelief. And when, as midnight approached, Astrid had wanly told him to go to bed and get some sleep, he had instead gone to the bedroom window and listened, looked out over the benighted fields and hills under their pale coat, turned a ghostly blue under the moon.

And he had heard it, again, that long, low cry that swelled like distant thunder. Hearing it, he had known that the great devourer howled in triumph, having caught and eaten the soul it hunted.

This is what Matteus thinks, as they fill the grave, as they hide the broken body that seems so much smaller in death under the unkind soil. And while he yearns for vengeance, Matteus knows that it is beyond him, and that he can tell no one of what he knows. Jesper might believe him, but he doesn’t want to break his uncle’s heart further, and the others would only be angry with him and call him a little heathen and a liar.

A few days after the burial, Nils takes his axe to the sled, utterly destroying it and using the remnants as fuel for the stove. Matteus wants to cry, watching them burn and remembering the Christmas two years prior, when the children had all been overjoyed to find the brightly painted plaything awaiting them in the first light of dawn.

(Short pause)

This Christmas finds the house dour and joyless.

Astrid has taken to sitting at the little table in the kitchen and staring out the window for hours at a time. Nils has thrown himself into the daily chores and winter work, never able to rest and seldom speaking a word. Stefan is gloomy and cruel, often striking out at his younger siblings with the slightest provocation, and facing no rebuke from the parents who are often absent in either body or spirit. Inga often hides in the bedroom, crying when she thinks no one can see or hear her.

Uncle Jesper has taken to walking far and late into the night, despite the occasional protest from Astrid, when she is present enough to notice. And, true to her warnings, Jesper does seem to grow thinner and paler by the day, and develops a cough that lingers.

Sometimes Matteus tries to join his uncle, and though the older man does nothing to stop him, he is silent and hardly seems to notice his nephew’s presence.

And so, Matteus finds himself very much alone that Yuletide, even when he is in the company of others—perhaps even most so then.

As they sit to supper the night before Christmas Eve, Jesper begins to speak, softly and strangely, of how long ago, it was Odin who rode on midwinter’s night. Astrid tells him to hush, her voice quiet but with a subtle edge. Jesper continues, as though he has not heard her, talks of how Odin was a strange god, a god of death and war and magic, a god who marshalled strength to fight against a fate he knew could never be averted. And, chuckling grimly, Jesper says that perhaps those ignorant old pagans knew far more of life than their foolish descendants, who hope for joy that can never last, who love a God who is distant and invisible and still every bit as cruel as the elder deities, for all the talk of His endless love.

Astrid slaps the table loudly, and Jesper looks up slowly. Tears glisten in both their eyes. Jesper looks down and says nothing more throughout the meal.

The next day, they all go to church, to spend the evening in prayer and worship. But all through the Christmas service, Matteus notices the barely concealed looks of pity from their neighbors and fellow worshippers. And, once, Jesper and he share a silent look, and the older man smiles faintly and squeezes his hand.

The next morning, the first Christmas morning without Peter’s loud laughter, Jesper is too weak to rise from his bed. The cough in his chest sounds like it rattles his very bones. So instead of opening their stockings stuffed with rare candied fruits and nuts and perhaps a few coins or a single small toy, Stefan, Inga, and Matteus join their parents in tending to Jesper, in fetching the doctor, in seeing to the endless work of the prairie homestead.

And, as Matteus lays awake in the night, listening to the wracks of his uncle’s frail body, he thinks he hears something else, a wet snuffling and hungry panting somewhere just outside his little window, the sound of a great tongue licking over a long, terrible muzzle.

(Short pause)

The short days are dark in the following weeks, the heavy curtain of the iron-hued clouds never shifting. A cold draught moans unrelentingly from the north, pushing the snow into high, long drifts that are flecked blackly with windblown dirt.

Jesper grows weaker and weaker, stops eating. His coughing fits are so long and violent, so that sometimes Matteus thinks that the thin man’s bones must break with their savage force.

One day, Matteus is helping his mother to try and coax Jesper into eating at least a little of the broth and bread she has made. The ailing man waves the food away with gentle words that are nevertheless absolute. Matteus thinks, looking back and forth between the two adults, that his mother looks as pale and spent as Jesper.

As Astrid gathers up the declined meal, Jesper sits up slightly, looking at Matteus with a strange intensity. He waves the boy over, and slowly, Matteus approaches, feeling an apprehension he has never felt toward his uncle, and also guilt for his hesitation.

Jesper smells of death, and Matteus has to struggle not to wrinkle his nose as he draws near. When the older man speaks, his voice sounds hollow and somehow damp, not at all like the uncle Matteus has so long adored.

This wide land is hungry, Jesper tells him, coughing wetly before continuing. It will gobble us up, all of us. Men brought their hunger into the innocent land, infected it, and now its immortal appetite has eclipsed even that of humankind. It has eaten so many, and it will swallow us too.

Astrid’s eyes are wide, seeming frightened, angry, and confused all at once. After a moment of hesitation, she sharply tells Matteus to leave the room, that his uncle is very ill and needs rest without distraction, and the boy reluctantly obeys. As he walks out of the dark room, Jesper calls for him to come back, but before Matteus can do anything more than turn around, Astrid has firmly closed the door.

He stands there, feeling sundered, feeling like his innards have been carved out, leaving him empty and false.

(Short pause)

When exactly Jesper stops breathing in the night, none of them know. But Matteus cannot help but think it was at that same moment when the shrieking and rattling of his window woke him.

Inga, who was woken at the same instant, insists that it was only the wind. Matteus does not argue with her.

The ground is too thoroughly frozen now for a grave, and the last Matteus sees of his uncle is when the town undertaker collects the body, to be preserved until the spring thaw. Matteus feels very strange, during that last glimpse; the face and body is not at all like it was in life. It looks so small, and the features seem wrong, subtly but horridly altered.

Perhaps, he thinks, that is what a person looks like, when their soul has been devoured.

(Short pause)

When spring comes, and they lay Jesper at last into the thawed but still-cold earth, Matteus has become almost used to the silence. He has not heard that inhuman voice in the night, not since that cruel midnight waking when his uncle passed.

And yet, every night, he falls asleep with the creeping dread that it will come again, someday. Perhaps it will be years, or perhaps it will be in mere moments, but he knows that its return is inevitable.

Almost, he hopes that it will come for him instead of yet another loved one. But then he imagines that great, dread beast leering at him in the darkest hour, looking just as it does in some woodcut illustration burned clearly into his memory and which he has never been able to relocate: its fur black and shaggy, its mouth, which his imagination has painted scarlet, wide and with a long, lolling tongue and horrifically oversized fangs, the eyes narrow and piercing and full of malignity. When Matteus thinks of that, he knows that he cannot wish that the thing ever comes seeking him, not truly.

Two years pass. Stefan and Matteus, both taller and stronger, take on more of the arduous farm labor as Nils’s back bends, as his hands stiffen and his knuckles grow thick and painful. Still, from both pride and from necessity, Nils insists on working the fields.

It is a spring morning, and the boys are mending a wheel on the seed drill while their father harrows the west field, where they will plant the year’s summer wheat. The sky is a bright, robin’s egg blue and the sun is pleasantly warm on their skins.

And then, distantly, Matteus hears it. He stiffens, and Stefan notices, begins to ask a question. But at that moment, there is a louder cry from the fields, sharp and wild and quickly cut off, and then the sounds of a horse whinnying in fear.

The two boys leave their task and run toward the field. Even before they get there, Matteus feels a bleak certainty of what they will find, but is no less stricken when his apprehension proves true. Nils lies facedown in the ravaged earth, where he was thrown when the horses started for some reason that none will ever know. Blood pours from the long tracks the discs of the harrow carved in his flesh, but he still lives. Yet, looking at him, Matteus wonders if that is only crueler. Those who live close to the land, to living things, develop a sense of when death hovers near, and looking at the mangled body of his father, Matteus doubts that Nils will live, would doubt it even had he not heard that awful, musical omen upon the wind mere moments before.

Still, when Stefan shouts for him to run to the house and fetch mother, and then to collect the doctor, he obeys.

It is a full day and a half before Nils, breathing raggedly, finally lies still. And, though they all stand within arm’s reach of each other, Matteus knows that he is the only one who hears the second cavernous howl. Trying in vain to blink back the tears burning in his eyes, he thinks that the beast sounds louder, each time he hears it, and wonders whether it is closer each time, or merely grown still larger.

(Short pause)

That winter, they all take ill, but only Inga develops the telltale coarse rash and strawberry tongue of scarlet fever. Matteus does not sleep at all after that, waiting to hear it, knowing it will come. And even as he lies awake, listening for any sound other than Inga’s increasingly labored breathing, he reflects on Jesper’s words. Older and wiser, he realizes how his child’s mind failed to grasp their true meaning, warped it into a nightmarish fantasy, and how there cannot be any such thing as the thing he listens for.

And yet, he hears it still.

He cannot summon a single tear when they lay Inga beside her father and brother, near Jesper. And he wonders if something has finally snapped within him. He feels very distant, as though watching himself in a dream, as he goes about the farm work, now far too much for the three remaining inhabitants of the somber little homestead on the stark, broad prairie.

(Short pause)

They stagger on, through that next year, dreary and hardly exchanging any words beyond those necessary to see to their daily tasks. The work has grown too heavy for only two boys and their aging mother, and though their nearest neighbors come to help from time to time, they fall ever farther behind in the cycle of ploughing, sowing, reaping and threshing, in taking care of the pigs and chickens, milk cow and horses.

And then, after a trip to town to buy provisions for the coming winter, Stefan begins to talk at the supper table of joining the army, of going west to fight the last of the Indians before they are all gone. Hearing this, Matteus cannot help but muse aloud what an ugly thing it is, to think of a people passing from the world and want only to spill their blood. Stefan rises in a bloodless rage, kicks over a chair, and leaves the house.

Astrid says nothing. The hollows of her eyes are dark and haunted, like her heart. The two of them sit in silence, waiting for Stefan’s return even though it may never come.

(Short pause)

Matteus hears the great wolf twice more.

He and Stefan are returning to the house at the end of a long day of putting up hay in the east field. His older brother has not spoken to him for three days, since that supper outburst, but he remains and continues to help, silently, with the work. The evening is chilly, and Matteus is looking forward to the warmth of the house as the setting sun paints the western sky in fiery gold and bruised purple.

But the house is dark and empty when they reach it, and no answer comes when they call to their mother. Breaking his silence, Stefan tells him to check the barn while he goes to the chicken coop. They have barely made it out of the house when they heard a faint snapping, creaking sound from the direction of the barn.

And that is when Matteus hears the howl, loud and long and triumphant, reverberating off the hills and plains like the trumpets around Jericho.

Stefan asks him what that was, and Matteus doesn’t know if he has finally heard the lupine phantom, or if he means the fainter sound from the barn.

When they find their mother hanging from a rafter in the barn, Stefan is quick to cut her down, and Matteus catches her and lowers her slack weight to the floor as gently as he is able. She is still warm to the touch, and for a moment, Matteus lets the merciless flower of hope blossom in his heart. But she does not stir, does not breathe, and before long, her flesh cools under their fingers.

They lay her gently in the house that night, and in the morning, the boys bury her themselves, seeking no help from the undertaker or the preacher in town, or even from their neighbors.

For the next four days, the two of them idle around the homestead, listless, their insides as pale and cold as their mother’s face that grim morning of the lonely burial.

When, at last, Stefan says flatly that he is taking the younger of the two horses and leaving, going west, Matteus nods slowly as though he has known that all along. And perhaps, he thinks, he has. It seems to him that he should be able to find some words for his brother and last living family member, some heartfelt parting or meaningful advice, even a plea to stay and build some future together, but it is as though his soul and mind have frozen. Not a single syllable rises up his throat, no whisper passes through his lips.

And the next morning, as he watches Stefan saddle the horse and ride away, seeming insect-small as he recedes into the distance and is dwarfed by the illimitable skies and the ocean of grass and grain, he hears, for the last time, that resounding song that has devoured not only the souls of his loved ones, but his own living one, and Matteus knows that he and his brother will never cross paths again.

For a moment, he turns away from the view of his brother’s retreating form, and toward the place where, long ago, he’d perceived the shape of a great wolf in the rolling, hard-boned hills. And, as he gazes there, it seems to him that a great shadow stirs, thickens, coalesces into a vague shape, then leaps into the sky and flies westward. It happens in only the space of an eye’s blink, and he cannot be sure that what he saw was ever truly there. But the wind carries with it a low note, sustained and sharp, that cuts into the core of his very being and swallows whatever light remains there.

(Sound of an eerie wolf’s howl, doomful music)

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro]

NARRATOR

Story, narration, and arrangement by Lars Mollevand. If you enjoyed today’s story, please rate, review, and share. Thank you for listening. We’ll meet again… in darker pastures.

Happy holidays, everyone!

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]