The boy who did
by Turts
For every job there is the right tool and if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If it’s not worth doing, get Lars to do it. “He’ll do”, they always said.
There were always bigger boys to do all the apprentice jobs around. He was busy at home so he didn’t get out much. Fifteen years old but he was still very much a stranger to the townsfolk. When it came to any minor civic chores that needed doing, he was always the go to guy, but if it wasn’t for the notoriety of his drunken father, nobody would actually know where it was they needed to go to. They were always surprised by how small he looked, having never remembered seeing him before, even though the same person had asked him to dig a drainage ditch beside the road only the week previous. It was a good ditch. It had done the job it was designed to do. But all the townsfolk knew of it was that there was a ditch. They couldn’t think of a time when the ditch hadn’t been there. It certainly never occurred to them that a diminutive teenager had spent the whole of a long summer day digging it, broken two spades in the process and had even carried off all the spoil.
When a local farmer started losing goats and asked the authorities for assistance, he didn’t get much of a sympathetic hearing. The prosperous people had thought that goat was a little passé these days, what with the advent of pigs, sheep and cows. The pig, sheep and cow farmers weren’t complaining, so why didn’t they just get Lars to look into it? “He’ll do,” they chorused. It took them a little while to recall where they could find him, but eventually one of them went with instructions to give to him.
It all sounded a bit adventurous to Lars. Not too adventurous. It was not as if he was a coward. He just hadn’t given much thought to venturing to the outlying farms. Most of the traffic was the other way.
His parents didn’t notice he was gone. Not until the fire went out. There was a bit of a commotion then, but they eventually figured out how to get one going again. Then it was very much business as usual. Until they got hungry that is.
A big leather coat was missing from by the door and a knife was not in the block where it should have been. In order of likelihood they considered thieves, goblins and Loki. If anyone had told them that their own son had gone out with them they would have thought that you were either an idiot or talking Flemish.
It was later that evening when Lars arrived at the farmer’s house. That was when the strangeness started. The lady of the house had made him some supper while her husband explained to him exactly what was going on with his goats. This was most unusual. It was the first time that he had felt noticed for a long time. Normally, he’d have just read what was written on the order and made up the practical stuff on his own. This felt like he was cheating. Maybe it was a trap and they were fattening him up, but they didn’t have the look and feel of witches so he put such thoughts to the back of his mind. He listened avidly instead.
The farmer had lent him a lantern to navigate the fields and nearby wood with. Most of the disappearances had been from the North field, farthest from the house. This was indeed the furthest North that what passed for civilisation in these parts went. Lars hoped that he wasn’t about to fall off the edge of the map. Perhaps that was what the lantern was for, so he could wave it to anyone looking over it for him. Then he thought about who’d come. Not for that, then.
There were no goats around here now. He could see a lot of rabbits. Really quick rabbits, in his opinion. It gave one the impression that they were rabbits that knew that speed was the key to survival in these parts. An uneasy sense of foreboding began to fester in Lars’ mind. Having never felt the sensation before, he had no idea what it was but he knew he didn’t like it.
He soon found some tracks through the trees and, before long, bits of what might have been goat. It had gone very quiet he noticed too, as if everybody and everything else that had a pulse was giving the whole place a wide berth. He noticed that the knife he’d brought was in his hand and that he was gripping it too tightly so his knuckles had gone white. He felt a chill on his face and guessed that all the blood had drained from there as well. The sound of his own footfalls were like a cacophony to him. It occurred to him to take his boots off and carry them but just as he stopped to lean against a handy oak, he noticed a pair of yellow eyes focussing on him. He looked over his shoulder, more in hope than expectation, to see if they were looking at someone else that might have been standing behind him. Sure enough he found that he was very much on his own.
There was a sinister, drooling sort of growl. He prayed that it was his own stomach. It wasn’t. Then a voice came from the darkness beneath the eyes.
