Content Warning for this chapter! I hope it's nothing too strong, but this is probably the creepiest and most horrific chapter in the whole story.
Chapter 7
Snotlout and Tuffnut could not believe what had happened. Over the vigorous protests from them and their families, they had been dragged to Berk's prison and locked up. Stoick had not openly accused them of murder yet, but since they had been accused by Hiccup and there was a mess outside to clean up, he ordered them imprisoned until he sorted this out. This did not reassure either of them.
"I'm innocent! Innocent I tell you!" Snotlout screamed as he tried to shake the bars on his cell door.
"So am I!" Tuffnut yelled from his own cell. "I never hurt a hair on Hiccup's head! I hurt a bunch of the other ones, sure, but there was one particular hair I never touched!"
"Oh very funny!" Snotlout snapped, "you think that's gonna help us now?"
"Well is it any better than what you're doing? Who are you shouting at anyway?"
Snotlout stepped away from the iron door and sat down on a grungy black rock, which the entire prison was dug out from. He cell was little more than a closet sized hole cut out of the dank black stone. These cells had been built long ago, back when Berk was first being settled, and while the upper levels where the guards and administrators dwelt had been rebuild constantly, these levels were virtually unchanged since their first day in use. And all Snotlout could do was pace around or sit.
But pacing quickly grew monotonous, for he could make several complete circles within a minute. But to sit and look around was even worse. Just to gaze upon the blackness in this prison was to look at foul uncouthness at its worst. There was virtually no light, save for a faint torch lit near the back of the passage that led out of cells. The air was rank and stuffy, almost suffocating. Everything that could actually be seen in this prison was bleak and horrible, and it was meant to be that way. Never before had he felt so helpless. By the looks of it, Tuffnut was feeling little better.
"Tuff, I have to know something. Did you do it?"
"Did I kill Useless, you mean? No, I did not." Tuffnut said miserably. "Did you?"
"No."
"I know that."
The two boys nearly jumped out of their skins. The Ghost of Hiccup was sitting in a cell opposite them.
He smiled sinisterly. "Why, what's happened to the tormentors I used to know? Not so powerful now that you're in prison, are you? Throw the Emperor into a cell and it turns out he's just as much a nameless number as the slave is."
"But we didn't kill you, Hiccup!" Tuffnut cried, "Why accuse us if you know we didn't? Unless it was a mistake?"
"Have you come to tell us we're getting out of here?" Snotlout asked eagerly.
"Oh it wasn't a mistake. You boys are right where I want you."
Snotlout and Tuffnut exchanged uneasy looks. "What do you mean?"
"I know neither of you didn't kill me, but you were the worst of my bullies, so I thought a little time in prison would be a nice punishment. After all, you guys trapped me in a prison for nearly 15 years."
"No we didn't! You weren't in prison!" Tuffnut protested.
"A metaphorical prison, dummy. All that time there was no escaping you and the abuse you showered on me. I had fresh air and space to move around in, but in all other ways I was as much as prisoner as you are now." Hiccup's expression turned ugly. "And now here you are, like bears caught in a deep pit, and hardly the first ones."
Snotlout tried to act brave. "Yeah, well, guess what? You yourself said we're innocent! Once the Chief comes down here we'll tell him that and he'll let us out! Laugh all you want, cousin, but we won't be here for long! You're little scheme is as useless as you are! Hah!"
Tuffnut laughed as well, but less enthusiastically, and he stopped laughing completely when he saw that Hiccup showed no signs that the words had affected him.
Instead, the ghost glanced about the cells. "This is the worst place on the entire island. Even worse than the Dragon Arena. Countless people have been thrown in here, and many never came out alive. But they're still here. Even decades and centuries later, they're still prisoners in this nightmare of a building. Don't believe me? Then just listen."
They did. At first all they heard was their own uneasy breathing, but slowly they became aware of other sounds. Voices, faint as the nighttime breeze at first, which gradually grew. They heard sounds of cell doors slamming shut and people screaming, much as they had done when they had been locked up. They heard people of every sort, women, men, and even children. And all the while they heard the screeches and scurrying of rats. Unseen the voices and sounds seemed to surround them. Snotlout and Tuffnut spun around repeatedly trying to see where the noises were coming from but there was no one else in the prison.
"Let me out of here! Let me out of here!" an invisible man pleaded.
"I want my mamma!" a child cried from behind them.
"Please, let me go! I'm innocent! I never harmed him! Please, my child needs me! Let me go to my son!" a woman screamed.
"Give us some water, there are people dying in here!"
"Kill me!" an elderly man croaked, "Just get it over with already and let me die!"
"There are rats chewing on me! Get them off of me! Help! Help!"
They heard someone coughing and vomiting, and bit by bit the coughing slowly stopped.
They heard another woman speaking with an accent in a tongue they did not know. First she sounded begging and then she cried out desperately "Non! Non!" And then they heard her screaming wordlessly while a man who sounded inebriated laughed boorishly.
They heard women singing to their dead children, and then the voices became masculine and began singing to their dead lovers. They heard drunkards singing as fierce winter storms howled around them, and the storms changed effortlessly into the roar of battle and the singers went from drunkards to soldiers, singing to rally their spirits as their bodies were split in half by swords. And then they heard the cry of the wounded. They knew that sound all too well, having heard it many times after dragon raids. It was a futile cry for help, a cry for the Gods to end it all, one way or another. It was a cry from those who had no hope there was a better day coming.
They heard people muttering and shouting incoherently, as though their minds had become unhinged. They heard the clanging of chains and the cracking of whips, followed by people of all ages crying out painfully. They heard the sound of racks turning and bones breaking, of metal burning and of weapons being sharpened. For a moment Snotlout thought they were in the forge, until he heard the sound of axes slamming into wood blocks after first cutting through human flesh. And all the while they heard the screeches and scurrying of rats.
"Hiccup, stop it!" Tuffnut suddenly shouted, "I can't take it anymore, stop it!"
"Vikings truly are great and powerful, aren't they?" was all that Hiccup said for a reply.
The noises grew even louder, so loud that Snotlout wondered why no guards had come to investigate.
"I want to go home!"
"Let me go!"
"I'm hungry," someone moaned feebly, "so…hungry…"
"No, please don't! I don't want to—"
And although they still could not see anyone and could not see what caused them to say what they did, in their terror Snotlout and Tuffnut could imagine the sorts of perverted activities that had gone on in this prison over the centuries. For them this was worse than actually seeing anything, for the imagination had no limit to how horrible a sight could be, and when they heard a woman imploring someone to save her infant, they imagined a baby as hideous as a victim of dragon fire. The sounds of rats made them imagine rats the size of dogs, with great yellow eyes, long slimy tails, and giant fangs waiting to bite into their own bodies, and thin claws ready to slice them into pieces.
They heard people laughing hysterically and imagined half decayed skeletons laughing as an executioner tried to decapitate them, only to discover that they kept laughing even with their skulls detached. And when they heard the woman speaking in the foreign tongue again, Snotlout imagined Astrid, first looking lovely as a Goddess, then suddenly changing into a voluptuous fiend with eyes blazing like meteors and skin hot as molten bronze, and then she was a living corpse with blood dripping from her mouth as she forcefully tried to make love to him.
Was this all actually happening around them or was it just their imaginations? Was this a nightmare or reality?
"LET ME OUTTA HERE!" Snotlout shouted, grabbing the bars of the door frantically. He heard an invisible phantom crying the same thing. "Hiccup, I'm serious, stop it! STOP IT!"
"Funny," Hiccup's voice said without emotion, "I can recall saying those exact same words myself once…"
The sounds and voices did not stop, but they seemed to retreat into the walls, and new ones once again reached the ears of the two teenage boys. And this time they recognized their own voices. At first it was just them laughing, along with Ruffnut, while they heard Hiccup sniffing.
"You're pathetic!" the voice of Tuffnut laughed.
"You're useless!" the voice of Snotlout jeered.
"You're pathetically useless!" the voice of Ruffnut spoke as if she had just come up with a sentence to be proud of. They heard the sounds of fists hitting a body.
Snotlout remembered this day now. It had been shortly after Dragon Training had started, though before Hiccup had begun to impress everyone. In those days, even though none of them had performed brilliantly, excluding Astrid as usual, they still found Hiccup's performance in the ring worth mocking.
"Look at him! The great Dragon Killer!"
"Let me go!" they heard Hiccup cry. There was a sickening crunching sound and Hiccup cried out in pain.
"Ha! He couldn't kill a mouse!"
"Stop it!" Hiccup begged.
"Let's tie him up a tree and leave him there!"
"Yeah! It's not like his precious daddy's around to save him this time, right?"
"Hang him upside down!"
Then they heard Astrid's voice interrupt the bullying by saying "What's going on here?"
Tuffnut remembered that moment. For a brief moment Hiccup's eyes had brightened with hope. He had probably thought Astrid had come to save him. Instead Astrid had merely glanced around, shrugged slightly, and walked away without comment. At the time Tuffnut had been so thrilled to see the hope die in Hiccup's eyes, but now he felt sick, so sick that if he had held power over Time he would have used it to undo his actions that day. Hiccup's expression had gone from hopeful to confusion to looking absolutely broken.
For the rest of this scene all he and Snotlout heard were their own laughs amidst Hiccup's pleading with them to stop, pleas which made them laugh even louder.
It had been Snotlout's idea to use a partially frayed rope to tie Hiccup to that tree, so that sooner or later the rope would snap from the weight and Hiccup would fall to the ground.
"Hopefully he'll break his neck!" he had said.
Snotlout in the cell suddenly felt a powerful grip around his own neck and for a moment was convinced Hiccup's ghost was going to strangle him. The grip relaxed almost as soon as it had started, but Snotlout shook for a while afterwards.
"So you tied me up that tree and left me there," the ghost said nonchalantly.
"Hiccup, I—"
The ghost went on as if Snotlout had not spoken. "But there was a sequel to this little experience in my life, one which nobody else ever knew about,"
They heard the sound of a branch snapping and Hiccup's cries of pain rang out again. Then they heard the sound of rain. It sounded so close and so real that they thought at first it was actually raining outside, or even inside, for the cells were likely as not to drip.
And then, with the sound of rain still present and prominent, they heard Hiccup's voice again. In between sobs he was shouting at somebody desperately.
"Come on! Go ahead and eat me! Everybody knows you guys eat humans all the time, so help yourself! Do us both a favor! Come on, I won't stop you! Just do it and get it over with! You'll get dinner and I'll be free from this place forever—we both get what we want for a change!"
"Who's he talking to?" Tuffnut whispered. Snotlout shrugged slightly.
"What are you waiting for? What's the matter with you? I'm offering myself up as a free meal; aren't you going to roast me or something? What's the matter? I thought dragons loved the taste of humans! Or am I not good enough even for that?"
"Oh gods," Tuffnut said in horror. "Hiccup tried to get eaten by dragon!"
Snotlout frowned. Was this how Hiccup had died? But that made no sense. The dragon had clearly not eaten him, because they all saw Hiccup the very next day! But dragons always went for the kill, right?
Right?
They heard Hiccup sob louder, "Oh this is just great! Terrific! My whole village hates or ignores me, and now I find even dragons don't want anything to do with me! Even our sworn enemies don't want me! Why? What have I ever done to deserve all this hate? All right then, where's a knife—since even the dragons are so reluctant to put me out of my misery I'll do it myself! Oh right. Snotlout took it so I couldn't use it on him." His yell was filled with misery. "Just kill me, somebody, just end me! I can't take this anymore! I want to die!" They heard the sobbing grow even louder, though he said no more.
"So you see?" the ghost of Hiccup reappeared before them. "You drove me so far that I was willing to let a dragon eat me rather than spend another day on this rock!"
"But it didn't eat you, did it?" Tuffnut asked, "You were just fine the next day!"
"No, he didn't eat me." The ghost's face contorted, "But that particular memory is one you two aren't privy to!"
"But where was this dragon?" Tuffnut pressed, "At the Arena?"
"Of course it was, dummy, where else would it have been?" Snotlout said scornfully, "I mean it's not like we've got dragons living in the woods, right?"
"I can't see how people think you're a model Viking when you've got the brains of a fish," Hiccup said with equal scorn in his voice, "unless it's another Viking trait that passed me over. You really think a dragon couldn't hide in the woods without anyone finding it?" He started laughing. "Well, my 'friends', I shall leave you to your thoughts. Pleasant dreams!"
"Hey, Hiccup, wait a minute!" Tuffnut yelled, but there was no response.
"Like I'm going to get any sleep now!" Snotlout whimpered. Even with his eyes wide opened he could not get the sights and sounds he had heard that night out of his head.
Still, he suddenly felt drained of all his energy and he collapsed onto the floor of his cell. "What are we going to do, Tuff?" he moaned.
"I don't know," Tuffnut said. He could scarcely remember a time where he had been so somber. Normally he had trouble just trying to be distressed, but tonight there had been no difficulty. He once again felt horribly sick. "We really screwed Hiccup up, didn't we?"
"Oh come on. He was hopeless even without us!" Snotlout said dismissively. "Though…I'll admit we didn't help much,"
"Much?" Tuffnut exclaimed. He was so appalled by Snotlout's words that he could think of no additional response.
"I wonder if it's daylight yet," Snotlout said after a while.
"I don't know,"
Few things had ever felt longer than a night where there was no way to tell the time. For all they knew a pause in any conversation might have lasted a minute or five hours. The moments went on forever.
And then Snotlout sat bolt upright. "Did you hear that?"
"Oh no," Tuffnut said fearfully. It was the sound of a woman crying for death to take her. The voices they had heard earlier were returning. The nightmare of sound was starting again.
Snotlout and Tuffnut tried to ignore it, but however hard they tried they once again heard people of all ages and genders making impassioned pleas to invisible captors.
"Spare him; take me!" an old woman pleaded.
"Don't hurt her! I'll do anything!" A man cried. If ever defeat was discernable in a voice, it was in this one.
"Let me out of here! I want to go home!" a boy wept.
"I want to talk to the Chief! I'm innocent! Let me talk to the Chief!"
And it only got worse, for now they started hearing the voices of the captors too.
"Ah shut up, you piece of filth!"
"One more sound out of you and I'll squeeze your eyes out!"
"Lookee here, guys! This one thinks if he begs hard enough we'll give him something to eat! How about we make him taste my whip?"
"Yeah, go ahead!" others jeered excitedly, "Do it! Do it!"
"Hit her legs with the hammer! See how long it takes 'em to break!"
Snotlout and Tuffnut tried very hard not to imagine the scenes that the voices were recreating, scenes that had really happened who knows how long ago.
They could hear once again floggings and the wheel of the rack, and in addition to the screams of the victims they could hear the laughter of the torturers. Snotlout and Tuffnut noticed uncomfortably eerie similarities between that kind of laughter and the way they had laughed themselves when picking on Hiccup. All kinds of verbal abuse were shouted as others pleaded for mercy, from jeers to villainous oaths.
And perhaps the worst of it was the fact that they would never be able to forget any of this. Even as the voices died out, which they did from time to time, there was no forgetting what they had heard and the images they had conjured in their minds as a result. There was no escaping from this nightmare. The two were so horrified they might have hanged themselves if they had had the means to.
Yet even worse was the urging to do something to help the miserable souls, while knowing it was already far too late. When they heard children begging for a morsel of food they wanted to give them something, anything, but such wants were vain and pointless.
Snotlout started crying. He tried to disguise it from Tuffnut, but Tuffnut hardly cared about appearances anymore. "Let it end, let it end!" he whimpered as he clung to the vest he was using as a pillow. In the excitement of the raid nobody had either thought or wanted to give them any basic comforts for their stay, which made matters even bleaker for them.
They both wondered if this had been how Hiccup had felt, and knew beyond any excuses now that they especially had been largely responsible for it.
And all the while they heard the screeches and scurrying of rats. Unfortunately, Tuffnut soon discovered there were real ones present as well. They did not bother the humans, but it was a real shock to gaze at a wall, see a pair of eyes looking back, and hear tiny claws scratching on stone as the creature darted away. And Odin knew how many rats were hiding behind the walls or under the floor. The two prisoners began imagining huge underground nests of filth that held millions of rats, all of them hissing and biting at anything that dared approached them, ferociously devouring all the polluted and unwanted waste of the village, and slipping out into the village in the dead of night to feed on prisoners and children.
The Vikings of Berk hardly thought of the prison these days, for it was not used too often, as made evident by the fact that there were no additional prisoners. Yet the neglect did in some ways made the prison appear even more appalling, for it showed that not only had past generations used it extensively with cruel and barbaric intentions, but that more recent generations had overlooked and forgotten about the horrors that had been carried out within these walls.
Tuffnut wished dragons had destroyed this place when it had first been built. Snotlout vowed that when he was Chief his first act would be to destroy it, with his own hands and alone if he had to.
The following morning Stoick ordered the prisoners brought before him in Mead Hall. They told him as much about what they had seen and heard that night as they dared to reveal, and trembled throughout the retelling. Ordinarily Stoick, and the population of Berk in general, would have considered men saying such things to be mad and locked them up for good, but they all knew this was no ordinary situation. And when it was revealed that Hiccup in fact had lied about Tuffnut and Snotlout being his killers, Stoick gave them a full apology. Spitelout Jorgenson had also been able to provide them with alibis for the time when Hiccup died.
"When the ships had returned they had been repairing a fence they had smashed the day before. Sentry Nosebrain Griegson was watching them."
"I'm sorry I could not come sooner," the man said apologetically, "I was busy guarding the sheep during the raid and had no idea about the arrest, even less of what it was for, until Jorgenson found me this morning."
So with that Snotlout and Tuffnut were set at liberty and Berk was denied the dramatic entertainment of a murder trial.
"Now," Stoick said after helping himself to a mug of mead and putting a block of ice on his head for the headache he could feel coming. "I've made up my mind. Life is hard enough as it is. We don't need ghosts and demons and Loki knows what else falsely accusing our own and bringing down buildings and keeping us up night and day."
"He also saved two of us during the raid," someone pointed out.
"That's like saying a storm also gave us some rainwater after it wrecked our crops and homes. No. I have had enough of this ghost business."
"Um, Chief? You might not want to talk like that, in case Hiccup hears you," Fishlegs said timidly. Stoick fixed him with such an intimidating glare that the boy nearly melted on the spot.
"But what are we supposed to do about it?" Spitelout Jorgenson demanded.
"That ghost said he wasn't given a proper funeral, yes? And he said that he was hit by a projectile and drowned, yes? Then we will search the coast waters for my son's corpse, and when we find it we will give him a proper funeral." Stoick declared flatly.
"That's not going to be easy," one woman commented, "and with the winter almost upon us…"
"I don't care! We're finding that body if we have to search all year for it!"
Everybody saw there was no shifting Stoick on this and dispensed with any reservations they might have had.
