The Fires of Vidar

The House on Thor's Ridge

1: The House of Thor's Ridge

It was foggy in Berk. In fact, around Halloween, it was always foggy in Berk, the cold and precipitous island in the United Archipelago that seemed ground zero for Viking-style beards, head bludgeoning contests and gross muttonheaded stupidity. It wasn't even a decent, picturesque fog: no, it was a clammy cold fog that got into your bones and made your feel like someone was walking over your grave.

Sheriff Snotlout Jorgensen hated Halloween. He had made it very clear to everyone who asked him and especially his muttonheaded assistants who were determined to try to add some Halloween cheer to the station house. He had so far removed six pumpkins, three ghouls, some bat-shaped bunting and three 'hilarious' skeletons that had been hanging from the roof but which caused everyone to have to crawl into the front office for fear of being accidentally kicked in the face by a rather sharp fake skeletal foot. Of course, Halloween had been fun as a child, when pumpkin pie and sweets from Trick or Treating played a large part in the celebration but as Sheriff, the holiday had lost its lustre the previous year when a young lad had been horribly murdered, leading Snotlout and his idiot deputies Ruffnut and Tuffnut Thorston, along with his cousin, his cousin's fiancée and his cousin's business partner to be trapped inside the horribly spooky lighthouse at Raven Point with a raging spirit and a lot more fire than was strictly necessary. That had led to the answer to a decades-old murder and a horrific tale of serial child abuse, abduction and murder that had caused Snotlout unwanted attention for about six months as Berk struggled to salvage its reputation.

Of course, Hiccup had swanned off back to his architect's practice on Dragonia, the main island, with his gorgeous girlfriend Astrid and his geeky friends Fishface or something similar, leaving Snotlout to field the flack. The fact he had only taken up the post about eighteen months earlier and no one had vanished during that time had protected him from most of the criticism though his father, uncle, other uncle and grandfather had been solidly in the firing line for their incompetence over a period of decades in completely missing the disappearances. It had caused the Mayor-Hiccup's father and Snotlout's maternal uncle-to institute a 'root and branch' overhaul of the police department. Though what horticulture had to do with his competence as a Sheriff eluded Snotlout. It had meant that Snotlout and his entire department had been sent on multiple course, retraining and mentoring by a senior officer from Dragonia. Commander Throk had been a harsh taskmaster and the fact he was visiting for his monthly appraisal just put Snotlout in a worse mood.

And then, of course, there was the obligatory missing persons call. It was coming up to Halloween so the youth of Berk-who seem imbued with the same amount of self-preservation as a chicken walking into a slaughterhouse-decided to stay in various dangerous locations. Old stone formations, haunted rotting houses, old lighthouses, Viking burial sites, the graveyard, the Cove... wherever they could manage to put themselves in danger of freezing, drowning, being hit by falling masonry, collapsing buildings, wild animals, maybe supernatural threats...

"How many?" Snotlout asked grimly, driving up towards Thor's Ridge and the old 'haunted house' that was the last stated location of the missing Juniors.

"Three," Gustav Larson replied, making notes on his clipboard. While Snotlout was short and stocky with slicked back raven hair and cool blue eyes, Gustav was a skinny ex-teen (he had turned twenty the previous week) with spiky black hair, grey eyes and boundless enthusiasm. For some reason, he idolised Snotlout and was modelling himself on his hero...though, as Snotlout noted, he was slightly smarter and worked his ass off. In the last year, he had completed six online courses including forensics, fingerprinting, psychological aspects of criminology, ballistics and poisons. Snotlout was in danger of feeling outsmarted. "Egil Jonsson, Gertrude Kalla and Elf-face McSweeney."