Nazis Don't Go To Valhalla: Spooky Week #5

it nearby. That's what we're doing this week, with spookiness being the vermouth and mixing up our martini. Today is Margaret Killjoy, Margaret Hello, Hello, I'm a famous mixologist, so clearly this would be very good. Now Margaret today for this very special episode of it could happen here on Spooky Week. You have written us, well, you've written a short story and you're going to read it and and and we're all gonna enjoy it. Is that is that accurate? Um? I hope at least I can I can testify to

the first parts, and I hope for the last part. Excellent. All right, Well, with without further ado, or with minimal further ado. Let's uh, let's let's let's just you know, with the with the stuff, with the stuff, Margaret, with this stuff. Well this is great because this is actually a short story that you start reading of. Oh ship, Yeah, where's that link? You tested it to me, but I don't have my phone on me. Okay, let me put it in the chat here um based impressive, to say

the least, based in fiction pilled. Okay, I start reading the italics. Yeah, it's the first A couple of paragraphs of introduction, and your your interview. Me, all right, motherfucker's let's get it started. The Northern Host, for all its lingering, horror and misery, the wake of a war is rich to reign for a folklorist like myself. More people report more supernatural experiences during times of war than times of peace.

Some of my peers have argued the stress and shock of battle leaves our brains more susceptible to mass delusion. Others claim that the veil between worlds remains thin when so many are passing from life to death. The Second American Civil War has been no exception. Most famously, of course, soldiers from each of the three armies present at the fifteen day Siege of St. Louis reported a wailing man who walked among the wounded, healing some and ending the

lives of others. On the Cascadian Front, rebel forces spoke of black bears, who in effect stood central for their guerrilla positions. During the White Army's occupation of Washington, d C. Civilians and soldiers alike reported apparitions pouring out from the Pentagon Crater every new moon. Of all the various myths and legends to spring up in the wake of the recent conflict, however, I find myself most strongly drawn to

the stories of the Northern host. Never have I heard a myth recounted in such detail by such a wide variety of people. My favorite telling comes from Private Sarah Dollar in the Battle of Ashville. This interview was recorded in the spring of and lightly edited for clarity with permission of the subject. Note that the subject refers to the White Army by pejoratives throughout. These have been left intact for the historical record. Could you introduce yourself and

tell me what you saw. Yeah, my my name is Sarah Daher. I'm thirty one years old. I live in Ashville and the Appalachian region of the United States of America on stolen Cherokee Land. My u S military rank was private. They may us all privates when they incorporated the Irregulars into the Army, but I only served in the Union to fight the White Army a year later. I'm one of those crazy radicals who doesn't think the

reconfiguration goes far enough. I've never fired a gun in my life before the Irregulars, and I hope I never fired another one again. By temperament, I'm neither a lover nor a fighter. I'm just your average trans girl who likes cats and hates Nazis. I fought in three engagements in Weaverville, Leicester, and Asheville. I think I killed two people. One of them I know I killed him. I saw him bleed out and I saw him taken away in a black bag. The other person was a man I

shot in the thigh during the Battle of Asheville. I didn't know you could die from a bullet in the thigh, but I've spent a lot of time looking at casualty records, and someone who fit that man's general description died in that battle from a bullet to the thigh. Does that bother you? Yes, No, I don't know. I don't lose sleep over it, but I think about it a lot. I look at the docks on both of them. The first guy was a true believer, a real blood and

soil type. It doesn't bother me that I mingled those two things for him. The second man, though, I'm not so sure, he signed up because his son signed up. I don't have any kids myself, but I could see myself doing that. His son survived the war. Have you been in contact with his son? Now? Funk? That guy that kids a fucking Nazi and I don't know how he talked his way out of the tribunals. Can you tell me what you saw at the Battle of Asheville.

This was during the Fascist Spring Offensive last year, you know, Hitler's birthday April. By that point, the White Army was pretty much done, but they weren't about to go down without doing some major symbolic damage. So there were about forty of us, all irregulars, with our own commanders, no army oversight. Morale was down. We felt pretty abandoned. Common sentiment in the South I was on the street out in front of the library, walking rounds. Downtown was half

rubble at that point. Only the library was standing because symbols matter and all that bullsh ship, So that's where we were making a stand. Neither side had artillery. Really by that point, the brass had just commandeered even our RPGs for the quote real fight. Air support wasn't coming, not for them and not for us. Really, the Battle of Ashville was was like nothing to the rest of

the world, and we knew it. So I was doing the rounds thinking about my ship luck, thinking maybe I was going to die, and how so many people had died, and what's another dead girl to add to the pile. I was thinking about how at least this dead girl is going to die surrounded by or in defensive books. And then I heard dogs from around the side of the building. One barked loud and near, the other sort of distant and echoy. I went to check it out,

turned the corner and there was this naked guy. He was pale as hell, tall, tattooed and scarred, and like I said, he was naked as the sun. I stared at him, he stared at me. I got so distracted trying to figure him out that it took me a moment to realize there were nine others behind him, or maybe they weren't there at first. I don't know. Oh most of them were men, mostly of the tall Norse looking variety, but there was a Middle Eastern man and three women, including one who by my read was Latin

X No dogs anywhere that I could see. The man closest to me he asked me something in a language I didn't know. I just kind of stared. He asked me another question in another language. What I asked? Who are you? Who are we fighting? He asked? His accent was thick, and I couldn't place it for the life of me. I mean, I know now, but I sure as ship didn't know it then we I asked what I was due back out front, because I was a century doing the rounds and this sure needed reporting. But

what the hell was I going to tell? People? Who are we fighting? Where are we You're in Asheville? Who are you? Ah? The American conflict? The man said behind him. Others nodded. Their movements were sloppy, dream like they were drunk. I later realized one of them had dried blood running down from her lip onto her not insubstantial. Ally, you're fighting the nationalists, the first one said, we're here to help you. Who are you, I asked this third time

he actually answered, my name is bell Gear. We are the dead. We are the inn here from Valhalla. Every day we are sent to a battle to fight, and we die. The others behind him nodded, definitely drunk. Now, I know there were good folks on our side who were into European paganism, but you have to understand that a lot more of the fashion were into that ship than anybody else. If they hadn't been naked and drunk,

I might have mistaken them for the enemy and shot them. Valhalla, I said, reciting the tiny bit I knew that's where Vikings go if they die in battle, feast every day and fight every night in Odin's hall until the end of the world, where you like also fight and die. But wolf eats the sun or something close enough. Bell Gear said, I mean Odin only gets half the battle dead,

and Viking isn't a good name for us. But sure, and you're here because we are to take arms alongside you, fight your enemies and die Today am I going to die today? Only the seers and the gods know that. I've been calling myself a witch half my life, but honestly that was mostly because I like taro and astrology and panagrams and ship I've never been someone who took the supernatural all that seriously. But nothing in the world

made sense like it used to. Fascists had just been driven out of d C. Cascadia had not only succeeded, but was in a civil war of its own now. Mexico was gone and replaced by self governing states of almost every stripe in the political rainbow. China had backed white supremacists and other nationalist types in an American civil war, and antigovernment leftists were fighting alongside weirdos like me in the damn u s Army. I can't say those things were as weird as naked dead don't call us vikings

talking to me in the street. But somehow all of that was just comparably bizarre. Come let us arm ourselves and fight together. You and I Belger said, So that's how I'm the Northern host. Most people don't believe me, assume it was just some kind of drunk wing nuts. Maybe some irregulars I've never met before, but I saw what I saw, and I believe it. The rest of us who survived they saw it too, And how did it go? Yeah? Pardon the battle? How did it go?

We got the iron here yard into irregular's garb and armed them. There were plenty of guns at that point in the forgotten hellhole of front. Bullets not so much, but plenty of guns. They were all comfortable with firearms, though one fellow groused about what he wouldn't do for an axe and shield, and another said what we had was fine, but monofilament web guns were better than any combat shotgun. To hear them, tell it, funk it? Why

am I pretending like I don't believe them? I believe them with every bit of my soul, and damn what people think of me for it. The Northern Host fight every night, and every night. They are in a different time and place. Most battles in human history were in the past, they said, which sounds optimistic, doesn't it, But they said they fought in every century up to the Nothing happen after the twenty four century. Ragnarok most likely the end of the world, wolves eating the sun, and

the moon all that. They stood guard out with me out front. Around midday we got hit with an e MP. We knew that was coming. It didn't screw us up much. We had a hardened phone in the basement, and all our weapons operated just as well in dumb mode a smart mode, including our own e MPs. The White Army showed up, maybe a hundred men, all men, that's their whole stick. They came in on motorcycles and a t v s and horses more stick. Like a fucking folksy

they are. We hit them with the m e mp s anyway level the field, took out the a t v s, the bikes were retrofitted, no electric and a horse. You can't impel horse. I don't know if there was a skirmish in that war that didn't start with both sides ritually knocking the other one back to basically the twentieth century. I think the tactical e MP is the

reason there's anything left of this country. We took a few pot shots while they were still at range, but we didn't have the AMMO to waste on anything else. I don't think we'd at any damage. They took up position further up the hill and the ruins of the old Basilica. Then we waited. We should have mined the church. That old thing was blown half to ship. Anyway, it wouldn't have made the world any worse if we'd either leveled it or hidden explosives throughout. But you know, ethical

war or whatever, don't mind churches. The other side leveled every mosques, inn agogue and quote heretic church they got their hands on, not to mention libraries and universities and even the goddamn Statue of Liberty because they hate immigrants. But we were supposed to be fighting a quote ethical war. Those two words don't got nothing to do with one another,

and everyone knows it. So they hold up in the Basilica, and we pulled back into the library and we had one of those good old fashioned standoffs where people die slowly from sniper fire and everything is awful. That's when Laura got shot right in the head because we missed a spot when we bulletproof the facade. She's dead. She had natural red hair, but she always died at Redder And her favorite show is by for the Vampire Slayer. And she liked to drink water out of long stem glasses.

She was I think she was thirty seven, way past rafting age. She volunteered. It was her first engagement. She was only there because she loved books, had plenty of time to avoid looking at her corpse while she was in there with us dead. Dwight was another one of my friends in the unit, one of my favorite people, hands down, total weirdo, and he was all obsessed with that Viking ship and Dark ages in general. Both his parents had come over from Sweden, though his dad was

originally from Nigeria. Dwight had one degree in medieval studies in another African history, and I can't tell you how many times during basic he'd run down the details of this or that ancient battle, whether in Europe or Africa. If there were guns involved, he didn't care about it, but if there were swords in armor or spears and shields, he was all in. He started talking to the Vikings

first thing. He was the first person to believe them, to to really believe them, and his faith was contagious. While we were pinned down, he asked them everything. Mostly they were quiet, even taciturn, but there was one thing they were very insistent on, and that I overheard them talking about Nazis don't go to Valhalla. But why not? Dwight asked, It takes two things to go to Valhalla. The spokesperson said, you have to die in battle, and you have to venerate Odin. A bunch of those fuckers

are Odiness, he said, no, they aren't. They're nationalist, fascists, racial separatists are all kinds of things, but they don't venerate Odin. Whatever they think, What do you mean? They only know one half of Odin. They know the masculine side,

the heterosexual side, the Christian side. They worship a bastardization of our God, a bastardization first created by a nationalist Christian eight hundred years ago that's only gotten further afield since our Odin practices women's magic, the magic of these sexually penetrated. We also worship female gods of war, and male gods of the hearth, and gods who change their gender when they're board. Nazis don't understand that any of it.

In life, we aided, sometimes traded. Other times we also did all sorts of things that won't fit your modern sensibilities, things that were I alive. You might kill me for but we're not Nazis, and people who worship a Christian version of our God most certainly do not go to Valhalla. It was as if the man had used up every word allotted to him for the day, because I don't believe one of them spoke again before the battle began

in earnest And how long was that another hour? Maybe the sun was still right overhead when the White Army rushed us. It was a bullshit move, rushing us one part over confidence in one part desperation. If you can imagine that they knew they were losing the war at that point, but they had us more than two to one, and we all know that KKK commanders don't give two ships about the lives of their men. That's when I put a bullet on a man's leg while he was

in the street running. It was a good shot. He was running, and I led the target and everything. I've been aiming for center body mass, but but still at least a hundred yards against a moving target. I was proud of that shot at the time on a technical level, even if I'm not sure I'm proud of it any more now that I know the man's name. We expected the charge. What we didn't expect was the ordinance that

knocked the reinforced front off its hinges. But that happened, and almost all the fighting happened right there on the first floor among the empty shelves. The whole thing felt like it lasted half an hour. I've looked it up since. From the time of the first blast at the time the last shot was fired, we're talking about three minutes. In twelve seconds, we thought they were going to pour in through the door after they blew at the funk off.

So James got in there with our one functioning automatic and he took at least ten of the fash down with him before someone got him in the neck. It was a faint and they blew a hole in the side of the building while well that was going on, and that's where they got in close quarters combat. As a whole different beast, a worse one, maybe maybe a

better one. I go back on forth on that sometimes instead of sleeping, I think about the pros and cons of various types of absolute are Is it better to see your death coming or to get picked off without knowing it. I would have thought the Vikings would expend themselves right off I mean Vikings. They were starting to sober up by that point, but still they'd been drinking, and they were already dead, and they were doomed to die.

But they were smarter than that. Never risked themselves unnecessarily. Your next assumption of a comrade you know is doomed is that they'll sacrifice themselves to save others. None of that either. They knew they were the best trained soldiers on the field, and that in order for us to win, they had to be in the fight as long as they could. They were smart like that. Assholes like that. I stationed myself in the back. I fancy myself more of a sniper than the assault sort, so I watched

the whole thing go down. I also only hit three targets out of a hundred and seventeen bullets I fired, But that's another story. I watched us win. We took casualties of fifty half of those were k I A. But we defeated a force twice our strength. I watched the in hangar bayonet in and shoot them, and I saw one of the Viking women break a man's face apart with her fists. Soon after, a bullet found her heart and she collapsed with a smile on her lips.

She disappeared like literally she phased out of existence, being me up Scotty. We pushed them back onto the pavement, And when I say we, I'm honestly not being fair because I didn't do much of it myself. We had them scattered and running, most of them. Dwight was out there, waving a pistol in one hand and swinging a wooden stock rifle like a club in the other. A Viking with a shotgun stood beside him. I think the same fashy little ship killed them both, maybe in the same

three round burst. I tagged the fashion in his belly, and his friends helped him get away, and the remaining Nazis ran. He survived his wound. Why do we have so much information about the war? Does it do me any good to know who I killed and who I didn't? And Dwight. Dwight lay alone in the concrete, face down. There wasn't much blood, but he was dead. Two ravens sat atop him, one on each shoulder. I've never seen a raven in Asheville in my life, not before, not since.

There were two of them, as big as people say those things are. They barked, and they sounded like dogs. One was loud, like it was right where I was. The other was distant, echoing. Then they flew away, directly up and towards the sun, and I tried to watch to see where they went, but you can't look directly at the sun like that. I looked back down and

Dwight was gone. Okay, so his body was still there, but there was there was something about him that was gone, and I don't know how to tell you what it was. That that was that we won sort of. They didn't storm the library, which I guess means we won. But sometimes I think I'd burn every single book in that place. It would bring back Lord or Dwight or any of the rest of my friends. The war was over at that point, even if we didn't know it yet. So what did they die for? I guess for symbols. Maybe

symbols matter that much. I don't know. I deserted after that, half the survivors of the Battle of Asheville less than a week later up in Pittsburgh, and I suppose I'd be dead if I had gone, And it probably makes me a coward that I didn't It's not that I was afraid of dying. It's that I was afraid of dying in battle because I believe in Odin Now it's hard not to believe in a god without venerating him. I don't want to go to Valhalla. I don't want

to fight ever again, let alone every night. I don't want to serve with the iron and yard at the twilight of the gods sometime in the century. If I don't want to do that, then I don't want to die in battle. Dwight, though I expect he's happy. I expect he dies every day with a smile on his lips and meat and his belly. He won't have to fight alongside the monsters of the human race either, because, as I learned in Nashville, Nazis don't go to Valhalla.

All right, that was awesome, markret thing you Yeah, thanks. D'll put a bunch of applause noise here because translating over yeah and and and and uh an air horn stick an, I don't think the air horn is going to be that as no Garrison air horn show. Thank you, thank you, Garrison. Margaret Um, how long ago did you write that? I wrote that I believe in two seventeen May.

Oh yeah, well it's not gotten less relevant. Yeah, man, I uh, there's definitely some times where I've I've wished for a platoon of vikings uh to deal with some ship. Yeah uh, well this has been it could happen here, and this has been spooky week. You enjoyed this scary story that's also relevant to our theme of collapse. Margaret, you want to tell the people where they can find you. Yeah, I'm on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy. I'm on Instagram

at Margaret kill Joy. I'm on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Margaret Killjoy, where this story and many other stories are available for anyone who sponsors me at a dollar a month. Then if you make less money than I do, then just message me and I'll give you all my ship for free. And I have an upcome because you've asked me to plug things, and I'm definitely just gonna go ahead and plug things. Um. I have

a book coming out from a K Press. It's a reissue of my anarchist utopian book, A Country of Ghosts. If you like my very I like writing war stories, but I specifically like writing war stories that are actually sad. And how about how war is horrible? Um, and so A Country of Ghosts is such a book and this story will eventually I'm excited to say I just signed the contract for a k Press is going to put out a short story anthology of mine which will include

this story. Yeah, that sounds incredibly rad Yes, great publisher. Yeah, not biased at all in that. No, no, no, nor towards stories of the Second American Civil War with superior I've been introduced to just today. Um, all right, we'll check out Margaret's book Parentheses. S uh and and um, check out this show when it comes back someday one day. You'll never know when, but you'll hear a whisper on the wind, and there will be or it will be

the next weekday after one of those. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media or more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening