Oliver Crum and the Grim Menagerie

by Chris Cooper

  “The Parlor used to be a brothel, you know,” Ruby said. “That little historical sidenote drew us in.”

  She looked at the dividing line between the entryway and the lounge, where Caleb had fallen, never to rise again. Oliver wondered what Ruby had done with the body but dared not ask.

  “Took us years to restore the place. Someone had turned it into a damned hookah bar. Nearly had to rebuild all the woodwork ourselves.”

  “Do you think kids could have done this?” he asked.

  She let out a heavy sigh and tossed the broken frame aside. Her heels pounded the hardwood as she paced down the hallway toward the stage at the back of the building, and Oliver followed closely behind.

  The room looked like the scene of a murder. Sloppy trails of blood had been splattered across the floor, and bloody palm prints streaked the wall at the back of the stage. The large fish tank had been shattered along with the giant mirror, covering the platform in fish bones, broken glass, and puddles of blood.

  “Not kids.” She examined a clumsy set of footprints next to the base of the broken tank.

  “Simon?” Oliver said.

  “What?”

  “Looks like someone climbed out of the tank. Look at the handprint streaks on the wall.”

  “But Simon’s dead,” Ruby replied.

  “If he knew Asher’s blood could be used to heal, perhaps he thought it could be used to bring himself back.”

  “But, Oliver, he’s dead. How could a corpse have walked in here and climbed into a fish tank?”

  “What if he’s linked to the violinist? What if she’s working for him?”

  “Working for a dead man? How could he have orchestrated all this from beyond the grave? And even if Simon somehow made it into the tank—”

  “He wouldn’t be able to leave it, at least for long. Would he?” Oliver added.

  “I don’t see how.”

  “The bastards have taken the other tank too,” Ruby said.

  Oliver hadn’t noticed, but the tank containing the undead birds was gone. He looked up at the ceiling. Someone had taken the rows of skeletal primate jars also.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Ruby said, turning toward the front of the house. “Just need to make a call first.”

  She walked across the trashed hallway to her office, and Oliver followed closely behind. Papers had been scattered across the floor, and her heels dug into them as she walked toward the purple chaise. With one angry motion, she flipped it over and unzipped a zipper on the underside. She reached in and pulled out a small black address book.

  “Thank God,” she said. She set the book on the desk and flipped through its aged pages. Eventually, she reached the M section and ran a finger down a tattered page.

  Ruby kept an old rotary phone on her desk. Many years had passed since Oliver heard the sound of a finger dragging around the circular dial and the whirring of the wheel spinning back to zero.

  “Feel awful for not visiting her for so long. Hope she’s doing all right,” Ruby said.

  The phone rang several times on the other end before a feeble voice echoed through the receiver.

  “Marie?” Ruby asked.

  “I know, I’m sorry. We’ve been so busy.”

  “Well, I was thinking of stopping by today, actually… if that’s all right with you.”

  “Great! See you soon.”

  Ruby hung up. “Better be on our way.”

  The two left through the front door, and Ruby clicked the lock on the door handle and gingerly pulled the door closed.

  “Not much protection, but hopefully it’ll keep anyone else from snooping around and causing any more damage,” she said.

  “I’m so sorry, Ruby,” Oliver said.

  “Me too.”

  As they left The Parlor and walked farther away from the bar, the scenery changed drastically. The historic brick buildings bled into boarded-up businesses and used-auto lots. They eventually arrived at a small subdivision. Rusted chain-link fences lined the broken concrete sidewalks, serving as poor barriers between passersby and the muscly fang-toothed canines that protected the properties.

  They turned a corner and walked down another row of dilapidated one-floor houses sitting on concrete slabs, artifacts from the 1950s cookie-cutter-housing boom. Most had fallen into disrepair. The original siding had faded over time, and many of the decorative shutters sat crooked or were missing altogether. Broken-down cars sat tarped in cracked asphalt driveways, and even the squirrels seemed to be rougher around the edges.

  Midway down the street, Ruby stopped and turned toward one of the houses. The owner had taken care of it even though this was the bad part of Amberley. Freshly painted baby-blue trim accented the bright-white walls, and the grass of the small lawn was a vibrant green and freshly cut and edged. Underneath a large bay window sat a bed of pansies that hadn’t died with the first frost of the season, surprisingly. The place was an oasis in a desert of litter and dust.

  A TV was blaring on the other side of the wall, and Ruby pressed the doorbell.

  The front door cracked open, and a man’s face appeared behind the screen door. His skin was streaked with brown swirls and patched with white. Vitiligo, Oliver thought as he, already over six feet tall, looked up at the man.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “We’re here to see Madam Marie,” Ruby replied.

  “Is she expecting you?”

  “I called earlier. You’ll find my picture on the wall next to the radiator. I’m an old friend,” she said with a smile.

  The man disappeared for a moment then returned to the doorway.

  “She’s napping now, but if you’d like to sit for a moment, I’m sure she’d be happy to see you.” His serious expression had completely melted, and he grinned widely as he opened the screen door.

  As they stepped inside, a faint whiff of mothballs filled the air, accented by the subtle scent of lilac.

  “I’m Mo.” The man wore a pair of light-blue scrubs and was made of solid muscle.

  “Her nurse?” Oliver asked.

  The man chuckled. “A nurse, yes, but mostly just a friend. I check on her in the mornings before my shifts at the hospital.”

  “Marie has lots of friends,” Ruby said. “She’s a well-connected woman.”

  “To say the least,” Mo added.

  Oliver and Ruby sat on an old olive couch covered with a multicolored crocheted blanket.

  “She’s been under the weather lately,” Mo said. “Caught a cold and can’t seem to shake it.”

  “How do you know Madam Marie?” Oliver asked, still waiting for someone to explain exactly who the woman was.

  “She’s saved us all at one point or another,” Mo said.

  “Saved you?”

  Mo looked at Ruby. “Does he know about—”

  She nodded. “He knows.”

  Mo’s shut his eyes, and his fingers twitched on the arm of the chair. Then his head disappeared, followed by his arms. Mo was now a floating pair of scrubs hovering in midair.

  “It was hard enough for my mother to deal with the fact I didn’t look like everyone else. Found me like this while I was sleeping one morning, and that was enough for her. She took me straight to church—thought I was possessed. When church didn’t work, she kicked me out.”

  Pale patches emerged from the sleeves of his shirt, and his skin gradually filled back in until it returned to its original mix of white and brown.

  “How did you find Madam Marie?” Oliver asked.

  “She found me. I had no money, so I broke into houses, which is easy to do when no one can see you.”

  “How did she find you?”

  “Picked the wrong house one night. Even though no one can see me, dogs can still smell me. A Rottweiler cornered me in a closet. Nothing like a vicious beast to make you second-guess your life of crime. Fortunately, I’d wandered into a house that was friendly to people like me. The guy grabbed me by the collar and dropped me off at Madam Marie
’s. Said she’d helped him out and she could do the same for me. It was pure luck. Wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for her.”

  “What about you, Ruby?” Oliver asked. “How did you find this place?”

  Ruby shuffled uncomfortably in her chair.

  “Mo!” someone shouted from the other room.

  “Sounds like she’s awake,” he said. “I’ll take you to her.”

  He led them to a dimly lit room at the back of the house.

  A woman sat slumped in an old armchair, her lap covered by a hand-stitched quilt. The smell of mentholated ointment filled Oliver’s nose. Pictures lined the walls of the room, covering nearly every square inch of space.

  “Oh! Ruby, so nice to see you, my dear!” Marie straightened in her chair as much as her hunched frame could manage.

  “Oliver, this is Madam Marie.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Marie extended a wrinkled hand, which Oliver lightly gripped. Her skin resembled cracked tree bark.

  “My, my. How nice of you to bring such a strapping young man to my doorstep.” Marie gave them a toothy grin. “Come sit.” She tapped the edge of the bed next to her chair then turned toward them as they sat across from her. “What brings you to visit?”

  Ruby leaned in. “Unfortunately, nothing good. We were hoping you could help us. Oliver’s town is in trouble, and we think it has something to do with a woman—a violinist who seems to have hypnotized the entire town. She’s made her way around Amberley, too, and we were hoping you knew something about her.” Ruby left out the details about Caleb’s death.

  Madam Marie thought for a moment and turned to Mo. “You told me about a young lady who played the violin,” she said.

  “She had dreadlocks, didn’t she?” Mo asked from the doorway.

  “Right. You’ve seen her?” Ruby asked.

  “I ran into a girl in the Amberley square. I knew when I saw her she was unique.”

  “You mean that she was an Unnatural?” Oliver asked.

  Marie squinted at Oliver through her thick glasses. “I hate that word. Unnatural. What’s natural, anyway?”

  “It’s not every day you see grown men throwing their wallets into violin cases of a street performer. She nearly pulled me in as well,” Mo said.

  “What did you do?”

  “She had a bandage on her arm, and it looked infected. I brought medicine on my way home from work, and we struck up an odd friendship. Refused to tell me her name, so I just called her Siren. She liked it. She told me she was destined for bigger and better things and was waiting for a new job to pan out—something in the little town down the road. One day, I crossed through town on the way home, and she was gone. I haven’t seen her since.”

  “If she’s behind the chaos in Christchurch, how do we stop her?” Oliver asked. “How do we break the trance?”

  “I can’t help you with that, but maybe Marie can,” he said. Mo looked at his watch. “I better be going, or else I’ll be late for my shift. Just be sure to click the handle on the door when you leave. And make sure she takes the pills in the cup on the table.” He pointed. “Have a good day, Marie.”

  “All right, sweetie. You, too, and stay out of trouble.”

  Mo nodded to Ruby and Oliver and headed toward the front door.

  Marie thought for a moment. “I may have an idea. I knew a little girl, Minnie Rutledge. Came home from school one day, and her parents noticed she wouldn’t eat. Asked her why, but she refused to tell them. They sent her to a doctor after a few days. After her parents prodding her, she admitted she wasn’t eating because all her food was full of worms. Can you believe it? Prodded a little more, and she admitted she and a friend stole a candy bar from a shop on the way home. Her friend ran away, but the shop owner caught Minnie, yelled at her, and told her she wouldn’t eat again until her friend brought the candy back.”

  “Seems a little severe,” Ruby said.

  “The candy bar had long been in the belly of Minnie’s friend, so she had nothing to take back to him. They had to get poor Minnie a feeding tube. On one of their trips back from the doctor, a bad storm caused their carriage to run off the road. Everyone survived, but the shock seemed to have shaken Minnie right out of whatever trance that man had put her in.”

  “So what are you saying? A car crash is the only way to pull them out of it?” Oliver asked.

  “Just a horse-and-buggy crash.” Marie smiled. “A shock or scare should break the trance’s hold. It worked for Minnie, and it should work for your friends. Maybe something as simple as a slap, unless it’s a powerful trance. And the longer someone’s in it, I imagine the harder it will be to pull them out.”

  Oliver was unsure of how he’d be able to shock the entire own out of hypnosis. Slapping them one by one, while fun in theory, would be impractical.

  “Wait, horse and buggy?” he asked. “So you must have heard the story from someone else.”

  “No, I was there. Saw it with my own two eyes. Nannied for the family, actually.”

  “I’m sorry, but how could you have been there? That must have been the early nineteen hundreds if you were still using a horse and buggy.”

  “May 11, 1885, to be exact. Even made the newspaper.”

  Oliver didn’t know how to respond.

  “Madam Marie has her own unique ability,” Ruby said.

  Marie chuckled. “I guess you could say that. I’m afraid to say it’s rather boring, though. Nothing like Ruby here. You know, when she’d get mad at me, she used to make the pictures on the wall talk. She thought it would scare me, but I enjoyed chatting with all my old friends again.”

  Ruby blushed.

  “Anyway, I expect this will not come as a shock to you, but I am ancient. I guess you could say that’s my gift—or a curse, depending on how you look at it.”

  “I wouldn’t guess you were a day over thirty,” Oliver replied, straight-faced.

  Marie chuckled.

  “We should be on our way,” Ruby said.

  Oliver glanced at the photos on the walls as they prepared to leave. Some were newer and in color, while others were black and white on yellowing photo paper. The closer he looked, the more he noticed the same woman in all of them: Madam Marie. Although the pictures must have spanned nearly a century, Marie’s appearance had changed quite slowly.

  Madam Marie grabbed Ruby by an arm. “Good luck to you. Don’t be afraid to call if you need help. I may not be able to do much, but I know people who can. Don’t be so long next time. Can’t promise I’ll be able to wait for you.”

  Ruby kissed Marie on the forehead, and as she turned to leave, Marie called after her.

  “And say hello to Caleb for me. Hope he’s doing all right.”

  The words stopped Ruby in her tracks, and she had to compose herself before speaking. “I will” was all she managed to say.

  “How did you meet Madam Marie?” Oliver asked once they had reached the sidewalk and headed back toward town.

  “She found me heaving in an alley in Amberley,” Ruby replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My parents gave me an early Christmas present one year: a packed bag and a swift kick out the front door. My story’s not so different from Mo’s, actually.”

  “Your parents just kicked you out?”

  “I may have made a turkey dance across the table at Thanksgiving. I wasn’t exactly the nicest teenager, and that was the last straw for them. The timing was poor because the weather was so cold. I tried to sleep out on the streets but got horribly sick.”

  “How did she know about Caleb?” he asked.

  “Caleb grew up across the street, the yellow house back there. The place didn’t look like it does now. This street used to be one of the nicest in the neighborhood. He asked me to marry him twice in that house. The first time, I said no. Didn’t think he’d handle all of this Unnatural business well. But he kept at it and refused to take no for an answer.”

  Oliver didn’t know what to say, so he put h
is hand on Ruby’s shoulder and squeezed.

  After a few moments, Ruby wiped the corner of her eye. “So we need a shock,” she said.

  “Fred. He seemed perfectly normal when we ran into him in the alley, the night Caleb… You must have snapped him out of it when he tried to attack Asher. Think you could do the same for an entire town?”

  “I can try. That would take a much larger illusion, though.” Ruby seemed hesitant. “Either way, sounds like it’s time we pay Christchurch another visit.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Back at Marv’s Unnatural Bar, Ruby pulled a stool up to the bar. “Take a seat,” she told Oliver.

  “A little early in the day, don’t you think?” he replied.

  Ruby rolled her eyes. “We’re not here for the booze. We’re here for Charlie.”

  The name must have caught the bartender’s ears because Charlie appeared from behind the bar as if he had risen through the floorboards.

  “Here for an afternoon pick-me-up?” he asked.

  “We need a car,” Ruby said.

  He looked behind the bar and rifled through a row of glassware. “Fresh out of those,” he replied with a smug smile.

  “What about the big guy? You think Marv’s got one we could borrow for an evening?”

  “You think he’d lend a car to just anyone?”

  “I’m not ‘just anyone.’ Tell him we need it to save the world from evil villains,” Ruby added.

  Charlie shot a glance at Oliver.

  “Close to the truth,” Oliver said.

  “Let me call him. He’s probably got something in that old garage, but I haven’t seen the guy drive in ages.”

  After a brief conversation on the corded phone at the corner of the bar, Charlie turned to Ruby and Oliver. “He’ll be out back in a few minutes. I’ll take you there.” He gestured for the two to join him behind the bar. “This is the fastest way to the courtyard.”

  Charlie pulled open a hatch in the wooden floor, revealing a flimsy set of stairs leading to a dirt-floored cellar below. As Oliver placed his foot on the first rickety step, he was reminded of the cellar below the clockmaker’s shop in Briarwood. Old wine racks lined the walls, and several large kegs sat in the corner.