Grimm Woods

by D. Melhoff

  Bert Hernandez didn’t make it home in time for the Yankees game that night. After hearing what those kids had to say, he never quite regained his appetite for chili either.

  ____

  Brynn waited by Scott’s side while Bert drove forty-five minutes to the nearest hill with cell reception and called 9-1-1. The ambulance wailed in an hour later. Unable to figure out the drawbridge, the paramedics ran their stretcher to Camp Mandolin on foot and then all the way back, attempting to keep Scott stable while his body bucked and bounced over the cobblestone paths. Inside the ambulance, they strapped a non-rebreather mask over his face and started an IV before tearing out of Grimm Woods and arriving at the emergency bay of Otsego Memorial Hospital in Gaylord, Michigan by quarter to six. Scott was unconscious for the entire drive, but the paramedics assured Brynn—who had ridden along and watched their movements with bated breath—that he was going to be fine.

  In a medical sense, they were right.

  ____

  The Gately family chartered an airplane to the Gaylord Regional Airport and swept Brynn and Stephanie back to their father’s house in Illinois before they had a chance to see Scott awake again. Deborah Mamer showed up the next morning in her ’91 Volvo—having driven throughout the night—and stayed by Scott’s side for the next two days, clutching her sterling necklace and limiting bathroom visits as much as her bladder allowed.

  Meanwhile, every national news station set up camp in the parking lot as journalists from around the country came for a glimpse—or better yet, a sound bite—of the young man who had survived what the tabloids had since coined the “Storybook Murders.” It turned out they would all be disappointed. When he stepped out of the hospital two days later—dressed in fresh clothes and only slightly less drained than when he had arrived, thanks to a full day of police questioning—Scott shouldered his way through the crowd and ducked into his mom’s car before gunning it out of the parking lot and burning rubber for I-75. Fortunately, the cops were too busy with crowd control to chase him down with a speeding ticket.

  A day went by, then two, then three. The attention got worse. The media bivouacs moved to Deborah’s trailer park and then to Detroit when Scott returned to his own apartment a week later. He never left his suite, and no one came to visit. Brynn sent him a long email from Chicago, asking how he was doing and thanking him over and over again. “Words can’t show enough gratitude. My whole family would like to say thanks in person. Maybe this Christmas we could meet up, or whenever you want, just let me know.” He replied with a few short sentences before powering down his laptop and his cell phone for seven days straight.

  He didn’t watch TV. He didn’t read the news. He didn’t answer his intercom. Mostly he slept: fifteen to twenty hours at a time, all deep, dreamless sleeps. The only exception was when he dialed directory assistance and asked for Child Protective Services to report an abuse case regarding Tyrell Wilson (whose last name he hadn’t known but, according to the CPS employee, was easily available from the list of campers identified from the summer’s tragedy). It’s not much, but it’s the most I can do. He knows he can make it through fucking anything now.

  The news trucks disappeared a week later, and when Scott had the guts to turn on cable again, he found out why. Media sharks—as he should have predicted—crave the freshest blood, and twelve days after the story about Crownheart broke, there had been a school shooting somewhere down south where four teenagers were dead and ten more were injured. Apparently, murdered high-schoolers trumped murdered college kids, and within twenty-four hours, the vans had packed up and shipped out, leaving nothing but a trail of crossword puzzles, pencil nubs, and crumpled notepad pages with unanswered interview questions and half-solved Sudoku puzzles behind.

  The only news article Scott read about the Storybook Murders appeared in the Free Press a month and a half later. The front page had caught his attention: a photo of two bulldozers plowing through the huts of Camp Mandolin, chewing up the grass and leveling it into the mud. The headline read: “BEAUFORTS BULLDOZE STORYBOOK DEATH CAMP.” In the background, he could see that the square and the fort were already demolished.

  The accompanying story, continued on page four, explained that Michael Beaufort had purchased the camp with the proviso of tearing it down and filling the acreage with saplings. Michigan’s parks department had planned on doing the same thing, but with the Beauforts’ money—and resources from Beaufort Construction—the process moved at quadruple the pace. Scott recalled the Beaufort name from his research with Brynn. The family had purchased the camp in the nineties with plans to convert it into a vacation home, but they had dropped the idea immediately when the backlash began hurting Mr. Beaufort’s odds of getting elected. This go-around, their timing was impeccable. Michael ran for office later that year and won by a landslide.

  Scott took another look at the front page and noticed the crosses they had planted were gone as well, likely trampled by the ’dozers or washed away in a heavy rain. Good, he thought. The more of that godforsaken place that vanishes, the better.

  Another month passed, then two, then five.

  After considerable goading, Scott finally agreed to make a trip to visit Brynn for the first time since Crownheart. From the way she wrote her emails, he could tell she was already seeing someone else—she never mentioned it, but the trail of exclamation marks and platonic language was too clear to miss (“Everyone can’t wait to meet you!”…“We’ll go on the river tour!”…“See you soon, pal!”). Surprisingly, he was okay with that. Whenever he had caught himself trying to hash out the logistics of a long-distance relationship, he would shake his head and tell himself that he must have lost more brain cells back at Crownheart than the doctors thought. Maybe now he could move on. This’ll be a one-time thing—that’s it.

  The trip was convenient too. His new job had him on the road a lot, and by sheer coincidence, Chicago was scheduled for the first week in February. If any aspect of his life had benefited from his fifteen seconds of unwanted fame, this was it. While the summer had wound down, he had applied at places where he could spend as much time away from the city as possible and avoid anyone under the age of twenty-one. The owner at a shipment center recognized his face from the papers and offered to help him out; now he was driving semis three or four days a week, sometimes more, on long jaunts through little towns no one had ever heard of, save the residents themselves.

  January came in the blink of an eye, and Jack Frost visited with it. In less than a week, the whole state was covered in a layer of sleet and ice. For once, Scott didn’t mind the cold weather—as long as the blizzards weren’t raging while he was on the highway and the radio stations stopped playing their torturous three-song playlist of “Santa Baby,” “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” he was fine with winter, if only because he wasn’t ready for another summer yet.

  It was late on one of those cold January nights—almost 1:00 a.m.—when he pulled into his apartment’s parking lot after a four-day trip to Billings. He crawled out of his car, exhausted, and plugged in his block heater before shuffling up to the building and sidling through the front door. Inside, he checked his mailbox—piling a week’s worth of fliers into his arms—and then slunk up the steps of the complex and shouldered his way out of the stairwell, crossing to apartment 305.

  The yellow lights of Scott’s unit flickered on. He dumped his mail onto the kitchen table and removed his gloves and jacket. Approaching his fridge, he opened the door and seized the only item that hadn’t gone bad yet: a half-gallon carton of orange juice.

  He twisted off the cap and brought the jug to his lips, then stopped.

  What’s that?

  A padded envelope had slipped out of the fliers on the table.

  Scott set the juice on the counter and picked up the bulky letter. He didn’t recognize the address. He tore open the seal and pulled out a piece of paper, which, among a collage of officious stamps, comprised a brief p
aragraph followed by a stranger’s signature. The note stated: “In accordance with court-approved State of Michigan probate letters outlined in Case 11485, section 2.01.004, these two (2) possessions are now the sole legal property of Mr. Scott Mamer, as outlined in the last will and testament of Ms. Charlotte A. Becker. Signed Leona Crandall, Executor, C. A. Becker Estate.”

  Scott’s heart stopped.

  Throw it away, he told himself. It’s been six months. Six months and your life is just getting back to normal. Throw it away.

  But he couldn’t. He had to know. That malicious sociopath was reaching out to him from beyond the grave, and if she still had something to say, he wanted to hear it. Needed to hear it.

  His hands trembled as he reached into the padded envelope and pulled out another envelope, a white one, with no writing or markings on the front. He flipped it over and saw the Crownheart logo stamped into a wax seal.

  The seal broke, the letter slid out. As he started to read, Scott could hear the cold timbre of Charlotte’s voice as though it was yesterday.

  Dear Mr. Mamer,

  If you are reading this, then I am sorry to say our summer together did not conclude as I had intended. No matter—a good storyteller must prepare for all possible endings.

  By now, I hope you can appreciate the message I was trying to send, even if you disagree with the medium. It is a godless world, Mr. Mamer, and I fear the problem is more severe than having forgotten what’s important. It’s that people have come to worship the opposite. There must be recourse. There must be realignment. It was Charles Dickens, after all, who stated: “In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.”

  Alas, Dickens’s voice has been drowned out, and I’ve been stymied trying to magnify its last echoes. Of course, everyone will say the world is a better place without me, but you don’t think it’s quite that black and white, do you? Because the simple fact that I’m gone and you’re alive means that all of the blood on your hands is unwashed. People who have never done something wrong—something truly wrong—might say you’ve gotten away with murdering a little girl and her mother. But you know you haven’t. Because when you hurt somebody bad enough, you never “get away with it.” You might feel lucky for a while, but you don’t feel like you’ve won, do you? You feel sick because you know both sides suffered, and neither one will be able to change what happened.

  I am not asking you to throw yourself in front of a jury, whose ideas of punishment pale in comparison to what you and I know you deserve. I merely request that you keep living your life with the burden of my daughter’s death hanging over your head (the bequeathed item should help with that). I want you to remember her every time you see another child, and one day, should you have sons or daughters of your own, open a book and read them a bedtime story for Auntie Charlotte.

  And Scott—while you’re reading, always remember one thing: sometimes we need the bad guy to make us better. Because without a villain, justice lacks its catalyst, and without justice, all you’re left with is a world full of outlaws where the wolves eat you alive.

  Forever,

  C. B.

  Scott lowered the letter and held up the padded envelope, tipping it over. The gold chain with the heart-shaped locket slithered into his palm. He looked at the filigreed casing—someone had tried cleaning it, but flecks of red were still caught in the tiny crooks—and popped it open. Desiree’s face looked back from the inner frame, smiling in the half-inch portrait, pudgy dimples and crooked teeth aglow in the apartment’s ugly kitchen light.

  He wiped his forehead, dizzy, and made his way to his bedroom, crumpling Charlotte’s note and dropping it into a garbage can.

  He paused with the bloodstained locket held above the trash.

  It swayed back and forth…back and forth…

  And he dropped it in the garbage too—clank.

  Without bothering to pull back the covers, Scott collapsed on his mattress and closed his eyes, attempting to push away the memory that he had failed to suppress for the past two years. He tossed and turned for over an hour, and finally—at 2:02 a.m.—his muscles relaxed and his troubled mind drifted warily to sleep.

  A minute passed. He remained motionless.

  Another minute went by.

  Then another.

  2:05…tick—

  2:06…tick—

  At 2:07, he awoke to the bloodcurdling skweee of a steam whistle.

  Acknowledgements

  The history of fairy tales is a rich tapestry of which Grimm Woods showcases only a few select threads. I would like to thank Dr. Jack Zipes, professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, whose translations of the Brothers Grimm stories were featured in this novel. For further reading, I recommend his book The Original Folk & Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.

  My editors were Caroline Tolley and Kira Rubenthaler. Their contributions have been significant, and for them, my thanks. Further thanks to my best friend and beta reader, James Aaron, whose humor and fashion sense know no bounds.

  —D.

  Books by D. Melhoff

  Adult

  Grimm Woods

  Come Little Children

  Children

  House Thirty-One

  Turkeyton Town

  The Easter Witch

  The Toymaker

  D. Melhoff was born in a prairie ghost town that few people have heard of and even fewer have visited. While most of his stories are for adults, he also enjoys terrifying younger audiences from time to time, as seen in his series of twisted picture books for children. He credits King, Poe, Hitchcock, Harris, Stoker, and his second grade school teacher, Mrs. Lake, for turning him to horror. For more information, visit dmelhoff.com.