Marlene's Revenge (Gretel #2)

by Christopher Coleman

  “I may have burned a few bridges as it pertains to Ben Richter’s truck. He’s a nice guy, but—”

  “Are you all ready?” Ben joined the children on the porch, keys jangling.

  “Ben, I know I always say this, but I need to go alone this time. This is important.” Petr was somber, curt with his syntax.

  “Alone? So you’re going without these two then?” Ben smiled at the siblings. “Hi, I’m Ben. Ben Richter. Petr has never been great with introductions.”

  “Hi,” Gretel said, “I’m—”

  “Oh I guessed who you were the second I saw you. Petr spent a good deal of conversation on the great Gretel Morgan.”

  Gretel blushed and recognized the same color in Petr’s cheeks.

  “And anyway, you’re somewhat of a celebrity in these parts, Gretel.” Ben looked at Hansel. “And you, I presume, are the brother. Hansel, eh?”

  “Yes, hi,” Hansel said.

  Gretel interrupted the charm before it got out of hand. “Petr’s right, Ben, you shouldn’t come with us. It could be dangerous.”

  “That’s right,” Hansel chimed. “It’s probably best you stay. Like Gretel says, it could be dangerous.”

  Gretel couldn’t help but grin, proud of her brother’s assertion.

  “Well now I’m definitely going. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing more dangerous than missing out on danger. Also, we have a stop to make on the way to wherever it is we’re going.”

  “No!” Petr yelped. “Ben, no, this is real. We need your help, we need your truck, so you can call it the way it is. But we need to go now. Quickly.”

  Ben nodded, dropping the playfulness from his expression. “Fine, but I told her I’d get her.”

  “Who?”

  “Sofia. She needs a lift. She asked me a week ago. And I don’t like to let people down. You know that about me, Petr.” Ben looked at each member of the group. “But if it’s out of the way from where we’re going, I’ll leave her.”

  “You promise me, Ben. If it’s out of the way.”

  “Of course. It’s a promise. You’re in a hurry though, right? So let’s get off this porch.”

  The four kids walked to Ben’s truck and hopped inside, with Ben and Petr flanking Gretel in the middle of the bench seat. Hansel sat alone on a fold-down seat just behind the driver’s seat.

  “Sofia?” Gretel asked. She looked over at Petr, an eyebrow raised.

  “Do you know her?” Petr sounded surprised.

  “If it’s Sofia Karlsson, then of course. Everybody knows Sofia Karlsson. That is who you mean, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was the most popular girl in school from the moment she moved here. Moving up to the big time, I see.”

  “And she’s quite smitten with Mr. Stenson,” Ben added.

  “All right, that’s enough. And it’s not true.”

  Gretel smiled and looked at Ben for the truth. Ben smiled back, wrinkled his nose and nodded, affirming the rumor.

  “So where are we going, Petr? What’s the emergency?”

  “The Northlands.”

  Ben looked wide-eyed at his friend; there was nothing else to say. “I had a feeling you were going to say that. But you know what that means, right?”

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  Gretel’s smile faded. “Does that mean Sofia is coming with us?”

  “No,” Petr corrected, “it means she’s getting a ride to her stop on the way. She’s not coming with us.”

  “Yes, right, that’s what I meant.” Gretel turned and stared through the windshield at the road unfolding before them, and within a few minutes was sound asleep, dreaming of how she would kill the witch for good.

  “Hi, Sofia.”

  Gretel awoke to the sound of Ben’s delightful voice greeting Sofia.

  Sofia. The name had a lovely timbre, and it roused Gretel as if she were tickled by a feather.

  “You remember Gretel, right? And this is her brother, Hansel.”

  Gretel shook her head clear and forced a thin smile.

  “Of course. Hi Gretel, how are you?” Sofia’s intonation was laced with sympathy and paternalism. “And you’re Hansel. Hi.”

  Petr jumped down and pulled the seat forward, allowing Sofia to take the position opposite Hansel in the back seat.

  “Hi Sofia, it’s nice to see you again. You look great, as always,” Gretel replied, the civility and compliments painful in their delivery.

  “Thanks. Where are you all off to so early? It was such a surprise when Ben called and told me you were on his porch. I almost didn’t believe him.”

  Gretel looked back at Hansel, a glean of warning in her eyes. “Uh, my grandfather’s house. There are some things there that still need to be cleaned out from his basement. Petr’s helping me. Us.”

  “That’s very sweet of you, Petr.”

  Petr barely nodded, keeping his gaze forward.

  “When did you get back in town?” Sofia asked, and Gretel detected just a hint of suspicion in the girl’s voice.

  “Yesterday. Late.”

  “Wow! You’re all very ambitious. Getting right to work then. How is your mother?”

  Gretel started getting the itch of irritation, as if she were being interrogated. “We’re all fine Sofia. How have you been? Still the queen of the school?”

  “Gretel, come on.” Petr said, trying to calm the tension.

  “I’m teasing, Petr, so you come on. Sofia knows I’m kidding her.”

  “I’ve been fine, thanks.”

  As coincidence would have it, Sofia was headed to a park only an hour from where the witch’s cabin stood, and thus the truck ride was long and awkward and mostly silent. When they came to Sofia’s exit, the one that would take them at least a half an hour out of the way, Sofia decided to speak bluntly. “Are you going to her cabin?”

  “What?” Petr blurted, just a beat too quickly in Gretel’s estimation. “Why did you ask that?”

  “Are you? Hansel?”

  Cheap shot, Gretel thought to herself. The pretty, teenage girl extracting the truth from a boy Hansel’s age. Gretel saw in the rearview mirror, the blush blossoming on his face.

  “Sofia, what are you doing?” Ben said, taking charge of the conversation in his truck.

  “Nothing. I just think you guys are up to something. And I want to go.”

  “No!” Petr barked.

  “So you are going.”

  Gretel stared over at Petr, frowning, as if to ask, how did you just fall for that?

  “Yes, we are. But you’re not.”

  “Why? Is she there? Is she alive? Were you right this whole time, Petr? Oh my god, you were.”

  No one answered Sofia, giving her all the answers she needed.

  “Listen,” she continued, “if you go straight to her cabin you’ll save forty-five minutes. At least. Once you take this exit, it’s another twenty miles. And then twenty back to the Interways. Just keep going, Ben. Go straight there and save the time.”

  “Don’t you have to be somewhere, Sofia? Isn’t that the whole point of why you’re here in the first place?” Petr was stammering now, as if he was helpless to stop where this train was headed.

  “Yes, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s a family thing that no one thought I was coming to anyway. Ben was able to give me a ride at the last minute, so I decided to go.”

  “I thought you arranged this a week ago?”

  Sofia ignored Petr. “I was going to surprise some people. Just show up. But no one will miss me. It’s settled. I’m going with you guys.”

  “Sofia, listen—”

  “Fine,” Gretel interrupted, the command in her voice resonating through the truck like timpani.

  “Gretel, no! I’m not going to put her at risk. You know more than anyone what that woman will do. What she has done to people.”

  “So does Sofia. Don’t you? You know my story by now.” Gretel gave a half-look over her shoulder. Sofia nodded, and Gretel thought s
he detected a grin from the girl. “And besides, she’s right, it will save time. If she wants to come, it’s up to her. She knows the risk. And who knows? Maybe she can help us.”

  “Yes, Gretel!” Sofia was giddy, clapping like she’d just been selected to come to the stage to be the volunteer in a magic show.

  “I don’t agree with this, Gretel. For the record, I don’t agree. I would never have agreed to this.” Petr was sulking now, a look of betrayal on his face.

  “It’s Mrs. Klahr, Petr.”

  “I know who it is! I’m the one who stayed here! I’m the one that had to listen to her cry every night for the first month. You were the one who left. You left us behind!”

  Gretel held Petr’s stare, allowing him to finish unloading on her whatever resentment he still held, bubbling beneath the coolness that he presented to her and the rest of the world most of the time. His breathing was heavy now, as if ready to begin another verbal outpouring, but he said nothing else.

  “I don’t have to go,” Sofia offered quietly. “I didn’t mean to start this trouble.”

  Gretel turned toward Sofia and studied her peer’s face like a scientist. Sofia blinked meekly and demur, evading Gretel’s examination. “I would like you to come,” Gretel said. “I don’t want to put you at any risk—this isn’t your fight—but the truth is we could probably use your help. This isn’t an adventure though, Sofia. There won’t be any fun involved. You need to know that going in. Petr is right about the danger. If anything, he’s underplayed it.”

  Sofia nodded, giving Gretel’s words real consideration. “I understand. I want to help Petr. And you.”

  Gretel looked from Sofia and then to Petr, silently regrouping everyone, making sure there was a tacit understanding that everyone knew what they were getting into. She straightened her back and looked coldly toward the front of the truck, watching the road. “Ben, do you know where you’re going?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “I’m sure Petr can tell you then. I have a feeling he’s been where we’re going more than a few times over the past year.”

  Chapter 26

  “Do you know who I am?”

  Carl Dodd lurched at the sound of the female voice; it was groggy and indistinct, as if seeping through the walls.

  “Excuse me?” Dodd’s voice squeaked. He was irritated at the lack of resonance in his speech. He cleared his throat and hastily stood from his seat. It had been a long night, and he needed more sleep, but it was vital that he remain composed. Going forward, there would be no room for weakness.

  “Do you know me?” the woman asked again. “She’s done this. Please help me.”

  Dodd walked a few paces until he was standing next to the bed where Amanda Klahr had propped herself up slightly on the bed’s lone pillow. He leaned forward and was now face-to-face with the prisoner, studying her dilated pupils and drooping eyelids, an indication that she’d been heavily drugged. He’d seen the look many times in his line of work. “Just rest, Amanda,” he said, “You’ll be okay.”

  “You do know me.” The woman’s eyes fluttered and then fell shut. A second later, her head flopped back down toward her chest.

  Dodd walked out toward the kitchen area, stopping just at the threshold of the stone floor where a thin strip of wood partitioned off the two areas. He stood just out of sight and watched Marlene, who was staring out the window at the front of the cabin. Her eyes were eager, paranoid, like a dog staring at a closed door when it’s heard the growl of an animal on the front porch. For the first time since arriving at the cabin, Dodd began doubting about his decisions. “You don’t plan to kill her, do you?”

  Marlene closed her eyes and dropped the hem of the curtain, slowly turning toward the System officer. She opened her eyes and smiled. “I don’t make plans like that, Officer Dodd. I simply do what is necessary. Nothing more or less. If the death of Anika Morgan’s neighbor brings me closer to my Source, then I most certainly will kill her. It makes no difference to me. Does the fly you swat on your kitchen counter weigh upon your mind?”

  Dodd stayed quiet, understanding the rhetorical nature of the question.

  “When did you know, Officer Dodd?”

  “When did I know what?” Dodd was sure he knew what Marlene referred to, but he asked anyway.

  “When did you know I was alive?”

  Dodd paused, as if considering the question for the first time. “Honestly, I guess I didn’t know until only a few hours ago. But I suspected long before. Of course, it was obvious to me that you didn’t die in the cannery that night. That was always impossible to me. Your body went missing almost instantly. And the nonsense rumor that you’d been dragged away by a mass of wild animals was absurd. Only a bear, maybe a pack of strong wolves, could have taken your carcass in that amount of time. And no one has seen a predator of that size in these parts for a hundred years.”

  Marlene was rapt with the tale, and Dodd relished the power of his words over this timeless being.

  “Most of us thought you somehow survived the attack and then staggered out of the cannery, delirious and critically wounded before finally collapsing at the shore of the lake where the water took you under. It was possible that you even made it to the deep woods, a place somewhere isolated and dense before you eventually collapsed there to be consumed by smaller, less ferocious woodland beasts than the ones that tend to find their way into such fantastic stories as yours.” Dodd paused. “But my mind was changed within a few minutes of walking onto this property. I knew there was another story that was quite possible.”

  Dodd paused again for effect, sensing the witch’s enchantment.

  “I saw the hole, Marlene. I saw your ditch.”

  Marlene caught her breath.

  “But I wasn’t alone here, of course.” Dodd’s words were fast now, racing. “So I had to be discreet. I lifted the canopy—a brilliantly designed construct, by the way, just amazing—and I saw your body there. It was surreal. Whether you were dead or alive, I didn’t know at first, but you were there. Crumpled and destroyed, an iron hammer jutting from your forehead. But you had made it back somehow, and quickly enough that you arrived back here before the System even knew the story of Anika Morgan.”

  “So why then? Why didn’t you take me away when you had the chance? I never even sensed that you were there. I was as vulnerable as I’ve ever been. Will ever be again. So why did you leave me there?

  “Because, Marlene, by the time I found you, I had heard Anika’s story. And I had just seen the body of Stenson.”

  Dodd could see that this wasn’t a good enough answer for Marlene. She needed the whole truth.

  “I had seen the change in Stenson over the course of several months, the secrecy and withdrawal in him. We all saw it. And then there he was, his dead body, here at this cabin, at the place where a lowly farm woman had just escaped before telling perhaps the most incredible story anyone had ever heard. A story of immortality. As I said before, I didn’t believe any of it at first. But…the things that had been done to him…”

  Dodd frowned and dropped the woman’s gaze.

  “After I found your…grave, I suppose I’d call it, I wasn’t quite sure why I didn’t have the whole System descend on this place to arrest you or kill you, why I didn’t have them dig up your entire property for any more bodies that may have gone missing from this area over the years. But I know now. I know now why none of that happened. Because I believed in the story. I believed in the accounts of Anika and Gretel Morgan. And I knew you had come back here for recovery, rejuvenation. It all made sense to me. In an instant. Stenson knew the story too, and he had seen or heard enough to believe in this magic. I knew then the myths were true. Just looking at you lying in that ditch, I knew I could never have the trampling boots of System clods ending that magic forever.”

  “They’re thieves,” Marlene spat, her teeth bared wide and sinister.

  Dodd smiled. “Yes, very often they are. But not me, Marlene.”

&n
bsp; Dodd realized this wasn’t quite true as he thought of the stark black book resting high on the shelf in his office. He walked to the front door and opened it casually, staring out toward the tree line.

  “So I waited very patiently—for just about a year—for some sign that you were awake, that you had emerged.”

  “Get from the door. They’ll see you.”

  In the isolation of the cabin, Dodd could have heard a car coming from ten miles away, but he didn’t want to set the witch off, so he closed the door gently and looked back at her. “And then I heard it, the manifestation, crackling over the radio, surfacing like lava from a volcano. The report of two boys who had gone missing from your property. I was patrolling here—right here—the moment the call came! It was a miracle.”

  Marlene narrowed her gaze, a sign that suspicion had snuck back into play for her.

  Dodd chuckled. “It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care about the disappearance of a pair of adolescent criminals, Marlene. I just wanted you to come back. I just wanted to learn from you. To become like you.”

  Marlene walked confidently from the window toward the front door and stood next to Officer Dodd. At this distance, he could have taken her by force, and there was little she could have done.

  “You may want my life span, Officer Dodd, but you don’t want to become like me. It’s the ‘becoming’ part that is so onerous. Even with the methods known to them, most could never withstand the process. It’s a long life of misery before you ever get to where I am.”

  “I don’t care about the work. About the pain. It’s nothing compared to death. Death has to be worse.”

  Marlene’s eyes widened while the rest of her face was stone, and then she belted out a horrible laughter that must have certainly awoken Amanda Klahr from her intoxicated sleep in the back bedroom. She composed herself and said, “I could name a hundred things worse than death, Officer Dodd.”

  “But you’re here. You pushed through it. Whatever pain you endured was worth it to you.”

  “I’m from another place and time, Officer Dodd. And that makes a difference. The life you must lead to stay alive this long is not one most would agree to. They’re unable to forego the luxuries of modernity. And I don’t mean conditioned air and powerful driving machines, Officer Dodd. I mean sleep. Palatable food. Warmth.”