The Gretel Series: Books 1-3 (Gretel Series Boxed set)

by Coleman, Christopher

  The witch tilted an eye through the curtain crack and watched the officer open the door and put his foot to the gravel. He stood and looked toward the house. He was tall and burly, with wide shoulders and a stiff jaw. But most alarming to the woman was that he projected a confidence that hadn’t quite existed in Stenson. Stenson was far from milquetoast, but this officer projected something more dangerous.

  The woman took note of the man’s demeanor and then quickly walked to the back room where Amanda Klahr lay semi-conscious, a loop of black iron clasped to her ankle. The chain was unnecessary at this stage, since the effects of the solution had rendered her helpless, but there was no reason for carelessness.

  “Who’s here?” Amanda grumbled. “Is that Petr?” The words came out in a sleepy panic, as if she were having a nightmare, speaking in protest to her own imagination.

  “No one is here,” the old woman said, disinterested, attempting to stay composed.

  “Petr! Stay away!” Her drugged whimper fell well short of the shout for which she was aiming.

  “Shut up! It’s not Petr!” the woman hissed.

  Amanda Klahr tried to rise, and feeling the tug of at her ankle, slapped at it as if a mosquito had landed near her foot. She moaned in despair and collapsed back to the bed.

  “Petr,” she said once more and then took a heavy breath before sliding into another bout of sleep.

  The woman glared at Amanda Klahr for several seconds, gauging the depth of her slumber, and then hurried back to the front room, carrying with her the wooden chair to which her prisoner had been strapped only hours earlier.

  The witch placed the chair beside her dining table and then sat with her back facing the front door of the cabin. She pulled up the oversized hood of her cloak and sighed, and then focused on calling forth the strength in her cells. She’d been sloppy again and had been caught off guard; there was nothing to do now but turn completely to the problem at hand.

  The first set of knocks was jarring, authoritative; three sharp wraps followed by a “Hello!”

  The woman stayed silent. She listened for the turn of the knob, followed by the sound of boot steps entering the cabin. As she waited, she did rudimentary calculations in her mind, measuring how many paces she would allow the man to take before unfurling her attack. Six seemed like the right number, maybe five if he started to get jumpy.

  Another set of knocks, followed by the painful creak of rusted door hinges.

  The woman breathed deeply and swallowed, eager now, waiting for the steps to begin. She’d positioned herself tall and narrow in the chair, and slightly off-center from the view of the doorway so that only her shoulder, perhaps only an arm, could be seen by someone entering. It was an enticement for the officer to come closer, as far as necessary to get a good look at the figure sitting in silence.

  The woman sensed the apprehension, the officer’s leeriness as he stalled at the threshold, treating the scene like the minefield it was. She was working hard at restraint, wanting nothing more than to spin and leap toward the arrestor, the pirate who had come to steal her life.

  “Hello?” the officer asked again, curious, perhaps not realizing she was sitting only a few feet away. She waited, her muscles tense, eyeball bulging, shifted left in its socket as if trying to look behind her without turning her neck.

  “I can see you there, so I know you can hear me. Are you going to answer me?”

  This wasn’t going at all as the woman expected, but she managed her composure and kept calm. She stayed seated, her head tilted slightly forward, demurring. “Yes?” she said finally. It was a breathy, sleepy noise, as if she’d just been drawn from a trance. Another layer to her trap.

  “Is that your truck parked outside?”

  Without pause the witch said, “No, it’s not.”

  The officer said nothing for a beat, letting silence fill the gap of the obvious follow-up question. “Well, whose truck is it?” The officer remained on the porch, at a safe distance to avoid an attack.

  “I think you know whose truck it is. It’s why you’re here, yes?”

  And with that, the witch had said too much to turn back. Her words weren’t quite a confession, but they teetered on the edge, and the officer would certainly continue pushing her until she careened over it. She had to move now; if she waited another ten seconds, she may have the barrel of a revolver pointed between her shoulder blades.

  The woman was still confident in her speed and quickness, but the truth was, at the distance she was currently from the door, she wouldn’t beat the squeeze of a System officer’s trigger finger. She had to go before he drew his gun. She had to attack now.

  And then another smell drifted in through the open door, one that she recognized instantly.

  She lifted her chin and pushed her nose forward, chasing the odor as it floated above her. She smiled, reconfiguring her attack plan. “Oh yes, yes you do. You certainly know whose truck that is. I can smell it on you. Perhaps I smell it beyond that?”

  The woman could almost hear the drop of the officer’s jaw. “It’s true, isn’t it?” he asked.

  The woman was not entirely sure as to which truth the man was referring, but she sensed the scene was trending in her favor. “What is your name, System officer?”

  There was a pause. “Dodd. Officer Carl Dodd. But I’m far more interested in your name, ma’am. We never quite figured out that information in our investigation. And I’m rather sure it’s not the Witch of the North.”

  Her name.

  She hadn’t thought of her forename in decades, and she hadn’t the remotest idea when it was that someone last called it out. Fifty years, maybe? Was that possible?

  Her throat constricted. The pressure she hadn’t felt from the presence of the System officer, she now experienced with the challenge of recollecting her name. She still possessed it inside of her. It was in her mind, buried deeply in the folds perhaps, but still retrievable, like a tool left in the forest for years which gradually gets enveloped by leaves and limbs. There was some digging to do, but it was there, able to be extracted.

  “You don’t know your name?”

  The woman shook her head once, as if jiggling away the distraction. She needed to think. Martha? No, that wasn’t quite it, but it was close. The M was correct though. She squeezed her one functioning eye closed tight, pressing her brain to work. She found Tanja first, her mother’s name, and then just beneath it, floating alone in her ancient intellect, she found her own.

  Marlene.

  “Marlene. My name is Marlene.” The words sounded glorious in her ears, like some type of audible medicine had been applied to her eardrums.

  “Marlene. That’s actually quite pretty.” The words were more surprise than flattery. “Is it true, Marlene? What I’ve heard about your...abilities, I suppose you would call them?”

  Marlene stood now and slowly turned toward Dodd, careful not to make any sudden movements. Being a System officer, he would have known as well as anyone what she was capable of, about the details surrounding the attack from the Morgan women. He would be aware of her strength, and he wouldn’t allow himself to be caught off guard the way Officer Stenson did.

  “Easy, Marlene. I’m not here to hurt you.” Dodd’s hand slipped to his waist; his pinky finger brushed the handle of his sidearm.

  “But you wish to take me away, yes? I’m afraid I can’t allow that to happen.”

  “I’m not here to do that either. I understand why you would think that, obviously, but I’m not.” Dodd paused again and then looked the woman squarely in the eyes. “What I’m here to do is help you. To help us, really. If what I’ve heard about you is true, I think we can help each other quite a bit.”

  “I couldn’t say what is true and what is not, since I don’t know what’s been said.” This was no longer just banter; Marlene was intrigued by this news of her infamy. She gave the officer a narrow look of suspicion. “What have you heard? And from whom?”

  Dodd exhaled a chuckle.
“Everyone knows the story of Anika and Gretel Morgan, Marlene. It’s a local fairy tale by now. The details are so fantastic that it’s already grown past this region of the New Country. It may even reach the shores of the Old World someday. Perhaps become a cautionary tale throughout the world, a chronicle parents tell their children to curb their naughty behavior. Of course, I’m a bit ahead of things here; it hasn’t quite reached that point yet. Besides, it would be a bit too soon to tell kids such a gruesome tale. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Marlene felt the sting of an insult at this last part. There was a tone suggesting the officer viewed her as some kind of monster. “What do you want, Mr. Dodd? If you’re here to help me—and to help yourself—why don’t you tell me how we would go about making those things happen.”

  “Okay, I’ll get right to it then. In her official statement to the System, Anika Morgan spoke repeatedly of a potion. She described it as some type of putrid soup or something.” A pop of recognition appeared on the officer’s face. “Pies. That was it. She said the potion was put into pies.”

  Dodd paused, and Marlene could see him searching her face for a tell, some blink of familiarity to validate the story. Her expression didn’t waver.

  “She recounted to us how, for several months, she was being used—or, more specifically, that you were using her—to make some ancient concoction. A witch’s brew, if you will. She said you took her blood and ... other things.”

  Marlene delighted in the officer’s words and silently waited for the full dissertation of the events surrounding the Morgan woman. Dodd, however, left the tale there.

  “I see,” she said without expression.

  “It was madness of course, this story, at least to those closest to the investigation. And it was even more widely dismissed by everyone in the barracks. At least everyone I talked to. As I’ve heard, the whole narrative has become a bit of legend across the full span of the System.”

  “But not to you. You thought it was more than legend.” Marlene instinctively knew the rest of Dodd’s story, but she let him finish the broad strokes of it.

  “I wasn’t so convinced.” He paused. “Do you know who Officer Stenson is?”

  Marlene took an involuntary step back, her body preparing itself for defense.

  “So, I guess you do.” Dodd put his hands up, palms facing flat toward Marlene. “But I’m not here to relive his demise. I don’t care. He made his choices. I only mention him as a reference for you.”

  Marlene exhaled quietly but kept her distance.

  “I’m the one who found him in this cabin. He was torn to shreds. My partner and the rest of the investigators assumed he’d been killed by an animal. They figured you kept crazed dogs or wild pigs or something and that you’d released them on him when he came to question you about Anika Morgan.”

  This time Marlene couldn’t help the slight curl of a smile, though she doubted it was detectable by the officer.

  “But that isn’t what happened, is it? You did that. Somehow you did that to his body.”

  Marlene could again sense Dodd waited for some reciprocation from her, some dialogue so they could devise their plan to “help each other.” She still gave him nothing.

  “But I don’t blame you, Marlene.”

  The woman closed her eyes and basked in the sound of her own name.

  “He was coming to hurt you, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, her eyes still closed, her head tilted back slightly.

  “I knew him well enough to see the change in him. I sensed his corruption for months. His behavior became erratic. I didn’t know if it was something in his personal life or beyond, but it was real. You aren’t to blame, Marlene. Officer Stenson was using you, wasn’t he? He was using you for your powers, and then he was going to steal it all away from you. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes!” the woman screamed. Her mouth hung gaping, like an opera singer, holding the short-E sound as if ending an aria. She felt the cool air on her exposed fangs.

  Dodd stayed composed, expressionless.

  “They’re always coming to steal from me, you and your kind. They don’t have the talent to do what I do, so they take it from me, compelling me. The tools they used to use were rape and torture, now it’s the threat of my freedom and the thievery of my secrets.”

  Marlene thought of her book. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she registered that this officer standing outside on her porch was the first to come here following the escape of Anika Morgan.

  “I think I preferred it before, when what the men stole from me took only a few minutes to obtain. Now they want not just me but my life’s work. My possessions. But no more. I’ve found the secret. What I’ve been searching for as far back as my memory goes. I don’t fear you anymore. And I don’t need you.”

  “As I said, Marlene, I’m not here to force you or coerce you to do anything. You say you don’t need me, but you will. We can help each other.”

  “It’s too late for you to stop them, Officer Dodd. They’ll be coming for me. I’ve already made sure of that.” Marlene again readied herself for attack, waiting for Dodd to lower his defenses for just a moment.

  “I know about Georg Klahr. The neighbor. The one who lived across the lake.”

  Marlene had smelled the man on the officer seconds after he appeared at the door; what she didn’t know was that he’d been to the house already. That he had already discovered everything.

  “It was the boy then. He put his trust in your detestable organization after all. I hadn’t expected that.”

  “No, it wasn’t Petr. There’s been no call from Petr Stenson to The System.”

  “Then how?”

  “I’ll tell you, but first I’d like to come inside. To talk. We can keep this same distance from each other if you like, but I’d rather be off the porch.”

  Marlene unconsciously glanced toward the bedroom.

  Officer Dodd picked up on the movement. “She is here then. I assumed so. Is she dead?”

  Marlene shook her head, like a child who’d just confessed to attempting some dangerous stunt and had been asked if she was hurt.

  “Okay, that’s good. There can’t be any more of that. Not yet. May I come in?”

  Marlene nodded, and Dodd walked inside, closing the door gently behind him. He walked to the kitchen, keeping the proper radius, his eyes fixed on the woman as he moved behind the counter, a natural barrier of protection should the need arise.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Marlene. We have some things to figure out. Very serious things. You’ve created quite a bit of damage over these past few weeks. And I’m not just speaking of the Klahrs. Those boys who disappeared? I assume that was you? Am I right to assume that?”

  Marlene was confused at first; she hadn’t thought of the boys since she’d buried the second one at the edge of her property. “They’ve been found.” It was a statement.

  “No, they haven’t, but that is only because of me. The younger brother of one of the missing boys gave a rather convincing account about the day they were last seen. Please, sit down.”

  Marlene followed the order to sit and now recalled how the boy’s escape had seemed problematic at the time, a future worry to contend with. Yet it didn’t appear as if any detectives or System officers had come to her home since that day.

  As if reading her mind, Dodd said, “I can make a lot of things go away, as you can see. If it wasn’t for me, there would be a large-scale manhunt underway right now. But I can’t make problems go away forever, Marlene. People are beginning to get suspicious again. The myth of the Northlands Witch and the possibility that she might be alive and roaming the New Country looking for victims is starting to make its way out of the school yards and into the barracks. And that’s not where you want those stories to be.”

  Marlene gave a knowing nod, keeping her eyes locked on the officer, waiting to hear about her contribution to their deal.

  “I always believed you were alive,” Dodd c
ontinued. “I’m not going to get into the whole story about why I believed that, because it’s not important, but just know that I’ve done quite a bit of work to keep everyone else believing you were dead. And one of the biggest problems I’ve had to work out has been the Stenson boy, Petr. He’s made things quite difficult over the last year. He’s been busy with his own investigations, raising questions about the disappearance of your body and why no one at the System has been able to give him a straight answer. He’s formulated some pretty accurate theories that some people are starting to consider. And now, with his normally stable guardians suddenly disappearing and two boys vanishing from your property along with a witness who heard screams, well, those people who were only lightly considering Petr’s theories before are going to start considering them very seriously now.

  “What do you want, Officer Dodd?”

  Dodd smiled and nodded, pleased that the woman understood that negotiations had begun. He looked at the walls and ceiling of the cabin, as if just noticing them for the first time, and then took a cursory scan of the one large room that made up the bulk of the cabin. “Do you enjoy living here, Marlene? Living like this?”

  Marlene frowned and shook her head, confused. “Enjoy living here?”

  “Yes. Do you enjoy your life? This life?”

  Marlene’s expression flattened, and she shook her head slowly, now realizing what the officer asked. “I enjoy almost nothing, Officer Dodd. Joy is fleeting, like the memory of a dream. When you’ve lived as I have there is little about life you can truly enjoy. Enjoyment is for children. At a very young age, it transitions into struggle. For most, life is struggle. It has always been the way. Struggle is what your ancestors did for millions of years to bring you into existence.”

  “Then why? If not for the joy, why do you keep doing it? Why do you try so hard to stay alive? Why do you want to keep struggling?”

  Marlene rose from her chair and took a step forward, staring the officer in his eyes, imparting the magnitude of what she was about to say. “Because life is no longer about struggle for me, Officer Dodd. I’ve moved to the next phase. Beyond joy. Beyond struggle. I crave, Officer Dodd. I keep chasing this life because I crave it.”