The Grimm Curse (Once Upon A Time Is Now)

by Stephen Carpenter

  “Yes, at Woodland High,” she said. “Just follow the road flares.”

  “Follow the flares,” I said, uncertainly. “O-kay.”

  “I’ll see you in a minute. Hurry.”

  I hung up, wondering what I should do. This person on the phone sounded sort of breathless and crazy, and I had had enough crazy for one day. I was very tired and very hungry and I was starting to feel lightheaded. The last thing I wanted to do was dive into the deep end of the insanity pool with a person I’d never met, but as I walked back to Smith’s car, I decided I would at least find out what this Madeleine girl wanted from me. On the short drive to the phone booth, Smith had started talking about guardians and foster families and I wanted no part of that, either. So I got back in the car and told Smith to take me to the school.

  We drove around the square and I noticed people were starting to gather around the bandstand with lighted candles in little paper holders. There were people handing out flyers for the missing twins that I had read about at the library. Smith noticed it too, but neither of us said anything.

  We pulled up to the school a couple of minutes later, and I saw the road flares. Smith and I got out and walked toward the Sheriff’s car, where a small group of people were gathered. A deputy with a large belly was trying to keep the gathering crowd, mostly high school kids, away from something officers were examining on the ground.

  “Jacob!” came a girl’s voice behind me. I turned and saw a girl about my age rushing up to me. She had a long, curly ponytail and a Woodland High sweatshirt, and she was carrying a backpack that was bulging with something big, and apparently very heavy, considering how she kept shifting its weight on her shoulder.

  She came up to me and took my hand and looked me in the eye and said, “I recognize you. From the pictures Eustace showed me.” She gave me a quick hug.

  “We have to get going,” she said quietly. “It’s already started.”

  She started to pull me away when Smith reached out his hand to her.

  “Hi, I’m Bill Smith, I represent the Grimm estate…” he began.

  “Nice to meet you!” Madeleine called back to him as she pulled me away. I looked back and saw a woman in a nurse’s outfit watching us. I saw Smith shake the nurse’s hand and they began talking as Madeleine pulled me away.

  Madeleine took me around the corner of the school building, out of sight. It was dark now—except for the full moon—and I nearly had to run to keep up with her as we crossed the football field, heading toward the woods.

  “What was going on back there?” I said. “With the cops?”

  “That’s what we’re about to find out,” she said. “Come on, hurry.”

  “Come on where?” I said.

  She gave me a funny look.

  “To the woods, of course,” she said.

  “Of course,” I said. “How stupid of me.”

  She marched ahead, until we reached the woods. I followed her into the thick forest, stumbling over roots and ducking spider webs, falling behind her.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, you have no idea,” she said. “The trouble started when Eustace got sick. He just couldn’t keep up.”

  “I know the feeling,” I said, pushing a tree branch out of my face.

  “Without a Huntsman we have no idea whether we’re dealing with a Malefic or even an ogre,” she said. “Now that you’re here we’re about to find out.”

  “Where do you get your drugs?” I said, under my breath. If she heard me she acted like she didn’t, and marched on through the darkness.

  “And why, exactly, are we heading into the woods?” I asked.

  “To perform the Initiation, of course,” she said, like I was some kind of moron. Then she stopped and stared at me as I caught up with her.

  “You read the will, right?” she asked, with an alarmed look on her face, her eyes wide.

  “Oh…yeah…sure,” I lied, and she turned and kept on walking ahead of me. “It’s just that, ah, it was kind of long and I don’t remember every little detail, exactly…” I said, following her once again.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “Eustace said it would take a while for you to absorb the whole thing.”

  “Yeah, I’m still…absorbing…” I said, struggling to keep up with her. “Remind me about the, ah, Initiation?”

  “Well, as you know, we first have to scatter Eustace’s ashes in a clearing in the direct light of the moon, which will reach maximum fullness in just a few minutes…” she slipped off her backpack and unzipped it and showed me a silver urn inside.

  “You’re carrying my great uncle’s ashes in your backpack?” I said.

  “Of course,” she said, like I’d just informed her that the earth revolved around the sun. “I never thought I’d be present at the birth of a Huntsman!” she added.

  I moved away from her a little bit.

  “Me either,” I said.

  “Come on,” she said, and hurried through the woods ahead of me.

  Curiouser and curiouser, I thought.

  But I followed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Rachel Makes Brownies

  Rachel hummed a four hundred year-old song—The Song of the Feast—as she moved quickly around her kitchen, making brownies. She was still wearing the yoga outfit, which was now covered with grease and stains of many colors and textures. Her lovely blonde hair was becoming brittle and dry and her skin had a pale sheen to it, like she was covered with some kind of filmy oil. She was also developing quite a serious potbelly, which looked rather ridiculous, given that her limbs were still long and yoga-thin. She glanced down at her swelling belly and patted it happily, satisfied to see that she was starting to get her figure back.

  On the counter were three large trays of brownies. The brownies on two of the trays had been frosted with thick, white icing, but the third tray had yet to be frosted. Rachel opened a pantry door, revealing the world’s most bizarre spice rack: there were hundreds of bottles inside, labeled in different languages, some with no label at all. There were normal herbs and spices—oregano, thyme, rosemary—but mixed among them were oddly shaped bottles with labels like “PICKLED NIXIES,” “ICHOR OF EEL NYMPH,” and “PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED TOAD TOE.”

  Rachel took a large plastic bottle of Sprite from a shelf. She twisted the cap off of the bottle and shook out a tiny, wriggling sprite—a winged fairy the size of a dragonfly. Rachel closed her filmy palm around the squealing little sprite the way you would hold a fluttering moth in your hand. She carried it over to the large butcher-block table in the center of the kitchen, lifted the lid on the Cuisinart, and dumped the fluttering little fairy into the food processor. She replaced the lid, then hit the button on the machine that read “Puree.” The tiny squeals were cut short by the whining blades of the food processor and the inside of the glass container was sprayed with bright green fluid.

  Rachel scraped the green fluid from the glass with a small rubber spatula. After collecting almost all of the thick green glop, she plopped the stuff into a bowl of white frosting and mixed it vigorously with the spatula, turning the frosting a bright, iridescent green.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Initiation And The Talking Wolf

  I had just about had it with Madeleine and our freak-show journey into the woods, and I was about to tell her I was going to turn back and head home (wherever that was) when we reached a clearing, which was illuminated by the full moon.

  “This is it,” she said, looking up to check on the moon. She put the backpack on the ground and opened it and took out my uncle’s remains.

  I stood back from her as she solemnly, carefully removed the lid on the silver urn. In the moonlight I could see the elaborate engraving on the container, which was similar to the wax seal on the will. There was an etching of the shield from the parlor wall—which I figured was some kind of family crest—and the initials EWG.

  I stood there, wondering, Is she really going to dump the ashes right out here onto the�
�?

  Then she held the urn up toward the full moon, took a deep breath, and began to speak:

  “We the living pass the soul of Eustace Grimm to the place from whence it came,” she intoned in a hushed voice. “And in its passing, let the scales fall from the eyes of the new Huntsman, so that he might see.”

  With that, she slowly turned the urn upside down, and the pale gray ashes spilled out onto the forest floor. Dust from the ashes rose up all around us in a thick cloud, nearly blotting out the bright moon. I backed away farther, not wanting to breathe the ashes of my dead relative, for God’s sake.

  Madeleine closed her eyes and murmured a few words in a language that sounded like German, as near as I could tell. Then she turned to me. Through the dim, ash-filled night air, I could see that her eyes were wet with tears, and very serious.

  “Jacob Grimm,” she said softly. “You are now the Huntsman of Woodland. May your greatest fears become your greatest strengths.”

  I tried to think of some kind of response, but what would that be, exactly? No spell overcame me, there was no sudden, magical feeling; I didn’t levitate or anything, and I certainly hadn’t expected to. All I could think about was getting the hell out of there, out of the woods, away from this girl, and away from the cloud of dust that used to be my great uncle.

  “Okay, then,” I said, coughing a little, having inhaled a brief breath of the spreading gray cloud. “I think I’m gonna go now—”

  I started to turn away, then stopped in my tracks.

  Beyond Madeleine, through the cloud of dust, where a moment earlier there was only darkness, there were now…eyes.

  Eyes.

  Dozens of them, approaching us from the dark woods. Green, glowing eyes, dull red eyes, large eyes and small eyes, some narrow and sinister, some wide and timid-looking. Most of them were in pairs, but here and there was a single, large, glowing, eyeball the size of a basketball.

  My first response was to run back the way we came, but there were eyes behind me as well. In fact, there were eyes everywhere—high up in the trees, flying overhead, silhouetted against the moon, creeping and slithering toward me through the brush. And as they came closer, I could start to see the strange forms of the creatures themselves—the creatures whose eyes were staring at me—through the dust and the shadows of the forest. But before I could get a good look, the creatures with the glowing eyes stopped at the edge of the clearing. They stopped and just stared.

  I stood there, frozen. I mean, frozen. I had even forgotten to breathe. I moved closer to Madeleine and whispered.

  “Are you seeing this?” I said, the words coming out trembling and shaky.

  “Yes,” Madeleine replied softly, her voice far calmer than mine. “Don’t show any fear. They won’t come closer unless they sense fear.”

  Fear?? I was about to crap my pants. My whole body seemed to be one big shiver, and every hair was standing on end, like it was shot through with electricity. Every inch of me—every part of me—was shaking, and I couldn’t get my feet to move.

  There was a rustling sound, behind Madeleine, and the eyes moved around, parting, making way for something that was trotting along the forest floor toward us.

  I saw its eyes first, along with the others: narrow yellow eyes, focused on me, moving fast, heading right toward me, and then I could see that it was a wolf—a very big one—its head low, its glowing eyes never leaving mine. It didn’t hesitate like the other creatures—it trotted right out into the clearing, into the moonlight, right toward us, head low, teeth bared. I had never seen a real wolf, except on TV, and I had no idea wolves could grow that big. As it came closer it raised its head, which was as high as my chest, and then it slowed as it came closer still, within a leap’s distance, and stood up on its hind legs and walked like a man, right up to me.

  I was shaking even harder as the wolf walked up to me, close enough for me to feel its breath on my face. The wolf looked down at me, towering at least a foot over me, and its black lips pulled back in a vicious, cruel expression.

  It was grinning at me.

  A low growl began deep in its huge chest, and then the growl became a laugh.

  It leaned close enough to bite off my nose with one snap of its jaws.

  “You must be the new guy,” the wolf said to me in a deep, rumbling voice that rattled my ribs. I swear, I thought I was going to pass out.

  The wolf looked into my eyes, still chuckling in that terrible low growl.

  “See ya later,” the wolf said, and then dropped back down on its four legs and galloped off into the woods and was gone. The eyes followed the wolf, retreating back into the woods after it, flying off, stomping off, slithering off, leaving Madeleine and me alone in the moonlit clearing as the wind blew what was left of my great uncle Eustace away, into the cold, clear, night sky.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I Learn About The Huntsman And Eat The Best Brownie Ever

  To be totally honest with you, I don’t remember much from the moments right after that whacked-out encounter in the woods. I only remember running from the woods—this time I was leading her—and I remember the two of us shouting at each other. It went something like this:

  Me: “WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!”

  Madeleine: “They recognized you—they all knew the Initiation was coming.”

  Me: “Who are THEY??”

  Madeleine: “The Otherworld! It was in the will—”

  Me: “The wolf—it TALKED TO ME!!”

  Madeleine: “I know! I hate that guy…”

  And so on.

  Then I remember running back across the football field, past the school, toward the town square, where we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a huge crowd of people, who were all gathered around the bandstand, holding lighted candles in little paper holders. Some people had signs, with pictures of the missing Peyton twins on them.

  Madeleine grabbed me and stopped me from running as a man in a priest’s collar stood at the top of the steps of the bandstand and led the crowd in a prayer. I must have still been shouting questions at Madeleine because she put her finger against my lips and said “Shhh!”

  We stopped, and Madeleine bowed her head and I stood there, trying to calm down. I looked around at the crowd, their heads bowed, candles lighting up their somber faces. I was still shaking—I was vibrating—like someone had hooked me up to a hundred volts of electricity and thrown cold water on me. People always talk about how they react to horrible things, like a car wreck, or something…they always say things like “everything slowed down, like slow-motion,” or something like that. But I can tell you, there was nothing “slow-motion” about the way I was feeling. My heart was pounding about a hundred miles an hour and my brain was running even faster. I couldn’t stand still. It’s not like time had slowed down, it’s that everyone else seemed to slow down because I was all amped up, running at fifty times regular speed while everyone around me was stuck on normal. I can tell you one thing for sure, that guy’s prayer took forever. I kept looking over my shoulder to see if that FREAKING TALKING WOLF HAD FOLLOWED US.

  “Amen,” the priest finally said, and the crowd murmured “Amen,” and lifted their faces to the priest as he talked about the missing Peyton twins in a voice too low for me to hear. I looked around at the crowd. There were high school kids with their parents, and other townsfolk—it seemed like all of Woodland had turned out for the vigil.

  “Tell me what you see,” Madeleine said to me.

  “What?”

  “Look at them—at the crowd. What do you see?” she said.

  “I see…a crowd of people…what are you talking about?” I said, then Madeleine pulled me aside.

  “Am I going crazy?” I said. “You saw it too, right? The wolf and the—”

  “You’re not going crazy,” she said.

  “Well somebody better start explaining what’s going on because where I come from wolves don’t talk!” I said.

  Madeleine gestured toward
the crowd. “You really don’t see anything but people?” she asked.

  “No!”

  “Oh my God,” she stared at me in horror. “You lied to me—you didn’t read the will…”

  “I read—part of it…” I said.

  “No you didn’t!” she said. “If you had read it you would have taken the vow…”

  “Alright, I didn’t read it,” I said. “Now will you please tell me what—”

  Madeleine started pacing back and forth, her hands covering her face. She was freaking out.

  “You didn’t read the will,” she said. “That means you didn’t take the vow, which means you have no powers…oh my God…”

  I grabbed her by the shoulders to stop her pacing.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “Calm down and tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “The Grimm Curse,” Madeleine said. “It’s all explained in the will…”

  “WHAT’S explained?” I said.

  “The birthplace of the last living Grimm descendent is where the Otherworld comes to life…”

  “The Otherworld?”

  “The beings from the fairy tales—the Grimm fairy tales. They’re all here.”

  I stared at her, totally confused, unable to get my mind around what she was saying.

  “Witches, big bad wolves, the whole deal.” she said. “You should be able to look out at this crowd and tell me who’s a wolf in human form, or an ogre, or a witch…like Eustace could.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Slow down and explain—”

  “We can’t slow down,” she said, panic rising in her eyes. “You were supposed to take the Vow of Initiation before we scattered the ashes, so you could receive the powers of the Huntsman…” she started pacing again. “Oh, God…a powerless Huntsman! What are we gonna do?”

  “Madeleine!” a woman’s voice came from behind us. It was the nurse I had seen at the crime scene in front of the school. She walked up to Madeleine and me.

  “What’s wrong? You look like death,” the woman said.

  “Nothing, mom.” Madeleine said, turning away from her.