by Tom McNeal
“Know one good thing?” she whispered. “The enchantment can’t be undone.”
Jeremy seemed not to understand.
“The enchantment of the first bite,” she said. “It can only be undone by the touch of a salted tear on the parted lips of the spellbound.” She tried to smile. “Meaning me—the spellboundee.”
“So?”
“So that can’t possibly happen to me in here. I’m beyond reach of your tear, salted or unsalted.” She laughed a small, raspy laugh. “The thing is, I think you’re stuck with me, Jeremy. And you might be stuck with me in the sweet hereafter.”
“That’s fine by me,” Jeremy said. “Being stuck with you, I mean. But I’d like to put off the sweet-hereafter part.”
He seemed to be considering something, then took a deep breath and began recounting “The Singing Soaring Lark,” a solicitous choice, I thought, for the tale features a brave and resourceful heroine, much like our own.
That night in the darkness, instead of whimpering voices, they heard symphonic music, the same music the baker had listened to when he drove Jeremy and Ginger into the woods.
The next morning, when the chamber began to lighten, Ginger and Jeremy were again holding hands through the bars that separated their cells. They withdrew their arms slowly, as if reluctant to let go of the solace the other provided.
There were nineteen peas—all shriveled and faded—lining the shelf the day the prisoners again heard the moaning wall and the squealing cart.
“Hallå, Hallå!” the baker said as he entered. “Is it not a great day to be alive?”
None of the captives rose from their cots, and none of them spoke.
The baker pulled the white cloth from the cart to reveal a single plate piled with scraps of stale pastries and bread of the type that would normally be set out for stray dogs, and each of the prisoners looked upon the scraps as a starving dog might.
The baker talked as he divided the bits of food among three plates. “A little news,” he said. “Frankie’s mother and Ginger’s grandfather have received their letters, and everyone feels reassured now, knowing that Frankie is making his way as a chef on a private yacht and that Jeremy and Ginger have found a hospitable home in some unknown remote location.”
He began distributing the plates—the prisoners rose slowly to position themselves at the edges of their cots. “And now, my dear children,” the baker said, “you will each begin to become a memory less and less frequently visited.”
Jeremy, Ginger, and Frank Bailey all raised themselves with difficulty and moved closer to their small feeding doors.
“Yes, yes, it is not always flattering, but it is the human design. For a while, we miss the departed”—he gently shook his head—“and then we forget them.”
With a push of a button, the small doors opened and the prisoners—they could not help themselves—reached through and grabbed the scraps. They ate greedily, which brought a laugh rumbling up from the baker’s great belly.
Ginger swallowed, wiped her mouth with her sleeve, and said in a tight, rasping voice, “What is wrong with you?”
The baker produced a smirking smile. “That you, looking as you at this moment do, can ask such a question of me is rich with irony.”
In a leisurely manner, he took out his tobacco, seated himself in his rocking chair, and tapped clean his pipe.
“I will tell you something interesting,” he said. “Whenever I used to read one of those stories that Jeremy likes to tell, the ones where a genie or a talking fish grants somebody three wishes, I always thought I would ask for only two. And do you know what they were? One was to have a single friend who could take me as I am and upon whose loyalty I could always rely. And the other”—the baker pulled smoke from his pipe and released it slowly—“was to do whatever I wanted.”
The baker rocked and smoked. The prisoners—this was not an easy thing to watch—began actually to lick their plates. When they were done, he said, “I think the time has come for me to tell you a certain story. This is not one of Jeremy’s feel-good fairy tales. It is even better, and do you know why?” His eyes grazed from prisoner to prisoner. “Because it is true and has a certain application to your present circumstances.”
He drew from his pipe, then let white smoke flow through his lips. “This, dear children, is the story of the Nyköping Banquet. Do you know of it?”
The prisoners stared at him. They had not heard of this notorious occasion, but I had, and a fearful tremor passed through my spectral form.
“The Nyköping Banquet,” the baker began, “was an unusual dinner party hosted in the early fourteenth century by Sweden’s King Birger. Seven years before, at the Håtuna Games, the king’s two brothers had staged a bloody coup to dethrone him, but they were rebuffed by the king’s forces. With the passage of time, the king publicly forgave his two brothers and, shortly before Christmas of 1317, he announced his intention to reconcile with them. They were invited to a magnificent banquet at his castle in Nyköping. But after royally feeding his brothers and plying them with nectar, King Birger threw them into his dungeon.” The baker stood and drew close to Jeremy’s cell. “But before he did, do you know what he said to them?”
No one spoke, so the baker said, “Kommer ni ihåg Håtuna spelen? Jag kommer klart ihåg dem.” He paused. “Do you want to guess what that means?”
I gave Jeremy a basic translation, and he repeated it. “Do you remember the Hatuna Games? For I remember them clearly.”
The baker cocked his head in surprise. “What did you say?”
Jeremy repeated it.
“So you know Swedish?” the baker said.
I was unsure what to suggest Jeremy might say, but it did not matter, for a strange resolve had settled into his face. He sat straighter and said, “I don’t speak Swedish. But there is a ghost who stays near me. He’s the one who knows Swedish.”
The baker stared at him for a moment and then began to laugh. “A boy in the middle of the United States with a Swedish-speaking ghost,” he said even as he continued laughing. “That is perhaps too much to believe.”
“He speaks a lot of languages, not just Swedish,” Jeremy said. “He is the one who knows all about the fairy tales. He is the one who watched you go into Elbow’s Café when we were bound up in your delivery van. He is the one who floated nearby while you ate beef pot pie and talked about me with my father.” Jeremy fixed his eyes on the baker. “And he is the one who will haunt you until your last breath if you hurt any one of us here.”
The baker’s eyes had grown wider—for a moment, his face seemed made of stretched rubber—and it was so quiet that you could hear a mouse blink. But then his face regained its shape, and he issued another laugh, one that was smaller and harder. “You are very clever, dear boy, but what you saw was through comatose eyes and what you say your ghost heard is untrue.”
It is completely true, I told Jeremy, and then I told him something else.
“And you tried to plant the idea with my father that I might run away with Ginger.”
The baker shrugged. “Again, untrue. Perhaps your ghost does not hear well or”—he smiled slyly—“perhaps your ghost does not exist.”
After a moment, Jeremy pointed to the baker’s chair. “See that rocker?”
The baker regarded his rocking chair, which sat empty and still.
“Yes, my dear boy. I see it very clearly. Can your ghost make it vanish?”
“No,” Jeremy said. “But he can sit in it.”
“Yes? And is he sitting in it now?” He sniggered. “Why not make it three ghosts sitting in it, or”—another small laugh—“a whole baker’s dozen?”
“Just one,” Jeremy said. “And he will sit in it and make it rock.”
It took me a moment to understand what Jeremy was asking me to do … but then I threw myself into the task, swirling past the chair, front then back, again and again, until the rocking began, and so furious was my swirling that it gained speed and the chair wa
s soon rocking quite madly.
When finally I stopped and the rocker gradually grew still, Ginger, Frank Bailey, and the baker were all staring at Jeremy, who said, “My ghost seems to like your rocker.”
A few moments passed in silence, and then, to the surprise of everyone, the baker began nodding and smiling as if in amusement. “So,” he said. “So.”
The prisoners, with their hollow eyes, stared as one.
“A mystery has been solved,” the baker said. “So many boys our Jeremy has been. The boy who upon seeing me burrowed into his blankets. The boy who heard voices. The boy who knew fairy tales. And now he is the boy with his own ghost.” His eyes settled on Jeremy. “I knew you were destined to visit me here in the great chamber, and I knew that it was important, but I did not know why. And now I do. I see why we had to meet here.” His blue eyes twinkled. “For you and for me, Jeremy, it is our great opportunity.” His face seemed to shine with luxurious anticipation. “Here, in front of our friends, we will match our … talents and see … how it all will end.”
The baker took in and expelled a deep breath. “You are the cleverest of boys, Jeremy Johnson Johnson. But”—he was serene now, poised and assured—“even if you had a dozen personal ghosts, they would be no match for my demons.”
Then, unhurriedly, he went to the painting on the wall and turned it over.
And there, on the reverse side, was a far different work of art, as ghoulish as the other was benign. In this woodprint, a haggard mother, who had been cooking a scant meal at her fire, looks on in anguish as a skeleton pulls her small child from their tumbledown hut. The terrified child reaches back through the smoke for its mother even as the skeletal form pulls it inexorably away.
“God,” Ginger said in a faltering voice. “What is that?”
The baker’s eyes gleamed with pride. “It is one of many prints collectively called The Dance of Death. Each is designed to remind us how Death is always with us, waiting to lead us away.” The baker leaned toward the print. “The woodcutting is superb, and yet for a long time the identity of its creator was not known.” He turned a smile to Jeremy. “Perhaps your ghost knows his name?”
I told Jeremy, and he said, “Hans Holbein.”
The baker made a show of not being surprised. “The Elder or the Younger?”
I again supplied the answer. “The Younger,” Jeremy said.
“Very good,” the baker said in his most pleasant voice. “Your ghost is good at the esoteric question, and yet”—a rich laugh tumbled from his lips—“when it comes to the Disney version of Snow White …”
He did not finish the sentence. With stately calm, he pushed his cart from the dungeon, the wall moaning closed behind him.
For several moments, the chamber was deeply quiet.
Then Ginger said, “That was pretty freaking fabulous, Jeremy. I think you actually had him going there for a second or two.”
“More than a second or two,” Frank Bailey offered from across the room.
Jeremy waved a hand dismissively. “Didn’t scare him enough, though, did it?” he said. “We’re still here, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” Ginger said, “but that rocking-chair poltergeist thing was amazing.” Her eyes were fixed on him. “So how’d you do that? And where’d you come up with that personal-ghost stuff?”
Jeremy sat on the edge of his cot and said nothing.
“Jeremy?”
He breathed heavily in and out. “Promise you won’t laugh or anything?”
“Promise.”
“Okay,” Jeremy said. “I didn’t make it up. It’s true.”
From their stares it was clear that they did not believe him.
“Really,” Jeremy said, looking earnestly at Ginger. “True.”
Frank Bailey was searching all around. “And he’s, like, in here with us?”
Jeremy nodded. “Unless he slipped out with the baker, which I doubt, because he promised me he would stay with us.”
Ginger’s eyes darted here and there in the chamber. “How do you find out?”
Jeremy touched his temple and whispered, “You here, Jacob?”
Yes.
“He’s here,” Jeremy said.
Ginger was having a difficult time grasping what she was hearing. “So he’s here, and you can hear him, and you call him Yaw-kub?”
Jeremy nodded. “That’s his name. He lived in Germany about two hundred years ago. His last name’s Grimm. He and his brother are the ones who collected the household tales.”
They were all silent for a moment or two, then Ginger said, “So do you think we’re in some kind of weird fairy tale, and that’s why he’s here?”
Jeremy shook his head. “I don’t know. And I don’t think my ghost does, either.”
“But it is like we’re in some kind of fairy tale,” Frank Bailey said. “It’s got enchantments and dungeons and potions and forbidden rooms”—his face fell; he seemed suddenly to remember something—“except this time it’s all real.”
Another silence stretched out. Then Ginger said, “And this ghost—he sees and hears everything we do and say?”
Jeremy nodded.
“That’s kind of creepy,” she said.
“Actually, he’s pretty good about respecting people’s privacy.”
Something had occurred to Ginger. She put a finger to her lips, and then she leaned forward and whispered, “Are you just saying this so Sten will hear it and believe it?”
“No,” Jeremy said in his usual voice. “I don’t care whether Sten believes it or not. But I do know my ghost won’t let him rest if he does anything bad to us.”
She stared at Jeremy. “Yeah,” she whispered, “but why didn’t he do something to keep us from being abducted to begin with?”
Well, there it was: a sharp knife in the sheath of a short question.
It is true, Jeremy. I was not vigilant. Then I steeled myself and said something I had been needing to say. And I think that the terrible mistake I made has led me to make another.
He was waiting for me to go on, but Ginger spoke up first. “So what does your ghost think we should do now?”
I told him, and from his expression, I could see that it made him anxious. Still, he was cautious, lowering his voice to a whisper to say, “My ghost says that he needs to slip out with Sten.” Then he added even more softly, “If Sten ever comes back.”
“Maybe your ghost is the answer to our prayers,” Ginger said, and managed a dry laugh. “You should tell him to bring back the cavalry—and some Oreos.”
“That’s the thing. He can’t bring anything back. He can’t even tell anybody anything. But at least he can find out what’s going on out there. Right, Jacob?”
Yes. I can do at least that much. I had other ideas, too, but I did not mention them.
“It’s okay,” Jeremy said in a low voice. “We’ll be okay.”
For the first time, I detected something fatalistic in his tone, and what he meant by being okay, I did not want to guess.
All right, then, I said. I will slip out the next time I can.
Twenty-five peas, and the baker had not visited, then twenty-six and twenty-seven.
“That’s all,” Jeremy said in a soft voice.
His face had grown haggard and seemed composed of uncolored candle wax. All of their faces did. I must say it: the prisoners looked like the drawings one sometimes sees of ghosts.
“Twenty-seven days,” Ginger said.
“Which means fifty-even for me,” Frank Bailey said. “It seems like fifty years.” His eyes were unlighted lanterns. “I still can’t believe Mr. Blix is doing this.”
“I think it’s time to believe it,” Jeremy said, but Frank Bailey, instead of nodding in agreement, merely lowered his eyes.
Ginger brought out all the peas from the ledge above her sink and laid them on her cot. “Twenty-seven’s divisible by three,” she said. “Nine each.”
She began lobbing peas across the dungeon to Frank Bailey. Seve
n rolled into his cell; two fell short. She tossed two more. Frank Bailey collected them from the floor, eating them as he did. She then gave nine to Jeremy, who returned one so that the two of them would have eight each. They looked down at the peas, gathered in their cupped hands.
“Down the hatch?” she asked.
He shrugged. They opened their mouths, threw in the peas, then sucked them as one might candy, until at last they were gone.
“Nothing quite like a shriveled pea,” Jeremy said.
She gave a weak laugh. “Fabulous appetizer. Now, where’s the entrée?”
At night, the dreadful sounds of suffering still came through the walls, but now the prisoners stuffed their ears with small bits of cloth torn from their bedding.
One night, however, the whimpering and pleading ceased, and a short while later a new series of sounds came from another source—Jeremy himself.
“Please,” he murmured. “Please.” His pleading grew more fretful. “Please! Please!”
Jeremy! I said, and then I shouted, Jeremy! Wake up! Wake up!
He did not wake up, but his cries awakened Ginger, who pulled the wadding from her ears. “Jeremy!” she shouted, grabbing his arm through the bars.
He came slowly back from wherever he had been.
“What?” he said in a thick voice.
“You,” Ginger said. “You were yelling in your sleep. You said, ‘Please! Please!’ again and again.” She paused. “Please what?”
“I was asking …” He hesitated, as if trying to piece it together. “It was like I was hearing several voices, but it was different … I was seeing people, too.”
Ginger gave a small laugh. “Most of us call that a dream.”
“No. I mean, it was like a dream except … it was more real than a dream.”
“So why were you saying Please? Please what?”
“It was a party for a little boy, a long, long time ago, and I was there, except somehow I was the ghost and nobody could see or hear me. Everyone was speaking German and laughing and singing except a man standing in the doorway half in and half out, with longish gray hair and wearing, like, an old smoking jacket or something, and kind of half smiling in a way that made me know he wasn’t happy.” Jeremy lowered his voice apologetically. “That’s how I knew it was Jacob.”
