The trail at my feet illuminated the tunnel just a bit. I could see something up ahead. Something entirely peculiar. A broom. A shovel, too. They were moving back and forth deeper in the tunnel, at an intersection. They were like something out of a cartoon only here they were, real as the hair on my head.
They paid no attention to me as I stepped closer. When I was at sword’s length, I gently reached out with the tip of the foil and pressed it against the wooden handle of the broom. It stopped moving, then shuddered, slowly burning away. I did the same with the shovel.
“Alice …” came a voice deeper in the tunnel, echoing in every direction. My hands trembled. I stepped forward, following the glowing trail around a bend in the tunnel. When I saw what was waiting for me, I hopped backwards.
“Oh, gross!” I said. “Gross!”
There, dancing on the floor of the tunnel, were dozens of severed fingers and hands. Dancing! I reached out with the tip of my foil, stabbing at each one, telling them all how ridiculous they were. What else could I do? They looked fresh and bloody and downright disgusting and they weren’t just moving, they were dancing!
“Alice …”
“I’m coming!” I yelled angrily. “I just need to stab a few more severed hands and I’ll be right there!”
Finished, I walked deeper down the tunnel, where a new curious sound was coming from deeper within. Hissing. Or whispering. It seemed to fill the tunnel like a flood of water and I felt my legs turn into jelly. I just had to yell out, didn’t I? Couldn’t just keep quiet and hope for the best here, huh? I could have slapped myself.
I turned another corner and stopped. The tunnel opened up a bit into a small box-shaped room that looked as if it had once allowed water to gather. Now, with no water, it had been converted into something far stranger. A hundred white candles were lit in a line around the floor at the base of the walls. At the far end, where the tunnel resumed, there was a pile of rags and a dozen or so books. The sizzling sound was coming from two frying pans sitting on the concrete floor. Two strips of filleted fish were in each pan, and crouched over the pan was a man covered in a thick wool blanket.
A man with two long, curved horns protruding from his forehead.
“You can put the sword down,” he said in a low voice. “I mean you no harm.”
“I doubt that,” I told him in a squeaky voice, keeping the tip of the foil pointed at him. The smell of fish filled the room.
The man laughed, grabbing the handle of one of the pans and moving it back and forth on the concrete. Strangely enough, there was no fire underneath the scorching hot pans. “I knew Juliette. The last hero. Did you meet her?”
“No,” I said cautiously.
The man grunted. He looked in his mid-forties, with a balding head and broad shoulders. His skin was a pale blue, unwarmed even by all the candles. “A nice enough young lady, I suppose. A little morbid for my tastes. Always talking about her impending doom. Doom this, doom that. It really got quite annoying.”
“Did you kill her?” I asked, stepping forward.
The man ignored the point of my foil and shook the other sizzling pan so the slices of fish meat slid around. “Don’t think I could have even if I wanted to. She was one hell of a fighter.”
“The fish are cooked.”
He nodded, standing up and tightening the blanket around his body. He turned and looked at me. He had eyes of coal. “The fish are never cooked. That’s the awful truth of this place. Those fish don’t cook. They’re part of my story and nothing else. If I want something to eat, I have to go outside. And if someone sees me … well, let’s just say it’s not pretty.”
“Are you the one who spray painted my name outside?”
The man/creature grunted. “Indeed. A rudimentary sign of sorts, but the previous hero was quite insistent that it be done.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked. “Why were you calling my name?”
The man sighed. He was staring at the tip of my foil—not with a look of fear, but something else: longing. “I made a deal with the last hero. She told me she needed my help and in exchange she promised to give me that which I’ve desired for so long now.”
My heart grew cold. “Me?”
“What?” He furrowed his brow, smiling. “No. Of course not. Don’t be silly. Look around you! This is no place for a young lady to spend her days.”
“I thought you might kill me. Or worse.”
“Oh no no no.” He laughed a booming laugh. “My days of killing are long gone. I played out my story a thousand times and then I went into hiding. I ended up here, right here in this little hovel, because I threw myself into the ocean one day in hopes of finally reaching the end of my story. The ocean churned me and carried me for years, decades even. I washed ashore right here on this beach in the middle of a fine summer day.”
“I can imagine the surprise of beachgoers,” I said.
The man/creature nodded, cracking a slight smile. “I hardly needed anyone to point out my hideous horns.”
“Why did Juliette need your help?” I asked.
“She had a message for you. And I was to assist you in a way as well.” He walked over to the other side of the room, where the books were strewn around the pile of rags. His long, sharp fingers opened one of the books and leafed through the pages until a small slip of paper fell out. “Here it is,” said the man/creature. He grabbed it and walked over to me, holding it out. “I fear I must not get any closer. The tip of your blade tempts me to break my promise.”
I kept the blade pointed at him, quickly reaching forward with my free hand to grab the note. “What now?” I asked.
“One final thing,” the man/creature said. “A warning. And a gift. The gift is water.” He pulled back the old blanket, pulling a small clear glass vial from his pocket. He was wearing ancient, ragged clothes that looked like they would fit in better in a Sherlock Holmes novel. “There will be times in your journey when you will find this water useful. It can save a human life or it can hasten death. It will not always work the way you intend it to.”
“Why?” I asked.
The man/creature smiled. “Because that is how my story goes.” He handed it to me. I took the curious vial—no bigger than one of those disgusting severed fingers—and placed it in my pocket.
“Now a warning,” the man/creature said. “Death stalks this earth still. He was born from the pages of the Grimm brothers’ stories and no hero has ever attempted to kill him. If you see him, don’t acknowledge him. Let him pass. Let him do what he does. He takes indiscriminately, and he does it because that is what he was written to do. Regardless, he has become something more now after all these years living on this earth, and evil pulsates through his milky white bones. I say this again only because I have met with him and danced with him and have tasted the cold blade of his scythe. Let him pass.”
“Does he only take Corrupted, or does he take … well, humans?”
The man/creature rubbed his square jaw and inhaled through his long, hooked nose. “When one of the Grimms’ creations kills another of the Grimms’ creations, there is little concern, is there? After all, they were fated to die by the Grimm brothers themselves the moment the words were written on those cursed documents. But if I tell you Death now takes human beings, you would no doubt be concerned. Is that true?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, lowering my foil. I took a deep breath. “It’s true. I would care more.”
“As you should.” His bare feet padded on the concrete slab as he paced across the small room. Above him, an old drainage pipe was leaking a steady trickle of water that threatened to snuff the candles directly below. The water slipped into a crack in the concrete. This wasn’t the greatest of living conditions, I thought.
“We are but fictional creations,” the man/creature continued. “We don’t belong. That is why evil consumes us all, eventually. We are loved on paper, but not in the flesh. Because on paper, the stories end. When those foolish brothers made us real,
they forced us all to live beyond the end of our stories. And we knew not what to do.”
“You could be good,” I said. “You could … I don’t know … people could accept you. Maybe. Well, the horns are trouble.”
He turned to me and smiled. “I apologize for digressing. To answer your question: yes. Death has begun to take human beings. He’s already taken the Corrupted he was scripted to take. Now he scours the world and performs the only duty he knows how to do. Some day, a hero must stop him.”
I didn’t know what to say. A small part of me wanted to volunteer for the job. The rest of me shut that small part up right quick. I didn’t think I could do it.
The man/creature seemed to read my thoughts. “I would not recommend it. I was told to warn you because your ancestor, Juliette, knew your paths would cross often. Death has a way of following the heroes, I’m afraid. She worried about your safety.”
“Maybe she worried I would try and stop him,” I said, shuddering. I had this bizarre image of the Grim Reaper stuck in my head. “Boy, that doesn’t sound like a good idea. I can think of a hundred better ways to spend an afternoon. Shoe shopping, for one. I would even let my mom take me shoe shopping before I’d think about doing that.”
The man/creature stopped pacing. “I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain. Now I must ask for you to fulfill yours.”
“Mine?” I asked. “Woah, woah, woah. I didn’t agree to anything.”
“Juliette, promised me release. She said you would do it.”
“Release?” I asked. “Um … like, how?”
He stepped toward me and my hand instinctively lifted the foil. The sharp tip pressed against his rag-covered chest. “Drive your sword into me and end this curse. End my torment.”
“But you’re … nice!” I exclaimed. My hand shook. “I can’t kill you!”
A strong hand wrapped around the blade. His lips curled back in a smile and his thick wrinkled face grew dark. “Listen to me, girl: for a hundred years, I walked from battlefield to battlefield and tore men limb from limb. I ran my spears through children and burned down villages and asked not a single payment for my services. I sequestered myself here to stave off the evil within. It will never leave me!”
“I …” My mouth was dry. My throat seemed to close shut.
“Now!” he said. “End my curse!”
My hand pushed the blade forward and I felt the tip pierce the man/creature’s flesh. He fell back, exhaling. The area around the wound began to burn away. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you so much … hero.”
He fell to the ground, knocking over the pans of fish. As his fingers touched them, they too burned away. Nothing remained but ashes.
I returned outside, inhaling the night air. I threw the sword into the tunnel and began walking back toward the beach party. There were more people running into the lake now. Just as quickly running out, too. Someone’s loud laughter reached my ears and immediately I felt my skin tingle. It was Tricia.
When I reached the picnic tables again, Edward fought his way through the groups. He was smiling, holding a bottle of water.
“Where did you go?” he asked.
“A walk,” I said.
His hand wrapped around my waist. “You should have told me. I would have come with you.”
“It’s fine.” I scanned the students for Tricia. “Where’s my inebriated friend?”
He turned and looked around. “Well, she ran into the lake a few minutes ago, so I bet she’s drying off somewhere.”
A couple topless track boys grabbed their bottles of beer and stepped away from the picnic table with the red paper lantern. When I saw Tricia, my jaw dropped. “Oh. No.”
There she was, soaking wet, clutching her shirt in her hand, her sparkling pink bra soaked through and available for viewing. All the boys were taking in an eyeful.
“Trish,” I said, walking over to her. “Put your shirt on.”
“No, take your bra off!” one of the track boys said.
I gave him an icy glare and he just laughed. “Tricia,” I said, turning to her, trying to make eye contact but her eyes seemed unable to focus. “Let’s go. You need to come home with me.”
She laughed. “I’m OK. I just went for a dip.”
“And you took your shirt off. Come on.” I looked to Edward for support. He was giving her a strange look. The glow underneath his skin seemed more intense than it had been just moments ago, and it was like a punch in the gut: he wasn’t human. He couldn’t be.
“Are we really going?” Tricia asked, letting me pull her toward the parking lot.
“Yes,” I said. “Holy crap, yes! You’re … I don’t know what you are. How many of those strawberry things did you have?”
“I dunno,” she said. “Maybe forty.”
“You definitely didn’t have forty.”
Edward gave a wave to his friends and then jogged ahead of us, opening the backseat of his car and getting in the driver’s side. I shoved Tricia in and followed her so I could buckle her up.
“Take us to my house,” I said.
His eyes met mine in the rear-view mirror. “We could go to my place.”
“No,” I said, maybe a little too quickly. I forced a little half-smile. “I’ll come over on Sunday. For my birthday.”
“But your birthday is on Monday.”
“I know,” I said. “Twelve a.m., to be precise.”
He smiled back. “You OK, Trish?”
Tricia, eyes half-closed, gave him a thumbs-up.
“What did they do to her?” I asked Edward.
He shrugged. “She wanted to drink. So she drank.”
I was angry. Intensely angry. Tricia had her head pressed against the window, her eyes closed. She looked like a fool, sitting there with nothing but a bra covering the top half of her body. This was what the cool kids considered fun?
“Are you drunk?” I asked Edward.
“No,” he said. “I stopped after the one drink. I try to make a point of being responsible.”
Well, aren’t you just perfect, I thought. There was a time when those types of things just sent my heart aflutter. Now? Now, I didn’t know. Everything he said sounded suspicious. Who was the murderer from my dreams? Did Edward know him? Did they have Corrupted slumber parties and discuss their evil intentions?
Back at my house, I gently woke Tricia up and helped her out of the car. She mumbled a goodbye to Edward.
“Tomorrow,” he whispered to me through the open window.
“Tomorrow,” I told him, hugging Tricia close. Holding her up, too. “Come on, you big dummy,” I told her, pulling her across the driveway.
Edward’s headlights illuminated the side of my house, then the yard as he pulled out. We were blanketed in darkness. Above us, clouds covered the stars.
“Spoooooooky,” Tricia mumbled.
“Be quiet,” I whispered, ushering her into the pitch-black house.
“I will,” she said. “I love you, dear.”
“Right back at you, darling. Step. Step.” We ascended the staircase slowly, then snuck into my room. I got her a dry shirt from my closet. “Pink pandas,” I whispered to her, helping her into it. I unhooked her bra and pulled it out from under the shirt, setting it on the desk chair so it could dry. It smelled like Lake Michigan and dead fish.
“Pink pandas,” she murmured, falling over on my bed. “I remember when you bought that shirt.”
I took off my shorts to change into pajama bottoms. The note slipped out of my pocket, landing on the floor. I grabbed it and opened it next to the window so I could read the old writing. It was from Juliette, I was sure of it. The man/creature had held onto it for decades:
Alice,
Deny him.
I sighed, grabbing one of the pillows and setting it on the floor. I hid the note under the pillow.
“Trish …”
I wanted to tell her everything that had happened. But Tricia was already asleep and snoring, and I had a funny feeling
we wouldn’t be able to go back to that easier time when the two of us stayed up late drinking hot cocoa and rifling through clothing magazines.
For a lot of reasons.
Chapter 7
We got lucky. My parents spent every free morning golfing, and as such managed to entirely miss the wonderful “day after.” It was a learning experience, to say the least. I learned that drinking too much can make you vomit. I learned that it was especially helpful to have someone hold back your hair while you did it. I even learned that you might regret the things you did while drunk.
Tricia learned all this the hard way. I was the passive observer who helped her through it.
“You brought this on yourself,” I said, holding her hair back.
Her response was something along the lines of “Blaaaaaarg!”
I flushed the toilet. “You took your shirt off. Do you remember that?”
She shook her head. Her skin was puffy around her bloodshot eyes. “My head hurts.”
“You brought this on yourself.”
“OK, I get it!” she said. “I got out of control! Can you please … please …”
“What?” I asked. “Do you want an aspirin?”
She answered with another “Blaaaaaaaarg!” That, I decided was the end of the conversation. And the end of my mothering. If Tricia wanted to do this again, she could. But I wasn’t going to go out of my way to help her. This was not how I wanted to spend my Sunday morning.
“I need to go home,” Tricia said after finishing in the bathroom. She located her lake-soaked bra and put it back on. “Ewwww, it feels slimy on my skin.”
I followed her to the front door. “Do you want to wait until my parents get home so I can drive you?”
“No,” she said, opening the door. The sunlight hit us. She squinted fiercely, glaring up at the sky with an intense hatred. “Just push me in the right direction.” I did, surprised at my own strength as she stumbled north, toward her house on the other end of the suburb.
When I returned to my bedroom, the rabbit was waiting for me.
The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 1 Page 9
