So where did Alice leave off? Ah, yes! Of course! We were in the forest behind her house. We’d been practicing and celebrating just a bit after our most recent victory in Chicago—remember the rats? I sure do!—and then, suddenly, Alice collapsed! Our once thriving and pugnacious hero had gone cold and clammy, pale and sweaty. And I was feeling just how she looked.
It was the cuts. Those darned cuts from the Frog Prince. Well, old Briar isn’t a fool. I know poison when I see it. Actually, I don’t know poison at all. Which is why I hopped around for a few tense moments, trying to figure out what to do.
What would you do if your friend was poisoned? Well … if you’re a human, you’d call the poison control hotline and maybe 9-1-1. If you’re a giant talking rabbit with no cellular phone, though …
Luckily, a black cat had wandered into the forest. I just happened to know this particular cat, too. His name was Boots, and he belonged to a strange family down the street from where Alice lived.
“Boots!” I exclaimed. “I need your help! We’ve got to get this young lady to her house! Can you lend me a paw?”
Boots yawned, lifted his leg, and proceeded to clean himself where the sun don’t shine.
“I say!” said I, hands on hips. “You’re no help at all!”
Boots shrugged and, no doubt seeing something shiny off in the distance, proceeded to be on his merry way.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Briar, there’s no way you’re getting out of this one! You just aren’t smart enough!
That’s where you’re wrong, dear reader. Old Briar had more than enough brains to deal with this here predicament.
I picked Alice up and tossed her over my shoulder. Only a hero would do that, right? I had an idea, but it was going to require me sneaking her back into the house. I could only hope that her parents weren’t in the kitchen, getting a snack. Quite frankly, I’m not sure how they could stay away from the kitchen. It was full of delicious treats! Cheese in the fridge, ice cream bars in the freezer, cookies in the cabinet …
OK, OK, I’m getting distracted. Alice says I should keep my contributions to this story short, so I’ll try not to digress again. The point was that I needed the kitchen all to myself. But before I could do that, I had to make my way back through the woods with Alice on my shoulders. And boy oh boy, she was not looking good. Not sounding good, either. She was groaning something fierce and breaths came out in raspy gasps. She was heavy, too; by the time I made it to her backyard I was out of breath.
“No time for a break!” I told myself. I’ve got some pretty long legs and I made the best use out of them as I could, cutting through the yard as quickly as possible so no nosy neighbors could spy the confusing scene—I was invisible, after all … anyone watching would simply see Alice floating through the air! Of course, I could have simply made myself visible, but then they would have seen a rabbit carrying a young lady into a house and that would have opened up an entirely different can of worms.
Before I opened the back door, I checked the little window. Her parents weren’t anywhere to be seen so I snuck in through the door, gently closing it. I set Alice on the floor and she made a little groaning noise that broke my heart. She just couldn’t die here! Not like this! Not now!
“Easy now,” I whispered to her. “OK,” I said. “Here goes nothing.”
I grabbed both of the flower vases sitting on the kitchen countertop. In one were a dozen beautiful roses. In the other was a small bouquet of lilies and other such things. Two beautiful displays of affection from a husband to his wife. Unfortunately, they both needed to serve a much more important purpose now.
“Prepare to behave like parents,” I said, and with that I dropped both vases on the floor. Each of them broke in a symphony of cracks and crinkles. To top off the symphony of destruction, I jumped high into the air, landing on flat feet so that they made a loud thump that resonated through the floor, shaking the old windows in the living room.
“Honey?” her mother called out. “Are you OK?” She came walking in, then hurried to Alice’s side when she saw our fateful hero lying on the ground. “Carl, come quick!”
Her father came walking in. A look of surprise registered on his face.
“Honey,” said her mother, giving her shoulders a solid shake. Alice mumbled something. I stifled a concerned whine.
“Get the car started!” her dad exclaimed. Alice’s mother rushed past him, out the front door. Her father scooped her up in his arms, lifting her with a grunt. He carried her through the living room, kicking open the front door with his foot.
And then they were off, speeding out of the driveway before I even had the sense to think of following them.
I was alone, in the dark house, with only my worries and my thoughts. What if she died? Oh, I would have gone bonkers. Curse you, Briar! Of course that disgusting Frog Prince would have some trick up his sleeve! How could you have been so foolish as to not get her to a hospital right after the fight!
“It’s all my fault,” I said, pacing the living room floor. “Oh dear me, what kind of helper am I? The most promising hero in ages, and she’s going to die because of a poisonous frog.”
I never told Alice before, but being a hero never guaranteed a long life. Even the first hero, the servant of the Brothers Grimm, hadn’t lived all that long … and he’d barely even had the chance to pass along the magic pen to another before meeting his untimely death.
How do I know this, you may ask? Well. It just so happens that this is not the first hero’s diary that’s been written. The second hero to have lived was a savvy servant girl named Adele. Back in those days, it was highly unusual for servants to be able to read, and very few masters allowed it. The reasoning was a literate servant was much more likely to try and run away from her obligations. An unfortunate sign of the times, I suppose.
But rules never stopped Adele. She was a strong girl and she understood that something strange had happened to the world. The Grimms’ fairy tale characters appeared alllllll over the world, you see, and the stories themselves played out so quickly that very few people even noticed. And you must keep in mind that there was no Internet back then! Not even phones! By the time a new mysterious king appeared in town claiming the townsfolk as his subjects, the townsfolk simply assumed he was the new fellow in charge.
And so it went. But Adele’s town, which was just a hop, skip and a jump away from the town the Brothers Grimm lived in … well, her town began to experience some strange events. She wrote about it in her diary, before she became a hero. I can’t remember it word for word, but let me see if I can get the gist of it …
Ahem!
Dear Diary,
The strangest thing happened to me on the way to the market in town. I was making my way on the path through the small forest between my master’s house and the town. It was early morning and sunny. I had two baskets with me, as I was expected to purchase cheese and salted meats as well as any fruits that might be for sale at a reasonable price.
I was lost in my thoughts. I’d recently snuck away one of the master’s newest books, a collection of fairy-tales by the Brothers Grimm, and read nearly all of it during the course of the evening. I was tired and did not keep track of my steps.
Out of no-where, a dog jumped out from behind two pine trees!
“Are you lost?” I asked him in a sweet voice. He looked like a husky, with a heavy coat of dark gray fur and beautiful muzzle.
“Indeed!” said he. I nearly fainted. When I did not respond, he asked me, “Are you all right, dear girl?”
“Dogs do not talk!” said I.
But the dog was quite adamant that he did talk, and asked for directions to the nearest town. Although what he might want from town … I cannot say.
You see? Little things like that were popping up all over the world! Most of the people’s reactions are lost to time, and Adele’s diary is no different. It was lost decades ago in a horrible fire started by a particularly malicious C
orrupted.
But that’s beside the point. The point was that by the time the Grimms’ servant appeared on the doorstop of Adele’s master’s house, she was already well-versed in the collection of fairy-tales. The master allowed the Grimms’ servant to stay the night, seeing the festering wound on the young man’s leg. A wound caused by a horrible creature that stalked the forest. A conniving Corrupted with three eyes on her head and a mouth full of sharp teeth.
When the master went to sleep, the Grimms’ servant told Adele what she must do. He passed along the magic fountain pen and told her about the three-eyed woman in the forest. He told her about the magic book of fairy tales that the Brothers Grimm had created, then destroyed. And he told her a secret, one I haven’t yet shared with Alice …
Not all of the fairy tales were in that magic book.
Which ones? That, my friend, I cannot tell you. I have no idea. Once their nefarious deed was completed, the Brothers Grimm wrote more stories to be published and read by children all over Germany. Those stories were quite harmless, and the characters lived only in the imaginations of the readers.
Where all fictional characters should remain, I suppose.
Regardless, Adele was ready for the new challenge bestowed upon her. I suspect she said something smart-alecky, just like Alice always does … that attitude has always been a common trait.
But so is respect. The next morning, Adele buried the Grimms’ servant and set out into the forest to find the vile three-eyed Corrupted.
A more terrifying “first encounter” I cannot imagine! I think you could guess at what I might do in this situation. Yes, you’re right: I would run in the opposite direction.
But Adele, she went right on into that spooky forest. The canopy overhead was thick, choking out the sunlight. The forest floor was littered with little green shrubs and rotting tree branches. Not a single bird sang. Not a single animal appeared. There was nothing …
Just silence.
She crept slowly through the woods. Twigs cracked under her thin leather shoes. She was holding a broom—yes, a broom. It was the only thing she’d known enough about to draw. I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking, this girl is doomed!
Deeper inside the forest, the canopy grew thicker. The wind kissed the leaves, creating little beams of sunlight that danced along the forest floor. Something was there with Adele, lurking behind the trees. She could feel it.
“Come face me!” she called out. Fear crept up her throat and she swallowed it down, steeling her nerves and gripping the broom so tight that her knuckles were white.
The creature emerged from behind one of the thick pine trees. She was eight feet tall if she was a foot. Her three eyes blinked in quick succession. She had a long hook-shaped nose and thick saucer-shaped ears and stringy black hair that hung over her face. Her wide mouth opened, revealing two terrifying rows of fangs. She wore nothing but greasy dark brown rags that covered her womanly features. The skin of her long, slender arms was a dark gray. She wiggled her sharp nails.
This is where your dear rabbit friend would have surely fainted.
But not Adele. Adele simply took a step forward and waited. What was going through her head? We can only speculate. I, for one, believe she was thinking about her family. Long gone, they’d been taken by influenza—the flu!—during a particularly widespread pandemic. Her parents had been part of an unlucky number that had not recovered. But if her diary has any truth to it, they’d been good parents. They never would have wanted to see their only daughter end up a servant. They would have rather seen her in school, and perhaps apprenticing with a baker. Her parents had never considered the idea of Adele living a simple servant’s life.
Ahem! I apologize. Back to the confrontation.
The three-eyed creature stared at her nemesis, no doubt bemused. Here was a short, slight servant girl carrying a broom of all things! Surely Adele stood no chance against such a terrifying, foul monster. Surely this would end as so many other encounters with the three-eyed creature had ended: bloodshed.
Adele stood her ground, watching the Corrupted step closer. Above, the tree branches shuddered as a cool breeze blew through the forest—I don’t know if this is entirely accurate, but it makes the story scarier—and suddenly the hideous Corrupted lunged forward!
Adele took a deep breath. She gripped the broom in both hands, lifted it high up …
… And brought it down over her knee! The broom split in two … two sharp staves, to be precise! And as the three-eyed monster closed the distance between them, Adele met her and stabbed with both jagged halves of the broom. The creature fell over, burning away.
And there you have it. The resiliency of the hero.
Where was I now? What were we talking about? Ah, yes ... our current hero. Well, needless to say, I nearly wore a hole in the rug as I paced in worry.
After four hours passed, I started to really worry.
Chapter 2: Alice
I remember ending up on a hospital bed. I remember a metallic taste in my mouth and the smell of disinfectant. I even remember the doctor’s faint voice, and the words “antibiotics,” and then some relieved sighs. But then everything went black.
The dream came on fast and vivid, more vivid than any of the dreams I’d had previously about any Corrupted. I was in the dark woods, moving between the trees with a terrifying swiftness. I could smell the pine and hear an owl calling out somewhere far above. I was following someone … no, something.
He was tall. He moved like some kind of ninja, darting from tree to tree. He breathed heavily, letting a low growl escape from his throat as he lifted his narrow snout in the air, sniffing.
There were lights far ahead coming from a building, but I couldn’t see well enough through the trees. I felt a strange unease come over me. Why had this dream come on so vividly? Was it the poison running through my body?
I moved closer to the creature. I could see its outline a little better now, and it looked strange, almost as if it had something on its back. A creature with a backpack? No, no … the shape wasn’t quite like that. The creature darted to the next tree, grabbing it with one hand-shaped paw. It bent over to sniff at the ground, and its back seemed to arch up. There were things on its back. Pointy things.
We reached the edge of the clearing. Now I could see the creature more clearly: he had a long, rat-like snout and beady black eyes and little pointed ears. On his back were long, pointy quills—hundreds of them, maybe thousands of them. The quills were black, except at the sharp tips where they were a pale white. He had the torso and arms of a strong man, with hands that were a mix between an animal’s paws and human fingers. Definitely an animal’s claws. One hand went to his furry brown belly, scratching absently as he examined his target.
A hospital.
I didn’t need a talking rabbit to help me put two and two together: I was somewhere in that hospital. He was coming for me, and I was fast asleep.
Wake up, Alice! my mind screamed.
The Corrupted glanced over his shoulder, as if he’d heard a noise in the woods. Then he turned, jumping over the tall chain-link fence that surrounded the hospital parking lot and landing with a grunt. I followed, passing through the fence as if I were a ghost. The creature slipped between the parked cars, moving cautiously ahead. Two of the parking lot’s tall overhead lights were out, and the creature seemed to favor the patches of darkness directly underneath, glancing in every direction before it darted to the next car.
“Wake up, Alice!” I cried out again. It was already halfway across the parking lot.
Ahead, a woman dressed in scrubs was walking out of the building. The creature watched her, backing up as she continued in our direction.
Don’t you dare kill her, I thought. Kind of an empty threat, I guess. But the monster was there for me … no one else had to die. And what was the point of skulking around if it was going to just jump out and attack someone anyway? Seriously, did this Corrupted even have a brain?
<
br /> He continued following her. I’m just going to call him a “he” from here on out because I knew exactly who he was: Hans. Once a sweet young man in a fairy tale, and now here he was in the present-day no doubt working for a shadowy trio of dwarfs, almost fully transformed into a man-sized hedgehog. Sweet little Hans moved from car to car, hunting the woman like she was his prey. Drool dripped from the creature’s chops. The claws on its toes scraped the concrete. The lower half of his body was more animal than human, and as he crouched down behind a red Corvette, his legs bent like the hind legs of a dog.
The woman pulled her phone out, tapping on the little keyboard. She was oblivious, her face illuminated by the screen. She nearly bumped into one of the parked cars as she walked. She slid the phone’s little keyboard shut, then stopped a moment, sliding her fingers across the screen. The familiar sound of annoyed cats broke the silence of the parking lot.
Of course she was playing Castle Cats. Way to go, lady. Your last moments on this earth are going to be spent playing a stupid phone game. Two cars behind you, a mutant hedgehog man is slobbering and wondering which piece of you to eat first.
But when he reached the next car, Hans stopped. His claw gripped the bumper as he watched the woman get into her car, shutting the door.
We turned back to the hospital. The creature seemed to have regained his composure and now we were hurrying from car to car to car. A fresh look of determination—if such a thing was possible—was on Hans’s narrow face now. A red tongue escaped his mouth, licking at the black fur around his cone-shaped muzzle.
Wake up, Alice!
Hans ignored the glass doors leading to the emergency room, darting instead to the outside wall, sneaking around the tall building. From somewhere nearby, I could hear the hum of cars zipping by at a quick speed. I recognized the building now. This was the hospital just off from the freeway, near my house. It had been cut out of the forest nearby, much to the annoyance of local neighbors who wanted to see the land turned into a park. So long as the Corrupted creature didn’t walk around to the other side of the building, there was no chance someone would see him.
The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 1 Page 24
