A WALK THROUGH THE WOODS
Jackie didn't like the woods. Having grown up in the city, he had a natural distrust of the forest. In all the fairy tales his mother had read to him, and in the one scary movie that he had ever been brave enough to watch on TV without his parents' permission-it was in the woods that bad things had happened to people, especially children. Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel-all had been in danger as soon as they had entered a forest. Walking through one now, Jackie could understand why.
The woods were creepy. In addition to the shadowy light, the air was filled with strange rustlings and creaking noises. The trees leaned every which way and the thick interconnecting weave of leaves and branches overhead reminded him of a spider's web. When the breeze blew through the leaves, they danced as if long-legged creatures were scurrying over them. At any moment he expected some furry, bug-eyed thing to drop down on a gluey long thread and snatch him off his feet to devour him ...
Books by R. Patrick Gates
THE PRISON*
GRIMM MEMORIALS*
FEAR
JUMPERS
TUNNELVISION
DEATHWALKER
*Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
For Corey Briscoe Gates and his cousins Jackie, Jennifer, Devin, Sara, Melissa, Adrian, Shea, and Sylvia. Fairy tales are real, kids. You can be living one and not even know it, and only you can decide if it has a happy ending.
Author's Note
This book would not have been possible without the inspiration of the following: Mother Goose, the Brothers Grimm, and The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Dr. Bruno Bettelheim. I would also like to thank Christopher Schelling for his support of this book, and my uncle, Verne (Bucky) Roy, for his detailed information on undertakers' gurneys and crematoriums.
For every evil under the sun There is a remedy or there is none ...
Ye parents who have children dear, And ye, too, who have none, If you would keep them safe abroad Pray keep them safe at home.
-Mother Goose
Once upon a time ...
-the Brothers Grimm
CHAPTER 1
There was an old woman and what do you think?
They're coming!
The old woman sat on the bar stool and listened to the low, gravelly voice.
SHE'S coming! The one I was waiting for.
Her long white hair, speckled with blotches of charcoal gray, hung over her face as she sat, her head down, staring into the glass of tequila on the bar in front of her. With a hand that trembled from palsy, she reached for the glass, clutched it, and warily brought it to her mouth, spilling only a few drops. As the glass reached her lips, she tipped her head back and downed the fiery liquid. The strength of the tequila made her want to gasp, as it always did. And, as always, she swallowed the fire in her throat, fighting the burning liquor back into her belly.
Can you hear them? They are your funeral march.
She pushed away the voice, listening beyond the murmuring thoughts of the other bar patrons, beyond the rush of mental images in the street and town outside until, finally, she could hear them. She squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated. She could feel the Machine start in motion. An image formed on her eyelids.
Can you see them? You'll never have them.
An orange Saab wavered blurrily, then shrank into focus. It hovered in her mind's eye and rippled slightly as if seen through great heat. In the car was a family: woman, man, two children-a boy and a girl. The boy was blond and cherubic with wide blue eyes. The girl was older, hair darker, eyes brown. The children were in the backseat. The girl was reading to the boy. The man was driving. He was tall with longish, dirty blond hair. His complexion was red with a fresh scrubbed look.
The old woman fixed their images in her mind, then dismissed them. She turned to the mother, a small, brownhaired woman with wide, almond-shaped brown eyes and a swollen pregnant belly. The old woman took a deep breath. "I can almost taste her," she mumbled. "Fe, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of a pregnant mum," she said out loud.
The bartender, who was washing glasses a few feet away, looked up at her. "Excuse me, ma'am?"
The old woman opened her eyes and looked at the bartender. He started to smile at her and stopped. The back of his head went suddenly cold with fear. For a split second, he could have sworn that something had happened to the old woman's face. He could have sworn (he would convince himself later that he had had something in his eye) that her face had sagged, almost melted, for just a second, then it had snapped back into place.
"Give me another," she said in a cracked, ancient voice. The bartender shook his head clear and quickly poured another tequila, straight up, for her. Just as quickly, he backed away from her and went to the other end of the bar. She downed the drink as she had the one before it.
"She's the one, Edmund," she murmured to the air. "The one we were waiting for," the old woman said dreamily as the tequila burn left her high and slightly dizzy. "She's the one .. ."
At the intersection of Main Street and Route 9 in downtown Amherst, the orange Saab stopped at a red light. Suddenly its engine stuttered, and skipped, then shuddered loudly and shook until it stalled
"Shit!" the blond-haired man at the wheel exclaimed, giving a guilty glance toward the children in the backseat.
"What's wrong with it, Steve?" the woman asked.
"If I knew that, Diane, I'd be a mechanic instead of a teacher," he said with a sigh. He got out of the car and went to the hood and opened it. Heat vapors rippled upward from the hot metal. Steve stared at the engine and swore under his breath. Cars were lining up behind the Saab as the light turned green. Several cars began beeping when he didn't move his vehicle. The horns fueled a resentful anger in him. He furiously motioned for the cars to go around, but when the light changed, each car had inched its way forward in anticipation and now they were too close together to do anything.
Diane Nailer got out of the car with the difficulty of the very pregnant and looked at her husband's face getting redder than normal. "That bad, huh?" she asked. He merely grunted. She reached in the car, pulled the passenger seat forward, and told her children, Jackie and Jennifer, to get out.
"Are we there yet?" Jackie piped up as he slipped out of the car. His big blue eyes blinked sleepily.
"No, honey," she said and looked up. "Here comes a policeman, Steve. Maybe he can help."
The cop, a baby-faced, slim-built young man, immediately went to the rear of the Saab. "Let's get it out of the road," he said with an air of authority that belied his years. "You steer and push from the driver's side," he commanded Steve, who did as he was told. Together they pushed the car around the corner and to the curb.
"There's a Sunoco garage down the street," the cop said, pointing south along Main Street, "but you can't leave it here too long or I'll have to ticket it."
Steve nodded, smiled, and thanked the policeman for his help.
"I've got to pee real bad," Diane whispered urgently to her husband as he rejoined her and his stepchildren on the sidewalk.
"Okay," Steve said, putting his arm around her. "They must have a restroom at the gas station. Let's go kids."
"Can we get ice cream?" Jackie asked, as he took his stepfather's hand and walked alongside him.
"We'll see, Jackie, we'll see"
A half block away, in Roosevelt's Bar and Grill, the old woman pushed the hair back out of her eyes and looked up. Seated across the end angle of the bar from her was an old man dressed in black, as she was. His hair was whiter than hers, and his eyebrows were youthfully black and so thick that his tiny eyes were hidden, but otherwise their features were nearly identical. The old man smiled at her and his leathery
face cracked into a thousand hideous wrinkles.
You're going to fuck it up, Eleanor! His voice was grating.
Eleanor smiled tightly. "Go away, Edmund. You're dead"
The old man faded.
A waitress returning empty glasses to the bar heard her and laughed uncomfortably.
Eleanor got off the bar stool, rising to her full six feet, picked up her large black bag, and shuffled out of the bar. As she walked past the waitress, she let loose a barking burp in the waitress's direction that made the latter jump. The old woman started to laugh, then grabbed at her chest as a needling pain shot through it. She staggered to the door quickly as the pain spread, seeping into her arms.
With Jennifer and Jackie on either side of them holding their hands, Steve and Diane strolled arm-in-arm down the steaming sidewalk. She was seven and a half months pregnant, just big enough so that she appeared to be waddling when she walked and had to lean against her husband to support her unbalanced frame. Near the entrance to Roosevelt's she had to pause and rest next to a maple tree growing out of a rectangular prison of dirt encased in sidewalk. The heat was making it hard for her to breathe. The hot weather had bothered her all summer as she got bigger and bigger, but lately it was becoming unbearable. She shook herself free from Steve's arm and Jennifer's hand and sucked in the stifling air. She held her hand to her heart and thought, Good day for a heart attack.
"Are you okay, honey?" Steve asked with concern. Diane leaned against the tree, fanning herself with her left hand, and nodded.
"Mom, look!" Jackie shouted, pointing to the alleyway next to Roosevelt's Bar and Grill where a long, gleaming black, wing-finned hearse was parked.
"It's Batman's station wagon," he said with a giggle.
"Oh, gross," Jennifer exclaimed. "It's a hearse"
"What's that?" Jackie inquired
"It's a car they use to carry dead people to the cemetery in," Jennifer explained. Jackie stopped laughing.
Diane looked at the hearse and giggled nervously to herself. If I do have a heart attack, I won't have to go far, she thought and immediately felt a chill.
Opposite them, the door to Roosevelt's burst open with a loud bang that made them all jump. Eleanor stumbled through the door of the bar and leaned heavily against the wroughtiron railing lining the short walk that led to the sidewalk.
Diane fell back against the tree and stared. The old man who had just walked out of Roosevelt's was the spitting image of her late father; he could have been his twin. As the old man met her eyes, Diane almost swooned. It was her father. But then he smiled and the light changed; he returned to being a man who merely looked a great deal like her father. She pushed her fists into her groin as her weakened kidneys suddenly threatened to let go and she grabbed at Steve's arm.
"Honey, I've got to go," she pleaded. He stood mesmerized for several moments, staring at the old woman, then pulled himself away to help his wife cross the street to the gas station. The children followed, but the cherubic-faced boy lingered, giving the old woman a distrustful look, as if he didn't want to turn his back on her.
"I need more time," the old woman muttered as she watched the little boy run across the street. A wave of pain enveloped her suddenly, wracking her body with shuddering torture. She clutched at her chest and fished in her bag. Staggering sideways to the hearse she leaned against it to steady herself. She found what she was looking for, a small, black pillbox, and struggled to open it with feeble, trembling hands. She fumbled a tiny pill from the box and shoved it under her tongue. She closed her eyes and leaned against the hearse. After nearly a minute, the old woman sighed and straightened.
You're out of time, Sister.
"I'll be all right," she whispered, defiantly. "Got to get home" She staggered around the car, leaning heavily on it, and was barely able to pull the driver's door open. Gasping for air and struggling with the door, she managed to get in, her head lolling against the top of the seat as she stopped a moment to rest. The nitroglycerin pill she'd taken was doing little for her. The pain in her chest was like searing heartburn, only a thousand times worse. With an immense effort, she closed the door and started the engine. Grinding the gears, she forced the shift into first, pulled out without a glance at the oncoming traffic, and drove away.
Two hours later, after the Saab's fan belt had been fixed, they'd had ice cream, and were driving to Northwood, Jackie spoke up and voiced his opinion of the old woman.
"That old woman near the gas station was creepy," he said to his sister, Jennifer.
Jennifer smiled thoughtfully. The old woman had reminded her of her grandmother. "I thought she looked nice."
In the front seat, Diane was lost in thought and seemed not to hear the children, but Steve had to chuckle to himself when he heard Jackie call the woman old. To Jackie, he supposed she was old, but she couldn't have been more than twenty-five; probably she was more like twenty. He felt himself getting hard as he remembered how beautiful she was; how she had stared at him as if she could see right inside him; and how she had fondled her breasts with her left hand as she stared.
CHAPTER 2
I went to the wood and got it.
The drive from Amherst to Northwood was a pleasant one, full of sights to keep the children occupied. They drove through the campus of the University of Massachusetts, past the towering, but half-empty, library and the abstract, concrete block architecture of the Fine Arts Center.
As they turned onto Route 116 the surrounding countryside changed suddenly from the modern, urban-style buildings of the college campus to rolling green fields occasionally dotted with ramshackle barns and houses alone against the sky. Except for the humpbacked and breast-shaped hills along either side of the road, the area could have easily been in some Midwest farming state; the contrast between urban and rural was immediate and shocking. Shimmering green ravines cut into the hilly fields here and there along the sides of the road for miles as it wound through the countryside, leaving the vast, towering structures of the university behind like a mirage of some fabled and magical city.
In the distance, the tall, rounded mound of trees and red shale cliffs that make up the summit and western face of Mount Sugarloaf jutted boldly into the bright blue, early September sky. Beneath the open red wound of the cliff face the sleepy towns of Northwood and Deerfield nestled together. On the other side of the mountains, the Connecticut River flowed through the town of Sunderland.
"Look, kids," Diane said, pointing ahead. "There's Mount Sugarloaf. You can see it from our new house. There's a road going up there and at the top they have a little park with a picnic area"
"Oh, Mom, let's go up there! Can we, now?" Jackie asked excitedly.
"Not today, honey. We've got to get in our new house and get settled. School starts next Wednesday, you know."
Jackie grimaced as if to say, Don't remind me. Next to him, Jennifer smiled at her little brother's frown. Unlike Jackie, Jennifer was looking forward to going to a new school and making new friends.
At the blinking red light at Bloody Brook Square, in the middle of Northwood, they turned left onto Route 47 and traveled for two blocks by rows of white Colonial houses until they came to a street sign on the right that read: Dorsey Lane. Steve turned the car onto the tree-lined road and drove to their new home, a large, two-story Colonial identical to the only other house on Dorsey Lane, which ended in a culde-sac after the Nailer house.
Steve pulled the Saab into the driveway and turned off the engine. "Well, kids, this is it. We're here"
The house had been white at one time, but years of weather and little upkeep had turned it gray. Its windows were blind with reflected clouds and shadows cast by several large maple trees growing close to the house. The trees spilled over the roof, their branches like monster arms reaching to gather the house in and carry it off somewhere to be eaten. At least that's what Jackie thought as he and Jennifer climbed out of the backseat, after Steve and Diane got out.
They had been there befo
re, when Steve and Diane were looking at the place, but that had been back in June and, bored to death by the process of house viewing after seeing five houses in two hours, Jackie and Jennifer hadn't paid much attention to it.
As they got out of the car, Steve went to the mailbox at the end of the driveway and got the key that the real estate agent had taped to the inside for them. Steve took the key and unlocked the front door. He whistled as the door swung open. The hallway and front rooms, visible from the door, were filled with cardboard boxes and plastic-wrapped furniture.
Steve turned to Diane who was standing behind him, smiled, and rolled his eyes. "We have got a lot of work to do, babe. Maybe it's not too late to forget all this and move back to Boston"
Diane laughed and patted his shoulder. "Oh, come on, it's not that bad. We'll be done before you know it."
"What do you want us to do, Mom?" Jennifer asked. At ten, and very aware of her mother's condition, she was always ready to help.
Diane reached down with some effort and grabbed Jackie by the collar of his shirt as he tried to crawl between her legs and slip into the house. "Hold on, cowboy. You stay with your sister. I think the best help you can be, Jen, is to keep this little monster out from under our feet while we unpack everything." "
"But, Mo-o-om, I want to stay with you," Jackie whined.
I know, honey, but we've got a lot to do. You go with your sister and play. You can explore the woods behind the house, okay? Just don't go too far."
Jennifer took Jackie's hand and began to lead him away, but he resisted. "No-o, I want to stay with you, Mummy. There's trolls and ogies and witches in the woods," he pouted, on the verge of tears.
Steve squatted in front of him and took him by the shoulders with both hands. "Hey, big guy, come on. What's this? We need your help here. There aren't any trolls, or `ogies,' or witches around here. Where'd you get that idea?"
Jackie looked at his sister. "Jen said so. She was reading fairy tales to me in the car and she said they're real. She said we'd probably find trolls and ogies in the woods around the new house cuz this used to be a 'chanted forest. She said the witch in `Hansel and Gretel' used to live in these woods"
Grimm Memorials Page 1
