Grimm Memorials

by R. Patrick Gates

  "I was just fooling around," Jen said sheepishly. She shot her brother a dirty look.

  "Well you can just fool around in your room for the weekend after we move in," her mother scolded. "I don't know how many times I have told you not to tell him wild stories. You know how he gets"

  Jennifer looked at her shoes and mumbled, "I'm sorry."

  "Listen, big guy," Steve said confidently to Jackie, "There are no such things as witches, trolls, or `ogies,' or anything like that. They're all make-believe. And if they are makebelieve, and not real, then they can't hurt you and you don't have to be afraid of them. Do you remember what I told you about being scared of things?"

  Jackie pouted and shrugged.

  "Come on, you remember. I said fear is ignorance. People who are afraid are ignorant. Do you remember what ignorance means?"

  Jackie mumbled, "That's when you don't know nothin'."

  "Right. People get scared when they don't understand something. Once you know something, there is no reason to be afraid of it anymore. Your knowledge is strength. Now, since you know there are no such things as trolls or witches, or as you call them, `ogies,' or monsters of any kind, you don't have to be frightened by the woods"

  "How do I know there's no such things?" Jackie asked, gazing with intense sincerity into his stepfather's eyes.

  Steve had to laugh in spite of himself at Jackie's seriousness. "You know because I told you so, and your mother told you so. And even though Jen told you those stories were real she doesn't believe them and she knows that they aren't real. Don't you, Jen?"

  Jennifer nodded slowly, looking sincerely repentant.

  Jackie regarded her with suspicion and Steve with doubt. "If you won't believe us, then go and check the woods for yourself. All you'll find are a lot of trees and a neat place to play."

  Jackie looked warily in the direction of the trees. He had been maneuvered into feeling now that he had to go and look.

  "Yeah, I think that is a good idea," Steve went on. "You and Jen explore the woods around the house while your mother and I unpack stuff. That way you'll know there's nothing out there so when your little brother Stevie is born you can tell him that there is nothing to be afraid of. Once we make a dent in the unpacking and get things arranged a little, you two can come in and put your stuff away."

  Steve stood up, gave Jackie a pat on the head, turned him around, and guided him to Jen. She took his hand and led him around the corner of the house to the backyard.

  Jackie looked fearfully at the trees that bordered the yard and, to him, loomed overhead like fairy-tale giants. Jackie paled at the image his mind had conjured. He was gifted with a wild imagination that didn't need much prodding to shift into high gear.

  "Are there really trolls and ogies and witches, Jen?" he asked his sister. "Tell me the truth "

  Jennifer looked at him and rolled her eyes. "You know you are such a queebo. Thanks for getting me in trouble." Jackie looked despondent. "First of all, it's ogres, not ogies, stupid, and (exasperated sigh) what did Steve just get done telling you? I can't believe that you are going into the first grade; sometimes you are such a stupid, queebo wimp."

  "I am not," he retorted vehemently.

  "Are to"

  "Am not!" he reiterated, tears springing to his eyes, his mouth twitching on the verge of a bawl.

  Jennifer looked at him and clucked her tongue in disgust. "Okay, okay, you are not. Just don't start crying on me"

  They rounded the rear corner of the house and went into the backyard. Very near the house grew the three huge maple trees that had appeared so threatening to Jackie from the front. Under the far tree, in a sand-filled square area, a swing and kiddie slide had been set up. The rest of the yard was dotted with several smaller birch trees that refused to grow straight and slanted at odd angles. In between the trees the grass was long, with an occasional bare spot here and there where dirt or ledge showed through. The property stretched a good twenty yards behind the house until it met a large field of goldenrod and strawgrass that ran another half an acre to the woods.

  Upon seeing the play set, Jackie immediately ran to it and began swinging. He kicked his feet hard and made the swing arc higher and higher. One of the posts of the swingset had rusted free of its cement anchor and jumped off the ground with a loud groan at every kick of Jackie's legs.

  "Jackie, stop it," Jennifer protested. The irritating metallic ka-chunk of the swing post had the same affect on her ears as nails scraped across a blackboard. Jackie grinned wildly and pumped his legs harder, making the awful sound louder.

  Jennifer walked away from him. "Okay, be a jerk, I'm going to explore the woods. You can stay here if you want to, but if there were such things as witches and trolls, I bet they'd like that sound. I bet that noise would bring them running"

  Jackie immediately stopped swinging and looked around. "I thought you said there was no such things?"

  Jennifer stopped, shrugged, and smiled slyly.

  "I'm telling Mom, Jen," he threatened. "She told you not to tell stories anymore"

  "I didn't say anything," she answered smugly. "I said if there were such things." She smirked and walked away.

  Jackie watched her go. Suddenly, the shadows under the tree seemed to get darker. He looked up at the tree above him. In his wild imagination its many branches resembled a canopy of snakes, writhing in the breeze. A bird flitted abruptly from one branch to another, startling Jackie. Without hesitating a moment longer, he leapt from the swing and ran into the field after his sister.

  Jennifer was admiring a spray of buttercups that filled a shallow ditch in the middle of the field when Jackie called to her. He had nearly caught up with her but was now squatting in a small clearing a few yards away. As she reached him, she saw that he was crouching next to a large anthill. She leaned over and saw what had fascinated him: two red ants were struggling to pull a large, dead spider up the side of the anthill.

  "Oh, gross!" Jennifer spat out, making a face. She turned away and headed for the woods.

  Jackie giggled with delight at having grossed his sister out and ran after her, crawling his hand up her back like a large arachnid.

  "Cut it out, Jackie, or I'll leave you in the woods"

  Jackie scuttled his hand down her arm and ran ahead of her, laughing.

  "I'll get you for that, Jackie!"

  He ran to the edge of the woods and stopped. The sun passed behind a cloud and he was swallowed by a gray-blue shadow. The trees loomed darkly and the undergrowth was thick with the musty, biting odor of rotting leaves. A grayness seeped from the woods, tainting the air and chilling the back of Jackie's neck. He stepped back, ready to retreat, when Jennifer walked by, ignoring him, and skirted the edge of the trees looking for an opening in the underbrush. Not far away she found a narrow path between two crooked birch trees.

  "I don't want to go in the woods," Jackie said uneasily.

  "Fine. Stay here then, wimpy," Jennifer said tauntingly and went into the woods.

  Jackie hesitated a moment and looked around. The trees leaned very close here. He turned to go back to the house, but he imagined that the grass of the field was longer than it was before. Visions of what might be hiding there ran quickly through his head. His imagination made up his mind for him and he ran after his sister.

  The change in lighting was sudden and dramatic. Jackie plunged from sun-filled daylight to shadow-filled twilight. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust and he was in a small panic until they did. He held his breath and stumbled forward until he caught up with Jen, who was poking with a stick at a toadstool growing at the side of the path.

  "If you ate one of these, you'd shrivel up and die," Jennifer said wickedly.

  Jackie eyed her doubtfully, but kept clear of the fungus. He didn't like the woods. Having grown up in the city, he had a natural distrust of the forest. In all the fairy tales that his mother had read to him, and in the one scary movie that he had ever been brave enough to watch on TV-without h
is 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 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 at its leisure in the treetops.

  Jackie walked faster, staying right behind Jennifer and stepping on the heel of her sneakers whenever she slowed down to look at something.

  "Jackie, you gave me a flat," she said, suddenly angry when he caused her sneaker to slip off her foot.

  "Sorry," Jackie said in a small voice, all the while keeping a wary eye on the surrounding trees.

  Jennifer fixed her shoe and straightened, then pointed ahead just past where the path ended in a tangle of bushes and undergrowth. "Look, there's a road," she said and started off through the thick patch of laurel and lilac toward it. Jackie stayed right with her, glad that she had seen the road. On the road he would definitely feel safer.

  They broke from the brush and walked onto the road. It was dirt covered and just wide enough for a single car. Jackie looked down the road and was surprised to see the roof of their new house through the trees, which were sparser as the road, the opening of which could barely be seen through overgrown bushes, connected with Dorsey Lane. A bird was sitting on the chimney. The image vaguely reminded Jackie of something that made him uneasy, but he couldn't remember what it was.

  "Let's see where it goes," Jennifer said, heading off up the road.

  Jackie watched her go, then looked back at the house. It was much closer than he thought it should be-to him it felt like they had walked miles into an unknown wilderness but still was too far away for him to risk going to it alone through the threatening trees. He turned and reluctantly followed his trailblazing sister.

  The road wound serpentine through the woods. It curled around thick trees and made sharp sudden turns that would be difficult for a car to maneuver. Neither of them noticed the fresh tire ruts beneath their feet. After following the twisting road for five minutes, it opened up wider and began to run straight. Ahead, they could see a clearing; the road went up a dusty, curved incline and continued out of sight.

  "Jackie, look at this," Jennifer said, staring into a thicket of bushes at the side of the road. Lying against the stump of a tree that appeared to have been blasted by lightning was a large, old wooden sign. There was printing on it, but they couldn't make out what it said until Jennifer pulled back the bushes to completely reveal it and read the faded black printing on it out loud:

  GRIMM MEMORIALS EDMUND GRIMM, MORTICIAN COFFINS MEMORIAL STONES BURIALS CREMATIONS.

  "This is a place that burns dead people," Jen said in a spooky voice.

  A chill ran down Jackie's arms, making the downy hair stand on end with goosebumps. He looked up. Through the tops of the trees, he could see a tall, square spire of a house with a single window in it. He had the strange feeling the window was staring at him. Into him.

  "Gotcha!" Jennifer cried loudly and suddenly as she grabbed her little brother by the arm. He let out a gasping shriek and turned tail down the road, running as fast as his short legs could carry him.

  CHAPTER 3

  Fe, fi, fo, fum ...

  The big black hearse, its motor barely running, was parked in front of the rambling, many-gabled, gray Victorian house. The old woman, her face still pale and a line of sweat bubbling on her forehead, sat with her eyes closed and head back. Her chest moved imperceptibly with every weak, shallow breath that rattled in her throat and whistled from her nose.

  She didn't know how she had made it home. The pain in her chest had spread to her entire body, setting it on fire and pulling a red veil of torture over her eyes. She remembered driving, swerving from side to side on the highway so badly that it was a wonder a cop hadn't pulled her over. She had driven by instinct more than anything else. She didn't remember passing through the town square, or turning onto Dorsey Lane, and she barely remembered steering the hearse up the winding, tree-lined road through the woods surrounding the big old house. Now she sat in the car, her muscles so tight with pain that she could barely stretch out her hand to turn the ignition off.

  I could die right here, she thought. It would be an end to the intense pain she was feeling, but she was not ready yet to die. If she had anything to say about it, it would be quite a while before she would succumb to death.

  But only if she could get out of the car and into the house.

  Eleanor, a voice hissed in her ear through the open driver's window. She tried to turn her head but the pain running amok in her chest, arms, and neck wouldn't let her.

  Eleanor the voice hissed again. The rattle of her laborious breathing grew louder for a moment. Her eyes fluttered and her gaping, gasping mouth worked silently. She opened her eyes and blinding sunlight made them water. She managed to turn her head a little and look at Edmund's face peering with concern through the window at her.

  You're fucking it up, Eleanor, he said with a laugh so hollow, it sounded like it came from the depths of a tomb.

  Eleanor tried to shake her head, no, but the pain had made her neck rigid. With a superhuman effort she moved her left hand to the door handle and pulled on it. The door swung open, nearly spilling her out, but she held on to the wheel. Grunting painfully with every move, she swung her legs out of the car and stood, leaning heavily against the car door.

  Another wave of pain flowed through her, turning her vision dark for several seconds. When it cleared, with swirls of light popping around the edges of her sight, she saw Edmund standing a few feet away. A dull, hot breeze blew, and his body rippled with it as the air passed through him.

  How do you like it? he said in a voice as gritty as graveyard dirt. It's not pleasant, is it?

  Using the door as a crutch, Eleanor staggered around it, then leaned against the fender and slid to the front end of the hearse. From her pocket she took the little black box that held her nytroglycerin pills. In her right, she held a bottle of tequila. She took a swig before tugging the box open and scooping one of the tiny pills out and into her mouth, where she pushed it under her tongue with her finger.

  You're going to fuck it all up as usual, Edmund chuckled.

  "Shut up," Eleanor said between clenched teeth. When the pill was dissolved, she took a deep breath, stood straight, and pushed herself away from the car, lurching across the dirt driveway to the front porch stairs.

  You'll never make it, Edmund gloated.

  She grasped the stair railing and braced herself against the shock of pain she expected. Surprisingly, there was no unbearable wave of pain; the pills were finally working and the torture was actually subsiding. She was going to make it. Moving slowly, she went up the steps, across the porch to the massive double oak doors, and unlocked the left side.

  Eleanor pulled herself through the doorway and shuffled over the black marble floor of the entrance hall. To the left, a wide staircase went up the wall to the secondfloor landing, which ran the length of the room and had an ornate oak railing with diamond-cut balusters. Directly ahead was a large, dirty white marble podium with an open book on it. At the top of the exposed, dusty yellowing pages was the legend: Guests of the dearly departed. Dark, heavy oak furniture decorated the room solemnly: a large sofa between two closed paneled doors (one of which had Crematorium printed on it in gold letters, the other Chapel) against the back wall; a black, Boston rocker in the far right corner; and a long mirrored coatrack along the right, next to another door. The walls were dark oak paneling and bare.

  Eleanor made it
to the sofa and fell heavily on it, landing on her side with her legs dangling off the end. The black leather cushions squeaked loudly as she landed on them. Her head hung back and her mouth gaped open, gulping at the air.

  The pain that had started in her chest, spreading from there to the rest of her body, returned to its starting point. With every beat of her heart she could feel the pain diminishing. After several minutes, though she felt lightheaded, she could again breathe normally.

  She stood and wandered around the room, touching the furniture as if she had never seen it before. She stood for a long time in front of the mirror, then went through the door next to it.

  The room was dark and she stood just inside the door for a while, allowing her eyes time to adjust. She was in the main waking room. The windows were heavily draped with thick, black velvet curtains. Around the room, on risers, were set showcase caskets that were dusty, their linings moldy. At one time Grimm Memorials had been the Connecticut Valley's leading mortuary, but in the past five years it hadn't had even one funeral.

  Eleanor looked at the little-used room as if she couldn't remember what it was for. She crossed the floor and opened a door at the other end of the room, but didn't go through it. The smell of wood and stone wafted out to her from the large room that had been Edmund's carpentry and masonry shop. She breathed deeply of the scent and it seemed to clear her head. She looked around as if she had just awakened.

  She turned quickly and bustled back the way she'd come, back into the entrance hall and to the door marked Crematorium to the left of the sofa. She leaned against the door, breathing heavily, and listened to the faint sobbing coming from the other side. She started to reach for the handle, but stopped. She didn't think she could make it down the stairs and back up again in her weakened condition. She needed rest first, and nourishment.